Western Illinois University

A Foundation for Sustainable Rural Community Development

Carl C. Taylor Rural Sociologist

Carl Cleveland Taylor was born in Harlan, IA, on December 16, 1884. He received his bachelor’s from Drake University in 1911, his master’s from the University of Texas in 1914, and his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Missouri in 1918. He taught college-level economics and sociology at the University of Texas and the University of Missouri from1916 to 1920. He also taught at North Carolina State University and was dean of the Graduate School from 1920 to 1931.

In 1933, after two years of writing and research about North Carolina, he was appointed special assistant to the director of the Subsistence Homesteads Division of the United States Department of Interior. He was regional director for the Land Policy Section of the New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration in 1934 and 1935. He was assistant director of the Resettlement Administration from 1935 to 1937. He then became chief of the Division of Farm Population and Rural Welfare, Bureau of Agricultural Economics in the United States Department of Agriculture, where he served for most of the next 18 years, succeeding Charles Josiah Galpin.

Taylor moved community research forward in the Bureau with publication of six Rural Life Studies: Culture of a Contemporary Rural Community, between 1941 and 1943. He also spent a year doing rural sociology research in Argentina with the State Department in 1942 and 1943. He was author of dozens of publications and a member of the American Country Life Association, the American Sociological Society (president, 1946), and the Rural Sociological Society (president, 1939). He died in Arlington, VA, on February 10, 1975.

Works by Carl C. Taylor

  • 1919. The Social Survey: Its History and Methods. Columbia, Mo: University of Missouri.
  • 1926. Rural Sociology; A Study of Rural Problems. New York: Harper & Bros..
  • 1926. with B. F. Brown. Human Relations. A College Textbook in Citizenship. New York: Harper & Bros, 1926.
  • 1949. Rural Life in the United States. New York: A.A. Knopf.
  • 1971. The Farmers' Movement, 1620-1920. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Recommended Resources

  • Cornell University Library Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, “Guide to the Carl Cleveland Taylor Papers,1920-1969.” Cornell University Library. (Accessed: June 5, 2008).
  • Larson, Olaf F.; Zimmerman, Julie N. 2003. Sociology in Government: The Galpin-Taylor Years in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1919-1953. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
  • “Obituaries. Carl C. Taylor.” 1975. ASA Footnotes. August, 1975. (Accessed: June 18, 2008).