Research in Service to Society: The First Fifty Years of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina

By Guy B. Johnson and Guion Griffis Johnson

The Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina quickly achieved a national reputation for its contribution to pure research, university teaching, and public affairs. From its inception in 1924, it addressed touchy issues such as race relations, industrial inequities, and political inefficiency in the South. Despite worries about academic acceptance and funding, the institute's scholars produced research and publications that are landmarks in American social science.

Originally published in 1980.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Jul 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781469648071

Book preview

Research in Service to Society

Research in Service to Society

The First Fifty Years of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina

by Guy Benton Johnson and Guion Griffis Johnson

The University of North Carolina Press

Chapel Hill

© 1980 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN 0-8078-1420-2

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 79-21247

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Johnson, Guy Benton, 1901–

Research in service to society.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. University of North Carolina at Chapel

Hill. Institute for Research in Social Science—

History. I. Johnson, Guion Griffis,

joint author. II. Title.

H67.C37J64   300’.7’152   79-21247

ISBN 0-8078-1420-2

In memory of the founder

HOWARD W. ODUM 1884 – 1954

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Chapter 2: The First Decade: Struggle and Growth

Chapter 3: Organization and Administration

Chapter 4: Financing the Institute

Chapter 5: Folk, Race, and Culture Studies

Chapter 6: Regionalism

Chapter 7: The South at the Bottom of the Ladder

Chapter 8: Research in Social Problems and Social Policy

Chapter 9: Behavioral Science Research

Chapter 10: Urban, Health, and Other Studies

Chapter 11: An Overview

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Foreword

When I read this book in manuscript form I enjoyed it very much. That may not much surprise anyone, for I serve as director of the Institute for Research in Social Science whose history is being recorded. Certainly it would not surprise the members of my staff who know my pride in the history of the Institute and know that every grant application I write begins with the statement: Founded in 1924 by Howard W. Odum, the Institute for Research in Social Science is the oldest university-associated social research organization in the United States.

Yet in some ways it is surprising. The enthusiasm is neither personal nor egocentric. I personally played a very small role in the history of the first fifty years of the oldest university-associated social research organization in the United States. Nor is it typical of American social research, or corporate business, or other bureaucratic organizations to be very much concerned with institutional history. Today is today, and yesterday’s problems have little relevance to the present.

But if such an attitude is prevalent, as I think it is, it is sadly mistaken. The past does provide insight into the present, and no problem that I have faced and thought unique turns out to be without precedent in the history of the Institute. The Institute has been many things and different things at different times; its history in this sense parallels and reflects the history of American social science generally. It has endured attacks upon freedom of inquiry brought by powerful economic interests. It has survived the fiscal problems that reflected the economic depression of the 1930s. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the Institute became deeply involved in contract governmental research, some concealed behind security classification. It has reversed course and opted for pure academic, discipline-defined research. It has been the major beneficiary of the first National Science Foundation science development grant awarded in the social sciences, reflecting the shift in American social science to a new world of computers, data banks, and quantitative analysis. Its breadth of interest and diffusions of purpose in more recent days reflect the knowledge revolution in American life.

To many, however, the most interesting passages will be those concerned with the early years of the Institute. That is not, I believe, simple sentiment or nostalgia but reflects the ambiguity of meaning that modern Americans attach to the word school. To most of us a school is a building, an edifice; only in museums does a school connote commonality of purpose. There was a time when a university was expected likewise to have a distinctiveness of outlook and to offer something different from its collegial institutions. That certainly was true of the North Carolina of the Odum days when a particular viewpoint on region was found pervasively and almost alone at one institution. That identity of person (Odum), institution (the Institute for Research In Social Science), and idea (region) will be for many the most intriguing aspect of the story that Guy and Guion Johnson tell. We can appreciate the breadth and variety a more modern form of academic structure provides yet regret the loss of the vitality with which a novel viewpoint was advanced, institutionalized, and propagated.

This and other parts of the Institute story the Johnsons have told with warmth: and skill. I am deeply grateful to them for their efforts. Yet in all candor I must state that I could hardly expect anything else from two people who quietly entered their own history in the Institute’s first year when Guy B. Johnson became Odum’s first nominee for a research assistantship and his wife Guion Johnson became the first woman research assistant. Writing from such intimate personal knowledge, the authors can be expected to give their best. They do. We all profit.

Frank J. Munger

Preface

On June 30, 1924, the Institute for Research in Social Science was organized at the University of North Carolina. It was the first institute of its kind in the nation, and it was destined for a distinguished career. It stands today as an enduring monument to its founder, the late Howard W. Odum, a remarkable figure in twentieth-century social science. Odum left other legacies to the University, notably the Department of Sociology, the School of Social Work, and Social Forces, but the Institute was probably his favorite because it embodied his commitment to cooperative research in the social sciences and his firm belief in the role of research in service to society.

