Edward Digby Baltzell Jr. (November 14, 1915 – August 17, 1996) was an American sociologist, academic and author. He studied the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment and is credited with popularizing the acronym WASP. He was also a best-selling author whose books were popular with both scholars and the general public.
Early life
Baltzell was born in Philadelphia, to a wealthy family of Episcopalians. His parents were Carolina Adelaide "Lena" Duhring and Edward Digby Baltzell, an insurance broker. His maternal grandfather was Rev. Dr. H. Louis Duhring of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. His paternal grandfather was Henry Eaton Baltzell of Baltimore, Maryland and Wyncote, Pennsylvania. He was raised in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia. Baltzell said, "We always thought we were totally broke, but we were really in the top one-tenth of one per cent; I always thought we didn't have any money. But as I look back, I led a really privileged life."
He attended St. Paul's School, an Episcopal boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire, graduating in 1935. However, his father lost his job due to alcoholism in Baltzell's senior year. Unable to afford Harvard or Yale or Princeton, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, paying for his tuition with a scholarship and worked at Franklin Field where he collected tickets, ushered, and parked cars. He studied architecture and was a member of the literary fraternity St. Anthony Hall. He was also captain of the freshman tennis team and played on the squash team.
In the summer of 1937, he worked at the Northeast Harbor Tennis Club and its swimming club in Mount Desert Island, Maine, arranging tournaments and other activities at both clubs. When his father was arrested for insurance fraud in 1938 (although Baltzell would later tell people his father had died), Baltzell lacked the funds for tuition and dropped out to work as a salesman at Wanamaker's Department Store. A friend loaned him $200 to return to Penn, and he graduated with a B.S. from the Wharton School of Business in 1939.
After graduating, he took a job as an underwriter, followed by working as a pharmaceutical salesman. During World War II, he joined the U.S. Navy, serving as a naval aviator and air combat intelligence officer in the Pacific theater. The war was a pivotal moment in creating Batlzell's world view; he said, "War was the great equalizer, the melting pot. You couldn't share the hardships, the dangers and boredom with people of all races and backgrounds and then turn around and exclude them from opportunities to which they were entitled."
He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University in 1952. There, he studied under Paul Lazarsfeld, Robert Staughton Lynd, Robert Morrison Maclver, Robert K. Merton, and C. Wright Mills. Baltzell realized that his background made him different from others in the field of sociology which was dominated by people from the middle class. However, this also meant that the upper class was an understudied topic. He decided to write his dissertation on the American upper class, and "for the rest of his life remained the world’s foremost authority on it." Baltzell's developed his class theory from Max Weber and Alexis de Tocqueville, rejecting a Marxist framework.
Career
Baltzell taught at a branch of Pennsylvania State University. He joined the faculty of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1947. He said, "It was good to be born rich, because if you’re rich, you have freedom. But if you can’t be born rich, then the next best thing is to be a professor."
In his most influential book, The Protestant Establishment (1964), he asserted, "…While socialist faiths might aim for a classless society, the United States stressed equality of opportunity in an open class system." This book also introduced the term WASP in the book's tables. Baltzell explained, "How was I going to fit those words in the little boxes?″ It was easier to just fit 'WASP' in there."