2012 Reprint of 1947 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) was a sociologist at Yale University, a historian of American banking, and great expositor of classical liberalism. "What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other" was first published in 1883, and it asks a crucially important question: does any class or interest group have the duty and burden of fighting the battles of life for any other class or of solving the social problems to the satisfaction of any other class or group? Sumner saw that the assumption of group obligation was destined to be a driving force behind the rise of social management in the future.