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Roger W. Babson

Babson pictured in The Babsonian 1920, Babson yearbook
Born        July 6, 1875
Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA
Died        March 5, 1967 (aged 91)
Lake Wales, Florida, USA
Education        MIT (1898)
Occupation        Entrepreneur, Businessman, Economist, Writer, Philanthropist
Known for        Business forecasting, founding of universities, predicting Wall Street Crash of 1929
Political party        Prohibition Party
Religion        Protestantism
Spouse        Grace Margaret Knight (m. 1900 - d. 1956)
Nona M. Dougherty (m. 1957 - d. 1963)
Children        Edith Low Babson
Parents        Nathaniel Babson and Ellen Starns
Roger Ward Babson (July 6, 1875 – March 5, 1967), remembered today largely for founding Babson College in Massachusetts, was an entrepreneur and business theorist in the first half of the 20th century. He also founded Webber College, now Webber International University, in Babson Park, Florida, and the defunct Utopia College, in Eureka, Kansas.
He was born to Nathaniel Babson and his wife Ellen Stearns as part of the tenth generation of Babsons to live in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Roger attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked for investment firms before founding, in 1904, Babson's Statistical Organization, which analyzed stocks and business reports. It continues today as Babson-United, Inc..[1]
On March 29, 1900, Babson married his first wife, Grace Margaret Knight.
According to biographer John Mulkern, Babson attributed the business cycle
to Sir Isaac Newton's law of action and reaction.... His pseudoscientific notion, that the laws of physics account for every rise and ebb in the economy, had no more validity than [astrology or alchemy]. But just as astrology gave birth to astronomy and alchemy to chemistry, so, too, did Babson's efforts to explain the economic cycle... lead to the economic breakthrough that revolutionized the business of economic forecasting.[2]
Babson authored more than forty books on economic and social problems, the most widely read being Business Barometers (eight editions) and Business Barometers for Profits, Security, Income (ten editions). Babson also wrote hundreds of magazine articles and newspaper columns. He was a popular lecturer on business and financial trends.
Babson was an investor and sometimes director of many corporations, including some traded on the New York Stock Exchange. He established an investment advisory company Babson's Reports which published one of the oldest investment newsletters in America.
Babson had "ten commandments" he followed in investing and encouraged his readers to do the same. These were:
Keep speculation and investments separate.
Don't be fooled by a name.
Be wary of new promotions.
Give due consideration to market ability.
Don't buy without proper facts.
Safeguard purchases through diversification.
Don't try to diversify by buying different securities of the same company.
Small companies should be carefully scruitinized.
Buy adequate security, not super abundance.
Choose your dealer and buy outright (i.e., don't buy on margin.)[3]
On September 5, 1929, he gave a speech saying, "Sooner or later a crash is coming, and it may be terrific." Later that day the stock market declined by about 3%. This became known as the "Babson Break". The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression soon followed.
Babson was the Prohibition Party's candidate for President of the United States in 1940. Election was won by incumbent President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the Democratic Party. Babson was surpassed by two other unsuccessful candidates:
Wendell Lewis Willkie of the Republican Party.
Norman Mattoon Thomas of the Socialist Party of America.
Babson founded the Gravity Research Foundation in 1948.[4] The Foundation established a research facility in the town of New Boston, New Hampshire after Babson determined that this location was far enough away from the city of Boston, Massachusetts to survive a nuclear attack.


An example of a "Babson Boulder" at Dogtown
Babson was interested in the history of an abandoned settlement in Gloucester known as Dogtown. To provide charitable assistance to unemployed stonecutters in Gloucester during the Great Depression, Babson commissioned them to carve inspirational inscriptions on approximately two dozen boulders in the area surrounding Dogtown Common. The Babson Boulder Trail exists today as a well-known hiking and mountain-biking trail. The inscriptions are clearly visible. The boulders are scattered, not all are on the trail, and not all of the inscriptions face it, making finding them something of a challenge. Samples of some of the two dozen inscriptions include: "HELP MOTHER", "SPIRITUAL POWER", "GET A JOB", "KEEP OUT OF DEBT", and "LOYALTY".[5][6]
He became a widower in 1956.[7] In 1957 he remarried to Nona M. Dougherty, who died in 1963.[8] Babson died in 1967.

How the Stock Market Predicted
It will be observed that where these areas are shallow they tend to become broader in time consumed, and where the time to complete the area is less the depression or expansion is deeper or higher, as the case may be, the black areas above or below being assumed to balance each other, at least approximately. One of these black areas of depression shown in the Babson chart began in 1903, only developing recognizable space in the latter part of that year, and continued throughout 1904, finally emerging above the line of growing wealth in the earlier part of 1905. The stock market anticipated this area of business depression, for a primary bear swing began in September, 1902, and ran until the corresponding month of 1903. Mr. Babson's area of depression was still ruling when the market became mildly bullish, in September, 1903, and strongly bullish before the following June; while the Babson area of depression was not completed till the end of that year -1904. The Babson chart does not show any great degree of expansion until 1906, although it foreshadows it in September, 1905. But the stock market barometer foresaw all Mr. Babson's expansion, and the long bull market continued up to January, 1907, overrunning itself - a tendency of bull markets and bear markets alike.
  
A True Barometer
Mr. Babson's area of expansion reached its high maximum in 1907, when a bear stock market swing had already set in, continuing for eleven months until early December of that year, predicting that length of time ahead of Mr. Babson's truly calculated area of depression, which was deep, but not long in duration, and lasted till the end of 1908. His subsequent expansion area above the line did not begin to show itself in market strength until the end of July of 1908; but the stock market barometer once again foretold the coming prosperity in a bull market which had its genesis in December, 1907, and its culmination in August, 1909, beginning from that time to predict with equal accuracy, and well in advance, Mr. Babson's next period of depression.
Surely this shows that the stock market is a barometer, and that the Babson chart is more strictly a record, from which, of course, people as intelligent as its industrious compilers can draw valuable guidance for the future. To use a much-abused word, the stock market barometer is unique. You will remember that "unique" is a word which takes no qualifying adjective. Our barometer is not rather unique, or almost unique, or virtually unique. There is just one of it, and it cannot be duplicated. It does predict, as this simple illustration has shown, the condition of business many months ahead, and no other index, or combination of indices, can assume to do that. Our highly scientific and competent Weather Bureau often explodes the fallacy of any assumed radical change in general weather conditions. It does not pretend to go back to the glacial age. It tells us that there have been droughts and hard winters before, coming at uncertain and incalculable intervals. When it attempts specific prophecy - a single particular from its immense collection of generals - it is merely guessing. Does anybody who happened to be in Washington at the time remember the "fair and warmer" weather prophesied over the Taft inauguration? I went over the Pennsylvania Railroad on the following day, when the storm had leveled every telegraph pole between New York and Philadelphia. It was even said that some of the special trains had so far missed the parade that they were not in Washington then. Even the aneroid barometer can only forecast a limited number of hours ahead, according to the atmospheric pressure.

Roger Ward Babson (1875--1967), founder of Babson College, had many careers and interests, including being a columnist and speaker. He was a prolific writer who published more than fifty books. His writings range from the fundamentals of business to a tourist guide to Cape Anne to the importance of religion in daily life. Most of these books are available in the Babson Collection which is housed on the second floor of the Horn Library. The Babson College Archives has produced a biographical sketch of Mr. Babson.

http://www.babson.edu/about-babs ... TitleTableIndex.pdf

谢谢！