Ward, Lester Frank 1841-1913

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WARD, Lester Frank 1841-1913

PERSONAL: Born June 18, 1841 (some sources say 1839), in Joliet, IL; died April 18, 1913, in Washington, DC; son of Justus (a mechanic) and Silence (Rolph) Ward; married Elisabeth Carolyn Vought (deceased, 1872), married Rosamond Asenath Simons, March 6, 1873; children: one son (died in infancy). Education: Attended Susquehanna Collegiate Institute at Towanda, 1861-62; Columbia College (now George Washington University), A.B., 1869, LL.B, 1871, A.M., 1873.

CAREER: Paleontologist, sociologist, educator, and writer. U.S. Treasury Department, member of staff, 1865-81; U.S. Geological Survey, geologist, 1883-92, paleontologist, 1892-1906; Brown University, professor of sociology, 1906-13. Military service: Union Army, 1862-64; discharged due to wounds received at Chancellorsville.

MEMBER: Institut International de Sociologie (president, 1903), American Sociological Society (president, 1906-1907).

WRITINGS:

Haeckel's Genesis of Man; or, History of the Development of the Human Race, E. Stern & Co. (Philadelphia, PA), 1879.

Guide to the Flora of Washington and Vicinity, Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1881.

Incomplete Adaption as Illustrated by the History ofSex in Plants, [Philadelphia, PA], 1881.

Politico-Social Functions, [Philadelphia, PA], 1881.

Dynamic Sociology, D. Appleton and Company (New York, NY), 1883, reprinted, Greenwood Press (New York, NY), 1968.

Sketch of Paleobotany, Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1885.

Synopsis of the Flora of the Laramie Group, Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1886.

The Geological Distribution of Fossil Plants, 1888.

The Course of Biologic Evolution, [Washington, DC], 1890.

Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism, Press of Gedney & Roberts (Washington, DC), 1891.

The Psychic Factors of Civilization, Ginn & Company (Boston, MA), 1893.

The Psychologic Basis of Social Economics, American Academy of Political and Social Science (Philadelphia, PA), 1893.

A Monistic Theory of Mind, [Chicago, IL], 1894.

Status of the Mind Problem, [Washington, DC], 1894.

The Political Ethics of Herbert Spencer, American Academy of Political and Social Science (Philadelphia, PA), 1894.

The Nomenclature Question, [New York, NY], 1895.

Outlines of Sociology, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1898.

Report on the Petrified Forests of Arizona, Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1900.

Pure Sociology, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1903, reprinted, A. M. Kelley (New York, NY), 1970.

(With James Quayle Dealey) A Text-Book of Sociology, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1905.

Status of the Mesozoic Floras of the United States, Government Printing Office (Washington, DC), 1905.

Lester Frank Ward, selected with an introduction by Israel Gerver, Crowell (New York, NY), 1963.

Glimpses of the Cosmos, edited by Emily Palmer Cape, G. P. Putnam's Sons (New York, NY), 1913-1918.

The Ward-Gumplowicz Correspondence: 1897-1913, translated and with an introduction by Aleksander Gella, Essay Press (New York, NY), 1971.

Applied Sociology, Arno Press (New York, NY), 1974.

Editor of American Journal of Sociology.

SIDELIGHTS: A U.S. Civil War veteran, autodidact, scientist, and sociologist, Lester Frank Ward "is one of American sociology's most colorful characters," it was stated in a biographical profile in World of Sociology. Born in 1841 (some sources say 1839) in Joliet, Illinois, Ward was the youngest of ten children. His father, Justus, "was a mechanic of an inventive turn of mind," and his mother, Silence, was the "daughter of a clergyman," and "is said to have been a woman of scholarly tendencies and versatile accomplishments," according to James Quayle Dealey in the Dictionary of American Biography. Ward's early childhood was spent in Illinois and Iowa, "in close contact with nature under frontier conditions," Dealey remarked.

Early in life, Ward developed a keen appreciation for education. "He considered learning to be the chief mechanism for self-improvement and progress," it was noted in the World of Sociology profile. However, his family's working-class existence meant there was little opportunity or resources for a formal education. Ward's early "formal schooling was scrappy at best, and he was often required to contribute to the family income through part-time mill work or farm labor," wrote Wilfred M. McClay in Society. "Yet somehow Ward became fixed with an iron determination to better his lot in life and had a growing conviction that education was the key to such self-betterment." As part of this steadfast determination, Ward taught himself several subjects, including five classical languages and mathematics; his diary was written in French as a linguistic exercise.

"It is not hard to guess that Ward's ambition was powered by a burning desire to escape his hardscrabble origins," McClay remarked. "To put it mildly, he was not held back by attachment to family," having little or no affection toward his parents. Ward cared little for genealogy or family history, and to him, "nothing was more unpleasant than looking backward." Ward believed that his liberation from poverty and "a defining milieu he despised" would depend on "the firm resolution of Ward's own will," McClay remarked. "His task would require of him the single-minded strength of the self-made man, who could not take the time, or the risk, of backward glances. Whatever his view of individualism in the realm of social ideas, he was personally committed to an ethos of self-propelled equal opportunity, in which a man ought to get just as far in life as his abilities and his tenacity would take him—no less and no more," McClay wrote.

