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The History of
Sociology in Britain
New Research and Revaluation
Edited by Plamena Panayotova
 The History of Sociology in Britain
“This book explains that sociology is at its best when it is conducting rigorous
empirical enquiry. There is a strong British tradition of empirical sociology that
has often been obscured by fashions for theory. Much of that tradition lies in work
for public agencies concerned with social improvement. That socially reforming
tradition is given its due place in this important contribution to our understand-
ing of how academic enquiry can help societies understand themselves.”
—Lindsay Paterson, Professor of Education Policy, University of Edinburgh, UK

“This book represents an important contribution to understanding the history

of sociology in Britain. But more than that, the essays in this book also chronicle
the development of social thought, social research and social science education
in Britain over more than 200 years. The book also addresses the controversial
question of who and what is remembered and prompts us to consider why some
social thinkers may be forgotten over time.”
—Louise Ryan, Professorial Research Fellow, University of Sheffield, UK
 Plamena Panayotova
Editor

The History of
Sociology in Britain
New Research and Revaluation
Editor
Plamena Panayotova
Sociology Department
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-19928-9    ISBN 978-3-030-19929-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19929-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover Illustration: © Oksana Ariskina / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Preface

The essays in this volume are a selection of those presented at the

Conference on the History of Sociology in Britain held at the University of
Edinburgh on 16th–17th April 2018. This conference, the first devoted
solely to the history of British sociology, brought together a distinguished
group of historically minded sociologists and historians of social science.
In 1980, the British Sociological Association annual conference had
dedicated part of its deliberations to a discussion of several aspects of the
development of sociology in Britain between 1950–1980 (cf. Abrams
et al. 1981). The 2018 Edinburgh conference provided a valuable oppor-
tunity not only to update and build upon the 1980 discussions but to go
beyond them in scope and ambition. The Edinburgh conference covered
a much broader sweep of history and historical themes, going as far back
as the Scottish Enlightenment right up to the present day. Unlike the
1980 historical discussions, which were included in the BSA annual con-
ference as a way of commemorating the upcoming 30th anniversary of
the Association, the 2018 conference was held purely for the sake of
exchanging knowledge and ideas; bringing together a small band of devo-
tees, all of whom were concerned about the lack of opportunities to share
knowledge face-to-face about the history of British sociology and all of
whom were keen to promote the idea of history as a vital tool in under-
standing the distinct character of sociology in this country. The confer-
ence also set a precedent in bringing together representative figures from
v
vi Preface

two distinct groups of British sociologists, which, historically, have existed

separately but parallel to one another: ‘quantitative sociologists’ who have
long persisted as a minority in British sociology and so-called ‘main-
stream’ or primarily non-quantitatively oriented sociologists who have
tended to make up the majority. More recently, a number of initiatives
have been introduced to encourage the development of quantitative
research and teaching in British sociology. The success of these initiatives
has been limited and dialogue between quantitative and qualitative soci-
ologists has remained difficult. This conference was a rare opportunity for
these two groups to start a dialogue about the troubled experience British
sociology has had, stretching deep into the past, with the teaching of
quantitative methods and their application in sociological research.
Interest in the history of sociology in Britain has never been totally
absent among sociologists; however, to this day, study of the history of
sociology has remained ‘a speciality’ carried out by sociologists whose
expertise lies in other fields of sociological enquiry; or by historians. A
great deal remains to be done to stimulate a deeper curiosity and concern
within the wider sociological community about sociology’s past; and it is
hoped that this conference was a small but advancing step towards this
goal. This conference may have been the first in many respects but, hope-
fully, it won’t be the last. One of the major aims of the present book is to
promote its legacy by spreading word of the benefit of its results, of its
overall message and of its long-term goals and, thereby, act as an inspira-
tion and a catalyst to others.

Edinburgh, UK Plamena Panayotova

7 November 2018
 Acknowledgements

The publication of this book would not have been possible without the
unwavering support I have received in the past nine years from my col-
leagues at The University of Edinburgh. I wish, firstly, to thank my doc-
toral supervisor, colleague and friend, John MacInnes—learning from
him has been an invaluable and enjoyable experience that I will always
treasure. Donald MacKenzie, Lindsay Paterson, Vernon Gayle and Steve
Kemp have all stimulated my interest in the history of sociology and sta-
tistics and have helped me in building the foundations of my scholarship.
This book came out of a conference on the history of British sociology
which I organised and which was held on 16th and 17th April 2018 at
the Sociology Department in The University of Edinburgh. The idea for
this conference first emerged during a supervision meeting with John
MacInnes and, later on, took shape over dinner with John
H. Goldthorpe—I thank both of them for encouraging me to pursue and
realise it. Due credit must also go to Jonathan Hearn, Head of Sociology,
who supported my idea from beginning to end; to the Graduate School
at the School of Social and Political Science and Edinburgh Q-step for
their approval and contribution to the funding of the event. Thank you
to Lizzie Robertson, the Sociology secretary, who spent many hours sort-
ing out some of the organisational details; and to my colleague Christine
Hübner who volunteered to help me on the days of the conference. Last
but not least, I’m grateful to all scholars who attended the event and
vii
viii Acknowledgements

c­ ontributed to the diverse and lively debates; and, of course, to all pre-
senters and participants in the discussion panels: Frank Bechhofer, Martin
Bulmer, Lawrence Goldman, John H. Goldthorpe, Christopher
T. Husbands, Kenneth Macdonald, John MacInnes, Donald MacKenzie,
Peter Mandler, Colin Mills, Geoff Payne, Jennifer Platt, Chris Renwick,
Baudry Rocquin, Marius Strubenhoff and Stephen Turner.
Sadly, one of the participants, Frank Bechhofer, passed away just
recently. He died in December 2018. He was one of the founding mem-
bers of the Edinburgh sociology department and a fine scholar who gave
me much support when I was working on my doctorate and preparing
for the conference. I dedicate this volume to his memory.
This is my first time working on a book. I feel extremely fortunate I
haven’t written it alone. Working with the contributors to this volume
has been extremely rewarding and has taught me things that cannot be
found in books. I couldn’t have asked for a more positive experience at
this early stage in my career. Thank you to all of you—I feel humbled and
privileged to have had the opportunity to earn your trust, work closely
with you and receive your support in making both the conference and the
book happen.
I’m extremely grateful to my good friend, Ron Wilson, who for years
has been teaching me the crafts of learning and writing and has helped
me in the preparation of chapters one and eleven. To my family and my
partner Ivan—thank you for shining a bright light above my shoulders
while I was busy working on this book.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Plamena Panayotova

Part I Disputed Origins   35

2 Did British Sociology Begin with the Scottish

Enlightenment? 37
Kenneth Macdonald

3 Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Social Science in

Nineteenth-­Century Britain 71
Lawrence Goldman

Part II Neglected Legacies 101

4 Making Sense of Christopher Dawson103

Garrett Potts and Stephen Turner

ix
x Contents

5 Richard Titmuss, Eugenics, and Social Science in Mid-­

twentieth-­Century Britain137
Chris Renwick

6 Social Status, Social Position and Social Class in Post-War

British Society161
Colin Mills

7 ‘Poor Cousins’: The Lost History of Sociology in the

Polytechnics191
Geoff Payne

8 Anglo-America: The Case of Edward Shils, Sociologist,

1910–1995221
Martin Bulmer

Part III Teaching Sociology 247

9 No Longer Oblivion: Sociology Courses Before the ‘First’

Sociology Course249
Christopher T. Husbands

10 The Rise of the Social Sciences in British Education,

1960–2016281
Peter Mandler

11 The Teaching of Research Methods in British Sociology in

the Twentieth Century301
Plamena Panayotova
 Contents xi

Part IV Historical Peculiarities 337

12 Sociology and Statistics in Britain: The Strange History of

Social Mobility Research and Its Latter-Day
Consequences339
John H. Goldthorpe

13 What Kind of ‘Ology’? Two Cultures and the Success of

British Sociology389
John MacInnes

Index415
 List of Contributors

Martin Bulmer Department of Sociology, University of Surrey,

Guildford, UK
m.bulmer@ntlworld.com

Lawrence Goldman St. Peter’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford,

UK
lawrence.goldman@spc.ox.ac.uk

John H. Goldthorpe Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford,

UK
john.goldthorpe@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

Christopher T. Husbands London School of Economics and Political

Science, London, UK
c.husbands@lse.ac.uk

Kenneth Macdonald Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford,

UK
kenneth.macdonald@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

John MacInnes University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

john.macinnes@ed.ac.uk
xiii
xiv List of Contributors

Peter Mandler Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, UK
pm297@cam.ac.uk

