As I was paging through images of some documents I had examined a few years ago in the papers of Arthur F. Burns at Duke University’s Economists’ Papers Archive, I found an image of a sheet of paper with the following brief “Ode to Arthur Burns.” It was typed (perhaps printed) in the lower left quadrant of a sheet of paper. As often happens to us archive rats, we find an interesting document but one that comes with no clear indication of either authorship or the circumstances surrounding the creation of the particular document.
I will admit that I liked the Ode because it captures the essence of the Schmoller-Menger Methodenstreit and its 20th century revival seen in the Koopmans-Burns-and-Mitchell controversy regarding the proper dosage of theory required for scientific economic measurement. Recall: Burns and Mitchell got burned pretty badly by Koopmans’ review of Measuring Business Cycles.
Moderation was to come to the Cowles Commission in its 1952 shift from its chosen motto “Science is Measurement” to “Theory and Measurement”. On the other side, the NBER has long become a lot more like the Cowles Commission of old than it has to its statistical-institutionalist ancestors of the first half of the 20thcentury.
The theory versus empirical split is analogous to the normative versus positive economics split recognized in the earliest methodological tracts of philosophically inclined economists. Working economists in the mainstream view themselves bathed in the flattering light of moderation along both methodological dimensions. Both-side-ism is not just a journalistic weakness. Those who work on the frontiers of human knowledge love striking an Aristotelian pose of reasonable moderation (don’t we all?).
But getting back to the issue of the authorship of the Ode and its larger context, let me identify the two suspects of Ode authorship swept up in my duly diligent Google search:
- George P. Shultz (1920-2021): a 1949 M.I.T. Ph.D. alumnus in industrial economics, Dean of the Business School at the University of Chicago, and successively Secretary of Labor, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of State in Republican Administrations.
- Edward Teller (1908-2003): the “father of the hydrogen bomb”, and if not Stanley Kubrick’s human model for Dr. Strangelove then a Doppelgänger to a second-order approximation. It is not altogether obvious how he could possibly fit into the picture.
So Whodunnit? We begin at the scene of the literary crime.
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Ode to Arthur Burns
A fact without a theory
Is like a ship without a sail,
Is like a boat without a rudder,
Is like a kite without a tail.
A fact without a theory
Is as sad as sad can be
But, if there’s one thing worse
In this universe,
It’s a theory without a fact.”
Source: Duke University, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Arthur F. Burns Papers. Box 6, Folder “Other papers 1926-1987 (1 of 2)”,
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Sometimes it just turns out that you get lucky with a Google search using just a snip of a quotation. George Shultz was reported to be the author of lyrics that he sang to “the lively tune of Silver Dollar”. This title meant nothing to me. But before turning to the further power of the internet, let us enter the relevant portion of the Time magazine profile of George Shultz with its lede that takes the reader back to a “VIP-stacked Manhattan dinner”, ca. 1970. We note minor differences in the middle of the second stanza but it seems likely that at the latest the Ode was performed in 1970.
The Economy:
Another Professor with Power
CONCLUDING a speech on economic policy at a VIP-stacked Manhattan dinner three years ago, George Shultz startled the audience by abruptly breaking into song. To the lively tune of Silver Dollar, the then director of the Office of Management and Budget [sic, he was Secretary of Labor at the NBER dinner in 1970] belted forth in full voice:
A fact without a theory
Is like a ship without a sail,
Is like a boat without a rudder,
Is like a kite without a tail.
A fact without a figure
Is a tragic final act,
But one thing worse
In this universe
Is a theory without a fact.Shultz is seldom short on either fact or theory, although the softspoken, smooth-faced economist seldom expresses his ideas in song. His quick grasp of facts and theories, his skill in persuading the federal bureaucracy to act on them—plus an ironclad loyalty to the President—are the qualities that have prompted Richard Nixon to keep investing his Treasury Secretary with added clout. By now Shultz has become one of the two or three most powerful men in Washington….
Source: Time Magazine. Monday, Feb. 26, 1973.