In the spring of 1975 Elizabeth Fink, assistant director of the Institute, approached us with the proposal that we do something to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary—something like writing the history of the Institute’s first fifty years. Having fully enjoyed the delights of retirement for several years, we were extremely loath to give up our freedom for even a short time. We were inclined to give Miss Fink a firm negative response, but we told her we would like to think about it. That was probably a mistake.

The more we thought about reasons for not getting involved in such a project, the more our consciences pushed us toward involvement. In the first place, we surmised that the Institute had tried and failed to get one or more young historians to undertake the task, and since the golden anniversary year of 1974 had already come and gone we felt that unless we accepted the assignment the occasion might continue to go unmarked. Secondly, we had both come to Chapel Hill in 1924 as research assistants in the newly organized Institute, had been hooked on Chapel Hill and the University, and had remained here ever since, so we felt that we were probably as well qualified as anyone to write about the Institute’s career. Thirdly, it occurred to us that although we had been married for more than fifty years and had collaborated on just about everything under the sun, we had never written anything together. If we were ever going to remedy this deficiency, it was time to get going. And so in the end we acceded to Elizabeth Fink’s request.

At first we thought in terms of a small booklet about the Institute, but we decided that this was an unsatisfactory way of dealing with so deserving a subject. As we explored the source materials—the minutes of the governing board, the annual reports of the directors, the personal papers of Howard W. Odum, Harry W. Chase, Eugene C. Branson, Louis R. Wilson, and others that have been preserved in the Southern Historical Collection in Wilson Library—we were gradually seduced into dealing with the Institute’s history in same detail. We hoped at first that we could do the job in a year, but the more we did the more the project expanded, and in the end we devoted more than two years to the researching and writing of this volume. Since we are now several years beyond the Institute’s fiftieth birthday, we have not held rigidly to the year 1974 as our cutoff date and in some instances have chosen to bring the narrative more nearly up to date.

This work has been for us not only a venture in the social history of an organization but in some measure a sentimental journey back through the corridors of time, for in recreating from the documentary sources the Institute’s beginnings, struggles, and achievements, we have also renewed our personal remembrances of things past. If we have occasionally included ourselves in the cast of characters in this narrative, we have done so with the hope that certain personal experiences and observations will help to illuminate the early history of the Institute. If a certain amount of sentiment has occasionally overshadowed the obligation of objectivity, particularly in the first few chapters, so be it. We have even provided a hero, and that hero is Howard W. Odum. He launched the Institute, preserved it against reactionary social forces and the ravages of the Great Depression, and lived to see it become one of the foremost social science centers in the nation. We knew this man from the day we arrived in Chapel Hill in August 1924 until his death thirty years later, but not until we had explored the archives of the Institute and its founder did we come to appreciate fully the man’s genius and versatility and, above all, the extent of his sacrifices.

We acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of several members of the Institute staff. We are especially indebted to Elizabeth Fink. She has provided us with the custody and use of the Institute’s archives and other source materials, has tolerated numerous interruptions when we needed information that only she could give us, and has never once uttered the word deadline. In addition, she has read all of our chapters with an eye for accuracy. Frank Munger, who became director in the Institute’s fiftieth year, read the entire manuscript and helped to improve it in several places. Angell Beza, associate director, was particularly helpful on details of the development of the Social Science Statistical Laboratory and computer facilities. Norma Scofield, publications coordinator, has aided us in numerous ways. Members of the Institute secretarial staff have patiently typed and retyped our chapters. We are grateful to Jane Dry, Robin Ratliff, Vonda Hogan, Lou Anne Robinson, and especially to Bonita Samuels.

We are also indebted to the Institute for employing a special assistant, Ellen Curtin, to help with our project for several months. She assembled data from library sources, abstracted the minutes of the governing board, and located relevant materials in the Southern Historical Collection. Later she was again available briefly for assisting in the preparation of the bibliography, verifying footnotes, and other chores. On her own initiative she also read the entire manuscript and offered useful suggestions.

Many other people have helped us. During the first few months of our work we often discussed the old days in the Institute with our longtime colleague, friend, and next-door neighbor, Rupert B. Vance. But three days after our first chapter was completed he suffered a stroke and lived only a few more days. His death on August 25, 1975 was a deep personal loss and it cast a long shadow of gloom over our endeavors. We shall always wish that he had been able to comment on our manuscript with his special brand of wit and wisdom. We were also saddened by the loss of another good friend and pioneer member of the Institute staff, Harriet L. Herring, who died on December 18, 1976. She had been in frail health for the past few years, and it was our great loss that we were not able to have the benefit of her rich store of recollections.

We have benefited from conversations with our longtime friend and colleague, Katharine Jocher, who joined the Institute in the beginning and served for thirty-five years, first as office manager and research assistant, then as assistant director, and finally as associate director. In addition she has read the entire manuscript and made many valuable comments. Paul W. Wager, one of the pioneer group of research assistants in 1924, who lives in retirement in Chapel Hill, read several chapters and made useful suggestions.

