Emery Castle Oral History Interview, February 12, 2010

JH: Today is Feb 12, Friday. We are in the home of Dr. Emery Castle and his wife Betty in Corvallis, Oregon. My name is Jane Harrison. We also have Xiaoou Han and Jill Smedstad. We will be all interviewing Dr. Castle today. It is good to have you here. Thank you for letting us be here with you. Xiaoou is going to start us out talking about your early years and family life.

XH: Could you please tell us when and where you were born?

EC: I was born in Kansas, very center of the United States, in Green Wood County Kansas. This was in 1923. At that time I had two older brothers and my parents 00:01:00were working in the oil fields, just east to Wichita, Kansas. So that is where I was born.

XH: Can you tell us a little bit about the town where you were born?

EC: It was not really a town. It was an oil field area. They lived in this area and had a small house there. They had migrate there from eastern Colorado where they had home started. They have not done well so they moved from eastern Colorado to the east Wichita, Kansas, in Greenwood County Kansas. If you need a town, there is a town called Rosalia, but they didn't actually live in Rosalia. 00:02:00They lived closest to Rosalia, Kansas. They understood there was work to be had and my father worked as a roustabout in the oil fields.

JH: What kind of position is that? What did you call that position?

EC: Roustabout-that is he did everything.

XH: So you just talked about your parents. Were they busy when you were young? Did they spend lots of time with you?

EC: Well, we lived there until I was three-year of age and I have no recollections of the conditions. I do remember the move; the move itself was too 00:03:00south central Kansas from that location. They rented a small farm. And I remember something about that move, but I don't remember about being...Ah my mother... I am told that that worker came to her and asked her if she would open a boarding house and prepared food. So she did. But...and...as I say so they lived there for three years and then rented a farm and moved to the farm. But I have no recollection of that period in the oil fields.

XH: You said you moved to another place when you were three years old. Did you 00:04:00move a lot like this?

EC: No. No. I would not say so. We lived on this farm until I was seven years of age. So we lived there for four years. But we didn't move a lot, not a lot.

XH: Can you tell us a little bit about that move? How did you feel?

EC: I had no negative feelings about any of the moves that my parents made because I thought it was the best for the family and I didn't have any negative reactions to any of the moves that they made.

XH: What was people's life like at that time? Is it significant different from 00:05:00what it is like now?

EC: I think so. I think so. In many ways, it was different. Family relations, I am sure, they have...what they have were somewhat the same. But when you lived on a small farm, everybody was engaged in a common enterprise. You didn't have a life independent of the family enterprise. We all worked on the farm and we all contributed to a common objective. The idea of having an independent soccer team which my step grand children have, that would have been completely foreign to 00:06:00anything that we did. Later when I got into high school, when I was a senior in high school, my father thought I should be permitted to play varsity basketball. So that was independent from family activity. But until then, until it, the family was pretty much a unit.

XH: How about the technology?

EC: The technology? Very different! Very different! We had automobiles. But automobiles...they were just coming in at that time. That was the major new 00:07:00technology was the motorized automobiles. And I also saw tractors coming in to the farm. Before that, most of the power was provided by horses and animals. But during my childhood, power came to farms and became much more common and widespread.

XH: How has technology affected your life such as telephone or computer?

EC: Ok. Telephones and computers affected my life. Well, you know, with respect to telephones. We had telephones when I lived on the farm but they were what 00:08:00they called party line telephones. That meant that there were a few farmers that they were on the same telephone line. Our ring was two long seven short and I remember that [unintelligible].

XH: So you didn't answer it if it was not your ring?

EC: Well, you weren't supposed to but it was common practice to eavesdrop.

XH: How about computers?

EC: Computers, I have witnessed the advent of computers when I first started working... graduate ...well not in graduate, we had hand calculators. Then they 00:09:00became much more recognized and gradually changed to the present computer systems. That is developed all the way during my lifetime. When I first started doing research, we did all of our calculations by hand. Now you push them into a machine and push a button and you get the answers. That was laborious several-day undertaking to do that sort of thing at that time.

XH: In your biographical sketch from the website, I saw that your early formal education was in one-room school. What was that like?

EC: I went to eight grades in a one-room country school. There were, often maybe 10, 12... I am not sure if we ever have had as many as 15 students. They were all in different grades. Not every grade would be representative. There might be a gap; there might not be anybody in the third grade for example. When I was about in fifth or sixth grade, I began to get into trouble when I was doing things I shouldn't do. My teacher talked to my parents. My father, who I adored, I mean I just thought everything about him, he punished me. He said I would be 00:11:00punished again if that teacher doesn't start giving me better report than what I have been getting. So when I went back to school, after that, she then put me in seventh grade history and geography. I moved up. And I wrote my first report. I wrote a report on Canada. That was my first piece of research. I read everything in the library on Canada. I wrote a report. And I think there was something of a turning point for me. She then let me begin to help first, second grade arithmetic. And I would help the younger children do this and that.

I don't have negative feelings about my one-room country school. Of course, there were things we didn't have and there were lots of thing could have been done that we didn't do, simply because that poor teaching was teaching people all the way from first grade to eighth grade. Nevertheless, we did learn quite a bit. Now an interesting thing has happened in much of the United States. I don't say all the United States, but certainly in our part of the country. When I was sent to eighth grade in order to go to high school, I had to go to the county and take an examination and I remember that examination till this day. It was 00:13:00printed out on about the fourth of the page like that, very fine print. There was a arithmetic problem, there was a question on government, there was a question about history. Then we had to write a paragraph about some subject that I was assigned. And you had to pass that in order to get into high school. They didn't require that of the city kids-just rural one-room school. They thought that was inferior. I don't know if that is inferior. It has been some recent research, not dealing with that specifically, but not surprising to you I am sure that children learn from other children. Now if you have a large room, all 00:14:00the same age. There will be some probability, say; there will be some children in that room that will be your peers. They will be ahead of you in some aspects so you learn from them. But if you are in a one-room country school, you have a small class-maybe you are the only one in your class. So you can't learn from your peers. But what you can learn from are the older children in the school. And you may have experiences with the one-room country school that you wouldn't have if you were all in the same grade. Recent research, it is very interesting, right?

JH: Yeah, and I am also thinking that how you can be a mentor to those that are younger than you too, taking on responsibility and leadership. That's very cool.

EC: Yeah.

XH: Just curious, were there more girls or more boys in the class?

EC: There are both.

XH: Almost even?

EC: Yes, I think so. I think so. Girls are strange creatures to me because I had no sisters.

XH: Do you have brothers?

EC: I have three brothers but I had no sisters. So women are strange.

XH: So you have three brothers. Are you the youngest or ...?

EC: Two brothers older, one was six years my senior and one seven. My younger brother was six years younger than I. So I was something.....I was sort of by myself...in that way.

XH: When you were a kid, did you spend a lot of time with your brothers? Did you 00:16:00hang out with each other?

EC: Well...hmm...I spent quite a lot of time with my younger brother but not with my older brothers. They were older. They were interested in different things than I was interested in.

