"Albion Woodbury Small: Promoter of American Sociology and Expositor of Social Interest" by Harry Elmer Barnes, Chapter XXXIX, Pp. 766- 792. An Introduction to the History of Sociology, (edited by Harry Elmer Barnes). University of Chicago Press: Chicago (1948)


Albion Woodbury Small, born May 11, 1854, Buckfield, Oxford County Maine, son of Albion Keith Parris Small and Thankful Lincoln Woodbury was trained in theology at the Newton Theological Institution, now Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, MA, 1876- 1879. During 1879- 1881, he studied history, social economics and social politics at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin in Germany. He taught at Colby College, Waterville, Maine and was named president of the college. In 1888 -1889, he studied history at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland were he received a Ph.D. in 1889. The title of his dissertation, which can be found in the special collections today at the university in Baltimore, is; "The Beginnings of American Nationality. The Constitutional Relations between the Continental Congress and the Colonies and States from 1774 to 1789".

In 1892 he left Colby and traveled to Chicago Illinois where he founded the first Department of Sociology in America at the University of Chicago; the first such accredited Sociology Department in the world to offer both undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees. He not only chaired this department for over 30 years but in 1895 he also established and edited the American Journal of Sociology, serving as editor- in- chief of this journal for 30 years. And in 1905 he was appointed as Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Literature at the University of Chicago and served in this capacity until 1925.

He did much to establish sociology as a valid field for academic study, and he occupied a leading place as a historian of sociological thought and as well a promoter of the cause of sociology.


"General Sociology (1905)" is one of his many works which include as well, "Adam Smith and Modern Sociology (1907)" and "Between Eras: From Capitalism to Democracy (1913)".


In a letter to Barnes (the editor of "Albion Woodbury Small: Promoter of American Sociology and Expositor of Social Interest", Chapter XXXIX, Pp. 766- 792. An Introduction to the History of Sociology, (edited by Harry Elmer Barnes). University of Chicago Press: Chicago (1948) and an excellent source on Dean Small) dated December 11, 1924, on Barnes review of "Origins of Sociology". Dr. Small admitted to stylistic defects when he wrote (and this reflects as well his general role at Chicago as being an enabler to sociological thought rather than as a sociological theorist):


"As to form you are of course utterly right. My mother once asked me with a deep sigh, "Why is it that you never publish anything that contains either gospel or entertainment?" I could only admit the soft impeachment, and leave the subject with an unsatisfying answer. I do not remember that I have ever written anything except things to be spoken without feeling, trailed by some coming man who would carry the job to completion. All my life, I have felt myself under mandate to get out stuff in the rough, which would be a challenge to somebody to work it over, or to get out more and better stuff of a more ultimate order".

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