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Early History of A Railway Organization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Leland H. Jenks
Leland H. Jenks
Affiliation:
Professor Emeritus atHarvard University
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Abstract

The more deeply scholars probe the evolution of management methods and structure, the earlier are antecedents of modern practice detected. The 1882 report on the Pennsylvania Railroad organization exhibits a highly refined conceptualization of big business administration and must stand as a significant milepost in the history of management. Here are to be found many of the ideas and even some of the terminology to which much more recent birth dates have hitherto been ascribed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , Summer 1961 , pp. 153 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961

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References

1 “Historical Development of the Organization of the Pennsylvania Railroad,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 14 (1882). pp. 776–778Google Scholar, 793–794, 809–810.

2 The system west of Pittsburgh under the control of the Pennsylvania Company was almost as extensive. But until 1920 it was conducted by two distinct operating organizations, whose relations to the mother company are only hinted at in the “Historical Development.” Their operative, as distinct from their corporate, structure, has been neglected in the literature.

3 Sipes, William B., The Pennsylvania Railroad (Philadelphia, 1875)Google Scholar; and Dredge, James, The Pennsylvania Railroad: its Organization, Construction and Management (London, 1879)Google Scholar.

4 Adams, Charles Francis, Notes on Railroad Accidents (New York, 1879), p. 247Google Scholar.

5 Delaware and Hudson Canal Co., Report to the Stockholders of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Co. by the Committee (New York, 1877), pp. 62–63Google Scholar.

6 Cochran, Thomas C., Railroad Leaders 1845–1890 (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 429–438Google Scholar. Other letters from Perkins disclose his familiarity with details of the Pennsylvania organization.

7 Haines, H. S., American Railway Management (New York, 1897), pp. 153–186Google Scholar; the paper was first published as a series in the Railway Review (Chicago), Sept. 13 and 27, Oct. 4, 1884Google Scholar.

8 Kirkman was a prolific writer who seems to have published his first articles under the pseudonym of “Paul Stork” in the Railroad Gazette in 1870. His Railway Revenue and its Collection (New York, 1877)Google Scholar is the liveliest of numerous books, in all of which the division of authority and duties, as well as of procedures, was discussed at length.

9 The total number of employees on a railroad ranged from five to ten per mile of main track. Kirkman, Marshall M., Railway Expenditures (Chicago, 1880)Google Scholar, Appendix A, listed 330 distinct “classes of service” on a typical railway.

10 Jacobs, Warren, “Early Rules and the Standard Code,” Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin 50 (October, 1939), pp. 20–55Google Scholar, is the only extended description of this phase. As time went on, apparently following British precedent, pamphlets replaced fly sheets, which prescribed in increasing detail the duties and responsibilities of the various categories of train officials.

11 Thus the organization of several New England railroads is described in detail in Knight, Jonathan and Latrobe, B. H., Report upon the Locomotive Engines and the Police and Management of Several of the Principal Railroads (Baltimore, 1838)Google Scholar.

13 The earliest printed specimen seems to have been that of the Baltimore & Ohio in 1847. Cf. “The Baltimore Railroad Co. and its Organization,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 15 (1883), pp. 165–166Google Scholar.

13 South Carolina Railroad, Inspection and Condition of the South Carolina Railroad by the Committee of Six (Charleston, 1848)Google Scholar.

14 Kirkland, Edward C., Men, Cities, and Transportation (Cambridge, 1948)Google Scholar, chap. 27 and passim; Ringwalt, J. L., Development of Transportation Systems in the United States (Philadelphia, 1888), p. 362Google Scholar; Black, Robert C., The Railroads of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill, 1952), p. 28Google Scholar; Jervis, John B., Railway Property (New York, 1861)Google Scholar.

15 A division varied in length, tending to extend from 50 to 200 or even 300 miles as routines and effective communication became established.

16 Cf. Kirkland, , Men, Cities, and Transportation, vol. II, p. 444Google Scholar.

17 The first printed instruction to this effect that has so far been found was in New York & Erie Railroad Co., Organization and General Regulations for Working and Conducting the Business of the Railroad and its Branches of the New York & Erie Railroad Co., February 21, 1852 (New York, 1852)Google Scholar, articles 2 and 30. Later in the year the Pennsylvania adopted the same phrasing and so did the Fort Wayne in 1856.