All of the living former directors of the Institute have been generous in their cooperation. During the early stages of the work, Gordon W. Blackwell, who has recently retired as president of Furman University, gave us several hours of personal reminscences at his home in Greenville, South Carolina, and later read the manuscript. Daniel O. Price, chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas, discussed the Institute with us at Austin in May 1977 and later read several chapters of the manuscript. James W. Prothro, professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, helped us on several occasions with his recollections and evaluations of the Institute and also read part of the manuscript. Richard L. Simpson, professor of sociology at the University, who served as acting director of the Institute in 1966–67, has also been helpful and has read portions of the manuscript.

Numerous members of the staff at the University of North Carolina have facilitated our work in various ways. Stuart S. Chapin, Jr., made available some of his personal files on the work of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies and read portions of the manuscript. Alan Keith-Lucas gave us same particulars on researches in institutional child care, Earl Baughman helped with information on certain psychological studies, and Norman L. Johnson loaned us some rare early reports of the Institute of Statistics. Harvey L. Smith, John Reed, John J. Honigmann, John Gulick, James L. Peacock, Julia Crane, Cecil Sheps, George B. Tindall, and John W. Thibaut have all read portions of the manuscript that pertained to their particular areas of research and have made useful suggestions. Philip P. Green, Jr., and Elmer R. Oettinger, of the Institute of Government, have also been helpful. Carolyn A. Wallace, head of the Southern Historical Collection at Wilson Library, facilitated our use of the papers of persons who were associated with the Institute in its early days, and Ophelia Andrew, administrative manager of the Department of Sociology, lent assistance from time to time with her extensive file of University catalogs.

The children of the Institute’s founder have given us a number of valuable insights. Mary Frances Schinhan of Chapel Hill gave us some little-known facts about her father’s life and read several chapters of the manuscript. Howard T. Odum, professor of environmental engineering at the University of Florida at Gainesville, offered valuable insights into his father’s work in a conversation with us during a visit to Chapel Hill in 1976. Eugene P. Odum, Callaway Distinguished Professor of Ecology and director of the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia at Athens, provided an analysis of his father’s theory of regionalism that we have used in Chapter 6.

A word on our chapter arrangement for the guidance of our readers is appropriate. Our first four chapters comprise the historical section in that they trace the Institute’s origin, its tribulations in an early environment that was sometimes hostile, and its structural, administrative, and financial problems over a period of fifty years. The next six chapters describe the researches of the Institute. They follow roughly the chronology of the dominant research interests, beginning with the early folk and race studies, progressing through the concentration on regionalism and southern problems, and ending with the great variety of behavioral science studies that have characterized the Institute’s program for the last two decades. Finally we present an overview, by way of summary and evaluation of the work of the Institute during its first half-century.

During the course of our work we have often had occasion to recall the old anecdote about a young scholar who had read a book about alligators. When asked how he liked the book, he replied, Oh, it was all right, but it told me more than I wanted to know about alligators. A related story also often came to mind. Two people were having their first close-up view of an alligator. One asked, Who on earth could love a creature like that? The other replied, Only another alligator. We are quite aware that this work runs the risk implied in both of these anecdotes. We have probably told the general reader much more than he wants to know about the Institute, and it may well be that the only readers who will be interested in our particular alligator, the Institute for Research in Social Science, are confirmed research-minded alligators. Readers who are interested primarily in the story of the origin, administration, and financing of the Institute are advised to read the first four chapters, and those who are more interested In the research programs of the Institute are advised to concentrate on the remaining chapters. The complete alligator will, of course, want to read the whole thing.

Chapel Hill

August 1977

Guy B. Johnson / Guion Griffis Johnson

Research in Service to Society

CHAPTER 1: The Beginning

The Institute for Research in Social Science was formally organized at the University of North Carolina on June 30, 1924. It began in a small way, in an environment that was sometimes hostile, gradually won recognition and respectability, survived the Great Depression, and eventually became a taken-for-granted force in the life of the University, the state, and the nation. The guiding genius and founding father of the Institute for Research in Social Science was the late Howard W. Odum, Kenan Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina from his appointment in 1920 until his retirement in 1954. Even when he arrived in Chapel Hill in the summer of 1920, with two Ph.D. degrees and a head full of dreams, he envisioned a scheme whereby research in the social sciences would point the way to a new era of progress for the state and the South.

The Founding Father: Howard W. Odum

Howard Washington Odum was born in 1884 in the little community of Bethlehem in Walton County, Georgia. His parents were farm people of modest means, and he knew that if he was going to realize his early ambition of entering the world of the intellectuals, he would have to make it largely through his own efforts. He had a restless mind and a strong body, and he was not afraid of work. His parents were able to help him a little with his education, but it was chiefly with hard physical work, stints of schoolteaching, and some borrowed money that he gave himself a remarkable education: an A.B. degree from Emory College in 1904, an M. A. degree from the University of Mississippi in 1906, and two doctoral degrees.