Colin Mills Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

colin.mills@sociology.ox.ac.uk

Plamena Panayotova The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

ppanayo2@ed.ac.uk

Geoff Payne Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

geoff.payne@ncl.ac.uk

Garrett Potts University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

garrettpotts@mail.usf.edu

Chris Renwick University of York, York, UK

chris.renwick@york.ac.uk

Stephen Turner University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

turner@usf.edu
 List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Correspondence Analysis bi-plot for extended GSS

­occupational groups 165
Fig. 10.1 Number of A-levels awarded in sociology and psychology
(in thousands), 1972–2016 286
Fig. 10.2 Number of first degrees awarded in psychology, sociology and
anthropology, 1966–2016 287
Fig. 10.3 Proportion of psychology, sociology and history degrees
awarded as percentage of all first degrees, 1967–2016 288
Fig. 10.4 Gender balance in degrees awarded in psychology and
­sociology, 1966–1979 289
Fig. 10.5 Proportion of sociology and psychology A-levels awarded as
percentage of all A-levels, 1972–2016 295
Fig. 12.1 Galton’s view of British social structure 343
Fig. 12.2 Contingency between occupations of fathers and sons 347

xv
 List of Tables

Table 6.1 Six occupational coding schemes 163

Table 7.1 ‘How many sociologists did it take to teach a degree in
sociology in 1966?’ 208
Table 9.1 Identified courses involving ‘sociology’ given in the UK,
1888–1904251
Table 11.1 Sociology courses at the LSE by type and period 304

xvii
 1
Introduction
Plamena Panayotova

The history of British sociology has always been a footnote to sociological

research and literature; a footnote written and read by a tiny minority of
historically minded sociologists. Only occasionally, most often to cele-
brate the anniversary of an institution or commemorate a renowned indi-
vidual, does it attract a wider audience. Courses on the history of sociology
in Britain, or in other countries, do not exist; while historical compo-
nents of introductory sociological courses are usually limited to a brief
discussion of the intellectual heritage of nineteenth-century bearded
scholars such as Karl Marx, Max Weber or Emile Durkheim. A rounded
history of sociology in Britain has rarely, if ever, been attempted: ‘This
still awaits its historian’, Martin Bulmer (1985b: 3) wrote in 1985 and his
words still have a familiar ring today. The most cited work on the history
of British sociology remains Philip Abrams’ essay on The Origins of British
Sociology: 1834–1914 published fifty years ago and a work which is lim-
ited not only in scope but which is also suspect in its historical judgment.
Yes, there is still much to be learnt from an old piece of history writing; but

P. Panayotova (*)
The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
e-mail: ppanayo2@ed.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2019 1

P. Panayotova (ed.), The History of Sociology in Britain,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19929-6_1
2 P. Panayotova

even if it does not contain any inaccurate information which has been
superseded by new research, with the passage of time all historical work
itself becomes an historical artefact, a topic of history. All history writing,
to a varying degree, reflects the concerns of the time in which it was writ-
ten; Abrams’ essay is no exception. And while many sociologists in Britain
are aware of Abrams’ essay, they are unaware of the much more special-
ised literature on the subject, conducted mostly in history departments,
which would help them to put the history of sociology into its proper
perspective (see below). It’s hard to escape the feeling that the history of
sociology in Britain still awaits recognition as a valuable tool in sociologi-
cal teaching and research. But most importantly of all, the history of
sociology in Britain still awaits its audience. What is needed is not just
continuous updating of history writing but more appreciation of the
value and power of historical understanding. And this understanding
begins with an understanding of the reasons why sociologists’ general
neglect of the history of their subject really matters.1
To begin with, we need to understand, and history can help us in this
respect, that the neglect of historical enquiry and the lack of up-to-date
historical scholarship are not by any means a new problem, either for
sociology, or for social science more generally. ‘The great paradox of our
age’, Ernest Gellner wrote thirty years ago, ‘is that although it is undergo-
ing social and intellectual change of totally unprecedented speed and
depth, its thought has become, in the main, unhistorical or anti-­historical’
(Gellner 1988: 12). Gellner was specifically referring here to philosophers
and social scientists and their widespread neglect of the importance of
employing an historical perspective in any type of analysis, be it philo-
sophical or sociological; this despite the rise of history as an academic
subject in the nineteenth century and its growing sophistication in the
twentieth century. A specialist historian in the social sciences would be
aware of the existence of a number of specialist essays on the history of
sociology (Sprott 1957; Madge 1957; Little 1963; Halliday 1968; Banks
et al. 1980; Soffer 1982; Albrow 1989; Kumar 2001) and longer mono-
graphs (Kent 1981; Evans 1986; Halsey 2004; Savage 2010) but as far as
the wider sociological community is concerned these remain items on a
curiosity shelf which would be examined only in rare circumstances.
 1 Introduction 3

The absence of any historical perspective is not at all new in sociol-

ogy—this is evident from the lack of engagement with the history of
sociology in some of British sociology’s core institutions. For example, a
recent examination of the archives in Keele of the first sociological institu-
tion in Britain, the Sociological Society, shows very little reference to the
work of the social scientific institutions that preceded it, despite the
important role they played in fostering social scientific research in Britain
during the nineteenth century. The Social Science Association (SSA)
(1857–1886) receives two passing comments in the private documents of
the Sociological Society’s organiser, Victor Branford (Branford 1903;
Sociological Society [Victor Branford] 1903); aside from this, the Society,
as an institution, made no acknowledgement of, and paid no tribute to,
the SSA, neither to criticise nor praise its contributions. The Sociological
Society also made no effort to engage seriously with the work of another
important predecessor, the Statistical Society of London (now Royal
Statistical Society (RSS)) which was established in 1834. The links
between the two societies were weak to non-existent right from the
start—two people, Edward Brabrook and Sir John Macdonald were
engaged in leading positions in both Societies in the early 1900s but there
is no evidence that either Brabrook, or Macdonald, or anyone else made
any significant efforts to strengthen the connections between the
Statistical and the Sociological Societies (for more details, see Panayotova
2018). It could, of course, be argued that the Sociological Society was
reluctant to engage with the historical legacy and contributions of the
SSA and the RSS due to its different focus and distinct understanding of
sociology. However, the Sociological Society had no institutional links
even with the only nineteenth-century institutions which shared its basic
understanding of sociology—the London Positivist Society, established
in 1867, and the closely related English Positivist Committee (like them,
the Sociological Society embraced Auguste Comte’s view of sociology).
And if the attitude of the Sociological Society towards the history of
social science in Britain seems like an example of a remote past, too
remote to remember, then we find parallels, a very similar attitude, in the
British Sociological Association when it was first established in 1951. The
BSA did not acknowledge the contribution or historical role of either the
4 P. Panayotova

Sociological Society or the Institute of Sociology2 (cf. Carr-Saunders

et al. 1951; Banks 1967; Platt 2003).
These examples of a failure to acknowledge their heritage are brought
up not to pass judgment on either the Sociological Society or the BSA;
nor to argue that the members of the Sociological Society were unaware
of the existence of the nineteenth-century institutions; but simply to
emphasise that this in itself is a characteristic of British sociology that
deserves attention and that has the potential to tell us something funda-
mental about British sociology—why it is that the development of sociol-
ogy in Britain created conditions not only for intellectual but also for
institutional divides? Ultimately, an historical perspective on the problem
of historical neglect in sociology saves us from wrongfully assuming that
we are facing a new problem.
An important part of historical understanding is the ability to distin-
guish old problems from new; enabling us to tell the difference between
the beginning of a new trend from a simple shift in an old one. This
brings us to another reason why neglect of the history of sociology in
Britain matters: knowledge of history is necessary to avoid simply repeat-
ing or arguing all over again what has already been said or argued. One
aspect of sociology has suffered acutely in this respect, and with
consequences.
The first official government report on the state of the teaching of
social sciences in Britain was published in 1946, summarising the results
of an investigation conducted by Lord Clapham and his advisers. Since
then, numerous reports of similar nature have been published, with nota-
ble examples including Pearson (1947), Heyworth (1965), Rosenbaum
(1971), ESRC (1987), Review Committee on Sociology (1989),
MacInnes (2010), British Academy (2012). Despite differences in ratio-
nale, focus, scope and data all of these reports are remarkably similar in
one respect: they all repeat, using more or less the same vocabulary, the
argument that British social science, and especially sociology, do not uti-
lise the potential of quantitative methods in teaching and research; some-
thing, which the reports argue is desirable and, if not improved, could
damage the future of the subject. The legacy of these reports, at least with
regard to the relationship between sociology and statistics, is precisely in
these repetitions, as they indicate the existence of a consistent trend in
 1 Introduction 5

