Henry Pratt Fairchild

Henry Pratt Fairchild (1880 to 1956) was an American sociologist, professor of sociology at New York University, and a public figure in several controversial debates of his time. Born in Dundee, Illinois, and raised in Crete, Nebraska, he graduated from Doane College in 1900 and took his doctorate at Yale University in 1909. He taught economics and sociology at Bowdoin College and from 1919 at New York University, retiring in 1945 to chair the sociology department of its graduate school. His work focused on race, nationalism, immigration and ethnic conflict, notably Immigration: A World Movement and Its American Significance (1913), The Melting Pot Mistake (1926), which argued that the United States could not assimilate the many immigrants it had accepted, and the 1934 textbook General Sociology. Fearing overpopulation, he advocated birth control and helped Margaret Sanger found Planned Parenthood. He presided over the Population Association of America from 1921 to 1925, the American Eugenics Society from 1929 to 1931 and the American Sociological Society in 1936, and he was a critic of capitalism.