XH: So there was a gap?

EC: There was a gap definitely, definitely. I was something of a loner. I was doing....I read a lot...everything I can get my hands on. There was not very much to read. What I was...hmm. I would go off by my self and read.

XH: Were you a good student?

EC: Well, yea, I think... I think I was pretty good. In the sense that... We didn't have a large number of students in class or in school. I was interested in things that were written. I really enjoyed history, government and subjects like that. So I think I was pretty good in that regard. I was not...I was not very much interested in science. Didn't have very much exposure to science. Our 00:18:00teachers were typically young women who graduated from high school. Then they would go to what they called "normal school" to prepare to be teachers. The ones I had were very conscientious and I think quite competent in many respect but there was a limit to what they can do in terms of their background and in terms of the facility available to them. So ... But I would say the teaching of mathematics and science was probably not what it should have been.

XH: How would your teacher define a good student?

EC: I suppose those examinations probably told them a good bit about that. But I 00:19:00believe there was a quite different attitude toward the measurement of "who was a good student and who wasn't" existed at the present time. Now we have all sorts of sophisticated tests that we give. It was nothing very much like that-reading, writing and arithmetic. And I think that was probably the major of what constituted a good student-if you could read and understand, if you could write a paragraph. And then I think there was quite a lot of admiration that was 00:20:00extended to the person that was good at arithmetic. Many of those problems were rigorous. They were difficult. We didn't have algebra until we went to high school. So we didn't have the algebraic tool to solve those problems. We had to do it on the basis of arithmetic and those were very difficult kinds of problems they would dream up and give to you. On one hand, it wasn't highly sophisticated. On the other hand it wasn't easy stuff either in the sense of they were always something more you could acquire. Now I think that when I began to get into mischief and trouble, I think I probably was beyond my grade and 00:21:00probably what I was being given at the fifth grade was not what I should have been getting. But on the other hand, I don't feel I was cheated with my one-room country school.

XH: Do you have a favorite teacher?

EC: Oh, sure. I had lots of favorite teachers. I admire teachers. I admire anyone who...I sensed early on the people that I knew that had been to the college, something about them made them different. And I admired those people and I wanted to be like them. And I had lots of favorite teachers. There were 00:22:00very few teachers I had that I disliked. I didn't feel that happened in high school. In one-room country school I didn't have any teachers that I didn't like very much.

XH: Can you tell us about the teachers that you liked?

EC: There was one teacher I liked very much. Obviously you don't know this so I am going to tell you. I married my high school teacher. She became my wife. So I would have to say she was my favorite. She wasn't Betty [Castle's current wife]. 00:23:00It wasn't Betty. She passed away some time ago and Betty and I married.

XH: Can you tell us how you met her [Castle's first wife]?

EC: How I met her? Well, she was teaching me. It was before World War II and she was my high school teacher. She left right after my senior year. She left that community. And I went to college and then I went to the army services. And when I was in the army services, I wrote to her and asked her if she would correspond with me. I was in combat at that time. And of course she agreed to do so. Then 00:24:00after World War II, I came back to the United States. I wanted to see her and that was when things got serious. But I have other teachers that were my favorite. There was an agriculture teacher. He was very eccentric kind of person. He was fired a couple of years later by the school. They just couldn't put up with him. But he was great for me. We became friends and we remained friends until his death a few years ago

XH: You just said there were teachers that you liked and you wanted to be like 00:25:00them. When you start thinking that you wanted to be a teacher or a professor?

EC: Oh, I never... It wasn't... I wondered about teaching I thought I would, I might like to teacher but I didn't aspire to do that as my life's work. But what I did aspired to be like them in the sense of perhaps it was the way they talked, perhaps it was their life style. It was a little different. I wanted to be like them. I acquaint that was college education more than teaching perceived. But I just sense there was something about going to college that made you a little different and I wanted to be that way. I really did want to be that 00:26:00way. But no one in my family and very few people in my community went to college. No one in my family had gone for four-year college.

XH: When you were a young adult, what expectation did you have about your life in general?

EC: Well.... I was uncertain what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be. I thought for a long time that I'd like to be a lawyer. The main reason for that is I enjoyed public speaking. I won the public speaking contest for my county 00:27:00when I was at eighth grade and I like public speaking.

XH: Did you do a debate? What kind of public speaking was it?

EC: What they did was they sent out different topics that you could speak about. We just went to the county seat and they gave each of us...I don't know....five minutes or something and we just paraded in front of judges if our speech [unintelligible]. I practiced on mine. I went to the local high school and there was a debate teacher there. He had a reputation of being very good. So I went to see him and asked him if he could listen to my speech. And I gave him my speech. He said "that's closest, that was close...that was very close to the worst 00:28:00speech I have ever heard in my life". Then he proceeded to take me apart and I didn't feel intimidated. He was very critical. He never smiled at once. But it was that lesson I got from him was the reason I won... I really listened. I can see after he has spoken ... I can see he was right. I really tried to accommodate that. But I did not have a clear objective of what I wanted to be and what I wanted to become. I didn't have that at all. I just knew that it was more to lives that I have experienced. And I did read quite a bit of history and 00:29:00I read everything I get my hands on about current politics. I didn't want to be a politician but I was very interested in politics.

XH: Can you tell us a little bit about Betty? How did you meet each other?

EC: Well, Betty... In 1986, my wife and I... My first wife and I moved back to 00:30:00Corvallis from the east coast. And the community which we moved was also the community that Betty and her husband were in. I didn't meet them at that point but he developed brain cancer and died within months actually after they moved into their house of the community. And my wife...the reason we came back from Washington D.C was because she had Alzheimer's and I didn't know that she had Alzheimer's. The diagnoses haven't been rendered at that time but she did. And she was 13 years of Alzheimer's before she passed away. I cared for her in our homes for seven of those 13 years. And then she fell... she got up one night and 00:31:00broke her arm so home care was out of the question. And she moved to the Mennonite home in Albany and I commuted over there to take care of her. During that period, Betty and I met. And her husband was gone. It turns out we were members of the same church. I didn't know that until we met. We have been married for ten years now.

XH: How many kids do you have?

EC: I have one child-a daughter-and she has no children. Betty has three 00:32:00children, five grand children and three great grand children. So I am surrounded by her children. She has five siblings and I like them all. I think they are all great people. I am blessed. It is different being a stepfather than being a father, or a step grandfather. It is different.

XH: How different?

EC: Well, it is different. First of all, her children were adults and my child was an adult when we were married. And the grandchildren, they came on. See I've tried to be very careful, not to try to replace somebody. I am an 00:33:00"in-addition-to" rather than "in-stead-of". And I tried to... tried very hard. And I think that as helped a lot. Because then I can develop a relationship that's unique and different and it is not the same as being a part of the family-biological part. Now that would not have been true if... you know... they had been quite small when we were married. That would have been different. I think that's helped a great deal. They can accept me differently. Did that answer your question?

XH: Yes. And where is your daughter now?