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This evidence was enough to get me to take a deeper dive into another folder in Burns’ papers at Duke where I had found a copy of the pamphlet that was prepared as memorial to Arthur F. Burns after his death with brief tributes from President Ronald Reagan, Rabbi Joshua Haberman, Milton Friedman, Senator Pete Domenici, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, Secretary of State George Shultz, and former Presidents Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon.
In his tribute George Shultz clearly staked a claim of authorship to the Ode to Arthur Burns.
George P. Shultz
O’Bie [nickname of George Shultz’s wife, née O’Brien] and I have a wonderful friend in Arthur Burns. We have lost him, but his influence and example live on with us. As Arthur Burns has touched and enriched our lives as individuals, so he has left our country an enduring legacy of scholarship and statesmanship.
Arthur lived according to deeply held values, both moral and intellectual. There was never a more devoted, or a more effective, defender of democratic freedoms — political and economic, and also intellectual — than soft-spoken Arthur Burns.
Arthur’s scholarship was truly of Biblical scope. Helmut Schmidt called him the Pope of Economics. But he was also a great student of the bible, and he lived by the values he found in the Scriptures. Arthur believed in learning, in work, in service, in personal discipline. He thrived on the creative tension between an idea and its application. His legendary tolerance for debate and discussion was a measure of his rigorous respect for intellectual integrity. This same respect for human intelligence also meant that Arthur suffered no fools gladly.
Facts held a fascination for him that no grand theories could match. He insisted that statements be meticulously accurate. He believed that theories, like his beloved New England houses should stand four-square on a solid foundation of facts.
Arthur suspected that someone who was careless with facts was likely to be careless in thought and unsound in judgment. For a dinner in his honor years ago. I wrote words to an old tune to describe this attitude of his:
(Sung)
A fact without a theory is as sad as sad can be.
But if there’s one thing worse
In this universe,
It’s a theory without a fact.This combination of intellectual and moral values, an insatiable capacity for disciplined work, and an ability to bridge the distance between concept and reality gave Arthur Burns a tremendous force of personality. When convinced of something Arthur was more powerful in his advocacy than just about anyone I have known. But convinced he had to be. Ever the student, Arthur was the first to admit when he didn’t know something and the first to seek out an answer.
I remember seeing Arthur in Germany in 1982, not long after his arrival as ambassador. He was already in his late seventies; yet, like a kid with a new toy, he was determined to master the German language and to understand the society and the economy. Master them he did, during a period of special challenge for our bilateral relations and for the NATO alliance. He never stopped learning. That’s why his life was so full.
Arthur is now mourned on both sides of the Atlantic on both sides of the aisle, in government, in business, in finance in academia. For years to come, Presidents and professors, Secretaries of State, and students of economics, even Governors of the Federal Reserve, will continue to learn from Arthur Burns, through the enduring force of his intellectual legacy.
We — his family, friends, colleagues — have had the great joy and privilege of knowing Arthur, the man. We will miss his infectious curiosity. We will miss his kindness. We will miss his counsel, his candor and his integrity. And, we will carry him in our hearts always.
Source: Duke University, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Arthur F. Burns Papers. Box 6, Folder “Memorial and remembrances, 1987-2003”, pp. 19-20.
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50th Anniversary Celebration
of NBER
The New York Times (March 2, 1970 p. 55 ) reported a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to honor the 50thanniversary of the National Bureau of Economic Research where both Arthur F. Burns (chairman of the Federal Reserve Board) and George P. Shultz (Secretary of Labor) were in attendance.
THE HONORABLE GEORGE P. SHULTZ…now let me talk for a moment about Burns’ Laws, and here I’m talking to the Federal Reserve Board staff, of course. (Laughter)
Well! First, all calculations must be checked at least twice, independently.
Second, we must develop measurements of all the key variables. Be sure they’re as good as possible, and understand their strengths and limitations.
Third, always identify the logical structure of the argument, and if it has none, discount it and him. (Laughter)
Fourth, be willing to live with ambiguity, have patience, suspend judgment, wait for the facts to come in.
Fifth, certainly don’t be satisfied with examination of the aggregates. Look below the aggregates and the over-all movement of the figures; at the components, as certainly the components may be the most revealing, let alone appealing.
