Daniel McCallum

Daniel Craig McCallum (January 21, 1815 – December 27, 1878) was a Scottish-born American railroad engineer, general manager of the New York and Erie Railroad and Union Brevet Major General of the United States Military Railroad during the American Civil War, known as one of the early pioneers of management. He set down a group of general principles of management, and is credited for having developed the first modern organizational chart.

Early life and education

McCallum was born in Johnstone in the council area of Renfrewshire in the west-central Lowlands of Scotland in 1815. In 1822, while he was still a boy, his family emigrated to Rochester, New York. He did attend elementary school but did not want to follow his father's footsteps and become a tailor. Instead, McCallum left school to become a carpenter and worked his way up.

New York engineer

In the early 1840s, McCallum worked as a civil engineer in Rochester, designing buildings including Saint Joseph's Church. Soon he started building and maintaining railway bridges as subcontractor for the New York and Erie Railroad. By the late 1840s, the New York and Erie Railroad placed McCallum in charge of its bridges, and he started experimenting with new construction methods. He developed and in 1851 patented a new type of bridge, named the "McCallum Inflexible Arched Truss Bridge", which could withstand heavier loads On February 25, 1857,

In 1858, McCallum resigned from the Erie Railroad and founded the McCallum Bridge Company.

U.S. military railroads

On February 11, 1862, weeks after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Railways and Telegraph Act of January 31, 1862 (which authorized the president to seize and operate any railroad or telegraph company's equipment for use during the American Civil War), the new secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton appointed McCallum as military director and superintendent of the United States Military Railroad with the staff rank of colonel. The USMRR's primary mission was to repair and operate captured Southern lines to support the Union army.

The previous secretary of war, Simon Cameron, had called on the Pennsylvania Railroad's Vice President Thomas A. Scott to coordinate railroads and Scott had been promoted to Assistant Secretary of War. However, President Lincoln replaced Cameron in January after newspapers reported he unduly favored the North Central Railroad in which he was a stockholder, at the expense of rival railroads including the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, including allowing removed B&O track and telegraph wire to be shipped to repair damaged Virginia lines. On April 22, 1862, Stanton summoned West Point graduate Herman Haupt, who had become a leading railway engineer after resigning his U.S. Army commission and who had applied for Scott's job, to evaluate the engineering required to rebuild the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac line in Virginia. On May 28 Haupt was also appointed a colonel, but he twice refused military rank (including a promotion to brigadier general on September 5, 1862), instead of becoming the civilian Chief of Construction and Transportation in the Department of the Rappahannock. Although Haupt would have difficulties dealing with some military men, he worked well with McCallum.

McCallum remained in Washington during the war to oversee the "big picture" of USMRR operations, and especially coordinate deliveries of locomotives and other equipment with manufacturers. He received a brevet promotion to brigadier-general of volunteers for faithful and meritorious services on September 24, 1864, and his authority was extended to the Western Theater and to support Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. He received another promotion to major general in 1865. In July 1866 McCallum was mustered out of the service and published a report on the military railroads during the war.

MacCallum also wrote a set of poems. The most famous was called 'Lights on the Bridge', which he wrote shortly before his death, memorializing his friend, Sam Campbell, a railroad engineer killed in 1842. McCallum himself died in Brooklyn, New York, on December 27, 1878.

Work

Architecture, 1830s-40s

thumb|St. Joseph's Church facade.

McCallum was an architect in Rochester from 1840, and for a few subsequent years. He was an accomplished architect and held a high position in his profession. Among the prominent buildings erected by him are the House of Refuge, St. Josephs Church, St. Marys Hospital, and the Odd-Fellows' Hall building. He did much to improve the general architecture of the city. His drawings and studies were carefully made, and his plans well-adapted to location. Nowadays only the preserved facade of St. Joseph's Church has remained.

McCallum's inflexible arched truss bridge, 1840s–60s

Late 1840s McCallum developed a specific truss bridge construction for the railroad bridges, called McCallum inflexible arched truss. It was constructed principally of pine timber, with less than the ordinary portion of iron rods, blots and casings.

These inflexible arched trusses were used in wooden railroad bridges across the US and Canada in the 19th century. After his work at the New York and Erie Railroad, in 1858 McCallum founded the McCallum Bridge Company in Cincinnati. The company specialized in railroad bridges, which they build in the Western and Southern States. Some of the Howe truss men were so impressed by McCallum's business success (if not by his arguments) that they began arching their top chords, and a notable example of this practice was the Rock Island Bridge over the Mississippi River. The advent of steel bridges in the 1860s effectively made obsolete his unique design.

Large-scale management problems at New York & Erie Railroad, 1850s

thumb|320px|New York & Erie Railroad system map, circa 1855

McCallum had started at the New York & Erie Railroad as a subcontractor to build and maintain bridges, was appointed superintendent of one region, and eventually made its general superintendent in 1855, controlling over 5000 employees. In this position McCallum came in contact with the large-scale management problems, which other great railroad companies such as the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad also faced. One of the main problems of these largest railroad companies was the rising of costs of moving freight in comparison to smaller companies. McCallum postulated that this was caused by the inefficient internal organization. In his 1856 report to the stockholders of the New York & Erie Railroad he explained:

New methods had to be invented for mobilizing, controlling, and apportioning capital, for operating a widely dispersed system, and for supervising thousands of specialized workmen spread over hundreds of miles. The railroads solved all these problems and became the model for all large businesses. The main innovators were three engineers, Benjamin H. Latrobe of the Baltimore and Ohio, McCallum of the Erie, and John Edgar Thomson of the Pennsylvania (railroad). They devised the functional departments and first defined the lines of authority, responsibility, and communication with the concomitant separation of line and staff duties which have remained the principles of the modern American corporation.