British sociology characterised by an inability to resolve the complex

issues involved in the development of quantitative research and training
within academic sociology. Their remarkable repetitiveness is also an
important indication that the direction of their recommendations was
consistently at odds with what social scientists, notably sociologists,
thought or wanted for themselves and their subject. But with regard to
what this example tells about the dangers of the neglect of history, the
recommendations, focusing solely on the present and simply repeating
the failed proposals of the past rather than addressing the real causes of
repeated failure, actually resulted in allowing a problem to continue.
History can teach us how to build on and improve older strategies
for action.
The value and power of historical knowledge is not limited to revealing
that things and arguments supposedly new and exciting are often little
more than failed repetitions of the past that has been ignored or forgot-
ten. Neglect of the historical record can lead to distorted perspectives that
affect present-day thinking in ways that are detrimental to good scholar-
ship. For instance, even to this day it is commonly believed that the early
post-war period in British sociology was dominated by ‘positivist’ research
and teaching. The veracity of such beliefs, however, was questioned early
on, the best-known example being Jennifer Platt’s 1981 article The Social
Construction of ‘positivism’ and its Significance in British Sociology,
1950–1980. Platt’s analysis of the types of sociological research published
in the three leading sociological journals in the early post-war period in
Britain shows that ‘the existence of a clearly defined positivist style is
highly questionable’ (Platt 1981: 76). By the time Platt was writing, how-
ever, the ‘positivism’ disputes had led to a widespread belief that some, if
not all, quantitative methods are inherently ‘positivist’ and, therefore,
somehow ‘anti-sociological’ or ‘a-sociological’. This was despite the fact
that the term ‘positivism’ was extremely ambiguous and unclear; that
there were no self-proclaimed ‘positivist’ sociologists; and that accusa-
tions aimed at quantitative sociologists were made without reference to
empirical and concrete examples from research and teaching (for more
details, see Panayotova 2018). Platt’s investigation was not totally suc-
cessful in convincing the sociological community that early post-war
sociology in Britain had not been ‘positivist’; similarly, Marsh’s 1980s
6 P. Panayotova

defences of the survey method against many unsubstantiated attacks on

behalf of the ‘anti-positivists’ was unsuccessful in eradicating the belief
that surveys are inherently ‘positivist’ (Marsh 1979, 1980, 1982). This
does not mean that historical analysis is useless; without Platt and Marsh’s
interventions, the positivist conception would have gone largely unchal-
lenged. However, only continual observation of historical trends and close
examination of the historical development of movements, ideas, and
institutions can prevent the perpetuation of myths and ungrounded
beliefs. Neglect of the historical perspective can harm a discipline by
allowing it to thrive on the basis of convenient but opinionated and
unsupported claims.
Neglect of historical perspective also matters because without it we are
blind to the different options and alternate paths that existed for sociol-
ogy in the past but which, for a variety of reasons, were not taken. If we
fail to take account of alternative courses of development this can, and
often does, lead to assumptions, albeit implicit, that the development of
sociology in one direction or another was inevitable. Closer inspection of
crucial instances in sociology’s development in Britain shows clearly how
mistaken such views often are.
A recent history by Chris Renwick of the events that took place in the
Sociological Society, for instance, examines the various possibilities that
existed within this institution to influence the course of the development
of sociology in a direction more closely associated with the study of biol-
ogy (Renwick 2012). And a study which I completed recently (Panayotova
2018) examines an alternative possibility with regard to the relationship
between sociology and statistics in Britain: given that the social science
that developed in Britain during the nineteenth century was both empiri-
cal and statistical, and that the major advances in statistics were made
here in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, it can legitimately be
questioned why, when first established, British sociology was established
as an a-statistical subject and remained such consistently throughout the
twentieth century. This and Renwick’s studies are valuable in the sense
that they allow us to ‘see how the same cards, so to speak, could have been
dealt out differently’ (Gellner 1988: 15) and, thereby, understand more
fully the choices that sociology made in the past and how the specific deci-
sions taken with regard to these choices determined its future. Probing
 1 Introduction 7

past evidence, therefore, helps us not only to locate and understand where
we are now but also to trace the path and identify the various crossroads
that took us here; such knowledge can provide us with a comprehensive
map, opening our eyes to the fullness of the landscape and the roads that
cut through it and, in the future, hopefully, at the very least, saving us
from blindly following what we may otherwise have mistakenly taken for
the one, the only, right path ahead.
Having a proper historical perspective also enables us to identify things
that have remained in the collective memory of sociologists in a static
way; the understanding of which has not been modified with the passage
of time. A good example of this came out of the recent Edinburgh confer-
ence. One of the sessions at the conference was devoted to the 50th anni-
versary of the publication of the first study to come out of the research on
The Affluent Worker. Three members from the original Affluent Worker
team were present—John H. Goldthorpe, Frank Bechhofer and Jennifer
Platt.3 The methodological strengths of The Affluent Worker project such
as, for example, its effective combination of theory and methodology and
its well-planned research design, were pointed out. But a much bigger
part of the discussion was devoted to the issue of whether The Affluent
Worker should continue to be hailed as one of the milestone achieve-
ments of twentieth-century British sociology. It was argued that all
knowledge, but social scientific knowledge especially, gradually becomes
out-dated. Social scientific knowledge tends to become out-dated more
quickly, as it is necessarily rooted in particular social settings and reflects
distinct social concerns that characterise a particular period. The Affluent
Worker study is no exception—although it is important to consider it as
an historical achievement it would be inappropriate to use it on its own
as a representative example of what sociology is, or should be, nowadays.
Remembering The Affluent Worker could be useful to sociologists nowa-
days in their teaching and in their research but only if it is accompanied
by the necessary historical understanding of the conditions that prevailed
within sociology as a subject and in society more generally at the time it
originated. It is the historical meaning of The Affluent Worker, and, for
that matter, of any other piece of research from the recent past, that now-
adays really matters more than its research findings. And it is only by
employing an historical perspective that we can even begin thinking
8 P. Panayotova

about the importance not only of remembering our predecessors’ work

but also paying more careful attention to the way we remember and the
reasons for remembering some things, but not others.
Sociologists who have written about the history of sociology often jus-
tify their work by arguing that their rationale is to recover something that
has been lost from memory with the passing of time. A series of articles
published in The Sociological Review in 2007 devoted to some of the
members of the Sociological Society, for instance, aimed to ‘recognise
anew the importance of these forbears’ (Savage 2007: 429); reclaim the
importance of the social theory of [Patrick] Geddes (cf. Studholme 2007)
and retrieve [Victor] Branford from obscurity, praising him for ‘envision-
ing’ a ‘theoretically and empirically grounded sociology’ (Scott 2007:
479). Another recent publication used a similar argument, namely, ‘to
recover [these] lost histories’ and ‘to offer multiple histories’ (Holmwood
and Scott 2014: 2). This may be a legitimate strategy but it should also be
made clear that the recovery of something ‘lost’; a modification of current
understanding; a revision of the past are by default the aims of every study
of a historical nature. Emphasis on recovery (and re-discovery) and revi-
sion contributes little to the strength of the arguments in favour of the
necessity for an historical perspective in sociology, which rest on this
basis. It is much more persuasive, and difficult, to argue why recovery,
rediscovery and revision are at all necessary at a particular point in time
and to justify this not only on the basis of contemporary concerns but
also historically. This is something that not all authors using ‘recovery’
and ‘revision’ as justification seem to have taken into account but which
this book acknowledges clearly. History is valuable and important not so
much because it recovers and revises; the value of a history of sociology
comes from the fact that when done well, it helps us identify trends and
get a clearer view on the intellectual, institutional problems that have been
driving the development of the subject in the last two centuries. Adding
to the list of histories through revision and rediscovery is simply not
enough; ‘new’ histories should aim to identify ‘new’ problems.
Neglect of the historical perspective has not only been multifaceted,
but also systematic. However, the fact that we observe a systematic neglect
of the historical perspective in sociological research and teaching in many
different aspects does not imply that this is universal and that there
 1 Introduction 9

