Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/687

 SOCIOLOGY AND THE STATE 673

Accepted by Herbert Spencer and recognized by several strong fcontinental writers, it got on its feet during the last decade of the nineteenth century, and before the beginning of the twentieth century it had become the most popular of all the sciences. It began to be taught in one after another of the higher institutions of learning, and at the present time it seems there are about four hundred such in the United States alone in which sociology forms a part of the curriculum.^ Something analogous to this is true in other countries but I cannot quote any recent statistics.^ Perhaps the surest index of the growth of sociology and of the hold it has taken of all enlightened nations is the number of sociological societies that have sprung into existence during the period under consideration. Inaugurated by the formation of the International Institute of Sociology in 1893, followed by the Sociological Society of Paris in 1895, the movement spread to Brussels where the Belgian Sociological Society was founded in 1899, transformed into the Belgian Institute of Sociology in 1901, between which dates in 1900 there was founded at Buda- pest the Hungarian Society of Sociology. A Laboratory of Sociology was established at Palermo in 1901 and an Institute of Sociology at Madrid in the same year. In 1903 England fell into line and the Sociological Society of London was born. Our own American Sociological Society arose in 1905. Austria awoke in 1907 and produced the Soziologische Gesellschaft at Vienna, and on the occasion of the retirement of Professor Gumplowicz from his chair in the University of Gratz in 1908 a sociological society was founded there in his honor. That same year saw the rise of two more sociological societies in Hungary, viz., at Nagyvarad and at Gyor, and it was also in 1908 that the Institute of Sociology was founded at Catania. Finally, during the present year of 1909 the contagion reached Germany, and the Deutsche Gresellschaft fiir Soziologie was in-

^ Amer. Journ. Social., Vol. XV, September, 1909, p. 165.

•An idea of the extent of this movement in 1900 may be gained from the report of the Congress for Instruction in the Social Sciences at the Paris Exposition of 1900. I condensed it for the U, S. Bureau of Education in chap, xxviii of the Report of the Bureau for the year 1899-1900, pp. 1458- 1564; since published in full in book form.