His earlier college training had all been in classics, but at Ole Miss one of his favorite professors was Thomas P. Bailey, author of Race Orthodoxy in the South, who had studied psychology under the renowned G. Stanley Hall at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and from there on Odum’s Interest was centered in the social sciences. Bailey helped him to get a fellowship to study under Hall. Odum’s first Ph.D. was earned in psychology at Clark University in 1909. During four years as teacher and student in Mississippi, he had assembled an immense collection of Negro folk songs and observations on the social life of the southern Negro people. He used his collection of religious folk songs as the basis of his doctoral dissertation at Clark. The next year he went to Columbia University to study under the distinguished sociologist, Franklin H. Giddings. In one year he earned a second Ph.D. degree. His dissertation, again drawn from his voluminous field notes, was later published as his first book, The Social and Mental Traits of the Negro.

At Clark University Odum had fallen in love with a brilliant young woman, Anna Louise Kranz, who was also studying psychology. After the completion of his second doctorate and several months of work in a new job in Philadelphia, Odum felt that he was ready for the responsibilities of marriage. On December 24, 1910, he and Miss Kranz were married at her home in Tennessee. The contrast between the gentle and somewhat frail woman and the restless, dynamic man was striking, but Mrs. Odum never lacked the inner strength to cope with the problems of married life with such a man. They were a devoted pair. She bore three children, managed the household and social affairs with efficiency and charm, and gave her husband constant emotional and intellectual support. This fragile woman, who lay at death’s door several times during the Odums’ Chapel Hill sojourn, was to survive hen husband by more than a decade.

After two years with the Philadelphia Bureau of Municipal Research, Odum went to the University of Georgia at Athens in 1912 to teach educational sociology. At Athens he met Eugene C. Branson, who was to have a strong influence on his career plans. In 1919 Odum moved to his alma mater, Emory, as professor of sociology and dean of liberal arts. He helped in the relocation of Emory from Oxford to Atlanta and in its tiansition to university status. He had high hopes at first of making Emory a great center for social science training but was soon frustrated and disillusioned, and when he was offered a post at the University of North Carolina he was happy to accept it. This was to be his last move. He came to Chapel Hill in the summer of 1920 and plunged immediately into a remarkable career of teaching, research, writing, administration, and public service.

He organized the School of Public Welfare in 1920 and served as its director. In the same year he organized the Department of Sociology and began his long service as its chairman. In 1922 he founded the Journal of Social Forces and was its editor until his retirement. In 1924 he founded the Institute for Research in Social Science and was its director until 1944. During his thirty-four years at Chapel Hill he wrote seventeen books of his own, edited or coauthored eleven others, and wrote nearly two hundred articles, chapters, and pamphlets. Along the way he found time to engage in many state, regional, and national public service activities. As if all of this were not enough, Odum also maintained a herd of pedigreed Jerseys that earned him the distinction of being one of only five breeders in the nation to develop a genetic type. No one at the University during this century has surpassed him in the variety and volume of his achievements.

What kind of man was Howard W. Odum? Perhaps the most obvious thing about him was his tremendous energy, both physical and mental. He was always moving, and he moved at a rapid pace. It was often said by his associates in Alumni Building that if you see a pair of coattails disappearing around a corner, you know they belong to Dr. Odum. His imagination was ebullient, and his thoughts poured out in a torrent of written or spoken words. Many students had trouble with his lectures until they learned how to pay attention to his meaning rather than his words. His writing was often a bit chaotic, but at the same time poetic, and one colleague described his style as a blend of Walt Whitman, Thomas Wolfe, and William Faulkner.¹ Odum liked to plan a new project, get it organized and running smoothly, and then turn it over to someone else. He wearied of routine matters, and he did not enjoy such petty details as presiding over meetings, presenting speakers, or writing the minutes of meetings. Often, after he had opened a meeting, he would make an inconspicuous exit, go to his office, write for an hour or more, and return to the meeting just in time to preside over its adjournment.

Odum had an intense devotion to the South and an abiding faith in its people. What the South needed, he thought, was not harsh criticism but understanding, wise leadership, and self-development. From his own roots he had an appreciation of why certain people joined the Ku Klux Klan, lynched Negroes, and did other unjust things. He often said, But for the grace of God you or I might be doing these same things. Let us condemn their evil deeds, but still love the people. We need to change the system in the South so that people do not feel compelled to do bad things. His own parents were to him the epitome of the folk. To condemn people was to turn his back on his own folk, and this he would never do.

With all of his remarkable talents, Odum was basically a very shy person. He was not urbane or smooth, and he had little facility for the small talk of teas and parties. He was always the country boy from Georgia, with a certain distaste for what he considered to be the trivialities of social life.

He worked incessantly, as if every day was to be his last chance to get something done. There were probably few days in his whole life when he relaxed completely and did nothing useful. Often he would be working on several different books. At his office every minute that he could snatch between lectures or conferences would be devoted to one of his manuscripts. In the late afternoon he might go to his farm to check on his Jerseys. After dinner he would retire to the study in his home and work on another manuscript. When he felt the need of sleep, he sank into a large lounge chair and slept for an hour or two, and then he would go back to his writing. He used to say, I relax by changing from one manuscript to another.