haven’t been in sociology’s history sociologists who have made efforts to

address it. In fact, there are several volumes with collected essays on the
history of sociology, some of which have gone far in redressing the situa-
tion outlined above. The volumes Practice and Progress: British Sociology
1950–1980 (1981) edited by Philip Abrams and colleagues and Essays on
the History of British Sociological Research (1985a) edited by Martin
Bulmer were published within a few years of one another in the early
1980s. This period is, historically, important for British sociology for at
least two reasons: by that time, British sociology had already been through
a phase of rapid-rate development that had transformed inter-war British
sociology, which had been unpopular and academically weak, into one of
the most fashionable and academically thriving subjects. But by the early
1980s, this phase was over and British sociology was facing increasing
criticism from government, funding bodies and the media and was
becoming less popular with students: in the words of two contemporary
commentators ‘sociology raised student expectations in the early 1960s
beyond those it either could or should try to meet’; by the early 80s, it ran
the risk of becoming ‘imprisoned in its sudden popularity’ (Westergaard
and Pahl 1989: 379).
Quite naturally, the experience that academic sociology had gathered
in the previous decades and the hostile social, political and academic cli-
mate of the early 1980s provoked an interest among sociologists about
the development and status of their subject, and created an urge for a
better understanding of who sociologists are, how they contribute to aca-
demia and society and how best to cope with contemporary challenges.
What better way to act upon such interest, than to look back and exam-
ine sociology through an historical perspective? The two volumes of col-
lected essays published in the early 1980s attempted to do exactly this.
The editors of Practice and Progress, for instance, argued that with this
volume they were attempting ‘an evaluation of British sociology during
the period 1950–80’ and an examination of ‘problems of methodology
and the creation of sociological knowledge’ and of two developments
which had ‘exerted a considerable influence on the direction and interests
of British sociology, namely, Marxism and feminism’ (Abrams et al. 1981:
6, 8). Bulmer’s (1985a) volume was more specific in its aim—it dealt with the
problem of the existing divide between the tradition of social empirical
10 P. Panayotova

enquiry that originated in Britain in the nineteenth century and contin-

ued to exist throughout the twentieth century in social science depart-
ments, academic institutes and government agencies; and the academic
subject of sociology which, overall, remained non-empirically oriented:
‘It is hardly an exaggeration to say that almost all of the empirical social
research undertaken in Britain between the wars went untouched by
what then passed for academic sociology […] it is surely remarkable that
for forty years the standard bearers of the discipline in Britain were
devoted to the primacy of armchair reflection’ (Bulmer 1985b: 4–5).
Both volumes therefore probed the contemporary state of sociology,
sometimes even with the risk of revealing inconvenient truths, in order to
deal with the problems sociology had been, and was still, facing.
Another volume of collected essays on topics related to the history of
British sociology appeared more recently under the editorship of
Holmwood and Scott (2014). The Palgrave Handbook of Sociology in
Britain lacks the problem-oriented rationale of the previous two volumes;
instead, a brief introductory note suggests that the volume aims to recover
‘lost histories’ and put an ‘emphasis on multiple histories’ (Holmwood
and Scott 2014: 2). These are, of course, legitimate aims. It could be the
case that the emphasis on recovering lost knowledge, instead of attempt-
ing to resolve any problematic issues, is itself a reflection on the current
academic status of sociology and the self-perception of mainstream soci-
ologists, since, it may be argued, compared to the 1980s when the previ-
ous two volumes appeared, British sociology in the 2000s enjoys again
popularity and public support. But there is room for improvement: vol-
umes, like Holmwood and Scott’s that contain essays on the history of
various sociological fields (‘multiple histories’) and that organise histori-
cal knowledge in terms of topics (rather than historical problems), make
a valuable contribution; and if the essays in them appear disconnected,
this on its own is a valuable indication of disconnectedness in the history
of British sociology itself. But volumes like Holmwood and Scott’s are
also less effective in conveying the message about the usefulness of an
historical perspective. It is problem-oriented historical volumes that are
most effective in raising awareness of ‘the bigger picture’ and improving
sociologists’ historical literacy—that is, the ability to use an historical per-
spective in one’s own work, regardless of the topic. What defines better
 1 Introduction 11

than anything else a subject like sociology is the way it researches and
teaches its object of study and the problems it encounters in the process;
and not what it studies or teaches. An historically literate sociologist is
therefore not somebody who knows about the historical development of
every field of sociological enquiry; but rather somebody who understands
the problems sociology has faced in the past and the role they play in
influencing its present and future development.
It is the primary aim of the present volume to help sociologists in this
country overcome their neglect of history and to contribute, albeit a lit-
tle, to the improvement of historical literacy among British sociologists
about some of the most fundamental and consequential problems that
their subject had to face throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centu-
ries. This book aims to achieve this by bringing together historical per-
spectives on sociological research and teaching; on the divide between
empirical social enquiry and academic sociology and on the divide
between ‘the quantitative minority’ and ‘the qualitatively and non-­
empirically oriented majority’ that work in British academic sociology
today. This book thereby contributes to existing historical knowledge but
also challenges it; it helps sociologists remember, but it helps them to
remember by equipping them with the tools that allow them to under-
stand contexts, trends and problematic developments and use that under-
standing in their own work.

Disputed Origins
The book is divided into four sections and each section focuses on a par-
ticular intellectual or institutional problem that is essential for the under-
standing of the history of sociology in Britain. The first section examines
the problem of the disputed origins of British sociology. Writing about
origins has been a contested issue among historians ever since the emi-
nent Herbert Butterfield argued in The Whig Interpretation of History
(1965 [1931]) that history ‘is not the study of origins; rather it is the
analysis of all the mediations by which the past was turned into our pres-
ent’; and that it is a defining characteristic of Whig historians to ‘imagine’
that they have discovered in the past a ‘root’ or an ‘anticipation’ of the
12 P. Panayotova

present (Butterfield 1965 [1931]: 47). However, Butterfield’s exclusion

of the study of origins from proper, non-Whig history is based on just
one of the meanings that a study of origins might have. When the study
of origins is understood as a study of the driving force and used as an
ultimate explanation of the phenomenon under investigation, then, yes,
it is highly likely that an historical account on such a basis would use
present-day understanding to judge, and thereby distort the past. And in
this sense, the study of origins can be as dangerous as Butterfield argues.
But a study of origins can also mean a study of beginnings, which would
involve an examination of the context in which ideas, movements, and
indeed whole subjects like sociology, first originated. A study of origins
can help historians use the benefit of hindsight not to distort the past by
turning the present into ‘an absolute’ and the past into ‘merely relative’
(Butterfield 1965 [1931]: 16); but to discover where the study of ‘the
mediations by which the past was turned into our present’ can with rea-
sonable accuracy be said to have begun and to explain the reasons for this—
and this is precisely why the study of origins, when done properly, matters.
The study of the origins of British sociology has tempted a few schol-
ars, most notably, Philip Abrams, whose 1968 essay The Origins of British
Sociology was quoted at the beginning of this introduction. In many
respects, Abrams’ study fails to avoid the risks, identified by Butterfield,
which are involved in writing about historical origins. Abrams’ account
uses, albeit implicitly, a 1960s understanding of sociology as primarily a
theoretical subject in his evaluation of the influence that nineteenth-­
century social science, as represented in the work of the SSA and the RSS,
had on British sociology: because these institutions did not emphasise
theoretical social science, they were ‘frustrating’ and harmful to the devel-
opment of sociology; it was because of social reformism and the statistical
movement that British sociology failed to emerge in the nineteenth cen-
tury. It is the rhetoric, the line and logic of Abrams’ argument, more than
any of the details of his argument, that are flawed and misleading—by
condemning early social science in Britain for the absence of ‘a sociology’
of a particular kind that was seen as desirable in the 1960s, we learn little,
not only about how nineteenth-century British social science originated,
but also about the mediations, to use Butterfield’s term, that brought
about twentieth-century British sociology.
 1 Introduction 13

In this respect, Lawrence Goldman’s paper in this volume, Victorians

and Numbers: Statistics and Social Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain,
represents a valuable revision. Drawing on many years’ experience of the
study of the history of nineteenth-century social science (Goldman 1983,
1987, 2002) and on extensive archival research, Goldman’s paper focuses
on the peculiar development of the British statistical movement in the
nineteenth century, providing one possible explanation of why it was
more likely that when British sociology was established at the beginning
of the twentieth century it developed into a non-statistical subject. In this
way, Goldman’s paper locates more clearly the problems that British
social science faced in the beginning and how these problems affected the
mediations, in the period 1830s–1900s, by which British social science’s
past was turned into British sociology’s present.
Preceding nineteenth-century ideas about social science, there is
another set of ideas that came to the fore with social reformism and social
statistics, that have also been considered by some scholars as marking the
beginnings of ‘sociology’. These ideas underpinned the Scottish
Enlightenment movement and are contained in the work of scholars such
as Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, John Millar, Adam
Smith, Dugald Stewart and others. A number of essays, including Alan
Swingewood’s Origins of Sociology: The Case of the Scottish Enlightenment
(1970); Lisa Hill’s Anticipations of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
Social Thought in the Work of Adam Ferguson (1996); and more recently
John Brewer’s The Scottish Enlightenment and Scottish Social Thought,
c.1725–1915 (2014) attempt to trace the origins of British sociology to
the Scottish Enlightenment. While these essays all argue that, in one way
or another, the work of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers anticipated
modern sociology, Kenneth Macdonald’s chapter Did British Sociology
Begin with the Scottish Enlightenment? challenges this view by arguing that
the presence of some sociological insights in the work of Smith, Ferguson
and others does not justify the claim that ‘sociology’ began with their
work. Unlike previous scholarship on the topic, which focuses more on
the analogies between the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers
and later British sociology, Macdonald emphasises that what also needs
to be taken into account are the differences between the ways the Scottish
14 P. Panayotova