EC: She is in Portland and she is a certified public accountant. She is in real estate. We still have a great relationship. She lost her husband two years ago and she was remarried last Saturday. She is 61 years of age and she still calls me "daddy". We have a...I think we have a very good relationship as it always has been. I think she would tell you this.

XH: During the past years, what national or world events and changes stand out 00:35:00as being especially important?

EC: Well, there are two things and you have them both right here. She [Betty] is a Depression girl and she was born in 1926 in South Dakota and I was born in 1923 in Kansas. We both suffered during the Depression and drought years in the Great Plains. And that was a major impact on my life. We really experienced very, very difficult times. We experienced poverty and I have never known anyone 00:36:00who hasn't said it was a major impact in their life and it certain was my case. But World War II is also a major impact for people at our age. See we were just becoming adults at the time when World War II came along and I was in the army of course. Really it was three years that we were dominated by military service and these were the years I was 19 to 22 during that period. And the entire planet was changed by World War II. For those who have participated directly, it 00:37:00was a major impact. So those two events really impacted my life enormously, both of them.

JH: Just a follow-up question, how do you feel young people in those ages today differ maybe because they didn't experience that being in the service or having the hardships of the Depression?

EC: The main thing that I see, that I think is different and sad, really, really sad, is that the wars we had since then have then had been divisive. You've read 00:38:00about World War II you know what they say-we were all in this together. That was true. That was true, as true as it could be. I would get on a train if I had on my uniform people would try to help me-they'd ask if they could do this, if they could do this for me. And there were expressions of support, all kinds of expressions of support. Everyplace you went, every direction you turn. It began to change with Korean War because it was the first war we went into with limited objectives. And then it was Vietnam and then the Iraq War. It is becoming better 00:39:00but still it is different. There is no universal sacrifice of these wars that we have done. And there were certain people would go [unintelligible], but it not shared, it is not shared. And it is sad, it is sad. I can't imagine a bullet as to... how to change that but it is different and I feel fortunate that I was able to be in World War II other than these other wars.

JS: I just want to reiterate if you want to take a break, or any of us. We 00:40:00planned for about a half hour each to talk with you. Um, and, I think before, you know I was going to discuss with you your professional life. But I think we kind of skipped the questions about your college life. Um, so maybe start, if you could start there. I know you said you; um, we've all read the Transgressions of an Intelle- I can't remember the title, the paper you had with the Rural Studies Institute. So some of these questions feed off of that. And I saw in there that you took a correspondence course briefly before you went to World War two. And then went to school full time after that. Could you just tell us some more general stuff about what inspired you to do economics?

EC: Well, I think I was drawn to economics because of the droughts and Depression years. My family just struggled. My parents were hardworking and 00:41:00intelligent people, not very much education. My father only had three years of formal schooling, and my mother eight. But they were very intelligent hard working people. And uh, that had a, had a great, great impact on me. Um, but uh, I, I think I missed the main thrust of your question here.

JS: Well just, uh, wanted to know why you went into economics.

EC: Ok. Because I saw the way that they suffered, the family suffered. I didn't think that was quite right and I wanted to understand what was going on here. Why did we have unemployment for so many years at such high levels. Why was it 00:42:00that when world war two came that all of a sudden it took off and seemed to have great prosperity. So I wanted to understand that. And, um, when I, the year I graduated from high school I didn't have money enough to go off to college. And the local merchant came to me and wanted me to run his local store. And so I did that. He went up to Wichita and opened another store up there, left me in charge down there. And I had some time during the day when, um, I didn't have anything to do. Uh, uh, the busy times would come in the morning, the noon hour, the evenings, and on Saturdays. Um, and so but during the day I would have some time. I got the idea that I should take some correspondence courses. One of 00:43:00those was of course economics. And I learned absolutely nothing. I passed. But I didn't learn anything. I was frustrated.

JS: So when you returned from world war two, you said you went to school on the GI Bill, were able to fund it. Could you tell us more about just what it was like to be in college at that time. And it was Kansas State, right?

EC: Yes, right. I had gone one semester at Kansas State before World War two. I'd got one semester. And I came back and um, I went to the University of Kansas and talked to them over there. They didn't seem to be interested in taking on one more GI. But the people at Kansas State wanted me to come back there. And so I did go back there. And um, um, again I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with 00:44:00myself. But I wanted a college education. Um, I started in January and that summer, I took a course from a professor Ed Bagley, whose picture is on the wall in my study. It was a course in applied economics. It was really economic policy, economic public policy. And I got so excited I couldn't sleep at night. He was so, he was so good. He was rigorous, he was um, uh, exciting, he was always well prepared. Um, and you couldn't stump him with a question. And I took the final exam in that course, and, you know I was not an outstanding student. I 00:45:00was a good student, but I wasn't outstanding. And I took the final exam in that course, and he saw me in the hallway some few days after I had taken the exam. I thought I had done pretty well at the time, I wasn't worried about it. And he asked if I'd come in to see him. And uh, so I went in to his office. He said, 'where did you take principles of economics?' And I said 'well, I self taught the course by correspondence.' 'Well that explains it,' he said. 'I have given that examination for years.' And he said 'you got the second highest grade that's ever been given. There was a young woman here a few years ago who got the 00:46:00highest grade. She missed one question, you missed two. And yours were the easiest questions on the test.' And then he showed me and explained to me that it was just what I had failed to learn with that first course. But I was an economist from that point on.

[Laughter]

JS: Sounds very influential in your life.

EC: He was, he was.

JS: Um, and so, you did your undergraduate degree, and then you worked a little bit, and then went back. Is that correct? To get an advanced degree?

EC: No, um, this was after World War Two, and Universities, colleges, Universities were just crowded. All those returning G.I.'s. And, so they gave me 00:47:00an assistantship. I finished in two years. I had one term before World War two. Then I came back and worked non-stop for two years. I went during the summer. And when I couldn't get courses to take, I took reading and conference and I finished in two years. So then they gave me an assistantship if I wanted to stay on and work for a masters. And I thought I was going to be a research assistant, with some of the research going on. One day I was standing in the hall and the department head walked by, and said, 'oh by the way, I'm really, uh, we have you signed up to teach a recitation section, the principles of economics.' So there I found myself teaching. They were all engineers in my class. And I told them on 00:48:00the first day, that I had never taught. There would be a lot of things I wouldn't know. But if they asked a question I didn't know the answer to, I'd tell 'em, and I'd get them the answer and bring it back another time. And from that point on they just worked with me. I mean they really were supportive. And I, and I thought 'gee whizz, maybe I could do this for a living.' I liked it, I liked it. I think I was a good teacher, but I don't think I was an exceptional teacher. I never thought of myself as an exceptional teacher.

JS: So, um, so you liked teaching. Was it teaching, or research, or both that inspired you to continue on a Ph.D. and want to continue on in academia?