Odum claimed that he really enjoyed working at this pace. He said that like his father he was naturally endowed with a robust constitution and that he had scercely been sick a day in his life. His father had died at the age of ninety-two. Odum retired at seventy in the summer of 1954, and he was looking forward to producing several more books, particularly an autobiography that he planned to call The White Sands of Bethlehem. But at the very moment of his retirement he suddenly began to look tired and ill, and on November 8, 1954, he was dead from a cancer of the pancreas. Most people said that he had simply worked himself to death. Those who knew him best wondered what caused the cancer, and they thought it was not overwork but frustration and disappointment at not having achieved still more. For years he had carried the scars of the misunderstanding of his motives by fellow southerners who thought he was a traitor to the South. In his early years at Chapel Hill he had endured the barbs of faculty and townspeople who did not know the difference between sociology and socialism. He had also been the center of controversies over the right of Social Forces to publish articles that might give offense to religious fundamentalists and the right of the Institute to do research on such delicate subjects as the textile industry or race relations. He was disappointed in the casual and uncooperative way in which some of his social science colleagues played their roles in the Institute, and he was frustrated and embarrassed by the eternal explaining, cajoling, and begging that he had to do to get money from the foundations. And perhaps, worst of all, he had seen his last big dream for the University—a school of public administration, planned in detail and with financial support by a foundation all but assured—go up in smoke because the president of the University failed to keep an appointment in New York at which he was to put the administration’s stamp of approval on the new school.

Odum left many monuments to his genius for pioneering. Aside from his prolific writings, the most enduring of these are the Institute for Research in Social Science, Social Forces, the School of Social Work, and the Department of Sociology. In 1933 the American Council on Education’s Committee on Graduate Instruction made a study in which it attempted to identify the departments in American universities that deserved a good rating in terms of being adequately staffed and equipped. At the University of North Carolina eleven departments were listed: Botany, Chemistry, Classics, Education, English, History, Political Science, Psychology, Romance Languages, Sociology, and Zoology. Only one of these was given the special rating of distinguished, and that was the Department of Sociology. Not bad for a department that was only thirteen years old! The department’s good fortune was made possible to a considerable extent by the existence of the Institute, which enabled Odum to attract able professors as well as promising young graduate students, some of whom would stay on after receiving their doctorates. The other social science departments likewise profited from the energizing presence of the Institute.

Those Who Helped

Several people besides Odum played important roles in the founding of the Institute: Harry Woodburn Chase, Jesse Frederick Steiner, Louis Round Wilson, Beardsley Ruml, and Eugene Cunningham Branson. The relation of the first four to Odum and the Institute may be sketched briefly. The role of E. C. Branson requires some elaboration.

Harry W. Chase was a native of Massachusetts. After earning his A.B. and A.M. degrees at Dartmouth, he went to Clark University to study psychology under G. Stanley Hall. There he became the good friend of one of his fellow graduate students, Howard W. Odum. Like Odum, Chase fell in love with a young woman who was also studying psychology. He and Lucetta Crum were married on December 26, 1910, just two days after Odum’s marriage to Anna Louise Kranz. The two couples were to be lifelong friends. It could well be that some of Odum’s devotion to the South rubbed off on Chase, for as soon as he had received his doctorate in 1910 Chase took a position as professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina. In 1918 he became dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Following the untimely death of President Edward Kidder Graham during the great influenza epidemic, Chase was elected chairman of the faculty in January 1919, and in June he was elected president of the University. His formal installation did not take place until April 28, 1920. Among those who attended the inauguration was his old friend Howard W. Odum, who was then dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Emory University near Atlanta. Odum had accepted an offer from Chase several months earlier and was preparing to move to the University of North Carolina. After returning to Atlanta, Odum wrote Chase: I congratulate you and the University on the remarkable success of the inauguration exercises. It was a great occasion. Personally, it was worth a great deal more to me than I am able to estimate. When one has staked his future on the belief in a certain institution and its youthful President, it is most refreshing to find them measuring up even beyond former estimates.²

Two months later Odum would move to Chapel Hill because his friends Chase and Branson had paved the way. In Chase, Odum had a warm friend who played a vital role in supporting and facilitating his proposals. Chase’s departure in 1930 to become president of the University of Illinois was a hard blow to Odum.

Jesse Steiner, a native of Ohio, was born in 1880. He had a doctorate from the University of Chicago, and he had considerable experience as teacher, missionary, author, and administrator. During World War I he became national director of the Bureau of Training for Home Service and later director of educational service for the American Red Cross. When Odum founded the Department of Sociology in 1920, he was already searching for someone who would strengthen the depth and respectability of the department. He was fortunate to be able to bring Steiner to Chapel Hill in 1921. Steiner and his family soon made many warm friends in Chapel Hill. He was scholarly, calm, a lucid lecturer, and a friendly adviser to his students. For several years these two men were the Department of Sociology. When Steiner moved to Tulane University in 1927, Odum again had a deep feeling of toss.

