Lester Frank Ward

American sociologist

• Born: June 18, 1841
• Birthplace: Joliet, Illinois
• Died: April 18, 1913
• Place of death: Washington, D.C.

Ward’s concern for the enduring features of social life led him to become one of the founders of the discipline of sociology. As a result of his contributions, the first systematic examinations of the complexities of the market economy, the social role of women, social and intrapersonal conflict, and social planning became core parts of social explanation.

Early Life

Lester Frank Ward was the tenth and last child of Justus and Silence (Rolph) Ward. His father was an itinerant mechanic who worked at a host of jobs but never seemed to settle down into any one of them. He had been a fife major during the War of 1812 and received a warrant to 160 acres of virgin land in Iowa for his services. However, he did not take advantage of this grant until 1855, when the Wards homesteaded in Buchanan County, Iowa. There, Justus Ward died. Silence Ward outlived her husband by twenty-two years. The daughter of a clergyman, she was a refined and scholarly woman who had a flair for literature that ten children did not take away from her. Much of the physical strength Lester Ward possessed and most of his indomitable will were derived from his mother.

Of his early years, little is known. They were spent in relative hardship, poverty, and hard work. Quarrying rock, tending a sawmill, and breaking the virgin prairie are among the activities in which his family engaged. His much-traveled family and the frontier region where most of his adolescence was spent provided little opportunity for formal educational experience. He was briefly enrolled in elementary school in Cass, Illinois, until 1855, when the family moved to the rolling prairies of Iowa. No schools were near the Buchanan County farm. When Justus Ward died, Silence Ward returned to St. Charles, Illinois, with the two youngest children, Erastus and Lester. There, Lester Ward returned to school; to earn their tuition, he and his brother performed farm chores and assisted in the corn and wheat harvests of the area. Ward proved to be an avid and exceedingly able student. He read everything available, including what he would term “yellow covered literature”—the pulp books of that era. Indeed, so taken was he by them that he tried his own hand at writing romantic fiction; several of his pieces were published in the St. Charles Argus.

Ward’s intellectual curiosity ranged well beyond the confines of the classroom into such areas as botany, zoology, and biology. He taught himself French, Latin, and Greek, and had a working knowledge of several other languages as well.

In 1858, Ward moved with his brother Erastus to Myersburg, Pennsylvania, to join another brother, Cyrenus Osborne Ward, in a wheel-hub factory. There, he met his future wife, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Caroline Vought, the daughter of a poor shoemaker. Ward enrolled at Susquehanna Collegiate Institute in Towanda, Pennsylvania, where he again excelled as a student. In 1862, he responded to the call for volunteers and enlisted at Myersburg in the 141st Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers. He married Elizabeth Vought on August 13 and reported for duty on August 26.

Ward saw action at Chancellorsville, where he was wounded three times and captured by Confederate forces. He was exchanged for a wounded Confederate lieutenant colonel and spent the remainder of his enlistment in the Veteran’s Reserves Corps, which guarded Washington and handled army supply. Ever mindful of educational opportunities, Ward also tutored the wounded in French and Latin while he himself was convalescing. Ward was discharged in November, 1864, and early the following year he took a job as a clerk in the Treasury Department; he would remain a government employee for more than forty years. His wife joined him in early 1865. Their only child, Roy Fontaine, was born on June 14; the baby died in May, 1866.

While employed by the government, Ward enrolled in night school at Columbian College (now George Washington University), where he would be graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1869 and a master of arts in 1872; he also earned a law degree in 1871. His educational achievements led to several promotions and many added responsibilities. Quickly recognized for his expertise in the natural sciences, he undertook countless field trips into the West, eventually rising to the position of chief paleontologist in the United States Geological Survey. Ward was a prolific writer, and his scientific treatises range from A Guide to the Flora of Washington, District of Columbia and Vicinity (1882), The Cretaceous Formation of the Black Hills as Indicated by the Fossil Plants (1889), to Status of the Mesozoic Floras of the United States (1904), with many others in between. Ward resigned from governmental service in 1905. Following a summer in Europe, he took a professorship of sociology at Brown University. The remainder of his life was spent in higher education.

Life’s Work

Lester Frank Ward is remembered in the twenty-first century as one of the primary founders of sociology as a distinct discipline. He helped create the American Sociology Society, of which he was president in 1906, and served as advisory editor of his fledgling American Journal of Sociology in 1896. Ward’s intellectual significance and the justification for the study of his life and thought lie in his efforts to reconcile mid-nineteenth century democratic assumptions and ideas with late nineteenth century developments resulting from scientific work in biology and from the urban-industrial transformation of American life. This intellectual and social revolution began a period of rapid change—an era that, early in the twenty-first century, shows no signs of ending—and Ward’s attempts to explain intellectual and social environments in transformation retain a profound relevance.

