John Andrews Fitch was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer, teacher, and pioneering social investigator of the Progressive Era

Progressive Era

The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of social activism and political reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political...

. He is best known for his contributions to The Pittsburgh Survey

The Pittsburgh Survey

The Pittsburgh Survey was a pioneering sociological study of the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA funded by the Russell Sage Foundation of New York. It is widely considered a landmark of the Progressive Era reform movement....

, a landmark study of social conditions in a U.S. city.

Born in South Dakota

South Dakota

South Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux American Indian tribes. Once a part of Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889. The state has an area of and an estimated population of just over...

, he was a 1904 graduate of Yankton College

Yankton College

Yankton College was a small liberal arts college in Yankton, South Dakota, affiliated with the Congregational Christian Churches .Founded in 1881, it was the first institution of higher learning in the Dakota Territory...

. He taught at Nebraska

Nebraska

Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....

's Weeping Water Academy before enrolling at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

University of Wisconsin–Madison

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

 for graduate studies in political economy

Political economy

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...

.

In the fall of 1907 he joined with his professor, John R. Commons

John R. Commons

John Rogers Commons was an American institutional economist and labor historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.-Biography:Born in Hollansburg, Ohio, John R. Commons had a religious upbringing which led him to be an advocate for social justice early in life...

, on a trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

 to begin work with dozens of other progressives on an ambitious sociological study: Paul Kellogg's Pittsburgh Survey, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation

Russell Sage Foundation

The Russell Sage Foundation is the principal American foundation devoted exclusively to research in the social sciences. Founded in 1907 and headquartered in New York City, the foundation is a research center, a funding source for studies by scholars at other institutions, and a key member of the...

. Fitch spent more than a year interviewing steel workers. The resulting book, The Steel Workers, was published in 1910, one of the Survey's six published volumes. It remains a classic depiction of a key industry in early twentieth-century America.

Fitch, after a brief stint working for the New York Department of Labor, was an editor and writer for Paul Kellogg's Survey, America's leading social work journal. Beginning in 1917 Fitch taught labor relations as a professor at the New York School of Social Work, where he retired in 1946.