EC: Well, you know I like to teach, and I like to be around young people; people who are your age. I've always really developed a great feeling when I'm doing this. Um, and, and then the word came down that if. I decided that if I was going to stay on there and continue to teach, I'd better get a masters' degree. And then the word came down that if at Kansas State if you expected to advance, you'd better get a Ph.D. So I talked with my wife. So we decided to go to Iowa State to get a Ph.D. But it wasn't research. It wasn't until later when I went to Iowa State and had to write a dissertation, a real dissertation, that I began 00:50:00to understand what research was about. I knew it was very hard to do the research. But I thought, I thought that if my main objective was to teach, that I needed to do some research along with it. That was ok, I probably could get by. But I wasn't really interested in research at that time.

JS: Um, so I guess moving on into your career once you finished your Ph.D. We know you joined Oregon State College at the time, um in 1952 as an Assistant Professor-

EC: Fifty-four.

JS: Fifty-four? Ok.

EC: There's an error.

JS: [Laughs] Ok, 1954. Can you tell us about your first impressions of Oregon 00:51:00and Oregon State University, um, when you joined faculty here?

EC: Sure. Yeah. I had been two years at the federal reserve bank of Kansas City. I left Kansas State, I got the Ph.D. and was on the staff there at Kansas State and had the chance to go to the federal reserve bank of Kansas City as an ag economist. I had been there two years, and, while I was there I began to see some things much more clearly than I ever had. And I thought, I began to see opportunities in a land grant opportunity to do useful work. And I thought I could do useful research. And uh, so, I learned about this position here at Oregon State. And, um came here. And was given major responsibilities from the 00:52:00outset. But my teaching, my teaching was in farm management. And much of it was in farm management and introductory economics. Those were the first few courses I taught. And uh, the students were no more like that group of engineers in the first place. Those engineers were serious, they were world war two veterans. They wanted to get on with their lives. I came here I was teaching freshmen, sophomores. They didn't seem to care, care at all.

This was a terrible disillusionment. Uh, uh. But I had decided that it was 00:53:00graduate students I wanted to work with. That changed in a few years, but right then that first experience teaching, um, farm management and introductory ag economics was nothing very inspiring about that. Although I did meet a person there that was in one of my classes. Uh, who became a lifelong friend. And uh, he was uh, he was uh; can't think of his name. [Bobb McKittrick] I'm almost there. He was, I discovered early on that he was on the football team. I could hardly believe it. He was a little guy. And he was interested in ideas. And then 00:54:00to discover he was on the varsity football team was kind of hard to. But anyway, he became um, student body president. And when he graduated he was a football coach [unintelligible] put him on as an assistant. And, um, to make this short. They left and went elsewhere, he went into professional football as a coach. And um, years later when I was dean of the graduate school he came back and wanted to get his masters degree. Tom [unintelligible], had been fired, was the football coach, and he thought he'd get a masters degree. So I fixed it so he could get into graduate school. He was working towards his masters. One day I 00:55:00saw him standing in my doorway. And he said 'did you hear Tom was going to come out of retirement to become head football coach again?' I said 'goodbye.'

Well, he became, he became the offensive coordinator eventually of the San Francisco 49ers when they had those good teams. And I could see him on the sidelines when I'd turn the TV on. He was a little guy, baldheaded. And um, he was surrounded by these giants. But he got to the top of his profession. Anyway, he was a freshman that first year that I came back. So yes, I enjoyed that, enjoyed students. But that first batch of students, that was a disillusionment. 00:56:00I'm sorry to make that long winded.

JS: Oh no, that was interesting. Definitely. Um, was, what was there any differences that you noticed in the faculty or just sort of the feeling of working in that department versus in Kansas or Iowa?

EC: Yes, there was a big difference. There was a big difference. I felt at home at Oregon State from the day I came. I just felt right at home. I was given major responsibilities. The faculty were from all over, from all different universities. They were, they were, some of them were very good. Not all of them were, but, professionally, but some of them were very good. But the attitude was, um, if you do the job here, um, you'll be rewarded and um, uh, and they 00:57:00were very easy to work with. Uh, as easy to work with different disciplines. You didn't just have to stay within your own discipline. I thrived at Oregon State. It was not the most prestigious university. But um, I'm not the least bit sorry that I made my career here. Not the least bit.

JS: Great. So, I think from your paper you mentioned that one of your other responsibilities was developing this Western Water Resources Research Committee.

EC: Right.

JS: And you mention it was one of the most stimulating intellectual, 00:58:00intellectually stimulating experiences you've encountered. Can you tell us a bit more about that, and why you think it was so stimulating?

EC: Yes, well, first of all there were two people that were absolutely peers in their field. They were way ahead of the rest of us at that point. So they sort of set, but. That committee brought in people from, it didn't make a difference what the discipline was. If they had something interesting to say about water resources, they'd bring em in. And so I had exposure to lawyers and political scientists, engineers, people from all different fields to do with water. And um, they didn't get hung up with a lot of, they made use of theory, and they 00:59:00made use of intellectual constructs. But they didn't let that dominate their thinking. So those were great events. We met twice a year and I always looked forward to meeting with them.

JS: Was that one of your first experiences doing multi-disciplinary work?

EC: Yes, yes I would say so. I did my undergraduate work partly in agronomy and partly in economics. But um, and I also as an undergraduate took some courses in liberal arts that I liked very much. But yes, I would say so.

JS: Do you know, um, I'm in the department of geosciences here. And we have the water resources graduate program. Is this, do you know is this linked to that 01:00:00history at all?

EC: I was one of the people that helped create the water resources program of Oregon State. It was the direct result of this committee.

JS: Oh great.

EC: There were four of us at Oregon State. There was Burgess in engineering, um, Chuck Warren in Fisheries and Wildlife, Jim Kraiger [?] in Forestry, and myself, the four of us, were the founders of the water program at Oregon State.

JS: Oh great. Well thank you, for designing that. Um, great. Well, and then it was 1965, correct, that you began as dean of faculty at OSU? And the next year you moved back to the department of Ag. econ. as department. What inspired you 01:01:00to seek out administrative positions?

EC: Well, uh, that, that was an interesting period in my life. So you came here, so you got to listen.

JS: [laughs]

EC: Um, I had um, '65. I came in '54, by '65 I had been working for eleven years. By that time I had some seniority on campus. I was elected president of the faculty senate. And um, the faculty, the senior faculty position in the faculty senate. I think it had a different title then. Anyway it was an elected position by the faculty. And in that role I got to know the president of the 01:02:00university quite well. He was the president of the senate at that time. I was the vice, vice president. But I was the faculty representative. So he and I became acquainted. I didn't feel I knew him well. But we got on.

JS: And what was his name?