Ward championed a belief in the potential of the common person—a faith inspired by his own background and experiences. Early he became convinced that the differences between the upper and lower classes in American society were a matter of neither luck nor heredity but mainly one of education. He believed that universal public education operating within a framework of democratic political institutions could generate the human talent necessary for the exploitation of scientific knowledge for humanistic ends. As such, Ward believed that it was possible for the American public to remain true to its historical values in the midst of a world of rapid change—both physical and social. To Ward, humans were not the captives of deterministic natural laws, as many scientists and social philosophers of the late nineteenth century claimed. Humans, Ward taught, had the intellectual powers to control the forces of nature in the direction they chose.

Ward wrote that sociology is the science of human achievement. As such, he was not particularly concerned with method. He thought the main method of science was that of generalization—interpreting and reasoning about facts. Although Ward assumed that the social world was bound by the same scientific laws as all cosmic evolution, his work in botany, biology, and zoology forced him to argue that such forces were controllable by humans. He used intuition and keen observation to arrive at some of his sociological generalizations. He believed that the social “laws” thus gained should be applied to improve human society. Ward held that humans, because of their intellect, had the ability to use social laws, if not change them. Ward offered a caution in this application. The tragedies of history, he believed, derived as much from false application as from false ideas. Thus, education must be universal, and government must become an agent of the people. The ideal government was a democratic one, which would channel its energies into producing the positive social changes benefiting the entire welfare of all classes.

Although sociological thought and modes of analysis have changed greatly since Ward’s day, his concerns with the enduring features of social life are similar to the substantive interests of current sociologists. Such questions as the role of women in society; intellectual, scientific, and artistic creativity; social and intrapersonal conflicts; social welfare and social planning; the role of deception and ruse in social affairs and especially in political life; and the social consequences of professionalization, crime, and deviancy still provoke interest. Ward dealt with all of these issues.

Lester Ward’s most significant writings are Dynamic Sociology (1883), on which he toiled for fourteen years, and The Psychic Factors of Civilization (1893). Those portions of his work that are most significant today reveal a passionate concern for social reform and the promotion of a liberal ideology. He believed that humans could shape their own destinies through the perfection of social mechanisms and institutions. Although he recognized evil and folly, he was not overawed by them. Reasoning humans, he said, could overcome them. Thus, he rejected the notions held by some sociologists that an authoritarian order needed to be imposed upon society. He denied Spencerian logic’s conclusion that human beings can only react to the impersonal forces of nature. He provided the reasonable alternative to both.

Although Ward’s professional career as a sociologist was relatively brief, his contributions to the discipline were significant. He died on April 18, 1913, in Washington, D.C.

Significance

It is impossible to sum up in a brief fashion the thought of Lester Ward. His learning was vast, his interests broad, his impact upon American thought far-reaching. He was the first American sociologist to bring his learning and experiences in peace and war to bear upon the problems raised by Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. Ward destroyed forever the naïve Manchesterism that Spencer claimed represented the ultimate design of the universe and restored humanism to sociology. Ward recognized the role of women in civilization. He made a plea for humanity. Despite his vagaries, Ward stands among the giants of the nineteenth century.

Bibliography

Chugerman, Samuel. Lester F. Ward, the American Aristotle: A Summary and Interpretation of His Sociology. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1939. The definitive biography of Ward. Must be consulted by anyone seeking to understand Lester Ward the man as well as his thought.

Rafferty, Edward C. Apostle of Human Progress: Lester Frank Ward and American Political Thought, 1841-1913. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. An intellectual portrait, describing the evolution of Ward’s thought. Rafferty demonstrates how Ward’s ideas laid the groundwork for the modern administrative state and contributed to the development of twentieth century liberalism.

Scott, Clifford H. Lester Frank Ward. Boston: Twayne, 1976. This introductory study combines a brief account of Ward’s life with an analysis of his thought. Includes an assessment of Ward’s impact on his contemporaries.

Timasheff, Nicholas S. Sociological Theory: Its Nature and Growth. New York: Random House, 1967. Places Ward in perspective as a social theorist.

Ward, Lester Frank. Lester Frank Ward and the Welfare State. Edited by Henry Steele Commager. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967. Contains a brief autobiographical sketch that reveals much about Ward. Commager does a masterful job of explaining Ward’s theories—especially those involving the need for governmental involvement. Indispensable for the serious student.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Lester Frank Ward: Selections from His Work. Edited by Israel Gerver. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1963. Excellent, brief presentation of key positions Ward espoused. Contains a good evaluation of Ward’s impact upon the discipline of sociology.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Young Ward’s Diary. Edited by Berhard J. Stern. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1935. This diary, kept by Ward between 1860 and 1870, is a valuable source for discovering the origin of many of his explanations of social organization and social interaction.