Illustrative organization chart, 1855

thumb|Organizational diagram of the New York and Erie Railroad, 1855

As general superintendent McCallum in 1855 designed an illustrative organization chart of the New York and Erie Railway, which is considered to be the first modern organization chart, which was compiled and drawn by the civil engineer George Holt Henshaw. On the chart is written, that the diagram represents a plan of organization, and exhibits the division of administrative duties and shows the number and class of employees engaged in each department, and is dated September 1855.

The chart explains that the diagram is compiled from the latest monthly report and indicates the average number of employees of each class engaged in the Operating Department of the railroad company. It shows the powers and duties of each individual and to whom they are subject to report. and Guidon Sorbo Jr. (1927–2008) in 2005. They suggested that the visualization of the organizational tree probably was inspired by the shape of a local flower Salix caprea (goat willow, also known as the pussy willow, or great sallow).

Principles of management, 1856

As General Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad, McCallum developed new ideas about a modern system of management. In his 1856 report he formulated the following requirements:

thumb|Organization scheme as pictured by McCallum, 1856

thumb|Table shows the rate and direction of subordination for a first class railroad, from [[George L. Vose|Vose (1857).]]

:"A system of operations to be efficient and successful should be such as to give to the principal and responsible head of the running department a complete daily history of details in all their minutiae. Without such supervision, the procurement of a satisfactory annual statement must be regarded as extremely problematic. The fact that dividends are made without such control does not disprove the position, as in many cases the extraordinarily remunerative nature of an enterprise may ensure satisfactory returns under the most loose and inefficient management..."

McCallum presented the following general principles for the formation of such an efficient system of operations, reprinted in Vose (1857)

:*First. A proper division of responsibilities.

:*Second. Sufficient power conferred to enable the same to be fully carried out, that such responsibilities may be real in their character.

:*Third. The means of knowing whether such responsibilities are faithfully executed.

:*Fourth. Great promptness in the report of all derelictions of duty, that evils may at once be corrected.

:*Fifth. Such information to be obtained through a system of daily reports and checks that will not embarrass principal officers nor lessen their influence with their subordinates.

:*Sixth. The adoption of a system, as a whole, which will not only enable the general superintendent to detect errors immediately, but will also point out the delinquent.

About the core principle of management, he summarized:

Vose (1857, p. 416) added, that all subordinates should be accountable to, and directed by, their immediate superiors only. Each officer must have authority, with the approval of the general superintendent, to appoint all persons for whose acts he is held responsible, and to dismiss any subordinate when in his judgment the interests of the company demand it. McCallum's view was that his organization "was a great construction and transportation machine, for carrying out the objects of the commanding generals." As superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad McCallum had developed a reputation as an autocratic leader, running his railroad with "strict precision and stern discipline." But to his credit, he combined his engineering and administrative talents with his pleasant personality to make a success of his tenure. While McCallum was the administrative head of the U.S. Military Railroads, Herman Haupt was in charge of the operations of the railroad in the field. At the time that McCallum assumed his duties, the seven-mile road from Washington to Alexandria, Virginia, was the only railroad in federal government control. By May 1862 the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, which ran from Alexandria southwest toward Orange, Virginia, was an important supply line, as was the Manassas Gap Railroad, which covered the territory between Manassas Junction and Front Royal and Strasburg.

thumb|280px|Percy covered bridge

The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (1897) confirmed, that the inflexible arched truss introduced by McCallum has probably been in more general use in the United States than any other system of timber bridges. A 2012 Historic American Engineering Record confirms that:

This success didn't last much longer. McCallum continued to construct bridges during the Civil War, but the type of bridge fell out of favor. It was obsolete by 1870, because it was difficult to frame

Nowadays the only remaining example in the world of the McCallum truss is the Percy Covered Bridge (1861), ironically an automobile and footbridge. It crosses the Châteauguay River at Powerscourt, Québec, between the municipalities of Elgin and Hinchinbrooke.

Management principles

Chandler (1977) stipulated that:

McCallum's work drew national and international attention. Chandler (1977) recalled that

McCallum's ideas were further developed by others, such as Chandler (1956) explained: "expert railroad engineers as George Vose and John B. Jervis wrote much on the principles of systematic management which McCallum had first articulated and Poor had expanded upon."

Selected publications

1856. "Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders, for the Year Ending September 30" in: Annual Report. New York and Erie Railroad Company, 1856. p. 33-97
1857. "Report of D. C. McCallum to the stockholders of the New York and Erie Railroad, March 25" in: Annual Report. New York and Erie Railroad Company, 1857. (Extract online)
1859. McCallum's inflexible arched truss bridge explained and illustrated
1861. Military railroads, 1861-1867: general orders, instructions and reports. United States. War Dept.
1862. Soldiers' marching song: "Our country and our home." Air--"John Brown". 4 pages.
1866. Reports of Bvt. Brig. Gen. D. C. McCallum: director and general manager of the military railroads of the United States, and [of James B. Fry] the provost marshall general. With James Barnet Fry. United States. Military Railroad Dept.
1870. The Water Mill and Other Poems. Brooklyn, N.Y.

References

;Attribution

12px This article incorporates public domain material from ; and other public domain material from books and websites.

External links

Laying Down the Principles: Management at library.hbs.edu