18 Jervis, Railway Property, pp. 252–253, 330–331.

19 “Railway Management,” Railroad Gazette, vol. I (1870), p. 459Google Scholar.

20 “Chicago,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 10 (1878), p. 567Google Scholar. Charles Perkins lamented in a private memorandum that most railroad corporations were “trying to operate with the same governing and supervising machinery adapted to very much shorter and simpler lines of Road.” Cochran, Railroad Leaders, p. 429.

21 The first edition of Kirkman, Marshall, Railway Revenue (New York, 1877)Google Scholar, chap. 1, described the typical railway organization with biting irony as a power structure torn with strife. The passage was much modified in later editions.

22 “Railroad Organization,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 12 (1880), pp. 358–359Google Scholar.

23 Cf. Vose, George L., Manual for Railroad Engineers and Engineering Students (Boston, 1872), esp. pp. 432–433Google Scholar; Railroad Gazette, vol. 4 (1872), p. 204Google Scholar; and esp. ibid, vol. 7 (1875), pp. 413–414, 502–503, 511–512.

24 “Work at Altoona,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 14 (1882), pp. 499–500Google Scholar.

25 Cf. “Observations on the Pennsylvania Railroad,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 10 (1878), pp. 530–532Google Scholar. The Pennsylvania system of government assumes “that there is much that is worth knowing of which the managers are ignorant, and that it is profitable to employ other persons and any available means for acquiring information and increasing knowledge.”

26 Railroad Gazette, vol. 14 (1882), pp. 580–581Google Scholar. One of its objectives was “the advancement of its members in the science of railway management.” Its formation was attributed to Frank Thomson, then General Manager.

27 Cf. 31st Annual Report… (Philadelphia, 1878), pp. 189–190Google Scholar; Railroad Gazette, vol. 14 (1882), pp. 577–578Google Scholar.

28 The first public clear statement of the dilemma that I have noted was in an editorial on “Railroad Organization,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 12 (1880), pp. 358–359Google Scholar, where it was suggested that the conflicting principles involved could be reconciled by what was later to be called a “functional” division of authority. A series of articles by an anonymous superintendent, “The Operating Department and Management of a Railroad,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 17 (1885), p. 769Google Scholar and succeeding issues, precipitated a lively controversy with “Roadmaster” and others analyzing in detail the organizational conflicts at issue. For standard accounts of the problem see Morris, Ray, Railroad Administration (New York, 1910)Google Scholar, chap. 4; and Loree, L. F., Railroad Freight Transportation (New York, 1922), pp. 132ffGoogle Scholar.

29 Pennsylvania Railroad Co., Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Transportation Department (Philadelphia, 1882), art. 336Google Scholar. Curiously the author of “Historical Development” seems not to have made use of the series of publications of which this item forms a part, which probably began in the 1850's. This is the prime source for successive definitions of duties of all categories of officials below the level of division superintendent, which the author largely ignores.

30 These comments have drawn upon a committee report on “The Modern Railroad Shop — its Organization and Operation,” made Oct. 20, 1909, to the Altoona Railroad Club of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and printed in its Papers and Discussions.

31 Railroad Gazette, vol. 15 (1883), pp. 45–46Google Scholar (Pennsylvania Company); p. 64 (Lake Shore); pp. 128–129 (Erlanger system); pp. 165–166 (Baltimore & Ohio).

32 A critic in a rival journal accused him of duplicity in gathering material from underlings and using it without credit, and of pretentiousness in undertaking to write “the theory and practice — of railroad management.” He is said to have been a young doctor who took a job with the Gazette as canvasser for subscritions. Railway Age, vol. 8 (1883), pp. 464, 572Google Scholar.

33 Railroad Gazette, vol. 14 (1882), pp. 467–468, 497–498, 535, 551, 577–578, 732Google Scholar; vol. 15 (1883), pp. 35, 53, 292–293 (a copyrighted series), and pp. 458–459.