EC: Jim Jensen. Um, I had uh, I'd been full professor for several years. And I thought the time had come when maybe I had, I was getting my major kicks from working with young faculty, young graduate students. And I thought maybe the time had come for me to be maybe like the department head. And um, Washington 01:03:00State University had a chairmanship open up, the chair of ag economics open up. And they contacted me. And I was interested. And they were interested. It looked like a good fit. Um, the evening that my wife, my daughter and I were going to go there for an interview, we were going to leave the next morning and drive up to Pullman. The telephone rang, and it was Jim Jensen, and he wanted me to come to his house. I went up to his house and he told me, that the dean of the faculty was leaving, um, and that um, he wanted me to be dean of faculty. This 01:04:00was the evening that we were going to go up there. Um, well I was just flabbergasted. I mean I was wiped out. I had never thought about moving to a position like that. So I just told him that I was going to still go up there for that interview. He knew all about the interview; I had not told him but he knew all about it. That is why he called me before I went up there. He didn't object. He thought that was fine.

Um, so I went up there. We were interviewed, were offered the job. And so here I was. With this opportunity to, this, this position has now become the provost. 01:05:00It was dean of the faculty then, but it was the principle academic office on campus. And, uh, I really didn't want to leave economics. I mean I, I still thought of myself as an economist. I was just concerned about going into academic administration. On the other hand, my daughter was to be a senior in high school. Um, we liked Corvallis, and I didn't want to go to Pullman, relative to Corvallis. And uh, so I uh, I agreed to become dean of the faculty. And then, for the only time of my life, for two-three weeks, I suffered 01:06:00depression. Disappointment and depression. And then I became very busy as dean of the faculty and got over the depression. And I think I did a pretty fair job as dean of the faculty.

But then a year later, uh, the department headship here in ag economics opened up. And I went to Jensen and asked for permission to apply for the job. And uh, he said 'I hope you don't get it.' But I did, and uh, I made it terribly awkward for him, by going back to the department. Um, and if I, if I had been more 01:07:00mature I might not have done that. But there were things I wanted to do in economics that I had not done. So I. Well, that's the story.

JS: Yeah, thank you.

EC: That was a difficult period of my life. Very difficult period. Uh, and I didn't dislike being dean of the faculty. It wasn't just that. But it was taking me away from something I was not fulfilled with yet.

JS: It seems like you definitely went on to contribute a lot to the field after that. So. We're glad that you went back.

JH: In general when people become dean of faculty or provost, do people generally end their research?

EC: Yeah. Um, that's a good question. You know one of the saddest things that I 01:08:00have seen in academic life was I interviewed at the University of Illinois for a position there. And, and I talked to the provost there. This was a person who was a distinguished chemist. And uh, he told me 'there is nothing, I get no intellectual stimulation from anything that I do.' I thought that was one of the saddest things I could imagine. I have always gotten intellectual stimulation from administration. Administrative problem's a problem for a reason. And to figure out what causes that and what to do about it, and so on, I don't find that, uh, routine. I don't find that boring, I find that stimulating to figure 01:09:00those things out. But he did not. Uh, so, it's. Now, most people in those kinds of administrative positions neglect their research, or they neglect their field. It's hard not to because there's always more work than you can get done. There's just more things to do than you could possibly do. But I have always, um, always have devoted some time to my field. And um, I, I think it's important that you do that. But I'm the exception. I'm the exception. If there's anything unique 01:10:00about my career, it is the combination of administration and substantive work in my field. Most people don't, at some point they choose one or the other. I have never done that.

JS: Um, so can you uh, you mentioned that, you know the sixties was this time of unrest. An interesting period to be in administration. Maybe caused a little anxiety to be an administrator. But it was also, you mention, um, an exciting period. Can you just describe what that was like to be teaching and also and administrator in that period?

EC: Yes. Well I can. Um, I think we were breaking away from authoritarian ways 01:11:00of doing things. Um, the attitude, the basic attitude on the part of faculty was that we know best, we know what the students ought to have. We know. And, uh, they didn't want, they didn't want students to be involved in designing courses, or saying what ought to be taught or anything of that nature. Um, without realizing it, I had never thought of myself as being particularly neat in that regard. But I always tried to, to find out from students what it was they were interested in. And um, I never had any problem in involving students. And I found that exciting and interesting, to uh, to have students telling us what 01:12:00they thought. Now you couldn't let students run away with everything, but you could at least listen to them. And I found that exciting.

Um, then one of the things that I, this is a bit immodest of me to say this, but, when I became an administrator, I, I was fortunate that I had to hire about six or seven, maybe eight assistant professors the first two years I was department head. And I held a faculty retreat. And I made these new appointees chair the committees. We went off on this retreat, I made all my new hires chairing different committees and so on. Well out of that came a plan that has 01:13:00served the department very well for a number of years. The point was that a lot of stuff that you now read in strategic planning, were things that we did just as a matter of course. And I found that exciting. I hadn't realized how different it was at that time. But it seemed like a logical thing to do. To get everybody on board, to get everybody on the same page. All moving ahead toward some kind of common objective. That's kind of exciting to see that happen. And graduate students and young faculty are the way to do that.

JS: That's neat that you can tie that into strategic planning; that you were doing that before the term existed or was common. Um, what kind of projects were 01:14:00you involved in then during that period as dean of - head of the department?

EC: Well we started some things, did some pioneering research. Um, one of the people that had a great impact on my life was Chuck Warren in fish and wildlife. And he called my attention to uh, a conflict that was existing in the state of Oregon with respect to sport fishing of salmon steelhead versus commercial fishing. And he said that there needed to be some analytical study made of this. So we did a pioneering study on the economic evaluation of the salmon steelhead sport fishery. It was easy enough to evaluate the commercial fishery, but to put 01:15:00an economic value on the sport fishery, that was pretty hard to do because no markets existed. So what you did was to simulate a market. And we did that. And I think we did the first empirical, made the first estimate of an empirical demand curve for the sports fishery. The first one I think had ever been made. WE did that here. And then we got, uh, involved in economic value of water quality. Particularly at Yaquina Bay at Newport. Those were some of the things we worked on. Those were pioneering, kind of took off from that.

JS: And that's the, I'm not very familiar with economic terms, but that's the 01:16:00non-market valuation, part?

EC: Yeah, we did some of the pioneering work on non-market valuation.

JS: Um, and also I think, you know you mention that the department changed its name at that time, and included the resource economics. Seems to go in hand with some of these things that you guys were doing. Um, can you tell us about that change, and was it significant? What your role was?

EC: I can tell you about that change. It's not a, it's not the kind of story that you might want to hear. Um, we did pioneer the work, the field of resource economics. And, I think Oregon State is recognized as probably uh, the leading 01:17:00institution in resource economics. It started in ag economics. Others are in it now, but at that time we were the leaders. But I always felt that our department should be broader than agriculture and resource economics. I thought it should be a department of applied economics. And so I got, the faculty agreed, so we made a proposal to become the department of agricultural and applied economics. And it sailed through, I thought it was going to go. And the president, Robert MacVicar at that time, he, he went to the economics department and they objected.

And so by that time I was dean of the graduate school. The dean walked in my 01:18:00office and said 'It's going to be the department of ag. and resource economics.' I was disappointed. I was disappointed. Everybody thought, a lot of people in the profession to this day think that I have something to do with that. They didn't know how disappointed I was.