Louis R. Wilson, born in 1876 in North Carolina, was already an old-timer on the campus when Odum arrived. He was Kenan Professor of Library Administration and director of the University Extension Bureau, and he was soon to be director of the University of North Carolina Press. He was a helpful adviser in planning the organization of the Institute, and he became a member of its governing board. He and Odum had occasion to disagree at times but these minor differences subtracted little from Wilson’s role as friend, supporter, and defender. In 1932, after thirty years of service at Chapel Hill, Wilson left to become dean of the University of Chicago’s Graduate Library School. Retiring there at the age of sixty-five, he returned to Chapel Hill in 1942 and made a new career as elder statesman and historian of the University as well as member once more of the Institute’s Board of Governors. On December 27, 1976, he celebrated his hundredth birthday, still vigorous and able to relate his vivid recollections of a fascinating career.

Beardsley Ruml, a native of Iowa and a resident of New York City, was director of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. The directors of this philanthropic foundation, which was founded in 1919, were particularly interested in helping universities to strengthen their curricula and research in the social sciences. Odum had occasion to see Ruml several times in the early 1920s. Ruml was impressed by the dynamism and the great plans of the young sociologist, and in the spring of 1924 he submitted to the Memorial, with his stamp of approval, Odum’s application for the three-year grant that would make possible the founding of the Institute. In a sense Ruml was the key to Odum’s plan, because he was the man who knew where the money was. The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial was to be the financial mainstay of the Institute in its formative years.

The Godfather: Eugene C. Branson

Each of these four men played a part, but the intellectual godfather of the Institute was Eugene C. Branson. Branson was born in Morehead City, North Carolina, in 1861. After his education at Trinity College (now Duke University) and Peabody College for Teachers, he worked in public schools as principal or superintendent in Raleigh and Wilson, North Carolina, and Athens, Georgia. Later he was appointed professor of pedagogy at the Georgia State Normal School at Athens, and from 1900 to 1912 he was president of that school. In 1912 he gave up the presidency to become founder and head of the Normal School’s Department of Rural Economics and Sociology. In this same year, Howard W. Odum came to the University of Georgia at Athens as an associate professor of educational sociology.

Probably Branson and Odum already knew each other, but it is certain that they now became good friends and mutual admirers. The twenty-eight-year-old Georgian, full of energy and vision, was in a hurry to improve his beloved South, and the fifty-two-year-old Branson had a rich background of ideas and efforts in the application of knowledge to the solution of social problems. Branson urged his students to go out and organize Georgia Clubs, patterned after one he had organized at Athens. His exhortation was: Know your community, know your state, through study and discussion, and see what you can do to make things better. Another major concern of Branson’s was the importance of developing professional training in the field of public welfare, so that this emerging profession in the South could be staffed with competent people trained in applied social science.

These ideas complemented and reinforced Odum’s own ideas, while he in turn made a very favorable impression on the older man. In 1914 Branson returned to his native state, accepting a position as professor and chairman of the Department of Rural Economics and Sociology (later named Rural Social Economics) at the University of North Carolina. Right away he began a quiet campaign to have the University create a school of social science or a school of public welfare, and always at the back of his mind was the notion that Howard W. Odum would be a good man to head such a school.

In the fall of 1916 Branson prepared a lengthy memorandum proposing A School of Public Welfare at the University of North Carolina and presented it to President Edward K. Graham. Branson later wrote that Graham at once authorized me to search the field for a dean to head up the school—a real person, in his significant phrase.³ But the nation went to war in 1917, and there followed a period of feverish activity on the campus to help with the war effort. Organizing and accommodating a large contingent of the Student Army Training Corps (SATC), for example, was a great strain on the University’s resources. In addition, President Graham assumed responsibility for supervising the installation of SATC units throughout the Southeast. On top of this came the deadly influenza epidemic, and Graham did not live to present Branson’s proposal to the University’s trustees. Furthermore, as Branson sadly related, the plans with the accumulated data, reports, correspondence, and the like, were misplaced in the President’s office during the subsequent calamities of influenza and the S.A.T.C.⁴

After Harry W. Chase became president in June 1919, Branson pursued the matter of the new school of public welfare and a real person to head it. Now things began to happen. Odum, who had moved to Emory University with ambitious plans for making it into a great academic center and probably becoming its next president, was finding it difficult to work with Bishop Warren A. Candler and the ultraconservative Methodist power structure that controlled the school. He was ready to move on, and Chase and Branson were ready to bring him to Chapel Hill. Sometime during the fall of 1919 arrangements were made, although there was no public announcement for some months, since Chase had to proceed cautiously and wisely in order to get the trustees to agree to establish a school of public welfare and a department of sociology.