Enlightenment thinkers did their ‘social science’ and the ways systematic
sociological research is done today.
The study of origins is inevitably a contested field; and, the fact that
definitions of sociology are themselves controversial, makes the prospects
of agreement between scholars even more difficult. Goldman’s and
Macdonald’s contributions, it is hoped, will provide clearer directions on
taking the right approach to such questions and provide valuable insights
into devising more reliable criteria for reaching any kind of conclusions.

Neglected Legacies
The question of what gets remembered in history and for what reasons is
a prime historical issue. Given British sociology’s comprehensive neglect
of its history, the present volume makes a special contribution in redress-
ing this issue by revaluing the role, influence and legacy of prominent
figures and institutions.
The chapter by Garrett Potts and Stephen Turner Making Sense of
Christopher Dawson highlights the case of the scholar Christopher
Dawson, who is well-remembered as a historian but has been almost
completely lost to British sociology despite his affiliations with sociologi-
cal institutions in early twentieth century Britain like the Sociological
Society and its later offshoots and with The Sociological Review, as well as
his general endorsement of sociological ideas, popular at the time.
Dawson’s case is a clear example of how a renowned contemporary can
turn into a forgotten shadow of the past, and Potts and Turner’s explica-
tion of how this came about suggest that this was not inevitable. Not
everything that has been remembered is necessarily remembered for good
reason and, as Potts and Turner’s essay shows clearly, not all that has been
forgotten is necessarily forgotten for a good enough reason.
Revaluation of how we remember the history of sociology is high-
lighted by rather extreme cases, such as the case of Christopher Dawson,
but it is not limited to such cases. Another figure who was also active in
social science before the Second World War but is primarily remembered
for his work on social administration and the welfare state after the War,
is Richard Titmuss.
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“Not silly at all,” demurred Clint. “Feel that way myself—only more
so.” He cleared his throat for a confession. “Fact is, Bess, he’s
managed to put me in a hole. Or else I’ve put myself there. It’s that
infernal quick temper of mine. I’d no business to let myself go. Of
course, I was figurin’ him just a bum like the others, an’ for that
matter he is a tramp—”
“He quoted Shakespeare at me,” inserted Betty, by way of comment.
“I dare say. He’s no ignorant fool. I didn’t mean that. What was it he
called me?” The ranchman smiled ruefully. “A local God Almighty on
tin wheels! Maybe I do act like one.”
“Sometimes,” agreed Betty.
The smile that went with the word robbed her concurrence of its
sting. It was tender and understanding, expressed the world-old
superiority of her sex over the blundering male who had always
claimed mastership. There were times when Betty was a mother to
her father, times when Clint marveled at the wisdom that had found
lodgment in the soft young body of this vivid creature who was
heritor of his life and yet seemed so strangely and wonderfully alien
to it.
“Point is that I didn’t measure up to my chance and he did,” Reed
went on gloomily. “It don’t set well with me, honey. After I’d thrashed
him till he couldn’t stand, he goes right away an’ fights for you
because you’re a woman. Makes me look pretty small, I’ll say. I’d like
to take him by the hand and tell him so. But he wouldn’t have it that
way. I’ve got to play my cards the way he’s dealt ’em. Can’t say I
blame him, either.”
“No, he had a right to refuse to have anything more to do with us
after the way we’d treated him.”
“Mostly we get second chances in this life, but we don’t always,
Bess. Oh, well, no use crying over spilt milk. What’s done’s done.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Don’t worry, Dad. I did my best to get him to stay
—went down on my knees almost. But he wouldn’t. There’s
something queer about him. What is it? He acts as though he
doesn’t care what becomes of him, as though he’s let go somehow.
Did you notice that?”
“Going to the devil fast as he can, looked like to me.”
This was probably accurate enough as a summary, but it did not
explain why to Betty. She dismissed the subject for the moment,
because Ruth came into the room followed by Bridget.
The child was in her nightgown and had come to kiss them before
going to bed. She ran to her father, threw her arms around his neck,
and gave him a great bear hug. Long since she had forgotten his
harshness of the morning.
But he had neither forgotten nor forgiven himself. In the first place,
he had been unjust. The injunction against going to the barn had not
been a blanket one. It had applied only to that part of the building
where the blooded stallion was kept in a box stall. He had hurt her
feelings as a vent to his annoyance at what had taken place by the
creek a half-hour earlier. It was pretty small business, he admitted, to
take out his self-disgust on an innocent four-year-old.
He held Ruth close in his arms while Bridget waited smilingly and the
little one confided to him plans about the puppies.
“’N’ I’m gonna have Lon make me a wagon, ’n’ I’ll drive it jus’ like
Betty does the team, ’n’ I fink I’ll call the puppies Prince ’n’ Rover ’n’
Baby Fifi ’n’—’n’ everyfing,” she concluded all in a breath.
“That’ll be bully,” the father agreed, stroking the soft flaxen curls
fondly. He wondered reproachfully why it was that he could turn on
those he loved, as he had done on the child this morning. He had
never done it before with Ruth, and he resolved he never would
again.
Ruth kissed Betty good-night and went out of the room in the arms of
Bridget, held close to her ample bosom, kicking and squealing with
delight because she was being tickled in the ribs.
As soon as Betty was in her own room, alone with her thoughts and
the rest of the world shut out, her mind went back to the problem of
the boy who had so early made such shipwreck of his life. She
puzzled over this while she was preparing for bed and afterward
while she lay between the white sheets, barred squares from the
window frames checkering the moonlight on the linen. What in the
world could cause a man, educated, clean-fibered, strong, to let go
of life like that?
It could not be a woman. In spite of her youth, she knew this by
instinct. A game man did not give up because of blows dealt to him
from the outside. The surrender had to come from within. No wounds
at the hands of another can subdue the indomitable soul. Young
though she was, she knew that. Books of fiction might say the
contrary, but she had a sure conviction they were wrong. What was it
Browning said?—“...Incentives come from the soul’s self.” Well, the
converse of it must also be true.
Somewhere in this boy—she persisted in thinking of him as a boy,
perhaps because his great need so filled her with the desire to help
him—there must be a weak strain. It was not, could not be, a vile
one. She held to that steadily and surely, without any of the
passionate insistence that doubt engenders. Ragged and dusty
though he was physically, on the drift to destruction, cynically self-
condemned, he was yet essentially clean and fine, a strain of the
thoroughbred in him. That was her judgment, and she was prepared
to wager all she had on the truth of it.
Betty did not sleep. Thoughts drifted through her mind as fleecy
clouds do across a summer sky. The magnet of them was this youth
who had already drunk so deeply of life’s bitterness. He
extraordinarily stimulated her interest.
It must have been near midnight that she heard quick voices and
lifted her head to the cry of “Fire!” Sketchily she dressed and ran
downstairs. The blaze was in the lower meadow where the wheat
was gathered for the thresher. A great flame leaped skyward and
filled the night with its reflection.
One of the men from the bunkhouse was running toward the unpent
furnace. She caught up a saddle blanket from the porch and
followed. In the lurid murk figures like marionettes moved to and fro.
As she ran, she saw that there were three fires, not only one. This
surprised her, for the distance between two of them was at least one
hundred and fifty yards. It was strange that in this windless night a
spark had traveled so far.
The roar of the conflagration reminded her of some huge living
monster in a fury. Tongues of flame shot heavenward in vain menace
to the stars.
“Stand back!” Forbes shouted at her. “All we can do is see it don’t
spread.” He was flailing at a line of fire beginning to run in the dry
stubble.
“How did it start?” she asked breathlessly.
“Fire-bugs.”
“You mean—on purpose?”
“Yep.”
“The tramps?”
“I ain’t sayin’ who.” He shouted to make his voice heard above the
crackle of the bellowing red demon that had been set loose. Already
he spoke hoarsely from a throat roughened by smoke.
“Where’s Dad?” she called back.
“Don’t know. Ain’t seen him since I left the house.” Dusty gave
information. “Saw him runnin’ toward the creek awhile ago.”
Almost instantly Betty knew why. He, too, must have guessed that
this fire had come from no chance spark, but of set design. No doubt
he was trying to head off the incendiary.
“Just which way?” she asked the cowpuncher.
Dusty jerked a thumb to the left. The girl turned and moved swiftly in
the direction of the fringe of bushes that rose as a vague line out of
the darkness. She believed her father’s instinct was true. Whoever
had fired the stacks would retreat to the willows and make his
escape along the creek bed, hiding in the bushes if the pursuit grew
close.
Before she had taken a dozen steps a sound leaped into the night. It
was a revolver shot. Fear choked her. She began to run, her heart
throbbing like that of a half-grown wild rabbit in the hand. Faint futile
little cries broke from her throat. A sure intuition told her what she
would find by the creek.
Her father lay on a sand spit close to the willows. He was dragging
himself toward the cover of some brush. From the heavy foliage a
shot rang out.
Betty flew across the open to her father.
“Look out!” he called sharply to her. “He’s in the willows. Down here.”
Reed caught at her arm and pulled her behind him where he lay
crouched.
The automatic of the man in ambush barked again. A spatter of sand
stung Betty’s face. Almost simultaneously came the bull roar of the
foreman’s hoarse voice.
“You’re shot, Daddy,” the girl whimpered.
“Keep still!” he ordered.
A heavy body crashed through the bushes in flight. At the same time
came the thump of running feet. Dusty broke into sight, followed by
the foreman.
The wounded rancher took command. “He went that way, boys,” he
said, and pointed down the creek. “Lit out a minute ago. Hustle back
to the house and get guns, then cut down the road in the car and
head him off.”
Forbes nodded to Dusty. “You do that. Take the boys with you. Hit
the creek at the ford and work up.” He turned to his employer. “How
about it, Clint? Where’d he hit you? How bad?”
“In the leg. It’ll wait. You get him, Lon.”
The foreman pushed into the willows and disappeared.
Reed called him back, but he paid no attention. The ranchman
fumed. “What’s the matter with the dawg-goned old idiot? No sense
a-tall. That’s no way to do. He’ll get shot first thing he knows.”
Her father was so much his usual self that Betty’s terror fell away
from her. If he were wounded fatally, he would not act like this.
He had been hit just above the top of his laced boots. Betty
uncovered the wound and bathed it with water she brought from the
creek in Clint’s hat. Around the wound she bound a large
handkerchief she found in his hip pocket.
“Does it hurt much?” she asked, her soft voice mothering him.
“Some. Know I’ve got a leg. Lucky for me you came along. It must ’a’
scared him off. You an’ Lon too.”
“See who he was?”
“Too dark.”
“Think it was the tramps? Or Jake Prowers?”
“The tramps. Not the way Jake pulls off a job. He’s no bungler.”
She sat down and put his head in her lap. “Anything else I can do,
Dad? Want a drink?” she asked anxiously.
Reed caught her little hand and pressed it. “Sho! Don’t you go to
worryin’ about me, sweetheart. Doc Rayburn, he’ll fix me up good as
new. When Lon comes back I’ll have him—”
He stopped. A rough voice was speaking. A foot struck a stone.
Vague figures emerged from the gloom, took on distinctness. The big
one was Lon Forbes. He walked behind a man who was his prisoner,
his great hands clamped to the fellow’s arms.
Betty stood up and waited, her eyes fastened on them as they
moved forward. Her heart was going like a triphammer. She knew
what she dreaded, and presently that her apprehensions were
justified.
The foreman’s prisoner was the tramp who called himself Tug.
 CHAPTER X
“ONE SQUARE GUY”