In 1861 Ward began the first of four terms at the Susquehanna Collegiate Institute in Towanda, Pennsylvania. "But in August of 1862 he found himself drifting without sufficient funds to continue his education," McClay wrote, "and so the twenty-one-year-old Ward finally enlisted as a private in the 141st Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteers." Ward was seriously wounded in combat during the Battle of Chancellorsville in May, 1963, and he was discharged in November, 1864.

Ward turned his attention toward government work in Washington, securing a clerkship at the Treasury Department, and remained in government service for the next forty years. His government employment allowed him to finally pursue a formal education, and he took night classes at Columbian College (now George Washington University), eventually earning A.B., LL.B, and A.M. degrees.

In 1875 Ward was invited to join a botanical survey in Utah and to prepare a paleobotanical collection for Philadelphia's 1876 Centennial Exposition. This work eventually led to Ward's employment with the U.S. Geological Survey in 1881. He was appointed geologist in 1883, and paleontologist in 1892. Ward contributed numerous papers and studies to the fields of the natural sciences while pursuing intellectual interests in biology, anthropology, psychology, and sociology.

Ward's professional exposure to science led him to the theories of August Comte and Charles Darwin, whose ideas he began incorporating into his sociological work. "Knowledge, he claimed, not only has the capacity to expand happiness but prevent crises as well," it was noted in the World of Sociology profile. "Ward concluded that disruptions, such as labor strikes and populist movements, could be prevented in the public were educated. Evolution, controlled through education, would eliminate uncontrolled social revolution. Ward began his first formal work in sociology with these ideas in mind."

That work, 1883's Dynamic Sociology, is considered among Ward's greatest contributions to the development of sociology. Written over fourteen years, Dynamic Sociology established Ward as the founder of the field of sociology. In Dynamic Sociology Ward conceived of "a world driven by social forces," it was stated in the World of Sociology profile. "Biological evolution was the conceptual fulcrum on which all social forces operate. Organic matter, Ward argued, including the human mind, is shaped by centuries of progressive evolution. But human beings, through their intelligence, can understand the laws of nature and statistically use them. As the title of his book attests, society and social forces exist in reciprocal relationship."

In his sociological work, "Ward sought to give a strongly monistic and evolutionary interpretation to social development," Dealey remarked. Ward argued that "the human mind is a great factor in evolution," and that human intellect, "when rightly informed with scientific truth, enables the individual or the social group to plan intelligently for future development." Ward maintained his strong belief that education was the key to improvement of the self and of society, and advocated that the government eliminate harsh poverty and develop a broad national systems for education that would accommodate the genius on one hand and the more ordinary minds on the other.

Other of Ward's works, including The Psychic Factors in Civilization, Pure Sociology, and Applied Sociology, were "efforts to elaborate on the evolution of humanity," it was stated in the World of Sociology profile. The first of these books centered on psychic human development, whereas the other two focused on issues of societal growth and control.

Ward's work in sociology was so influential that he was elected president of the American Sociological Socity in 1906 and 1907, even though he did not hold an academic position at the time of his election. However, in 1906, Ward was appointed professor of sociology at Brown University, in large part because of his prodigious output and well-received writing. Ward died in Washington, D.C., on April 18, 1913.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of American Biography, American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Garraty, John A., and Jerome L. Sternstein, editors, Encyclopedia of American Biography, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

Hart, James D., Oxford Companion to American Literature, 6th edition, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Herzberg, Max J., The Reader's Encyclopedia ofAmerican Literature, Thomas Y. Crowell Co. (New York, NY), 1962.

Johnson, Rossiter, editor, The Twentieth CenturyBiographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Biographical Society (Boston, MA), 1904, reprinted, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1968.

Johnson, Thomas H., The Oxford Companion toAmerican History, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1966.

Mitchell, G. Duncan, editor, A Dictionary of Sociology, Aldine Publishing Co. (Chicago, IL), 1968.

National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume 13, James T. White & Co. (New York, NY), 1906, reprinted, University Microfilms (Ann Arbor, MI), 1967-1971.

Page, Charles Hunt, Class and American Sociology:From Ward to Ross, Octagon Books (New York, NY), 1964.

Palmisano, Joseph M., editor, World of Sociology, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Preston, Wheeler, American Biographies, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1974.

Scott, Clifford H., Lester Frank Ward, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1976.

Steele, Henry, editor, Lester Ward and the Welfare State, Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis, IN), 1967.

Wallace, W. Stewart, compiler, A Dictionary of NorthAmerican Authors Deceased before 1950, Ryerson Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1951; reprinted, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1968.

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, editors, Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, D. Appleton & Co (New York, NY), 1888-1889, reprinted, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1968.

Wood Clement, The Substance of the Sociology ofLester F. Ward, The Vanguard Press (New York, NY), 1930.