A Life of Experimental Economics, Volume I

Forty Years of Discovery

Vernon L. Smith

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319984049
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book provides an intimate history of Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith's early life, combining elements of biography, history, economics and philosophy to show how crucial incidents early in his life provided the necessary framework for his research into experimental economics. Smith takes the reader from his family roots on the railroads and oil fields of Middle America to his early life on a farm in Depression-wracked Kansas. A mediocre student in high school, Smith attended Friends University, on Wichita's west side, where an intense study of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and astronomy enabled him to pass the examinations to enter Caltech and study under luminary scientists like Linus Pauling. Eventually Smith discovered economics and pursued graduate study in the field at University of Kansas and Harvard. This volume ends with his Camelot years at Purdue, where he began his famous work in experimental economics, nurturing his research into an unlikely new field of economics.

© The Author(s) 2018

Vernon L. SmithA Life of Experimental Economics, Volume Ihttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98404-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Before “My”

Vernon L. Smith¹

(1)

Economic Science Institute, Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA

Vernon L. Smith

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Casey Jones, in the language of the time, was a crack twenty-six-year-old passenger engineer on the Illinois Central Railroad’s Cannonball Express. On April 30, 1906, The Cannonball was approaching Vaughan, twelve miles from Canton, IL. Alan Lomax, the celebrated collector of American folk songs, prefaces “The Ballad of Casey Jones” with a report of the spectacular wreck of the Cannonball in The Folk Songs of North America (1960).

Casey and his fireman, Sim Webb, had not received any more orders and were bearing down on Vaughan, at the lower end of a “double S-curve.” There was a switch in the middle of the first S, enabling a slower train to be sidetracked. A freight train had not pulled entirely onto the side track. Sim reports that as they roared down on the switch, he could see two big red lights indicating a train not in the clear, but “Mr Casey” couldn’t see it because there was a deep curve to the fireman’s side. Sim yelled “Look out! We’re gonna hit something!” Casey shouted his final words “Jump Sim!” He kicked the seat from under him and applied the brakes. “I swung down … and hit the dirt. When I came to … Mr. Casey was dead.”

The Cannonball’s engine collided with the caboose of the freight and plowed into the next two cars—one of shelled corn and one of hay. When they found Casey, he had an iron bolt driven through his neck and on his chest was a bale of hay. The “Balad of Casey Jones” was composed by the roundhouse employee and “great Negro folk poet” Wallace Saunders, as he wiped up Casey’s blood from engine No. 382.

Like Sim, Grover A. Bougher (1893–1918), my mother’s first husband and the father of her two oldest children, was a fireman, who worked for the Santa Fe Railroad. For those not brought up on railroad lore, a fireman puts in, not out, engine fires; he makes and stokes the locomotive’s boiler fire by shoveling coal and maintaining the locomotive’s steam pressure. A fireman was commonly an apprentice locomotive engineer who served time in the cab to master the engine’s operations and learn from the engineer, who is essentially the captain of his train. This subordinate role of the fireman is clearly indicated in the exchange between the famous Casey Jones and his fireman, Sim Webb, who refers to Jones as “Mr. Casey.” Sim Webb was “Negro” or “colored ”—the polite ways of identifying “African Americans” in those days—and he may have been especially deferential for that reason.

At some point, after gaining experience in the cab, if he proved fit for the task and was of a mind to continue, the fireman would be promoted to engineer. An engineer lived by the maxim “Get her there and make time or come to the office and get your time (pay).”

I have a letter Grover wrote to his brother, George, a private in the American Expeditionary Force in France, dated October 3, 1918, and postmarked the following day in Newton, Kansas. Newton, which is twenty-odd miles north of Wichita, was a switchyard on the main line of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad. (None of the cities in the railroad’s name was on its main line from Chicago to Kansas City to Los Angeles.) One day later, on October 5, Grover was killed instantly in a train wreck, an accident not uncommon at the time. A manual cutover switch had been inadvertently left open, diverting his passenger train onto the sidetrack, where it collided with a waiting freight engine. The accident was similar to the 1906 wreck of the Illinois Central Railroad’s Cannonball Express, which killed Casey Jones.

The letter was returned to Newton, postmarked the following April, and forwarded to Wichita, where my mother had moved. A notation by the Command P.O. stated that George had been killed eight months earlier, shortly before Grover had written to him, on September 17, 1918, while fighting with the American Expeditionary Force in France. Thus, neither brother knew of the other’s death. When Grover was killed, my grandfather to be, Asahel Lomax (1874–1945), my mother’s father, had been laid up for some time with a serious leg injury caused by a railroad accident. He was an engineer on the Missouri Pacific Railroad (the MoPac, MP, or “MOP,” as we affectionately called it, never made it to the Pacific, or even west of Denver). According to my recollection of the oral reports in my family from the 1930s, Grandpa Lomax was injured in a straight-track accident—not on an S-curve as in the celebrated Cannonball wreck—when a connecting rod on one of the great drive wheels broke loose at the front end and flailed up through the cab’s wood flooring. Grandpa and his fireman jumped from their cab and survived. On a straight open track, a train will come to a stop without assistance from the engineer, and it’s hard to be heroic inside a demolished cab. Grandpa often said that years later his leg still contained splinters from the wood floor of the engine cab.