From Betty’s cheeks the delicate wild-rose bloom had fled. Icy
fingers seemed to clutch at her heart and squeeze the blood from it.
This was the worst that could happen, since she knew her father was
not wounded to death.
Lon spoke, grimly. “Bumped into him down the creek a ways—hidin’
in the willows. Heard a rustling an’ drapped in on him onexpected.
Thought he wouldn’t come with me at first, then he changed his mind
an’ thought he would.”
The tramp said nothing. His dogged eyes passed from Betty to her
father. She thought there leaped into them a little flicker of surprise
when they fell upon the ranchman sitting on the ground with his leg
bound up.
“Have you taken his gun from him?” Reed asked.
“Couldn’t find it. He must ’a’ throwed it away.” The foreman passed
an exploring hand over the body of the prisoner to make sure that he
had not missed a concealed weapon. “No, sir. He ain’t got a gat with
him now, unless he’s et it.”
“Take him to the bunkhouse and keep him guarded. We’ll ’phone for
the sheriff. Soon as you get to the house call up Doc Rayburn and
have him run right out. Then hook up a team and come get me,” the
ranch-owner directed.
From the fog of Betty’s distress a small voice projected itself. “You’re
not going to send for the sheriff without making sure, Dad?”
“Sure of what?” The steel-gray eyes were hard and cold.
“Sure he did it. He hasn’t said so.”
Reed’s laughter was harsh and without humor. “Nor he ain’t liable to.
Right now he’s trying to fix up his alibi.”
“Aren’t you going to hear what he’s got to say?”
“He can tell it in court.”
Betty turned from him to the prisoner. “Why don’t you say
something?”
She did not get past the defense of his sardonic smile. “What shall I
say?”
“Tell him you didn’t do it,” she begged, seeking assurance for herself.
“Would he believe me? Would you?”
There came to her a conviction that she would—if he said it in a way
to inspire confidence.
“Yes,” she said.
The veil of irrision lifted from his eyes. He looked straight at her. “I
didn’t do it.”
Instantly Betty knew he was telling the truth. A warm resurgent wave
flooded her veins. His life was bound up with tragedy. It had failed of
all it had set out to be. But she knew, beyond doubt or evidence, that
he had not fired the stacks or shot her father. The amazing thing
now, to her mind, was that even for a moment she could have
believed he would kill at advantage in cold blood.
“I knew it! I knew it all the time!” she cried.
“How did you know all that?” her father asked.
“Because.”
It was no answer, yet it was as good as any she could give. How
could she phrase a feeling that rested only on faith in such a way as
to give it weight to others?
“I’m one o’ these Missouri guys,” the foreman snorted. “He’ll have to
show me. What’s he doin’ here? What was he hidin’ out in the
bushes for? How could he tell soon as I jumped him that a man had
been shot?”
“He can explain that,” she urged; and to the vagrant, “Can’t you?”
“I can,” he answered her.
“We’re waiting,” snapped Reed, and voice and manner showed that
he had prejudged the case.
The young man met his look with one of cold hostility.
“You can keep on waiting—till the sheriff comes.”
“Suits me,” snapped the ranchman. “Hustle along, Lon. No use
wasting time.”
The foreman and his prisoner departed. Betty stayed with her father,
miserably conscious that she had failed to avert the clash of inimical
temperaments. None the less she was determined to keep the young
man out of the hands of the law.
She began at once to lay siege to her father.
“I knew he didn’t do it. I knew he couldn’t. It was that one they call
Cig. I know it was.”
“All three of ’em in it likely.”
“No. They had quarreled. He wouldn’t be in it with them. That Cig
thought he had told you about his attacking me. He threatened this
Tug. I think he’d have shot him just as he did you—if he’d got a
chance.”
“If he did shoot me. That’s not been proved.”
“Well, if this one—the one they call Tug—if he did it, why didn’t he
have a gun when Lon found him? Lon says he came on him
unexpectedly. He had no time to get rid of it. Where is it?”
“Maybe he dropped it while he was running.”
“You know you don’t believe that, Dad,” she scoffed. “He’d have
stopped to pick it up. Don’t you see he had to have that gun—the
man that shot you did—to make sure of getting away? And when
Lon found him he would have killed Lon, too. He’d have had to do it
—to save himself from the hangman. The fact that this Tug didn’t
have a gun proves that he didn’t shoot you.”
“Say he didn’t, then. Does it prove he wasn’t in cahoots with the man
who did? What was he hiding here on the ground for?”
“You didn’t give him a chance to tell. He was ready to, if you’d let
him.”
“I asked him, didn’t I?”
“Oh, Dad, you know how you asked him,” she reproached. “He’s got
his pride, same as we have. If he wasn’t in this—and I know he
wasn’t—you can’t blame him for getting stubborn when he’s
badgered. His explanations would have tumbled out fast enough if
he’d been guilty.”
This struck Reed as psychologically true. The fellow had not acted
like a guilty man. He had held his head high, with a scornful and
almost indifferent pride.
“What did I say, for him to get his back up so quick?” the ranchman
grumbled.
“It’s the way you said it, and the way Lon acted. He’s quick-
tempered, and of course he’s fed up with our treatment of him.
Wouldn’t you be?”
“What right has he to travel with a bunch of crooks if he doesn’t
expect to be classed as one?”
“Well, he hasn’t.” Betty put her arms round his neck with a warm
rush of feeling. Motives are usually mixed in the most simple of us.
Perhaps in the back of her mind there was an intuition that the road
to her desire lay through affection and not argument. “I can’t row with
you now, Daddikins, when you’re wounded and hurt. I’m so worried
about you. I thought—a while ago—when I saw you lying on the
ground and that murderer shooting at you—”
She stopped, to steady a voice grown tremulous in spite of herself.
He stroked her black hair softly.
“I know, li’l’ girl. But it’s all right now. Just a clean flesh wound. Don’t
you feel bad,” he comforted.
“And then that boy. I don’t want us to rush into doing anything that
will hurt the poor fellow more. We’ve done enough to him. We’d feel
awf’ly bad if we got him into trouble and he wasn’t the right man.”
Reed surrendered, largely because her argument was just, but
partly, too, because of her distress. “Have it your own way, Bess. I
know you’re going to, anyhow. We’ll hear his story. If it sounds
reasonable, why—”
Her arms tightened in a quick hug and her soft cheek pressed
against his rough one. “That’s all I want, Dad. I know Clint Reed.
He’s what Dusty calls one square guy. If you listen to this tramp’s
story, he’ll get justice, and that’s all I ask for him.” She dismissed the
subject, sure in her young, instinctive wisdom that she had said
enough and that more would be too much. “Is the leg throbbing,
Daddy? Shall I run down to the creek and get water to bathe it?
Maybe that would help the pain.”
“No, you stay right here where it’s dark and quit talking. The boys
may drive that fellow back up the creek. My leg’ll be all right till
Rayburn sees it.”
“You think he’ll come back here again?” she asked, her voice a-
tremble.
“Not if he can help it, you can bet on that. But if the boys hem him in,
and he can’t break through, why, he’ll have to back-track.”
The girl’s heart began to flutter again. She had plenty of native
courage, but to lie in the darkness of the night in fear of an assassin
shook her nerves. What would he do if he came back, hard-pressed
by the men, and found her father lying wounded and defenseless? In
imagination she saw again the horrible menace of his twisted face,
the lifted lip so feral, the wolfish, hungry eyes.
Would Lon Forbes never come back? What was he doing? What
was keeping him so long? He had had time long since to have
reached the house and hitched a team. Maybe he was wasting
precious minutes at the telephone trying to get the sheriff.
A dry twig crackled in the willows and Betty’s hand clutched
spasmodically at her father’s arm. She felt rather than saw his body
grow taut. There came a sound of something gliding through the
saplings.
Betty scarce dared breathe.
A patter of light feet was heard. Clint laughed.
“A rabbit. Didn’t think it could be any one in the willows. We’d ’a’
heard him coming.”
“Listen!” whispered Betty.
The rumble of wagon wheels going over disintegrated quartz drifted
to them.
“Lon’s coming,” her father said.
Presently they heard his voice talking to the horses. “Get over there,
Buckskin, you got plenty o’ room. What’s eatin’ you, anyhow?”
Forbes stopped on the bluff and came down. “Left the fellow with
Burwell tied up in the bunkhouse. Got both the sheriff and Doc
Rayburn. How’s the leg, Clint?”
Reed grunted a “’S all right,” and showed the foreman how to
support him up the incline to the wagon.
Five minutes later they were moving back toward the ranch house.
The fired stacks had burned themselves out, but smoke still rolled
skyward.
“Keller’s watchin’ to see everything’s all right there,” Forbes said. “I
don’t aim to take chances till we get the whole crop threshed.”
“Might ’a’ been worse,” Clint said. “If that fellow’d known how to go at
it, he could have sent half the crop up in smoke. We’re lucky, I’ll say.”
“Luckier than he is. I’ll bet he gets ten years,” the foreman said with
unction.
Neither father nor daughter made any answer to that prophecy.
 CHAPTER XI
MR. NE’ER-DO-WELL

