Edward Cary Hayes
February 10, 1868 – August 7, 1928
Edward Cary Hayes was born in Lewiston, Maine on February 10, 1868, the son of Benjamin Francis Hayes and Arcy Cary. Benjamin taught philosophy at Bates College and the Cobb Divinity School. Arcy was a local schoolteacher involved in a plethora of community improvement and social welfare activities.
Hayes entered Bates College, and upon graduating in 1887 went on to study ministry at Cobb Divinity School. He was ordained a minister in 1893 and became a pastor in Augusta, Maine. Hayes married Annie Lee Bean in 1895, with whom he had three children. He remained a pastor until 1896, at which point he began to find that his beliefs clashed with most of the congregation. Hayes turned his focus back to academics. He moved to New York, where he taught philosophy and served as Dean at Keuka College for two years.
In 1899, Hayes enrolled at the University of Chicago to acquire a doctorate degree in philosophy. It was during this time that he became interested in sociology. Hayes entered the University’s newest department, receiving instruction from Albion Small and studying alongside academics George Herbert Mead, John Dewey and James Tufts. He also spent a year in Germany at the University of Berlin, where he studied with Georg Schmoller, Adolph Wagner, Friedrich Paulsen, Alfred Vierkandt and Georg Simmel. Hayes was one of the original pioneers promoting the assimilation of sociology into the American educational system.
After receiving his doctorate in 1902, Hayes went on to teach at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He moved to the University of Illinois in 1907 to take on the position of Chair in its new sociology department. Sociology classes had previously been a part of the economics department. Hayes stayed at Illinois until his death. He also lectured on occasion at universities such as Harvard, Columbia, the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. During Hayes’s tenure, the department had grown to house seven full-time faculty members and enroll over two thousand students each year.
Hayes produced a number of notable works in his time. These tended to focus on definitions and methodological issues within sociology. His Introduction to the Study of Sociology (1915) was widely read at the time but has faded from much use today. Although Hayes observed a rising trend in specialization among sociologists, he stressed the importance of keeping attentive to the larger design. His works mostly consisted of attempts to define the discipline of sociology and to analyze the general problems facing sociologists of his time. Societal progress fascinated Hayes. A product of the progressive movement, he often criticized both radical and conservative thought. Hayes advocated more government involvement in social welfare. This desire is evident in his Sociology and Ethics (1921).
Hayes also had a large impact on the sociological discipline outside academia. He maintained an active interest in public sociology and solidifying the profession as a whole. Hayes held memberships in organizations such as the German Sociological Society, the Institut Internationale de Sociologie and the Instituto Internazionale di Sociologia. In 1904, he acted as Secretary for the Social Psychology section at the World’s Congress of Science. Hayes was also active in a number of social reform groups, such as the Family Welfare Society and the community chest in Champaign-Urbana. He was a member of an advisory committee to the Illinois State Department of Public Welfare. From 1910-1911, Hayes was the President of the Illinois State Conference of Charities and Corrections.
Hayes attended the first organizational meeting of the American Sociological Society in 1905 and became one of its most influential founding members. He served on the Society’s Committee of Ten, selected to create a universal model for schools’ undergraduate introductory sociology courses. He also attended the Joint Commission on the Presentation of Social Studies in Schools, on behalf of the Society. Hayes was elected Second Vice President of the American Sociological Society in 1919, First Vice President in 1920, and became its eleventh President in 1921. His Presidential address, delivered at the 1921 Annual Meeting, was entitled “The Sociological Point of View.”
Hayes died on August 7, 1928 in Urbana, Illinois. His obituary can be found in the July 1929 issue of the American Journal of Sociology 35(1): 93-99.
For more information on Edward Cary Hayes, you may find the following sources useful:
- Kivisto, Peter. 2000. “Hayes, Edward Cary.” American National Biography Online. American Council of Learned Societies: Oxford University Press, Retrieved March 14, 2003 (http://www.anb/org/articles/14/14-00269.html).
- Sutherland, E. H. 1929. “Edward Cary Hayes, 1868-1928.” American Journal of Sociology 35(1): 93-99.
Obituary
Written by E.H. Sutherland, published in the American Journal of Sociology, 1929.
Edward Cary Hayes, 1868-1928
Edward Cary Hayes was born of old New England stock and was reared in an old-fashioned New England home. The early influences of his life directed him toward theology and the ministry. After a short career as a pastor, he began graduate work in philosophy in the University of Chicago but by the influence of Professor A. W. Small was turned in the direction of sociology when he was thirty-two years of age. Thus, like many other sociologists he came into his life’s work after an experience in the ministry and when of almost middle age.
