The Making of Small Town in Mass Society - A Rare Look at the Vidich/Bensman Collaboration

Art Vidich Circa 1955

In November of 2016, I had the opportunity to visit the New School archives in New York City and obtain copies of some priceless letters that chronicle the Vidich/Bensman collaboration on what would become the classic study, Small Town in Mass Society.  The four page letter included in this blog post captures Art Vidich's frustrations with working within the bureaucratic confines of the Cornell University sponsored study of Candor New York - a town that was given the pseudonym "Springdale" by the Cornell project team.  Vidich expresses his frustration with the limitations placed on his research. 

For those familiar with Vidich's distaste for bureaucratically managed research, this letter reveals his naivete concerning the potential strictures that might be imposed by government funding. 

Fortunately, his colleague Joe Bensman disabused Art Vidich of his overly critical analysis of the Cornell study team and kept him focused on the task at hand rather than his "shocking" analysis of the Cornell Study team for which he worked when this letter was written. 

Written while Art was still working for Cornell, the letter appears to be prophetic. It suggests that a grant to conduct research in Puerto Rico could be of interest to Joe Bensman for his thesis. While that never materialized, it would only be a matter of months before Art Vidich would end his work at Cornell and accept a position at the University of Puerto Rico starting in the fall of 1954.  

While Art's basic research for Small Town in Mass Society was completed while working for Cornell University, it was in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico that he completed the drafts of the book.  Joe and Art carried on an active correspondence trading chapters of the book through the U.S. Mail and occasionally spending extended periods of time together to hammer out the final chapters.

While their correspondence was extensive, only a handful of letters - including this one - have survived to document their collaboration on this classic study of a rural farm community in upstate New York.