An finally, it’s important to examine the facts, and as Professor Leontief stated, to have a good conception for the relationship of the facts to the theory.
And so I would like to close with a little song, which I will try to sing to you. And this is by way of a sort of a ballad for Arthur Burns, and it’s my nomination for the alma mater, at least for the old National Bureau, if not for the new, and the theme song for the new Federal Reserve Board. And I’ll tell you I’ll give it a riffle through the first vers, and then I expect especially the head table, which has some briefing, to at least join me on the second, but I expect all of you to join me, too.
Ready? (Laughter)
A fact without a theory,
Is like a ship without a sail,
Is like a boat without a rudder,
Is like a kite without a tail!A fact without a theory
Is like a tragic final act.
But if there’s one thing worse
In this universe
It’s a theory—I said a theory—I mean a theory—
Without a fact! (Laughter and applause)[…]
THE HONORABLE ARTHUR F. BURNS: …And then I heard George sing a song, second time I heard it, and I’m puzzled. I asked George, sitting beside him, what would be the subject of his address tonight? And he mumbled, oh, something about guidelines. I said, “Oh no, you ought to sing that song, George.” Now I don’t know whether I inspired George to sing that song or whether the thought occurred to him independently. Somehow George and I have been on the same wavelength for so long, that though communicated itself from one to the other….
Source: National Bureau of Economic Research. Fiftieth Anniversary Dinner: Transcript of Proceedings, A Supplement to National Bureau Report 6 (June 1970) p. 20, 25.
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Handwritten copy of the Ode in Edward Teller’s desk
on White House stationery.
One shouldn’t think that the issue of authorship of the Ode would be a slam-dunk affair. Actually the first lead Google provided me was to an article in Hungarian (!) about the poetry (I am not making this up) of the nuclear physicist Edward Teller.
Having no reason to doubt Google’s translation of the Hungarian text, I learned that after the death of Edward Teller “a small note was found in a drawer.” An image of a handwritten note on White House stationery (without a date) was included and is provided below.
Source: Nyomhagyók Rovat, “Gyönyörködni titkos, mély harmóniákban” Teller Ede versei. Ponticulus Hungaricus, XXIII. évfolyam 12. szám ·2019. December.
This handwritten text bears more than a passing resemblance to the Ode found in Burns’ papers at Duke as well as the NBER version of the Ballad for Burns above. The second and fourth lines of the second stanza differ significantly. It is not unusual for songs and covers of songs to display variations after all. The author of the Hungarian article claimed/suggested the English original had been composed by Edward Teller.
Perhaps some kind visitor to Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has easy access to Edward Teller’s and/or George Shultz’s handwriting to make a determination of the identity of the above scribe in the White House. But even if the note should turn out to be written in Teller’s hand, it does not exclude the possibility that he just copied the verses he heard or read.
In any event it seems to me less likely that Shultz would have plagiarized from Teller than Teller would have instead kept a copy for himself. Besides, Schultz had significantly more opportunity to jot down notes on a White House memo pad than Teller did. This doesn’t take away from the mystery of how this alternate Ode came to Teller’s desk.
My final forensic note is that Teller was the sort of Central European intellectual who moved from home to home with a Steinway piano throughout his life compared to George Shultz who was a veteran of the U.S. Marines known to have a Princeton tiger tattooed on his (ahem) butt cheek. Which of the two men seems more likely to have recalled the words from a hit single in the early 1950s that covered a 1907 recording?
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Which recording served as inspiration to George Shultz?
There are numerous interpretations recorded of Silver Dollar. The Website SecondHandSongs displays 32 versions.
Fun fact: Petula Clark, singer of the Hit “Downtown” (1964), also covered Silver Dollar in December 1950!
But for my silver dollar, the closest variation to the Shultz version is found in a 78 rpm record released in 1950.
Silver Dollar by Clancy Hayes
and his Washboard Five
A man without a woman is like a ship without a sail,
Like a boat without a rudder, just like a kite without a tail.
Yes, a man without a woman is the saddest thing what am.
But if there’s one thing worse in this universe,
It’s a woman without a man! […]
Image Source: Time Magazine cover August 16, 1971.