He became professor of transportation and commerce at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896, and was dean of its Wharton School from 1919 to 1933.
[1] He served as expert on transportation (1899) on the United States Industrial Commission, and was a member on valuation of railway property for the United States Census Bureau (1904–05), and as expert on traffic on the National Waterways Commission of 1909.
In 1911 he furnished a report on Panama Canal traffic, etc., for U.S. President William Howard Taft, and in 1907 arbitrated the dispute between the Southern Pacific Company and the Order of Railroad Telegraphers.
[2] In 1926 he travelled to China; in Shandong he met the 6-year-old Duke Yansheng Kung Te-cheng and invited him to attend the University of Pennsylvania.
He was editor of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science from 1901 to 1914.