JS: So can you elaborate why the department of economics was against that? Or what the, kind of what the controversy was?

EC: Yeah, this is a great controversy across the country. Departments of economics, um, they say they do applied economics. And they do. To a certain extent. But so many departments have become so theoretical, so mathematical, that they don't really do very much applied economics. But, our department does. 01:19:00And uh, uh, it's been kind of a classic conflict over the years.

JH: Jill do you want to spend about five more minutes?

JS: Yeah.

EC: I'm talking too much.

JS: No! We have a lot of questions!

JH: Better than you not talking at all.

JS: This is the, you know, our objective to find out what it was like to find out what it was like at OSU. That's what we're doing.

Um, let's see here. Well, um, let's just go towards, um, you know, you spent some time at Resources for the Future, for ten years after leaving OSU. Um, how did that, once you did return to OSU, how did Resources for the Future, your experiences there, influence sort of the path you took?

EC: Well, um, do you know about Resources For the Future.

JH: Yeah, I do. I'm actually a Ph.D. student in forestry economics.

EC: Well, I, I really enjoyed my time with Resources for the Future and probably would have remained there longer. Except that my wife, I knew that she was ill. I didn't know what it was, but we needed to get where we were going to retire, and that was the reason that I returned to Oregon State. I just knew that she needed, needed help. And, you know, I had to travel a lot for Resources for the Future. And that's a large metropolitan area, and she was alone too much. I knew 01:21:00that we needed to ... so long story short we decided to come back to Corvallis. Um, but uh, um. They, it coincided with the need for a part-time person here to chair a graduate faculty of economics. And uh, so they wanted me to do that. Seemed like I was, I was always interested in bringing the economic people together at Oregon State. And uh, secondly it did fit with my needs very much. So that was why I came back.

Now your question pertained to how it was that I happened to get started in 01:22:00Rural Economics, at that point. When I was in Washington D.C. I'd go to, frequently would go to meetings, and uh, um, on economic development. There'd be people there from urban economics in metropolitan areas. And they had a body of theory, that they could talk about, urban economics. But the people that would come to talk about rural economics, um, had it all mixed up with agricultural economics. Um, and it just seemed to me that there was this large area there, out here, was, involved, ninety-five percent of the land in the United States, 01:23:00more than 20% of the people in the United states, most of whom were not agricultural by that time. And it just seemed to me that this was an area that was being neglected. There were a few people that were working in it around the country. But it wasn't systematic, coherent development. And I thought, well, I've lived through this with resource and environmental economics. Maybe I could do something for rural economics similar to that, so that's how I got started.

JS: Yeah. Um, what was, can you tell us- I'm also in the Rural Studies program, so it's great to have all these different ties. Find out about the history. So can you tell us more about just establishing the rural, rural studies committee, and the rural studies- I guess the progression and regression of that at OSU?

EC: What I did was, I was asked to go to a, uh, to a seminar at the Kellogg Foundation in the summer of 1986, the year I came back. And they brought a group of people together just to brainstorm about rural, rural America. And there was a woman there who participated in the group, uh, she, she had a lot of experience working at the rural level. And then at that point she was a council of state governments. And she talked about what was needed from academic community to help develop a framework, a conceptual base, for rural studies. And 01:25:00I put in a proposal as a result of that, that the Kellogg Foundation financed for nine years. That let us put together a national rural studies committee. Multi-disciplinary. And uh, we visited Hood River Oregon, Greenburg Mississippi, um, Council Grove Iowa, uh, Redding Pennsylvania, and Las Vegas New Mexico. Not Nevada. And we did field trips in all those different areas. We studied those. And that's how I developed a deep interest in rural studies. And I have been working on a theory ever since. And I think just recently I've finally had a bit 01:26:00of a breakthrough in that regard, that lets me tie things together in rural studies in a way in which um, I've never been able to do before.

JS: Cool. I want to find out more.

EC: Well, I can sure tell you.

JS: Maybe we'll let Jane ask in the, in more the intellectual life part. Can I actually just ask you real quick? So you became emeritus in 1993. How involved with OSU have you been since then, if at all?

EC: Well, very involved. Um, I headed up the rural studies committee for a couple of years, the Rural Studies Program for a couple of years before I turned it over to Bruce Weber. That was after '93, I'm not sure when it was, but that 01:27:00was after '93. So I've stayed fairly close. But then the last few years, um, I, I've stayed plugged in. Very much plugged in to the department, and what's going on there. You may know about the professorship that's been established in my name.

JS: Oh, I think so.

JH: Emery Castle reading room, I've been there.

EC: [unintelligible] Wu is-

JS: Oh yeah, he just began this year. Yeah, I've met him.

EC: Well that was created, so I worked to get that, that professorship going. But the last four or five, well about the time we moved into this house, which was six years ago. Shortly after that I began to pull away from going to the 01:28:00office every week. I don't do that now; I go up there every three or four weeks. But they're sending me to a meeting in August, to represent the University. So I'm still working.

JS: Yeah. Well thank you. I'll let Jane go from here.

JH: I'm very interested in your intellectual transgressions. I have my masters in Agricultural Economics and I came here to study agricultural economics for my phd, although actually I switched into forestry to be more interdisciplinary. Your ideas and thoughts on these following questions are very interesting to me. So first, how did your multidisciplinary experiences with lawmakers, engineers, 01:29:00sociologists, and other professionals influence you? Did you consider leaving economics for another career path?

EC: I've never really considered leaving economics, but I've always liked working with other disciplines. And I think a lot of people make a big mistake by saying I'm going to become a multidisciplinarian. I think that's very hard to do unless you're well-grounded in some discipline. But I have had a long series of appointments on state boards and commissions. Five governors have appointed me to state boards and commissions. Participating in those boards has really had 01:30:00a big impact on my thinking. First of all, I think an economist, if they're skillful, can have a big impact on groups like that, but you can't have an impact if you are, if you want to remain, esoteric and theoretical and start telling them, well this is the economic answer. You can't do it that way. You got to work through other disciplines and through other points of view if you really want to make an impact. And I have always felt the best multidisciplinary 01:31:00work is done with competent disciplinarians in the fields that are cooperating. I think that's a big secret of the success of multidisciplinary work. My work on boards and commissions has been the most valuable outside experience, it's just of great importance. When I was younger and was in a different spot, I'd come back from those meetings and I'd come back to the classroom and I could do things in the classroom that I could not have done had I not been in those meetings. And I could bring students along with me to give them a feel and the understanding for some of the nuances that they could not have had. I think, 01:32:00frankly, professors that I know, stay too much inside their offices. They do.

JH: And don't go to meet other people... What current intellectual fads or trends do you see in economics that you're either excited about or worried about?