I have not been able to document Grandpa Lomax’s connecting-rod incident. I have, however, obtained a Missouri Pacific ICC report of a connecting-rod accident at Benton, ten miles northeast of Wichita, which is quite likely the one. It seems to be the only such reported incident in 1918 on the MOP, and the location, injuries, and time are fully consistent with the family information. Ray State, an online documenter of railroad history and data, generously provided me with a copy of the report:

“April 6th 1918 locomotive 2668 near Benton Kansas. Front end main rod strap bolt and key lost out permitting rod to drop: 2 injured.” State comments, “Unfortunately, I have failed to identify 2668 as it does not appear in the 1920s number list. It may be an ancient 4-4-0 or 4-6-0 dating from before 1900 and condemned after the war.” (I found these model designations in railroad history: the 4-4-0 was a popular nineteenth mid-century “American type” eight-wheeler with 4 axels; it was replaced by a “ten wheeler” with four leading and six power drive wheels, used for both freight and passenger trains.) He further notes: “Minor incidents of the type you describe never made it to the level of the ICC main reports. However, from April 1911 railroads were obliged to report locomotive incidents which killed or injured train crew. These were recorded by the ICC Bureau of Safety and published annually in their Locomotive Inspection reports. Until recently these lay unused by the public and in most cases un-catalogued in archives.”

Here is the text of the letter Grover wrote to his brother in the vernacular of the time, complete with missing punctuation and misspellings and inaccurate word use. It captures much of the tenor of the war years, particularly the feelings that people had toward Germans, who were commonly and erroneously called the “Dutch” or, more derisively, “Krauts.” Twenty-five years later, angry Americans would refer to the Japanese people as “Japs,” and still later, they would refer to the Vietnamese people as “Gooks.” As one conflict succeeds another, the objects of derision follow suit.

Newton, Kansas

Oct 3rd 1918

Dear Bro George:

Will write you a letter today. We got home the 1st & we sure had some swell time there in Indiana, all of us went & of course we had some time together the kiddies sure was some “girlies” when we were out on the farm [the farm was near Paoli, where my mother was born and her father grew up] they wanted to know if you milked all the milk out the cows if you put it back in & all such questions they sure were amusing. Wish you had a been along

Well things in Old America bud are about the same old thing every thing fine & prosperous as ever & every body is working to there limit & now at present we have our 4^th loan campaign & it will go over the top & above expectations I am sure & believe me the boys at the front are sure putting the -K- in the Kiser & it wont be long I hope till you all can come home & tell us your wonderfull experiences & how they correlled the “Dutch”

George have [you] been in eney active fighting yet & how do you like the noise it sure must be wonderfull believe me I wish I were there with you, Why don’t you write to us more often I sure like to hear from you in fact we all do the kiddies often talk of Uncle George a soldier boy & gone to whip the Dutch you wont know those Babyies if you don’t get home for long. Billyei you know will be five in the Spring & Eileen she will be 3 the 19th of this mounth.

I am now on a regular run I have 17 & 16 Newton to A. [Arkansas] City & back every day its the best job out of here in my opinion.

We are having fine weather here now. No cold yet & we have no stove up yet eather but must put up one soon cause it may turn cool most any time

I am now 5 X out for Eng Xboard [Grover is referring to his fifth time working the engine extra-board on call for any run as engineer] & will probably take the examination in the next couple mounths as they are hard up for men & we have no more promoted men hear now so you see I can nearlly have my pick of the jobs around hear.

Well Dad & Ma Lomax are hear with us & Dad’s leg is not very much better he cannot walk on it yet he sure has had some hard luck, Ma she is going to work soon she has her a good job hear in one of the best stores, well I guess I’ll leave a little for the rest to write so will say Good Bye for now & may the best of good luck be with you & all our boys over there & that the job will soon be done & you all can come home cause if every one is anxious to see their near ones as I am to see you they would all be wishing we were in Berlin now with the Kiser & his whole D---out fit hung to a phone pole Bye Bye Bud & Love

Grover

My mother appended a short postscript to Grover’s letter:

Dear Bro,

Grover has written everything there is to write. I am a real busy woman now. Our family has enlarged. Mother and Dad are going to stay with us all winter.

I put another star in our service flag yesterday. Denny [her brother] is in training at Fairmount military school. He’s had a time trying to get into service somewhere.

