Page "W. I. Thomas" Paragraph 14

In 1918 the FBI arrested Thomas under the Mann Act, which prohibits " interstate transport of females for immoral purposes ", while in the company of one Mrs. Granger, the wife of an army officer with the American forces in France.

Some speculate that Thomas's arrest was arranged by the FBI, which at the time was monitoring the pacifist activities of his wife Harriet.

Although Thomas was acquitted of the charges in court, his career was damaged irreversibly by the negative publicity, especially from the Chicago Tribune.

The university dismissed him without awaiting the outcome of his trial and without any protest from his colleagues.

The University of Chicago Press, which already had published the first two volumes of The Polish Peasant, quit its contract with him, so that the work's remaining three volumes had to be published in Boston by Richard G. Badger.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York, which had previously commissioned Thomas to write a volume for its " Americanization " series, refused to publish it by the author's own name.

Thus in 1921, Old World Traits Transplanted appeared by authors Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, who had contributed only minor parts to the book, and it was not until 1951 that the book's authorship was re-credited to Thomas by a committee of the Social Science Research Council and reissued with its author's actual name.