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Multiple-Level Organization of a Great Railroad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Leland H. Jenks
Leland H. Jenks
Affiliation:
Professor of Sociology atWellesley College
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Abstract

Concluding his sophisticated analysis of the Pennsylvania Railroad's organizational structure (cf. BUSINESS HISTORY REVIEW, Summer, 1961), the anonymous reporter for the RAILROAD GAZETTE described in a supplementary article, reproduced here following Professor Jenks' interpretative comments, the decentralized management of the Pennsylvania's western divisions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1961 , pp. 336 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961

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References

1 “Two Methods of Operating Great Railway Systems,” Railway Age, vol. 10 (1885), pp. 710–711Google Scholar.

2 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., and Redlich, Fritz, “Recent Developments in American Business Administration and their Conceptualization,” Business History Review, vol. XXXV (Spring, 1961), pp. 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Jenks, Leland H., “Early History of a Railway Organization,” Business History Review, vol. XXXV (Summer, 1961), pp. 153–179CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Railway Age, vol. 7 (1882), p. 216Google Scholar.

5 “Organization of Railroads” (1882). I have been able to examine a copy in the Overton-Cunningham Collection, Notebook “Y”, pp. 52-68, through the courtesy of Richard Overton. For excerpts, cf. Cochran, Thomas C., Railroad Leaders (Cambridge, 1953), pp. 435–436Google Scholar.

6 Cochran, Railroad Leaders, esp. correspondence of Henry Ledyard.

7 “An Organization for an Economic Management of Railroads,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 15 (1883), pp. 458–459Google Scholar. Condit left the service of the Gazette toward the end of 1883 to take charge of the business affairs of Science, the weekly then being subsidized by Alexander Graham Bell.

8 See esp. Henry S. Haines. “Efficient Railway Management,” Railway Review, Sept. 13, 27, and Oct. 4, 1884, reproduced in his American Railway Management (New York, 1897), pp. 153–186Google Scholar; “Supervision of Details,” Railway Review, vol. 24 (1884), pp. 529Google Scholar. Latimer, Charles, “Railroad Organization,” Railway Review, vol. 26 (1886), pp. 202–204Google Scholar. A more favorable view of the operating possibilities of great systems, based on a short-lived Gould consolidation, is by Meade, Richard W., “Five-Thousand Mile Railway Systems.” Railway Age, vol. 9 (1884), p. 754Google Scholar; vol. 10 (1885), pp. 4, 20.

9 Quoted from Railroad Gazette, vol. 15 (1883), pp. 45–46Google Scholar.

10 One of the rare appeals to biological analogy in Condit's writings.

11 For the distribution of duties, cf. Jenks, “Early History,” pp. 170-176.

12 These included the two Pennsylvania vice presidents concerned with finance, receipts and expenditures. They also sat on the boards of the two great western systems, analyzed on following pages.

13 There were ten men who were directors in all three companies, a majority of whom were or had been officers of at least one of the companies.

14 The auditing departments of the systems were still in the process of consolidation in 1884. Railway Review, vol. 24 (1884), p. 668Google Scholar.

15 This arrangement was only temporary. There had been a common general manager in 1881; and the office was restored in September, 1885. Railroad Gazette, vol. 13 (1881), p. 501Google Scholar; vol. 17 (1885), p. 637.

16 “Staff” is here used as in “line-and-staff” patterns of organization, for which succeeding paragraphs provide a rationale.

17 C. L. C., “Freight Accounts,” Railroad Gazette, vol. 14 (1882), pp. 535, 551Google Scholar.

18 Nearly all of the directors of the western corporations were directors of the parent company. A majority were officers in one part or another of the super-system.