George Woodman Hilton (January 18, 1925 – August 4, 2014) was a
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
historian and economist, who specialized in
social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...
,
transportation economics
Transport economics is a branch of economics founded in 1959 by American economist John R. Meyer that deals with the allocation of resources within the transport sector. It has strong links to civil engineering. Transport economics differs from ...
,
regulation
Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. For ...
by
commission, the history of
economic thought
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...
and
labor history
Labor history or labour history is a sub-discipline of social history which specialises on the history of the working classes and the labor movement. Labor historians may concern themselves with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and other fac ...
.
Early life and education
Born in Chicago,
Hilton attended
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
and earned his
BA in Economics ''summa cum laude'' in 1946. He obtained his
MA in 1950. Hilton attended the
London School of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £240.8 million (2021)
, budget = £391.1 millio ...
in 1953–1955, and obtained his
PhD from the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
in 1956.
Career
He then taught for many years at the
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
, and was later a
Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
of Economics at UCLA. He served as the Acting Curator of Rail Transportation at the Smithsonian Institution from July 1968 through June 1969. He died of heart disease in 2014, aged 89.
Publications
Books
* Hilton, G. W. (1954) Cable railways of Chicago, Electric Railway Historical Society.
* Hilton, G. W. (1960) ''The
truck system
Truck wages are wages paid not in conventional money but instead in the form of payment in kind (i.e. commodities, including goods and/or services); credit with retailers; or a money substitute, such as scrip, chits, vouchers or tokens. Truck ...
including a history of the British truck acts 1465–1960''
*
*
* Hilton, G. W. (1963) ''The Ma and Pa: A History of the
Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad
The Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad , familiarly known as the "Ma and Pa", was an American short-line railroad between York and Hanover, Pennsylvania, formerly operating passenger and freight trains on its original line between York and Baltim ...
.'' Howell-North Books (Second edition, 1980; revised, 1999, The Johns Hopkins University Press)
* Hilton, G. W. (1964) The Staten Island Ferry, Howell-North Books, First edition.
* Hilton, G. W. (1968) The Night Boat, Howell-North Books, First edition.
* Hilton, G. W. (1969) The Transportation Act of 1958: A decade of experience, Indiana University Press, First edition.
* Hilton, G. W. (1971) ''The
Cable Car Cable car most commonly refers to the following cable transportation systems:
* Aerial lift, such as aerial tramways and gondola lifts, in which the vehicle is suspended in the air from a cable
** Aerial tramway
** Chairlift
** Gondola lift
*** Bi ...
in America'' (Revised edition, 1982)
* Hilton, G. W. (1974) Federal Transit Subsidies: The Urban Mass Transportation Assistance Program. (AEI
* Hilton, G. W. (1975) The Northeast railroad problem (AEI)
Pdf.* Hilton, G. W.; Jobe, Joseph and Plummer, Russell (1976) ''The illustrated history of
Paddle Steamer, paddle steamers'' Two Continents Publishing Group.
* Hilton, G. W. (1976
"What did we give wp with the big red cars?" (article)*
* Hilton, G. W. (1987) Monon Route, Howell-North.
*
* Hilton, G. W. (1995) ''The annotated baseball stories of
Ring W. Lardner, 1914–1919'' Stanford University Press, First edition.
* Hilton, G. W. (1995) ''
Eastland: legacy of the Titanic'' Stanford University Press.
*
* Hilton, G. W. (1997) Nellie Farren, Sir Arthur Sullivan Society.
*
[Reviews: ]
* Hilton, G. W. (2002) Lake Michigan passenger steamers, Stanford University Press.
* Hilton, G. W. (2002) editor, The Front Page: From Theater to Reality, Hanover: Smith and Kraus, Inc.
Selected chapters and journal articles
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Articles and comments
Published in ''Trains Magazine'', 1945–1993:
* Pere Marquette, August 1945 issue, pages 7–21
* Tennessee Central, January 1946 issue, pages 8–15
* Meets All Trains, August 1946 issue, pages 48–49
* Carquinez Train Ferries, August 1946 issue, pages 36–39
* Where 19th Century Carferries Float On, March 1965 issue, pages 24–27
* What Does Manx Mean?, September 1966 issue, pages 24–27
* What Went Wrong and What to Do About It, January 1967 issue, pages 36–45
* Muckraking in a Day Coach, June 1968 issue, pages 48–50
* The Promise of Promontory, May 1969 issue, pages 20–28
* What Was Grand About Grand Central, September 1969 issue, pages 20–28
* Ralph in the Roundhouse, November 1970 issue, pages 44–47
* Please, No Hero for the North Western, January 1971 issue, pages 27–28
* Integration in the North, July 1971 issue, pages 36–43
* The View of the Viaduct from in Front of the Diner, May 1972 issue, pages 20–25
* What Does the ICC Cost You and Me?, October 1972 issue, pages 24–28
* Turntable: Good News from the Lehigh Valley, August 1973 issue, page 58
* Department-Store Mural, March 1974 issue, page 43
* Why Pre-Electronic Railroading Survives, May 1974 issue, pages 20–24
* Turntable: Railfanning as Education, November 1974 issue, page 66
* Great Lakes Car Ferries: An Endangered Species, January 1975 issue, pages 42–51
* Turntable: The View from Middle Age, November 1975 issue, page 82
* Slack, February 1976 issue, pages 22–28
* What Does the ICC Cost You and Me? Currently, That Is, June 1978 issue, pages 28–32
* The One Best Place to Watch Trains, December 1980 issue, pages 28–38
* Turntable: Infran-canin-ophilia, March 1983 issue, page 66
* Turntable: Railfanning without Railroads, September 1984 issue, page 70
* Turntable: Is Railroading Worth a Lifetime?, February 1985 issue, page 70
* Turntable: In Praise of the Unbuilt, February 1986 issue, page 70
* Turntable: What Should Be Preserved from the ICC, November 1987 issue, page 90
* Perspectives: The Trains Were in Transition, and It Was a Fascinating Railroad Business, November 1990 issue, pages 82–83
* ABCs of Railroading: A History of Track Gauge, September 1992 issue, pages 23–24
* Regrets from Early Youth, July 1993 issue, page 76
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hilton, George
University of California, Los Angeles faculty
1925 births
2014 deaths
20th-century American economists
21st-century American economists
Alumni of the London School of Economics
Dartmouth College alumni
Historians of economic thought
Labor historians
Rail transport writers
University of Chicago alumni
Historians from California