Emory Stephen Bogardus
February 21, 1882 – August 21, 1973
Emory S. Bogardus served as President of the American Sociological Society in 1931. His Presidential address, “Social Process on the Pacific Coast” was delivered at the December 1931 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Society in Washington, DC.
Howard W. Odum, in his 1951 book American Sociology: The Story of Sociology in the United States through 1950, presented the following biography of Emory Bogardus (see pages 158-161):
Emory S. Bogardus, twenty-first president of the American Sociological Society, was born near Belvidere, Illinois, February 21, 1882, received his A.B. degree from Northwestern in 1908, A.M. in 1909, and Ph.D. from Chicago in 1911. He went directly from receiving his University of Chicago doctorate to Southern California as assistant professor in 1911 and became professor and head of the department of sociology shortly thereafter. He came into the field of sociology after the usual preliminary trial-and-error method of working in business, in newspaper reporting, on the farm, and in boys’ clubs in the city. In Northwestern University he was first interested in mathematics and in philosophy from which he became interested in the experimental aspects of psychology. Then, from his experience in boys’ work at the University Settlement, he became interested in problems of maladjustment and alleviating human misery. His next step was to go to the University of Chicago directly from Northwestern where he had majored in psychology. At Chicago he found the exact persons and fields through which to continue his interests as basic to his specialization in sociology. Small emphasized social process, Henderson featured social organization, Vincent and Thomas both came near to social psychology, Mead continued the philosophical interest, and W. I. Thomas featured the methodological emphasis upon research. All these added up logically to influence Bogardus’ later work.
Bogardus must be recorded as one of the most prolific writers among all the American sociologists. His total bibliography, beginning in 1898 and continuing for more than fifty years, added up to 275 titles of which he catalogued some 41 as being in the field of general sociology, 15 on leadership, 27 on social distance, 52 on race and ethnic groups, 30 on social psychology, 17 on social research, 16 on cooperatives. Many of these were minor contributed notes or short articles in Sociology and Social Research.
In a tribute paid to Professor Bogardus by his colleagues and distinguished guests in 1937, in token of twenty-five years of leadership, it was pointed out that more important even than his editorial work and the many articles he has contributed to this and other journals, were his widely used books. Among these were Introduction to the Social Sciences, 1913, 1922; Introduction to Sociology, 1913, 1927, 1931, 1949; Essentials of Social Psychology, 1917, 1923; A History of Social Thought, 1922,1929; The New Social Research, 1923, 1927; Fundamentals of Social Psychology, 1924, 1941; Social Problems and Social Processes, edited, 1933; Contemporary Sociology, 1931; Leaders and Leadership, 1934; Essentials of Americanization, 1919,1923; Immigration and Race Attitudes, 1928; The Mexican in the United States, 1934; The City Boy and His Problems, 1926; Introduction to Social Research, 1936; The Development of Social Thought, 1940, 1947. His writings, so the tribute recalled, were “known for their comprehensiveness and synthetic completeness, the systematic organization of material, the clear-cut lucid descriptions and practical applications, the sympathetic understanding of social situations, and the broad-minded attitude and wholesome spirit which pervade them all.”
In an informal way Professor Bogardus has classified his activities for us. He says, “My efforts have been given, first, to teaching, in order to earn a living, in order to have stimulating contacts with young people with their inquiring minds, in order to keep in touch with youth and their dynamic outlook on life. Second, there has been a continuous connection with editorial work as editor of sociological monographs, the Journal of Applied Sociology, the Journal of Sociology and Social Research, and Research News. Closely related has been a continuous activity for the past thirty-five years in reviewing sociological books, perhaps two or three dozen a year. Third, research projects have commanded attention. These have dealt with race relations, occupational attitudes, public opinion, the consumer cooperative movement, leadership. Not a little attention has been given to research methods. To assist in teaching, texts and syllabi have been prepared, presenting integrated pictures of various aspects of sociology. Fourth, administrative activities have been carried on for thirty-six years as head of the department of sociology, dean of a school of social work, and now dean of a graduate school. This administrative work has involved in each case a great deal of pioneering, which has required that many obstacles be faced and over-come. Fifth, throughout the years active membership has been maintained on at least from three to five boards of directors of community organizations. These positions have given many first-hand contacts with social problems and offered opportunities for research work.”
Bogardus continues, in his special statement for this book, “Perhaps needless to say the five foregoing activities have been carried on both simultaneously and continuously since 1911. Travel has been an out-standing hobby. It has brought first-hand contacts with people in England, France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil; in Hawaii, Japan, Manchuria, China, and the Philippines.”