In November 1919, while Branson and Odum were attending a conference in Chicago, they discussed Branson’s lost proposal of 1916, and Branson promised to reconstruct the whole thing de novo and send it to Odum. When he sent the proposal on December 5, he wrote: I have not yet recovered from the fervor of interest in your coming into the faculty here to head up this school and to get it going wisely and effectively.⁵ On the same day, he received a letter from Odum expressing a reciprocal feeling: "I think the pair of us can furnish equal enthusiasm! Needless to say that I am counting heavy [sic] on you and shall hope to carry out the plan to which you have given so much thought and time."⁶

Branson much preferred the title The School of Social Science to The School of Public Welfare for the new school that Odum was to direct. He had even made so bold as to write his friend John Sprunt Hill, a well-to-do alumnus who was a trustee of the University, suggesting that he endow such a school:

The John Sprunt Hill School of Social Science—how does that sound to you?

I have come to believe that long years will elapse before we have such a school unless you fund it and endow it.

After five years of patient, faithful work here I find every once in a while to my utter consternation that social, sociology, and social science are fatally linked to the North Carolina mind with socialism. We have not been wise as serpents, but we certainly have been gentle as doves. Nevertheless, one of our senators in Washington is recently credited with the remark, that the less we have of social science at the University, the better, that they will look after that end of the job in Washington.⁷

Mr. Hill evidently expressed some misgivings of his own in his response, for Branson wrote him in December 1919:

Thank you heartily for your good letter. I agree with you that there is a considerable element of danger in a school of Social Sciences at the University if it should be in charge of a Dean who was foreign to the soil and imbued with socialistic ideas. ...

Dr. Chase is really considering my report and will be presenting it in some form to the trustees in January. This along with other matters of critical import will call for wisdom on the part of the trustees, and I am hoping that you will certainly be present.⁸

Horace Williams, professor of philosophy, who was later dubbed the gadfly of Chapel Hill, also had some words of caution as well as encouragement for Branson. In replying to Williams, Branson said:

... I think you undoubtedly wise in your choice of terms for the proposed new school here. Public Welfare means more, in North Carolina at any rate, than Social Science. It will probably get us further along.

Sociology, however, is a recognized academic term and is fairly well standardized in the curriculum of our colleges and universities.⁹

Ever the wise strategist, Branson conceded that the new school would have to be called the School of Public Welfare. And it is interesting that in his letters to Hill, Williams, and others he never divulged the fact that a dean had already been selected, although he had known for months that Odum had accepted President Chase’s invitation to direct the new school.

Thus Branson had smoothed the way for Odum’s new venture. With his courtly manner, his geniality, and his intellectual vigor, he had won the admiration of faculty and students; and with his county surveys, his North Carolina Club, his Rural Social Science Library, and his News Letter, which circulated factual materials about North Carolina to the public, he had greatly enhanced the University’s image among the people of the state. Approaching his sixtieth birthday, he now encouraged the young man from Georgia to take the spotlight.

From Georgia to Chapel Hill

On January 27, 1920, Chase eloquently presented to the University’s Board of Trustees his recommendation concerning the proposed curricula in public welfare and sociology.

... It is clear that North Carolina is destined to an immense extension of her material resources; it is equally clear that, with all her great increases in material wealth, she can function effectively as a fine democracy only if she sets in the foreground of her thought the fundamental truth that human values are greater than material values; that man is more precious than the goods he creates. . . .

... I recommend the establishment in the University of a Chair of Sociology, about which there should grow up a School of Public Welfare. ... A knowledge of the fundamental laws of society, of what democracy really means and what its problems are, a spirit of social-mindedness which leads the individual to look beyond himself and to think of himself in relation to his community, these things are more and more requisite for good citizenship. The social sciences, including economics, history, government, and sociology in its various aspects, must receive a new and more intense emphasis in the higher education of the future.¹⁰

The Board of Trustees approved the recommendation, and a month later Odum was elected Kenan Professor of Sociology. Odum’s usual rapid pace now became downright feverish. He knew that unless he could lay hands on additional funds he would be the one and only staff member for the new School of Public Welfare and the Department of Sociology. He visited Chapel Hill several times, and he went to New Orleans, to Philadelphia, and to New York, where he talked to the administrators of various foundations about his dream of a center for social science teaching and research at Chapel Hill. He also turned to the American Red Cross, since he had served during the war as director of the southern division of their Bureau of Home Service Camps and Cities. The Red Cross agreed to fund and staff a series of special summer institutes for social workers and Red Cress secretaries. Thus Odum was able to begin operations at Chapel Hill with something of a flourish during the summer session of 1920. The Red Cross continued its assistance to the new school by providing some staff members and twelve scholarships, and in January 1921, Dr. Jesse F. Steiner, who had been educational director for the American Red Cross, joined Odum’s staff as a professor of social technology.

