Author(s): | Channon, Geoffrey |
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Reviewer(s): | Churella, Albert J. |
Published by EH.NET (January 2002)
Geoffrey Channon, Railways in Britain and the United States, 1830-1940.
Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2001. xi + 341 pp. $79.95 (cloth), ISBN:
1-84014-253-7.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Albert J. Churella, Social and International Studies
Program, Southern Polytechnic State University.
The title listed above provides a hint of the ambitious geographic and
chronological scope of this work. The author’s intent is not to provide a
thorough or comprehensive treatment of his subject but rather to explore
selected topics in “railway promotion and its associated finance; the
recruitment of railway directors; investment appraisal by a mature company;
management structures; inter-railway relationships; locomotive production; and
the powers of, and relationships between, different corporate ‘stakeholders,’
including shareholders, directors, managers, and labour” (p. 296) in barely
more than three hundred pages. At its worst, this multifaceted approach to so
many diverse subjects is fragmented to the point of schizophrenia; at its
best, however, the book offers important insights into British and, less
compellingly, American railway practice over the span of more than a century.
In the first two chapters, the author sets up Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., as a
kind of straw man, in particular preparing the reader for attacks on the
id?e fixe of the primacy of the unrestrained visible hand and the
syllogism that American managerial capitalism always trumped British familial
capitalism. This somewhat oversimplified distillation of the Chandlerian
synthesis seems unnecessary, since business and economic historians (including
several quoted by the author) have thoroughly explored the rich complexity of
American and British business enterprise. This minor criticism aside, the
author does provide an excellent overview of the seminal literature relating
to railways on both sides of the Atlantic.
The heart of the book begins with a series of case studies on selected topics
in British and American railway practice. Channon examines the role of Bristol
merchants in financing the Great Western Railway in the 1830s, indicating that
traditional financial methods, based on reputation and trust, provided
sufficient capital for this enterprise of unprecedented scale. When a
different railway, the Midland, constructed a new line to London in the 1860s,
this decision was based neither on traditional business models of profit
maximization nor on the systemized chain of command represented by
organizational charts. Instead, the general manager, anxious to increase his
power and status within the organization and within the larger realm of
British business, persuaded a small but influential group of directors to
authorize construction. Personal goals and corporate culture thus had a
significant impact on corporate policy.
Channon next provides a brief discussion of largely unsuccessful pooling
arrangements to regulate traffic and revenues between England and Scotland in
the mid-to-late 1800s. He returns to the Great Western in the following
chapter, showing how the failure of multi-company cooperative agreements led
to state-mandated consolidation in the form of the 1921 Railways Act. Many of
the companies grouped into the Great Western system had been, in effect,
subsidiaries of that company before 1921; this, combined with managerial
intransigence (in the form of an inflexible corporate culture) and a depressed
coal market, severely limited gains in efficiency stemming from consolidation.
Ultimately, the Transport Ministry, like the American Interstate Commerce
Commission, did not appreciate the extent to which railroads constituted only
one facet of a transportation industry that was rapidly becoming more
competitive.
The next three chapters, perhaps the most compelling of the book, provide a
group biography of the directors of the Great Western during the nineteenth
century. The author’s assertion that these directors “… shared the same
(elite) social, educational and cultural backgrounds and assumptions” is
hardly surprising, nor will the reader be shocked to learn that they were “…
also men who were influential in a political sense …” (pp. 301-02). What is
fascinating, however, is the depiction of the acculturation process that
ensued when members of Britain’s landed aristocracy first viewed railway
directorships as a socially acceptable form of contact with the hurly burly
world of commerce and industry, then used their railroad experience and
connections to infiltrate corporate boardrooms in other industries.
There follows a quantum leap both in geography and subject matter in two
chapters depicting labor relations on the Pennsylvania Railroad during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Channon argues that the
“Standard Railroad of the World” had shown little interest in standardizing
labor policies before the First World War, preferring to let local supervisors
establish hiring guidelines, wage rates, and disciplinary procedures on an ad
hoc basis in response to local conditions. The growing strength of organized
labor, not the visible hand of management, finally forced the Pennsylvania to
adopt standardized and centralized labor policies.
In the only truly comparative chapter in the book, Channon analyzes the
divergent paths of the American and British locomotive industries. This
divergence resulted from conditions unique to each country, and indicated that
there was no one best practice for locomotive manufacture. Still, the British
tradition of railroad-built locomotives more nearly fit the Chandlerian model
of vertical integration than did the American practice of buying locomotives
from outside suppliers.
The scope of Railways in Britain and the United States is commendably
wide, yet Channon’s reach exceeds his grasp. He simply attempts to cover too
much territory, introducing compelling topics without being able to fully
follow through on their analysis. He provides several superbly researched
chapters on British railways, yet these chapters fall well short of a
comprehensive treatment of a particular railway or its managerial structure as
it changed over time. His discussion of American labor practices lacks any
basis of comparison in the British experience. Channon correctly points out
that the 1921 Railways Act in Britain represented far more comprehensive state
regulation of private enterprise than did the 1920 Transportation Act in the
United States, yet does not provide an American regulatory counterpoint to the
British experience. At the risk of oversimplification, much of the book seems
to be an attempt, if not to refute Chandler, at least to indicate that the
railway industry in the United States is far more complex and less
managerially driven than Chandler alleged, and that British enterprise is more
efficient, more thoroughly integrated, and less dominated by family
connections than Chandler’s Scale and Scope might indicate. These
points are well taken, but they have been explored more thoroughly in other,
better-integrated studies.
These criticisms by no means destroy the value of the book, however. As
Channon points out, Railways in Britain and the United States is a
collection of essays, not a monograph or a synthesis. The somewhat curious
selection of topics notwithstanding, many of these essays raise fascinating
issues and should stimulate further discussion and research. The
breathtakingly high cost of the book begs the question of whether the author
could have found a more affordable venue for some of the more
thought-provoking essays — in journal articles, for example — but every
serious student of British or American railroad history, and anyone who
remains convinced that the Chandlerian synthesis explains absolutely
everything, should order this book (through interlibrary loan) and appreciate
its insights into the messy and unpredictable world of railroad transportation
in Britain and the United States.
Albert J. Churella is an assistant professor in the Social and International
Studies Program at Southern Polytechnic State University. He is the author of
From Steam to Diesel: Managerial Customs and Organizational Capabilities in
the Twentieth-Century American Locomotive Industry (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1998).
Subject(s): | Transport and Distribution, Energy, and Other Services |
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Geographic Area(s): | North America |
Time Period(s): | 20th Century: Pre WWII |