He was born in Lewiston, Maine, in 1868. His father was a professor in Bates College and his mother was influential in the organization and development of several social welfare agencies in Lewiston, Maine. When six years of age he went with his parents to Germany for a year and at that time secured a basic training in the German language which was of great value to him later. He was graduated from Bates College in 1887, was a student in Cobb Divinity School from 1888 to 1892, and a pastor in Augusta, Maine, from 1893 to 1896. Then he began to feel that he was out of harmony with the beliefs of many church members, and that he must change his career. He was a teacher and dean in Keuka College from 1897 to 1899. Then he went to the University of Chicago for a year of graduate work in philosophy where he fell under the influence of Professors Dewey and Tufts. During this year Professor A. W. Small invited him into the sociology office and said to him, “I have had you on my conscience ever since you were here (in Cobb Divinity School) six years ago. I believe you are one of the men who can help to create the science of sociology.” Though he was nearer to completion of graduate work in philosophy than in any other field, he decided, in consultation with Professor Small, to spend a year in the University of Berlin and then return for an additional year in sociology in the University of Chicago. During the year 1900-1901 he was in the University of Berlin, where he came under the influence of Simmel, Vierkandt, Schmoller, Wagner, and Paulsen. He returned to the University of Chicago the next year and was granted the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1902, with a dissertation entitled “The Sociologist’s Object of Attention.”
From 1902 to 1907 he was professor of sociology and economics in Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. Mrs. Wade· McMillan, who was a student in Miami at the time Professor Hayes was teaching there, writes in a letter as follows:
It is twenty-three years since Dr. Hayes left Miami University and yet if you ask any student who was a member of his class what remains as the most vivid memory of his college life his answer will be “Dr. Hayes and his ideas.” To the boys and girls of that period who had any appreciation whatever, the magnetic personality, the inspirational quality of the man so wrought upon them that they become what nowadays we call “fans.” It is trite to say that the great teacher is born, not made, that he is as real as the creative artist, and that for one such personality that vivifies the academic wodd there are a thousand painstaking conscientious pundits whose erudition hangs like a dense and disconcerting cloud above the heads of the students entrusted to them. But even among the inspired ones there are few so variously gifted as Dr. Hayes.
In 1907 Professor Hayes became professor of sociology and head of the department of sociology in the University of Illinois. The department of economics in Illinois had offered courses in sociology from 1893 to 1907, and in 1894–95 developed an ambitious program for graduate work in sociology. But aside from two courses given somewhat regularly and a few others given intermittently in the department of economics no sociology was taught in the University of Illinois until Professor Hayes became head of the department of sociology. This new department was met by contemptuous opposition on the part of many members of the faculty, but in spite of the opposition the department grew steadily, until in 1928 seven men were employed in sociology and the registration was more than 2,000 a year.
In addition to his regular teaching work Professor Hayes taught in summer sessions in Harvard, Columbia, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Colorado.
Professor Hayes has had an important place in the American sociological movement. He was present at the meeting in December, 1905, in which the American Sociological Society was started, and thus became a charter member of the society. His name appears frequently in the proceedings of the society from Volume I until the time of his death. He was a member of the Committee of Ten appointed by the American Sociological Society to outline the subject-matter of the fundamental course in sociology . He was appointed to represent the American Sociological Society on the Joint Commission on Presentation of Social Studies in the Schools. He was second vice-president of the society for 1919, first vice president for 1920, and president for 1921. He stated that as president he was responsible for the three following modifications in the work and organization of the society: first, a division of the program into sections: social evolution, biographical factors, and psychic factors; second, the appointment of a committee to take charge of each subdivision of the program; third, round tables as a part of the program. He was secretary of the Social Psychology Section of the World’s Congress of Science in the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. He was advisory editor of the American Journal of Sociology, and co-operating editor of the Journal of Applied Sociology. He was editor of the Lippincott series in sociology, of which the first volume appeared in 1922. He was a member of the German Sociological Society, a member of the Institut Internationale de Sociologie (Paris), and a member and former vice-president of the Instituto Internazionale di Sociologia (Rome).