Bogardus’ presidential address printed in the Publications of the American Sociological Society, Volume XXVI, 1932, was entitled “Social Process on the Pacific Coast.” He thought that invasion and population succession had brought about such changes as to make the Pacific Coast an “experiment station” in human relationships. “Conflict, adjustment, accommodation were incident to the meeting of heterogeneous races and cultures. His assumptions were that the meeting of the East and the West would, through overlapping and interpenetration, bring into existence a new culture.” This was in line with his general definition of sociology as “the study of collective and personal behavior in group life” in which the leading sociological data are social groups, personalities, social attitudes, and social processes.
Bogardus left his professional papers to the University of Southern California. A Finding Aid for his papers is available online.
Obituary
Written by Tom Lasswell, published in Footnotes, November 1973.
He came to his office in the Social Science building at the University every Wednesday, almost without exception, to read and answer his voluminous correspondence. Many of the graduate students who passed him in the corridors did not know his name, but he knew each of theirs-he was keenly interested in every single one of them. He knew where they had come from and what their special fields of interest were. They could have seen his name on the bronze plaque outside the front doors. It reads “BOGARDUS COURTYARD … ” Often, as he was leaving the building, he would stop by my office to invite my wife and me to his home for a Sunday evening game of Scrabble. ”I’ll fix a light supper,” he always added, “it won’t be much; just waffles, perhaps, and a little fresh fruit salad.” And with that, he would turn and hurry to his blue Pontiac to drive five miles through Los Angeles traffic to the market to shop and on to his two-story Spanish house on palm-lined Victoria Avenue, where he lived alone with his cat. He was ninety-one years old last February.
Emory Stephen Bogardus, the twenty-first President of the American Sociological Society (as the American Sociological Association was then called) was never, to my knowledge, called a particularly aggressive person. He had no energy to waste on the emotions associated with aggression. His unfathomed energy was devoted to the promotion of cooperative efforts and to the democratic process. His expertise in interpersonal behavior lay in facilitating the effectiveness of others.
Bogardus was the first President of the American Sociological Society to be chosen from a school west of the Rocky Mountains. The Society had elected a solid sociologist to symbolize the extension of its interests to the furthest borders of the nation. He had founded one of the largest departments of sociology in the world at the time (to become fifth most productive of doctorates under his leadership); he had founded the sociological honor society, Alpha Kappa Delta; he had founded the second sociological journal, Sociology and Social Research; he was the first President of the Pacific Sociological Society; he had written “Experiments on Tactual Sensations of the White Rat,” with Frederick W. Henke, for The Journal of Animal Behavior (Volume I, 1911), Introduction to the Social Sciences and Introduction to Sociology (both published in 1913), Essentials of Social Psychology (1917), A History of Social Thought (1922), The New Social Research (1923), and was eventually to have well over 300 titles of which he was the sole author in the listing of his works published during his seventy-five years of authorship. At the time of his death he was reading galley proofs of his How Much More, to be published in the fall of 1973 for private distribution to his close friends (he had privately published books for Christmas presents since 1956 ).
Bogardus actively encouraged liaisons with sociologists throughout the world during his term of office as President of the Society. Although he had visited personally many European scholars and was close friends with several of them (von Wiese, Bergson, Znaniecki, and others), he also had visited or would visit sociologists in Alaska, Mexico, Canada, Brazil Argentina, Chile, Peru, Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, China, India, Korea, Manchuria, Hawaii, the Philippines, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Iceland. Students of his were teaching or would teach in Iran, Colombia, Finland, and England in addition to the above countries. He regularly published “Foreign Sociological Notes” in Sociology and Social Research, which he had subtitled An International Journal with the hope that it would encourage a world-wide exchange of sociological information.
As President of the American Sociological Society, Bogardus worked actively with Herbert Blumer, who became Secretary of the Society and Editor of its publications in the year of Bogardus’ presidency. Blumer wrote a warm letter of admiration to Bogardus on the occasion of the latter’s ninetieth birthday, paying tribute to his gentle yet highly effective organizational abilities. Over two hundred sociologists and other friends attended the celebration in Town and Gown Hall at the University of Southern California to sing “Happy Birthday” to Dr. Bogardus and to hear a succinct and preciselyworded summary of the honoree’s present activities and plans for the future.
Born on February 21, 1882, Emory Bogardus was stricken with a massive cerebral hemorrhage on the morning of August 18, 1973 while carrying out his daily routine. He had no regular physician to attend him because he had never needed one. He died on August 21, without regaining consciousness. It is thus probable that he never spent an hour of his life without some constructive plan in mind.
