Frank Parsons (November 14, 1854 – September 26, 1908) was an American professor, social reformer, and public intellectual. Although he was educated as an engineer at Cornell University, he passed the Massachusetts state bar examination and became a lawyer in 1881. Parsons was a lecturer at Boston University School of Law for more than a decade and taught at Kansas State Agricultural College from 1897 to 1899. As a leading social commentator of the Progressive Era, Parsons authored a dozen books and more than 125 magazine and journal articles on a wide range of reform topics, including currency reform, regulation of monopolies, municipal ownership, establishment of direct democracy, and other matters. Parsons is also widely regarded as the father of the vocational guidance movement. Biography Early years Frank Parsons was born on November 14, 1854, in Mount Holly, New Jersey, the son of an Anglo-Saxon family with American antecedents dating back to the time of the American Revolution. The family was highly intellectual in proclivity, with a number of physicians, lawyers, and teachers dotting the family tree, particularly on Frank's mother's side. Intellectually talented from an early age, Frank was enrolled in Cornell University at the age of 15 and graduated after just three years with a Bachelor's degree in civil engineering. Career Parsons took a job as a civil engineer for a railroad located in Western Massachusetts upon graduation but he lost this position when the firm collapsed amidst the Panic of 1873. After relatively brief stints as a common laborer and a public school teacher, Parsons decided to go into the legal profession, preparing for the Massachusetts bar examination for one year before taking and passing the exam in 1881. Unfortunately, Parsons experienced a health failure shortly after passing the bar exam and found himself compelled to move the New Mexico Territory in search of recovery. Parsons would remain in that state for three years. Parsons established a legal practice in New Mexico but soon tired of the profession. Instead, Parsons was employed by the publishing firm of Little, Brown and Company as a writer of law textbooks. Several volumes were produced during the course of this association. With textbook publications came academic recognition, and in 1892 Parsons was added to the staff as a lecturer at Boston University School of Law. He would remain in that position for the greater part of the rest of his life,