EC: Well, that's the biggest subject that's been brought up today. I think fads, we tend to get something that comes along that we get all caught up in that and 01:33:00then we begin to see everything through that lens. And maybe something that's useful, but it's not the whole world. And I think that there's a great tendency for academics to get caught up with a new idea and go too far with it. Let me be specific. We've had this economic downturn, and this sort of the Keynesian view of things that's predominant at Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley, would be that the 01:34:00recession is caused because we didn't do a good job of regulating things, that as a result we had bubbles that occurred. Then you have the other view, the classic University of Chicago group that feels there's entirely too much government influence. That if we let that get out of hand, then we'll never have a recovery because the government will be competitive with the private sector. My feeling is that neither theory is sufficiently robust to give you those kinds of general answers. I just don't think you can do that. You have to take a 01:35:00particular situation and work through it and use whatever theory you need in order to solve the problem. You can't let the theory dominate the answer to these public problems. One of the things that I've done in my career that most people have not done that has influenced me, that is, that I taught research methodology for many years, which gets me into the philosophy of science. I see the weaknesses of economic theory perhaps differently than many economists do. That doesn't mean that I don't want to be an economist. That doesn't mean that I 01:36:00don't believe in theory, but it has taught me that every intellectual concept that we have has limitations. We can only go so far with it. Then it's exhausted. You have to do something else. I see a real weakness in our education system. Most of our professors are not competent to teach something like that. And as a consequence, the students don't get it. They don't get it because the professors don't know it. Now there are a few people in ag economics who could teach like that, but there aren't very many.

JH: I had the luck to have Alan Randall teach me economic methodology at Ohio State.

EC: Alan was one of my first students. I got him started in methodology. He's done remarkably well with it. Steve Buccola could teach a course like this. There aren't many people around that could. We don't even have a course being taught now.

JH: Do you feel like the philosophy of science is adequately taught in other graduate programs at OSU?

EC: No, I don't think so. There are some places where you get it. I'm not current in every field. But when I was dean of the graduate school, I tried to find out and the answer then was no, and I think it's still no.

JH: Since it's not offered, how do you feel it may affect students' higher level education in economics or in these other fields? How might it influence them not having it?

EC: Well, I just think from what I watch on TV and what I read currently on this economic recession, I think mostly what we're getting from economists are partial views. I don't think we're getting comprehensive views. Have you read Hausmann's book?

JH: I'm familiar with Hausmann, but I haven't read his entire book.

EC: Well, the title of it is the Separate and Inexact Science of Economics. I've 01:39:00had correspondence with him. Well first of all, I think it's a great book and I did use it in my methodology course. If I were to write a title now, I would say the inexact and incomplete science. And I'll just illustrate this very quickly, what I mean. A great deal of economics rests on the assumption of the hidden hand, of people responding to incentives, profit maximizing, utility maximizing 01:40:00oftentimes. If you find out where the hidden hand came from, it came from Adam Smith, Adam Smith has a book, approximately 1000 pages. He makes one reference to the hidden hand on page 439, just one reference, and in the paragraph where he makes this one reference, he has many qualifying words. Even Adam Smith didn't say this was the whole of economics. This isn't the way everyone behaves. This isn't a circumstance that applies regardless of circumstance. He never said 01:41:00that. But a great deal of economics is organized right around that one driving, major principle. It's incomplete, not wrong, it's just incomplete. That's what I mean.

JH: You already talked a little about how you had tried to change the department name to agricultural and applied economics. How to do you feel about the evolution of the new applied economics graduate program? Have you been involved with that at all? Are you familiar with it?

EC: I am familiar with it. I'm sad because when I came back, we established a graduate faculty in economics and we had all of the major economic programs 01:42:00under one tent and I think that's what should be. Well, I chaired it for six years and we brought in some people in economics, one person in particular, I won't mention names, who could not see cooperative work with forestry economists, ag economists.. They just thought that was beneath their dignity to do that. Instead of being together, they started going into this direction...The situation got so toxic that it had to collapse. There was no way you could hold 01:43:00this group together. That kind of anger and conflict that existed, so this reincarnation of the faculty of applied economics is the best thing that could be done under the circumstances. I have a lot of respect for Gopi, he's first rate and I think he will have a good program there. But it's too bad that we lose the other point of view, the more classic view, it's too bad.

JH: You're seen as many as one of the elites in your field? What personal 01:44:00factors would you really say contributed to your success? Whether it was your family, upbringing, support from your wife, being a member of your particular generation?

EC: First of all, I don't think of myself as one of the elites in my profession. I don't think I've attained that type of standing. I think I've been very lucky. Circumstances have just seen to fit. I guess one thing is that, although I'm not brilliant, I am persistent and I probably got that from the drought and Depression years. My family had discipline. Just one right after the other, but 01:45:00they didn't give up. They were very self reliant, never felt that they were owed something that they didn't achieve themselves. That rubbed off on me to a certain extent. So I think, for example, this rural studies thing, I have never gave up on that, I've worked on that and I've stayed with it, and I think that I've found something. That's not any great [unintelligible]. It's been persistence more than anything.

JH: Looking back on the various roles you've played in the last 60 years, father, husband, teacher, economist, researcher, what aspects of your life do you identify with most and has this changed since you retired?

EC: Well, I have always felt my family was very important and I'd like to think I've done a pretty good job of accommodating them. The other part is my profession that's been very important to me and I guess in one sense I might feel some guilt, but the family vacations were always combined with a professional meeting someplace, but they were family vacations. I took my wife 01:47:00and my daughter with me. For example, when I was a visiting professor in Purdue, we went to New York and saw Sound Of Music on Broadway. We never would have done that had we not happened to [unintelligible].

But, when I read your questions, I wrote down the word mentor. You didn't [unintelligible].

JH: I didn't put this as a role, no.

EC: I didn't set out to be, I didn't set out this way at all. But I think about the people that seem to respond in one way or another, it's been people such as 01:48:00yourself. It's not what they got in my class or what somebody got in a piece of research, but it's what they got [unintelligible].

JH: And so, what changes at OSU over the last 20 years stand out the most? What do you think the future holds?

EC: Oh boy, I don't know. I guess the one thing that I'm the most disappointed in is so many things seem to me, and I'm probably missing something, this probably reflects me than anything else. To me, a lot of things are just change 01:49:00for the sake of change. I don't see that they have identified problem and I don't see what they're trying to accomplish. You can spend enormous amounts of energy and intellectual capacity making these changes and going through all of the things you have to go through in order to reorganize. But without careful thought of what is going to be the outcome. Now maybe it's an error on my part, but you asked the question, so that's what I have to answer.

JH: And do you feel the future of Oregon State is likely to be similar?

EC: There has to be something provided that's missing it seems to me for the future to be as bright as the past has been. If you talk about the narrowness of the traditional land grant mission if you want and there's something to do that, we have probably overemphasized certain things and underemphasized other things, but I don't the reorganization that are being proposed, there may be some other 01:51:00fundamental problems they're addressing that I'm not aware of, but until you have the notion of what it is you want to accomplish change for the sake of change doesn't excite me very much. Did you come across the fact, that once upon a time, there were three of us over 18 months to study the university?

JH: Yes

JS: That was the three wise men?

JH: Do things happen like that?

