[3] He began his career as a social worker in Helena, Montana in 1895, before moving to do the same job in Buffalo, New York, Boston, and Chicago.
[4][5] From 1913 to 1925, he was the vice president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,[6] and served as its secretary for many years.
It argued that African American farmers were incompetent, in line with mainstream stereotypes at the time.
He helped establish the Philadelphia Training School for Social Work in 1908[9] and served as its consulting director for the following year.
That year, he became a prominent proponent of the Boasian view that all races were approximately equal in their mental ability, and that racial differences were "largely superficial".