Caroline Bartlett Crane and the history of sociology: Salvation, sanitation, and the social gospel

This article investigates the relationship between Progressive era (1890–1920) social reform and the origins of American sociology with a view of the vital contributions of women in these endeavors. I observe the efforts of the first generation of sociologists to legitimate and delineate the field in the “social construction” of the discipline of sociology, as they attempted to combine Christianity, the social gospel, and socialism into a new and unique ideology. In this article I examine the archival material of Progressive era reformer, Caroline Bartlett Crane (1858–1935), a Unitarian minister and student in the sociology department of the University of Chicago in 1896, to address the relationship between theology, sociology, and social reform from a woman’s perspective.