As ever—Belle

On October 5 and 7, The Kansan, the Newton daily published the following accounts of Grover’s train wreck:

Newton, Harvey County, Kansas, Saturday, October 5, 1918

FATAL WRECK OF SANTA FE TRAIN

Engineer B. McCandless and Fireman Grover Bougher

Were Killed

Santa Fe passenger train No. 17, which left Newton this morning a few minutes late shortly before 5 o’clock, crashed into a heavy freight engine, No. 1622, at Hackney, a few miles north of Arkansas City, at 8:00 this morning, resulting in the death of Engineer B. McCandless and Fireman Grover A. Bougher of Newton and Fireman C. E. Randolph of Arkansas City. It was stated in early reports that Engineer L. A. Dugan of the freight engine, of Arkansas City, and a few passengers, were badly injured.

As soon as word of the wreck reached division headquarters here, Supt. H. B. Lautz had a special relief and wrecking train made up and it was speeded to the scene, and some accurate information regarding the cause of the wreck and other details were expected early this afternoon.

Monday, October 7, 1918

Left Switch Open and Caused Wreck

It is evident from information gained following investigations into the cause of the wreck of No. 17 at Hackney Saturday morning, that a brakeman of the freight crew failed to close a switch, which turned the passenger train in on a cut-over switch in such a manner as to side-swipe the big freight engine.

The story is to the effect that the freight had a car from which the draw bar had been pulled. The crew had set this car on the house track, which is across the main line from the passing switch. The big 1622 freight engine had finished the work and returned to the passing track, by way of the cut-over switch, which crossed the main line. The brakeman failed to close the switch behind the freight engine, and when the 1451, pulling the No. 17, came along, she shot across the cut-over switch and struck the freight engine just about the cab. It was stated that Fireman C. E. Randolph of Arkansas City, on the 1622, was just climbing into his cab when he was hit, and only fragments of his body have been found. Engineer McCandless and Fireman Bougher of Newton, on the passenger engine, were instantly killed, the former having been thrown several feet. It is a mystery how Engineer Dugan of the freight train escaped, as he was in the cab.

It was stated that the brakeman who left the switch open, was standing directly by the switch, and the instant he saw what happened, completely lost his mind, and it was necessary to restrain him and remove him to a hospital. So far as has been learned, no passengers were badly injured, though practically, the entire train was badly jarred and jolted.

The life insurance money provided to my mother by the Santa Fe Railroad, augmented by a retail job selling shoes, guaranteed a decent but modest existence to a twenty-two-year-old widow with two girls, three-year-old Aileen and four and half-year-old Billye. My mother, encouraged by her mother, had married at age sixteen. After she had been dating Grover for a short time, her mother had asked, “Why don’t you marry Grover?” A woman’s task was to find a husband, and earlier was better than later.

As in all earlier generations, aid to dependent children still came from family and friends. In this case, assistance came from my mother’s parents, and she moved into their Wichita home at 201 West Eleventh Street.

My maternal grandfather and his twin brother had been orphaned at about age five. At the time, they were living on a farm in a Quaker community near Paoli, Indiana, where they were born. Their uncle John Stout had a nearby farm and was happy to raise them. Boys were especially adoptable because farm labor was always in demand. Asahel and his fraternal twin, Ezra, were among the youngest of nine children, a family that included another set of fraternal twins. Their mother was pregnant an eighth time, but no child survived. My mother always said that it was another set of twins, but this may be a family myth, as the genealogical record does not verify it. But, two sets of twins among ten children: No wonder the twin boys were orphaned so young! Asahel and Ezra’s mother, who had married at twenty, died at age thirty-six of “consumption,” as tuberculosis was called then; their father died of the same cause four years later. In the end, consumption accounted for the deaths of all but four of their father’s family of ten surviving siblings.

In 1893, when the twins were nineteen, Ezra left for Kansas. Asahel married Ella Moore in 1895, and followed Ezra to Kansas in 1896, soon after my mother was born. Initially, the twins both worked for the Santa Fe Railroad. Asahel worked in the SF Shops in Chanute for $39.05 per month, according to a short history written by my Grandma Lomax when she was eighty-eight. He resigned from the Santa Fe in 1903 and went to Wichita to work for the Missouri Pacific in the roundhouse (an engine repair shop containing a circular turntable that could turn an engine 180 degrees to travel in the other direction). He was promoted to fireman after three months and to engineer just six months later. According to Grandma’s narrative, his meteoric rise occurred because he was “one of the MOP’s crack Engineers.” He served as an engineer until his retirement on August 19, 1937. Throughout the period preceding the Great Depression, engineers had been much in demand because of expansion in the rail business.

My grandfather was once stopped by a police officer for driving through a yellow traffic light. The officer asked, “Sir, do you know what a yellow traffic light means?” Grandpa replied, “Yes, officer. I’ve been an engineer on the MOP for twenty-five years; it means proceed with caution, and that is what I was doing.”

Ezra was an engineer on the Santa Fe (as was the twins’ older brother William). Both he and my grandfather...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Before “My”
• Part I. Beginings and Launching
• Part II. The Purdue Years
• Back Matter