Tug walked to the bunkhouse beside the foreman, the latter’s fingers
fastened like steel bands to his wrist. If Forbes said anything to his
prisoner during the tramp through the wheatfield, the young fellow
scarcely heard it. His mind was full of the girl who had defended him.
In imagination she still stood before him, slim, straight, so vitally
alive, her dark eyes begging him to deny the charge that had been
made against him.
The low voice rang in his brain. He could hear the throb in it when
she had cried, “Tell him you didn’t do it,” and the joyous lift of her
confident “I knew it—I knew it all the time.”
The vagrant’s life was insolvent in all those assets of friendship that
had once enriched it. He had deliberately bankrupted himself of them
when he had buried his identity in that of the hobo Tug, driven to it
by the shame of his swift declension. It had been many months since
any woman had clung so obstinately to a belief in him regardless of
facts. He had no immediate family, no mother or sister with an
unshakable faith that went to the heart of life.
But this girl who had crossed his path—this girl with the wild-rose
color, the sweetness that flashed so vividly in her smile, the dear
wonder of youth in every glance and gesture—believed in him and
continued to believe in spite of his churlish rejection of her
friendliness.
Though he was one of the lost legion, it was an evidence of the
divine flame still flickering in him that his soul went out to meet the
girl’s brave generosity. In his bosom was a warm glow. For the hour
at least he was strong. It seemed possible to slough the weakness
that rode him like an Old Man of the Sea.
His free hand groped its way to an inner pocket and drew out a
package wrapped in cotton cloth. A fling of his arm sent it into the
stubble.
“What you doin’?” demanded Forbes.
“Throwing away my gun and ammunition,” the tramp answered, his
sardonic mouth twitching.
“It don’t buy you anything to pull that funny stuff,” growled the
foreman. “You ain’t got a gun to throw away.”
Forbes turned the captured vagrant over to Burwell, one of the extra
harvest hands, and left him at the bunkhouse while he went to
telephone the doctor and the sheriff.
It was a busy night at the Diamond Bar K. The foreman drove away
and presently returned. Tug heard the voices of Betty and her father
as they moved toward the house. Some one chugged up to the
house in a car with one spark plug fouled or broken.
Burwell went to the door of the bunkhouse.
“Get ’em, Dusty?” he asked.
“Not yet,” the cowpuncher answered while he was loosening the
plug. “But, y’betcha, we’ll get ’em if this bird we done got caged
didn’t play a lone hand.”
Presently Dusty drove away again, in a hurry to rejoin his
companions. He had come back to find out whether anything new
had been discovered.
The foreman showed up in the doorway. “The boss wants to have a
talk with you, young fellow,” he said.
Betty would have known without any explanation that the prisoner
had no intention of running away. But Lon had no perception of this.
He did not release his grip until the tramp was in the living-room.
The owner of the Diamond Bar K lay on a lounge and Betty was
hovering close to him as nurses do in their ministrations.
Reed spoke at once. “Let’s get down to brass tacks, young man. Put
your cards on the table if you’re in the clear. Come through clean.
What do you know about this business?” The rancher’s voice was
crisp, but not unfriendly.
Tug sensed at once a change in attitude toward him. He had come
expecting to be put through the third degree. It was possible that was
being held in reserve for him. His mind moved cautiously to meet
Reed.
“What do you mean come clean—confess?” he asked.
“Call it what you want to. You claim you didn’t shoot me—that you
weren’t in to-night’s job at all. Let’s hear your alibi.”
“If you’d care to tell it to us,” Betty suggested gently.
The vagrant looked at her. “Why not? I don’t fire wheatfields and I
don’t shoot from ambush.”
“All right. Let’s have it,” the wounded man said impatiently.
“When I left the ranch yesterday, I went to Wild Horse and camped a
mile or so out of town. I didn’t care to meet the fellows I’d been with.
They blamed me for having them hauled back to the ranch here—
thought I’d hurried back to squeal on them. But I was looking for
work and I wasn’t going to run away from them. About noon I
tramped it into town to see about getting a job. I saw this Cig in a
store. He was buying a gun and ammunition for it. He didn’t see me,
so I passed by. Later I went back to the store and made sure, by
asking the clerk, that Cig had bought the gun.”
Betty broke in eagerly. “And you thought he meant to kill Father. So
you followed him out here to-night,” she cried.
“Not quite,” the tramp answered with an edge of cold anger in his
voice. “I wouldn’t have lifted a finger for your father. He brought it on
himself. He could look out for himself. I don’t know what he did to Cig
yesterday afternoon, but I know it was plenty. What would he expect
from a fellow like Cig after he’d treated him that way? He’s
dangerous as a trapped wolf and just about as responsible morally.”
“Very well. Say I brought this fellow and his gun on me by giving him
what was coming to him. What next?” asked Reed brusquely.
“I couldn’t get him out of my head. If I could have been sure he’d limit
his revenge to you and your foreman— But that was just it. I couldn’t.
He might lie in wait for your daughter, or he might kidnap her little
sister if he got a chance.”
“Kidnap Ruthie?” the girl broke in, all the mother in her instantly alert.
“Oh, he wouldn’t do that, would he?”
“Probably not.” He turned to her with the touch of deference in voice
and manner so wholly lacking when he faced her father. “I thought of
it because the other day we were talking of the Charley Ross case,
and Cig had a good deal to say about just how a kidnapping ought to
be done. The point is that I wouldn’t trust him, after what your people
have done to him, any more than I would a rattlesnake. His mind
works that way—fills up with horrible ideas of getting even. And he’s
absolutely unmoral, far as I’ve been able to find out.”
“So you trailed him out here—on the off chance that he might hurt
Betty or Ruth. Is that it?” inquired the rancher.
“You see I can’t mind my own business,” the prisoner jeered. “You
invited me forcibly to get off your land and stay off, but I had to come
trespassing again.”
“No need to rub it in,” blurted Reed by way of apology. “I got off
wrong foot first with you. Not all my fault, though. You acted mighty
foolish yourself. Still, you’ve got a legitimate kick coming. I’ll admit
that. Sorry—if that does any good.”
He did not offer to shake hands. It was his judgment that this youth
with the somber eyes so ready to express bitter self-mockery did not
want to have anything more to do with him.
The vagrant offered no comment. His white face did not soften or its
rigidity relax. Clearly he would make no pact with the Diamond Bar
K.
Betty asked a swift question, to bridge the silence left by his rejection
of her father’s tentative acknowledgment of wrong. “How did you
know when they were coming?”
“I knew they’d come after dark, and probably to-night.” He corrected
himself at once. “I oughtn’t to say ‘they,’ for I knew York wouldn’t
come. He hasn’t the nerve.”
“You’re dead right there,” the foreman said. “All we give him was a
first-class chapping, an’ he howled like he was bein’ killed. That
other guy, now, he’s one sure-enough bad actor, if you ask me, but
he’s game.”
“So I lay in the brush near their camp,” the gay-cat explained. “York
went down to the railroad yards. He’s likely riding the rods for ’Frisco
by this time. After dark Cig started this way and I followed. When he
left the track, I trailed behind. The moon wasn’t up, and I lost him. I
knew he couldn’t be far away, so I headed for the ranch, keeping
close to the creek. For a while I didn’t see or hear anything more of
him. Just as I’d made up my mind to strike for the house, the fires
flamed up. I heard two or three shots, then some one went by me on
the run. Time for me to be going, I thought. Your Mr. Forbes was of
another opinion. He showed up just then and invited me to stay.”
Reed’s cool, shrewd eyes had not lifted from the tramp while he was
making the explanation. He was convinced that he had been told the
truth. The man had come out to do a service for his children, which
was equivalent to one for Clint himself. Again he felt the sting of self-
reproach at having played a poor part in this drama that had been
flung into the calmness of their quiet round of existence.
“Glad Lon did find you,” the wounded man responded. “I’ll go the
whole hog and tell you straight I’m right sorry for the way I’ve treated
you. That makes twice you’ve come through for me. I’ll not forget it,
Mr.——” He hesitated, waiting for the other to supply the name.
“Mr. Ne’er-do-well,” suggested the white-faced tramp, and on his
face was a grim, ironic smile.
Reed flushed. “You’ve a right to remind me of that if you want to. It’s
not the first time I’ve been a damned fool, and it likely won’t be the
last. But you can tie to this, young man.” The steel-gray eyes seized
those of the hobo and held them fast. “If ever there comes a time
when you need Clint Reed, he’ll be here waiting. Send for him, and
he’ll come. That’s a promise.”
“Will he bring along with him Dusty and Mr. Forbes and the rest of
his outfit?” Tug asked, a derisive flash in his eyes.
“Say anything you’ve a mind to. I’ll not blame you if you hold hard
feelings. I would in your place. But don’t forget the fact. If you’re ever
in trouble, Betty and I are here waiting to be called on.”
The girl slipped her hand into her father’s and gave it a quick
squeeze. It told better than words how glad she was of the thing he
was doing.
“I can count on that knock-out punch of yours, can I?” the prisoner
asked ironically.
The girl came forward impulsively, a shell-pink flag fluttering in her
cheeks. “Please don’t feel that way. We’re sorry—we truly are. We’d
love to have you give us a chance to show you how we feel.”
The hard lines on his face broke. An expression warm and tender
transformed it. He turned his back on the others and spoke for her
ears alone.
“An angel from heaven couldn’t do more for me than you’ve done,
Miss Reed. I’ll always remember it—always. If it’s any comfort for
you to know it, be sure one scamp will never forget the girl who out
of her infinite kindness stretched down a hand to him when he was
sinking in the mud.”
“But won’t you take the hand?” she whispered, all eager desire to
help. “It’s not a very strong one, I’m afraid, but it’s ever so willing.”
He took it, literally, and looked down at it where it lay in his. “I’m
taking it, you see. Don’t blame yourself if it can’t pull the scalawag
out of the mire. Facilis descensus Averni, you know.”
“Is your trouble so far beyond help?” she murmured, and in her eyes
he read the leap of her sweet and gallant soul toward him. “I can’t
believe it. Surely there can’t be any sorrow or distress that friendship
won’t lighten. If you’ll let me in where you are—if you won’t shut me
out by freezing yourself up—”
The honk of an automobile horn had drawn Forbes to the window,
from which point of observation he was reporting progress to his
employer.
“Reckon it’s the sheriff an’ Doc Rayburn.... Yep. They’re gettin’ outa
the car an’ comin’ in.” He turned to Reed. “What about this fellow
here? What’s the play we’re makin’ to Daniels?”
“That he came to warn us, but got here too late. I’ll do the talking,
Lon.”
A fat little man with a medicine case in his hand bustled into the
room. At his heels moved a big blond cattleman whose faded blue
eyes were set in a face of brown leather.
“What’s the trouble? What’s the trouble?” fumed the doctor. It was
his habit of mind and manner to effervesce.
“Some tramps set fire to my wheat and shot me up, Doc. Nothing
worth putting in the papers, I reckon,” answered the ranchman
easily.
“Let’s see about that. Let’s see,” the doctor said with his little touch
of pomposity.
He stripped his automobile gloves for action.
 CHAPTER XII
“IS THIS BIRD A PRISONER, OR AIN’T HE?”

