He started his career as a messenger boy at the age of fourteen, earning 4 dollars a week, and became the highest-paid railroad manager in the U.S., receiving an annual salary of more than $100,000 according to one survey.

[8] Promotions within the office did not encourage him enough, and five years later Smith transferred to a railroad construction crew in Toledo, Ohio, area, paid $1.50 a day.

His 1917 minority report noted that no legal safeguard can prevent the parliament from changing its mind and taking direct control of the nationalized assets.

[6] He advised stripping the railroads of redundant, loss-making lines through exchange or closure: "The scrap heap is frequently the most economical disposition available for inefficient plant and machinery.

[6] Smith's plan, "in all probability, would have saved the country a great many millions of dollars" but the government of Canada settled for nationalization along the lines of Drayton-Acworth report.

[16] In the very end of 1917 William Gibbs McAdoo, head of the United States Railroad Administration, appointed Smith as assistant director for the north-eastern quadrant of the United States (east of Chicago and north of the Ohio and the Potomac rivers); in January 1918 Smith became Director of Eastern District of the Federal Railroad Administration.

[11] According to The New York Times, Smith had consolidated the largest pool of railroads in the United States history to this date, which carried over half of national freight tonnage over 80,000 miles of main lines.

[3] Smith, as a federal administrator, had to untie the congestion that threatened to halt shipping in the Eastern states and resupply of the American Expeditionary Forces.

[3] As a practical railroad man he persuaded the Federal Government to abolish its priority order system which, in his opinion, was the major contributor to congestion.

[3] When the ice in New York Harbor put the system on the verge of collapse, Smith successfully persuaded the United States Navy to break all regulations and send its ships to clear the harbour.

[3] He dispatched harbor tugs to clear the Kill Van Kull, personally hired icebreaking steamer SS Florizel and guaranteed its insurance risks out of his own pocket.

[20] In the beginning of 1924 Smith spent several weeks in Cuba inspecting the Cuban railroads that were being consolidated into a single corporation under the Tarafa Bill.

[7] Smith's full-length portrait was painted by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Muller-Ury (1862–1947) together with that of his granddaughter Charlotte, a horse and dog, at the end of 1921 and early 1922, and was intended for an overmantel at his mansion at Chappaqua.

[22] According to Hooper's testimony Smith pulled sharply on the reins, lost his balance, grabbed the horses's neck and fell on the ground head-on.