He had wide-ranging interests ineugenics[2][3] andcriminology.[4] An adherent of the AmericanProgressive Movement in his early career, with a special interest in the protection of the rights of white workers and the white working-class.[5] He soon gained and has kept an enduring reputation as aracist andeugenicist for his vocal opposition to the rights of Asians in California, as well opposing their further immigration into the United States.
He was born inVirden, Illinois. His father was a farmer. He attendedCoe College and graduated in 1887. After two years as an instructor at a business school, the Fort Dodge Commercial Institute, he went toGermany for graduate study at theUniversity of Berlin. He returned to the U.S., and in 1891 he received his PhD fromJohns Hopkins University in political economy underRichard T. Ely,[6][7] with minors in philosophy and ethics.[8] He has been described as a disciple ofLester Ward.[1]
In Stanford's "first academic freedom controversy",[10] Ross was fired from Stanford because of his political views on eugenics.[11][12] He objected toChinese andJapaneseimmigrant labor (on both economic and racial grounds: he was an early supporter of the "race suicide" doctrine and expressed his wish to restrict entry of other races in strong and crude language in public speeches[13]) and Japanese immigration altogether. In the speech that was the catalyst for his potential firing and ultimate resignation, he was quoted as declaring, "And should the worst come to the worst it would be better for us if we were to turn our guns upon every vessel bringing Japanese to our shores rather than to permit them to land."[14] In response,Jane Stanford called for his resignation.[15]
In Ross' public statement as to his resignation, he wrote that his friendDavid Starr Jordan had asked him to make the speech. Jordan managed to keep Ross from being fired, but Ross resigned shortly after.[16]The position was at odds with the university's founding family, theStanfords, who had made their fortune in Western rail construction, a major employer ofcoolie laborers.[citation needed]
Ross had also made critical remarks about the railroad industry in his classes: "A railroad deal is a railroad steal." This was too much forJane Stanford, Leland Stanford's widow, who was on the board of trustees of the university. Numerous professors at Stanford resigned after protests of his dismissal, sparking "a national debate... concerning the freedom of expression and control of universities by private interests."[9] TheAmerican Association of University Professors was founded largely in response to this incident.[17]
His understanding ofAmericanization and assimilation bore a striking resemblance to that of another Wisconsin professor,Frederick Jackson Turner. Like Turner, Ross believed that American identity was forged in the crucible of the wilderness. The 1890 census's proclamation that the frontier had disappeared, then, posed a significant threat to America's ability to assimilate the mass of immigrants who were arriving from southern and eastern Europe. In 1897, just four years after Turner had presented hisfrontier thesis to theAmerican Historical Association, Ross, then at Stanford, argued that the loss of the frontier destroyed the machinery of the melting pot process.[19]
In 1913, the State of Wisconsin passed its first sterilization law.[20] Ross, who lived in Wisconsin at the time, was a reserved proponent of sterilization and indicated his support for the measure.[20][21] He qualified his support by contrasting it with the greater harm of hanging a man and advocated its initial use "only to extreme cases, where the commitments and the record pile up an overwhelming case." Involuntary sterilization remained legal in Wisconsin until July 1978.
From 1900 to the 1920s, Ross supported the alcoholProhibition movement as well as continuing to support eugenics and immigration restriction.[23] By 1930, he had moved away from those views, however.
"Western Civilization and the Birth-Rate,"Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd Series, Vol. 8, No. 1, Papers and Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting, December 26–28, 1906, Feb. 1907.
^"The findings of the eugenicists quite naturally gave support to the opponents of further immigration. One of the most widely read books on this controversial issue wasThe Old World in the New, by Edward A. Ross [...] he believed in the conventional myth of Nordic supremacy and the need for a program of positive eugenics in order to preserve our Anglo-Saxon Americanism against pollution through immigration [...] [ending] with a chapter showing how 'Immigrant Blood' was slowly polluting the purer 'American Blood', as 'beaten members of the beaten breeds' swarmed over the beloved land of his own pioneer ancestors. Somewhat obsessed with race, Ross was of course convinced that 'the blood being injected into the veins of our people was sub-human'; the newer immigrants were 'morally below the races of northern Europe'; and that it all would end in 'Race Suicide'." — Baltzell, E. Digby (1964).The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. Random House, p. 105.
^Rafter, Nicole H. (2009). "Edward Alsworth Ross: The System of Social Control, 1901," inThe Origins of Criminology: A Reader, Routledge, p. 320.
^Weinberg, Julius (1972).Edward Alsworth Ross and the Sociology of Progressivism, State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
^Mohr, James C. (1970). "Academic Turmoil and Public Opinion: The Ross Case at Stanford".Pacific Historical Review.39 (1):39–61.doi:10.2307/3638197.JSTOR3638197.
^The Argonaut. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum and Historical Society. 1900.
^Samuels, Warren J. (1991). "The Firing of E. A. Ross from Stanford University: Injustice Compounded by Deception?".Journal of Economic Education.22 (2):183–190.doi:10.1080/00220485.1991.10844707.
^Keith, Bruce (1988). "The Foundations of an American Discipline: Edward A. Ross at the University of Nebraska, 1901–1906,"Mid-American Review of Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 43–56.
^Weinberg, Julius (1967). "E. A. Ross: The Progressive as Nativist,"The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp. 242–253.
^Vecoli, Rudolph (1960). "Sterilization: A Progressive Measure?".The Wisconsin Magazine of History.43:190–202.For my own part, I am entirely in favor of it. The objections to it are essentially sentimental, and will not bear inspection. Sterilization is not nearly so terrible as hanging a man, and the chances of sterilizing the fit are not nearly so great, as are the chances of hanging the innocent. In introducing the policy, the wedge should have a very thin end indeed. Sterilization should at first be applied only to extreme cases, where the commitments and the record pile up an overwhelming case. As the public becomes accustomed to it, and it is seen to be salutary and humane, it will be possible gradually to extend its scope until it fills its legitimate sphere of application.
Gillin, John Lewis (1937). "The Personality of Edward Alsworth Ross".American Journal of Sociology.42 (4):534–542.doi:10.1086/217493.S2CID144305068.
Gross, Matthias (2002). "When Ecology and Sociology Meet: The Contributions of Edward A. Ross".Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.38 (1):27–42.doi:10.1002/jhbs.1095.PMID11835219.
Gross, Matthias (2003). "Sociologists of the Unexpected: Edward A. Ross and Georg Simmel on the Unintended Consequences of Modernity".The American Sociologist.34 (4):40–58.doi:10.1007/s12108-003-1015-9.S2CID145421989.
McMahon, Sean H. (1998). "Professional Purpose and Academic Legitimacy: Ross's Social Control and the Founding of American Sociology".The American Sociologist.29 (3):9–25.doi:10.1007/s12108-998-1002-2.S2CID144365444.
Odum, Howard W. (1951). "Edward Alsworth Ross: 1866–1951".Social Forces.30 (1):126–127.doi:10.1093/sf/30.1.126.
Page, Charles Hunt (1940).Class and American Sociology: from Ward to Ross. The Dial Press.