Professor Hayes’s sociological productions in the form of books and articles are numerous. These do not constitute research in the sense of the discovery or measurement of concrete facts. Rather his sociological works consist of interpretation and organization of facts that are fairly well known to all students of social conditions. When he began his career in sociology he was confronted with the theory of the social organism and with Spencer’s laissez faire philosophy. His doctor’s dissertation on “The Sociologist’s Object of Attention” ( which appeared in somewhat altered form in the American Journal of Sociology, Vols. X-XII under the title “Sociological Construction Lines”) was the basis of his system of sociology. His later sociological writings were largely an elaboration and amplification of the thesis there set forth. With modifications made during the course of his life the essential elements in that system of thought are as follows: First, the sociologist’s proper object of attention is the social process. Professor Small who wrote much regarding the social process gives to Professor Hayes the credit of being the first to formulate the concept of the social process. This social process is made up of interrelated social activities and it is to these recurrent and related social activities that the sociologist should direct his attention rather than to the social organism, the group, or the person. Second, the phenomena that the sociologist must take into account are of two types: problem phenomena and conditioning phenomena. The problem phenomena are the social activities and are the phenomena that the sociologist should attempt to explain. The conditioning phenomena are those which the sociologist attempts to use in his explanation of social activities. Social activities can be explained only in terms of the phenomena that condition them. Consequently Professor Hayes argued from the time of his first writing to his last that sociology must be a synthesis of the knowledge of all the conditions in which social activities occur. These conditions, however, should not be regarded as “forces.” They are rather the geographic, technic, psycho-physical, and social conditions in reference to which social activities take place. Moreover, he argued that the social conditions are in the nature of relations, and he outlined social relations as follows: suggestion, sympathetic radiation, imitation, inducement, deterrence, accommodation, corroboration, emulation, domination-subordination, competition, conflict, co-operation, and organization. Third, these social activities are essentially psychic. Professor Hayes declared in a meeting of the American Sociology Society in 1912, “I believe that I was the first member of this society to declare without needless qualifications that social phenomena are psychic.” He admits that as long as psychic activities are concealed or take place in individuals in complete isolation they are not object-matter of sociology, but argues that it is the psychic aspect of activities that is most important because that is the part in which the values lie, and that is the part that must be explained and controlled. Fourth, the purpose and essential part of sociology is ethics. In his Introduction to the Study of Sociology he stated, “Sociology aims at nothing less than the transfer of ethics from the domain of speculative philosophy to the domain. of objective science.” Other sciences may take over everything else that sociology has been doing but this ethical task, calling for a synthesis of all other knowledge regarding social activities, will always remain for some group of scientists. Good is an experience; people experience good just as they experience red. It is the function of sociology to explain this experience in terms of conditions. To those opponents who maintain that science has nothing to do with values Professor Hayes makes the rebuttal that science is necessarily concerned with values; it must evaluate techniques of investigation and it must evaluate facts for the purpose of arriving at generalizations. The process of drawing inferences from concrete facts is no different when the generalization has to do with ethical values from when it has to do with other values. Consequently an evaluation designed to determine the best policy is no more improper in science than an inference to determine the best scientific law.
These fundamental propositions are contained principally in his Introduction to the Study of Sociology and his Sociology and Ethics. His Introduction to the Study of Sociology was for a decade after its publication in 1915 one of the principal texts in sociology in this country. At the time of his death Professor Hayes was working on a revision of this text.
Professor Hayes took great interest and an active part in social welfare agencies in his community and state. He organized the Family Welfare Society of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and was a member of the board of directors of that society from the time of its organization until his death. Largely through the efforts of Professor Hayes a community chest was organized in those cities and he became the first president of that organization. He was a member of the advisory committee of the Illinois State Department of Public Welfare in 1917-18, and was president of the Illinois State Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1910-11.
His family was an example of a highly unified and completely democratic group. Probably no finer family relationship can be discovered in modern society than was exemplified in the home of Professor Hayes. Because of his cordial hospitality outsiders frequently had the opportunity to see and enjoy that family life. The most striking thing about the personality of Professor Hayes was his energy and vigor. He took pride in the advice given him by an athletic trainer, that his reactions were so quick and his coordination so good that he should have been a prize-fighter. At the age of sixty he was as strong and active as most men of thirty. This vigor was as apparent in his thinking as in his overt behavior. And with this vigor went a broad cultural interest in the selection of values upon which to exercise his energy. He was reared in an academic environment and spent most of his life in that environment. The result was a keen appreciation of others and a taste in conversation and behavior that exemplified the culture of that group.
Sutherland, E.H. 1929. Edward Cary Hayes, 1868-1928. The American Journal of Sociology. 35(1):93-99.
