Willard Price

Who was Willard Price?

Willard DeMille Price was a Canadian-born American traveller, journalist and author.

Price was born to a family of devout Methodists in Peterborough, Ontario. He spent his early childhood living on a farm before his family moved to Toronto and then Cleveland, Ohio in the United States when he was four. Price attended East High School and Western Reserve University where he funded his college degree by writing advertisements for local businesses and newspapers. During this time he gained notoriety as a young Methodist leader and developed a taste for adventure on long trips during vacations.

On graduating in 1909 Price confounded expectations by choosing not to enter a seminary, instead spending a year preaching as an unordained pastor. He then resolved to experience the "workaday world", a decision that took him to New York and then London. While there he developed a "painfully acute social awareness" while volunteering at a settlement house in Southwark. This inspired Price to become "a social worker with a pen".

Returning to New York in 1911 Price won a scholarship to the School of Philanthropy at Columbia University, where he acquired a MA and Litt.D. While there he wrote a number of campaigning newspaper and magazine articles including a first-hand account of the squalid conditions aboard a transatlantic liner, a survey of Newark's slums and an investigation of child labour conditions in a Pittsburgh iron and steel plant. Price also worked as publicity secretary of the Methodist Board of Foreign Missions, completed his thesis on immigration and edited the journals Survey and World Outlook.