[3] Price attended East High School and Western Reserve University where he funded his college degree by writing advertisements for local businesses and newspapers.

On graduating in 1909,[4] Price confounded expectations by choosing not to enter a seminary, instead spending a year preaching as an unordained pastor.

Returning to New York in 1911, Price won a scholarship to the School of Philanthropy at Columbia University, where he acquired a MA and Litt.D.

Price also worked as publicity secretary of the Methodist Board of Foreign Missions, completed his thesis on immigration and edited the journals Survey and World Outlook.

Price documented these adventures in a series of adult non-fiction books, beginning with Rip Tide in the Southern Seas (1936).

In 1999, Professor Laurie Barber of New Zealand's Waikato University suggested that Price may have spied for the United States.