EC: I don't think so, I don't think so.

JS: Your comments about the sake for change, are you referring to the different 01:52:00schools and divisions?

EC: Yes, that's part of it. I have asked over and over again why are we doing this and I have never gotten a good answer. Now I think there are some very good people at Oregon State that once it's done they're probably going to say 'what can we do with this?' Bruce Weber for example says the people that I want to cooperate with are not going to be in my division.

JH: A little difficult...What advice would you give to aspiring academics today? 01:53:00Either for us, or just in general?

EC: I know what I would do. I would try very hard to be sure I had mastered the major things in philosophy of science that affect my field because I can't think of any area that would provide better guidance to what needs attention than methodology and philosophy of science. For example, this climate change controversy that's public now, I'm not an atmospheric scientist and I wouldn't 01:54:00think about telling someone what to think about climate change, but I do know something about how science operates and I think I would know what's important, what ought to be emphasized, and what are some of the things we ought not to doing if we want to get to the bottom of this. I think that's missing. I don't see very many tracks on climate change that reflect very deep knowledge of how 01:55:00scientific questions get resolved and the philosophy of science tells us all kinds of things about the importance of transparency, how data ought to be preserved and presented, alternative theories. I see that missing from this discussion.

JH: Is there anything else you would like to add? I think that's all of the questions that we had.

EC: I think I should tell you something that you may not know. You referred to 01:56:00that article. Well, I think you should know something.

JS: Is there another chapter

EC: The OSU Press has accepted this for publication [shows group manuscript].

JH: Great. Is it different from what's online?

EC: Look at the table of contents.

JH: It looks thicker. This is everything.

JS: How recent is this document?

EC: I turned it into the OSU Press last June and it's been through some reviews 01:57:00and that's January, the date on the front is January. It's very...

JH: Recent.

JS: Oh, 2010, oh wow.

EC: It's supposed to be printed in 2010.

JH: Will it be available in the library?

EC: Well, it will be an OSU publication, and it will be in book form, for sale.

JS: I saw the section on Betty. You mentioned about your recent breakthroughs thinking about the urban, no rural studies. Are some of your thoughts in there? Is there a quick version?

EC: Well yeah, I could, maybe. The graphics got messed up in one of these...I don't know if this is the one. Okay, this is the one that's okay. Right here, oh pardon me.

JH: No problem.

EC: What I start with here is five empirical findings, this came out of the Natural Rural Studies Committee work, five findings. Then I turn to a definition 01:59:00of a place and that's an intersection of a geographic area, a local jurisdiction, and a community, and where they intersect tends to defines a place. Well, what place are you from? Well, it's usually some combination of a local jurisdiction, a community, or some piece of geography. One standing alone won't do it. It takes at least two. I think three. Then you come to a three premise model: local comparative advantage, U.S. system of government permits some degree of local autonomy, this is the thing is that people and people 02:00:00places have to be considered jointly if you're going to have any kind of a theory. That is, you can't start talking about people....

JH: Apart from their place, yeah.

EC: You can't start saying single mothers for example, rural single mother. That's not what you're going to have to deal with. You have to deal with single mothers associated with Sherman County, Oregon or someplace like that, you're going to have to keep those two together. Then if you do that, there are three, and only three, orientations that are possible: there's an inside-outside orientation, that is people inside a place, what orientation they have to the external world. There are people on the outside that have an inside orientation, 02:01:00that is, there are people in urban places that are interested in rural places for some particular reason like rural amenities or something like that, and then there's the inside-inside orientation. A local grocery, for example, their orientation mainly is inside, they have their customer, they have an inside-inside orientation. Then, this lets you talk about rural America, the real rural America. You can take these three orientations and begin to isolate groups which gives you the richness and detail and come to grips with rural 02:02:00America as it actually exists. Then, the implications of the theory; I come up with four, well there's quite a lot of discussion here, I identify four major problem areas that emerge from all this. One is what we generally associate with central place theory where standardized products are produced and go into the large market place. Then there is the variation in the natural environment together with human ingenuity establishes local comparative advantage. Then underemployment of rural people, you can begin to think about that in terms of 02:03:00these groupings here and what causes it. Finally, you have small group decisions in rural places that are in the presence of big government and big business, so you have small and large out here...that's what I came up with as a result of this.

JH: So when can we get a copy of that?

[Laughter]

JH: This is actually very related to my dissertation research. I study rural forest communities.

EC: I can't give you an easy answer to that. This isn't entirely mine.

JH: I like that, the framework. It's simple.

EC: It really works. I struggled with it for decades. I couldn't come to this. 02:04:00Now I see it. If you think about this, when I had that on my desk, I was looking down on it and said that's rural America. This is what I've been looking for, these kinds of groupings.

JS: What was that like? I know you've done a lot of work over the year, but was it an ah-ha moment? Hooray?

EC: It was. It was when I started to put this together. This is rural America. 02:05:00What I came up with here is despite popular discussion that leaves the impression that rural America is static, homogeneous, and idyllic, I conclude that rural America is better described as dynamic, heterogeneous, and turbulent. That may seem kind of hokey, but if you can come up with something like that to use to describe something that's complex and as variable as rural America, you've made progress. You can begin to talk about it in concrete, specific terms. That's what was missing from these meetings that I used to go to in 02:06:00Washington, DC when they'd talk about rural America. It wasn't focused, they'd go on and on and on. Of course you're going to have elaborations of this, you're going to have modifications here and there, but it's a framework, a context that we haven't had. Well, to answer your question, there's no reason why you shouldn't look at this and read this. It is a question of how much you ought to cite it, that kind of stuff that's sort of out of my hands.

JH: Perhaps I could contact the University Press.

EC: If you're seriously interested, why don't you get back in touch with me? 02:07:00I'll give you an answer.

JH: Great

EC: I don't want to just say something now.

JH: Right, ok.

EC: What you should know is that this thing is this. I could hardly believe it when I read these questions.

JS: We thought that that was the document, we thought we'd try to flesh it out, but you have done that yourself. Hopefully it wasn't too redundant.

EC: No, no.

Jill: I could ask you questions all day.

EC: It was that that got me started that you have. And I wrote that, and I was 02:08:00not altogether happy with everything in it. I thought, well, I'll do something about that. Those first five chapters just came out. The last three I have worked on pretty hard. The first five were fun.

JH: Thank you so much for meeting with us today.

EC: You're very welcome.

JS: Was there anything else...we kind of skipped over some chunks of time... that you feel like adding to beyond the book?

EC: Well, no, I'm going to continue to work, but I don't know just what it will be. I need to get this finished first.

JH: Thanks.

JS: Congratulations for getting it accepted.

EC: Yeah it's been accepted. It hasn't been copyedited and things like that.

JH: We're doing these interviews for a qualitative sociology course and we're interviewing a huge variety of prominent figures in OSUs history. I'm really glad we are able to interview you.

EC: I'm glad you were to.

JH: I will be in touch.

EC: We will work something out.

JH: Thank you so much. It was very nice to meet you.