A good father believes that he does wisely to encourage enterprise, productive skill, prudent self-denial, and judicious expenditure on the part of his son.

Sumner is often seen as a proto-libertarian. He was a polymath with numerous books and essays on American history economic history political theory sociology and anthropology. William Graham Sumner (October 30 1840 – April 12 1910) was an American academic and "held the first professorship in sociology" at Yale College.