Indicative of Odum’s tendency to think big was the fact that his first catalog presentation of the new Department of Sociology listed twenty-one courses to be taught by him and Steiner, while the first catalog announcement of the School of Public Welfare listed a similar number of courses to be taught by Odum, Steiner, Branson, Samuel H. Hobbs, Jr. (Branson’s young understudy), and the Red Cross specialists. After listing his Special Staff of Instruction for the School of Public Welfare, Odum listed Other University Professors, including professors of education, economics, history and government, psychology, library administration, dramatic literature, and music—a significant indication of his passion for bringing the social sciences together in an interdisciplinary enterprise.¹¹

In the four years between Odum’s arrival at Chapel Hill and the founding of the Institute for Research in Social Science, he became known for his dynamism, his devotion to his department, and his willingness to work eighteen hours a day. He kept his new academic enterprises going, he traveled a great deal to attend conferences or to make addresses, he organized summer institutes and special conferences at Chapel Hill, and he founded the Journal of Social Forces in 1922. He had little time for research, and he published very little during this period except for his editorial articles in the new journal and some bulletins for the Extension Division of the University, but he was consciously building toward the time when he and his colleagues could study the social problems of the state and the region.

A Grant for the Institute

Early in 1924 Odum learned that the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial was planning to distribute millions of dollars to encourage the development of the social sciences. He began a campaign to interest Beardsley Ruml, director of the Memorial, in making a grant to the University of North Carolina for cooperative research in the social sciences. Finally he persuaded Ruml to visit the South, and the two men met in Charlotte during the spring. In the end Odum allayed Ruml’s doubts as to the willingness of any southern university to enter areas of social research that might be controversial. Apparently he assured Ruml that he and his colleagues and the University administration would have the courage to search for the truth regardless of the social and political consequences. Ruml then told him that if he would draw up a strong proposal for cooperative research for presentation to the Memorial, there was a possibility that the Memorial would act favorably on it.¹²

Odum lost no time in laying this new opportunity before Chase and some of his colleagues. Chase invited Ruml to Chapel Hill, and he came in early May and spent several days. Chase, Odum, and Ruml worked out the details of a memorandum to be sent to the Memorial setting forth the plan for an institute for research in social science and requesting a grant of $97,500 over a period of three years.

President Chare, always the careful administrator, wanted to make sure that the University trustees were aware of these plans, since their favorable action would be required. On May 12 he sent the following letter to the sixteen members of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees:

During the last few days Mr. Ruml, Director of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial ... of New York has been in Chapel Hill. This [Memorial], which was founded in 1919, is somewhat similar in character to the General Education Board, except that the funds at its command are available in general for research in the social sciences instead of for general education purposes.

Mr. Ruml is very much impressed by the field which is open here for investigation into the problems of Statewide and Southern significance, and especially by the work which is being done by such men as Branson, Carroll, and Odum. He sees very clearly the enlarged field of usefulness which such men as these would have for the welfare of the State in case they are given completely trained assistants for field investigations into such things as county and municipal government and various economic problems of the State, and also funds for clerical assistance and for collection of material and publication of results. In fact, so highly does he think of the quality of the men who are at work in these fields here and the opportunity which lies open to the University to be of immense help to the State and the South in these fields of investigation that I have been encouraged by him to apply for a grant of thirty-five thousand dollars a year for a minimum of three years to help these men in working out problems which require a considerable amount of field study and an accumulation of, for example, statistical material, all of which is a laborious undertaking. He feels clearly that the University of North Carolina is in a strategic position among Southern institutions to make a real contribution in these fields.

As his Board meets on the twenty-eighth of May I am taking the opportunity of getting this matter before you in this way, as there will hardly be time to call another meeting of the Executive Committee. There are no strings tied to the proposition, other than at the end of the three year period the [Memorial] would want to check up on the work that had been done up to that time to see what attitude it would take toward continuing it. The University does not obligate itself in any way to take over the work, but the whole matter is left open for further consideration at the end of the three year period. The University would have full liberty in picking the assistants and determining the projects to be worked on. . . .

I do not of course want the members of the Committee, particularly in this informal way to bind themselves in advance to accept any gift which should be offered, but I do think that I should write you to say that with your permission I desire to lay a statement of our situation and of what could be accomplished along these lines with assistants before the [Memorial]. . . .¹³

On the same day that Chase sent this letter to the members of the Executive Committee, he sent the grant application to the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. The proposal set forth a plan for the organization and management of an institute for research in social science and the uses to which the grant of funds would be put. The institute would be managed by a board of governors, consisting of the president of the University as chairman ex officio, and professors from various social science departments and administrative posts, namely, E. C. Branson (Rural Social Economics), D. D. Carroll (dean of the School of Commerce), H. W. Odum (Sociology), A. M. Jordan (Education), J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton (History and Government), L. R. Wilson (Librarian), and Edwin Greenlaw (dean of the Graduate School). The primary use of the grant would be to provide research assistants to facilitate the researches that would be conducted by social science faculty members on problems relating to the state and to the region. There would be eight or nine of these assistants for the first year. To qualify for the position, an applicant would have to have had at least one year of graduate work. Each assistant would receive a salary of $1500 a year and would be allotted $500 for field expenses. The fund would also provide $7,500 for secretarial help, supplies, schedules, and the like; $6,000 for publication of research reports and for books, pamphlets, and similar research materials; and $3,000 for a secretary who would be in charge of the routine work of the central office.¹⁴

On June 16 Ruml notified Chase that the trustees for the Memorial had unanimously passed the following resolution: "that the sum of $32,500