While Dr. Rayburn, with Betty and Forbes to wait upon him, made
preparations to dress the wound, Sheriff Daniels listened to the story
of the ranchman. The officer was a hard-headed Westerner who
applied common sense to the business of maintaining law and order.
“Looks like that tramp Cig did it, unless this young fellow is passing
the buck for an alibi,” he said in a low voice.
Reed shook his head. “No, Frank. This boy’s all right. I thought at
first he might be in it, but I know now he wasn’t. He helped my girl
out of a hole yesterday—licked this Cig because he got fresh with
Bess. Even before that he had parted company with the other two.
You’ll go to barkin’ up the wrong tree if you suspect him.”
The sheriff looked at Tug. The vagrant was standing beside the
piano glancing at the music piled on top of it. Ragged, dusty, and
unshaven, he was not a prepossessing youth. Livid and purple
bruises ridged his pallid cheeks. Daniels found in the face something
not quite normal, and, since he was a clean outdoor man himself, an
unhealthy variation from the usual stirred in him a slight feeling of
distrust.
“By yore way of it, Clint, you beat up this hobo here for trespassing
on yore land. I’d say from the looks of him you gave him a plenty.
Does it look reasonable to you that he’d trail the other hobo for miles
to protect you from him?”
“Not to protect me, Frank. He gave it to me straight it wasn’t for me.
’Seems he got to worryin’ about what this Cig might do to the
children. The fellow had been talkin’ about kidnapping and how easy
it could be pulled off. So this one—Tug he calls himself—followed
Cig here. Looks reasonable to me. He’s game. You’d ought to have