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Electrical Manufacturing Around 1900*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Harold C. Passer
Harold C. Passer
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

During the two decades prior to 1900, electrical manufacturing companies grew from small, single-plant firms, producing only a few items and employing several hundred workers, to large, multiplant organizations, with hundreds of products and thousands of employees. This change in the scale of operations required the invention and application of new organizational forms and new administrative procedures. The men who were responsible for these developments were among the first to recognize and solve the administrative problems of large industrial corporations. The work of these men is the subject of this paper.

Type
Development of Large-Scale Organization
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , Fall 1952 , pp. 378 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1952

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References

1 Insull, Samuel, Central Station Electric Service (Chicago, 1915), p. xxxixGoogle Scholar.

2 General Electric Company, “Minutes of the Sales Committee,” August 21, 1893 (in the historical files of the General Electric Company, Schenectady, New York)Google Scholar.

3 Thomson-Houston Electric Company, Annual Report, February 2, 1891, p. 4.

4 Thomson-Houston Electric Company, “Report of the Meeting of the Standardizing Bureau,” February 24–27, 1891 (GE files).

5 Electrical World, XXIII (January 6, 1894), 4Google Scholar.

6 General Electric Company, “Minutes of the Sales Committee,” August 17, 1893 (GE files).

7 “Minutes of the Sales Committee,” September 19, 1893.

8 Broderick, J. T., Forty years with General Electric (Albany, 1929), pp. 62–70Google Scholar.

9 General Electric Company, Annual Report, January 31, 1894, pp. 6, 8.

10 General Electric Company, Annual Report, January 31, 1896, p. 9.

11 Letter from W. J. Clark, Manager of the Railway Department, to Local Office Managers, September 15, 1895 (GE files).

12 Letter from Eugene Griffin, First Vice-President, to Local Office Managers, July 25, 1895 (GE files).

13 Hammond, J. W., Men and Volts (Philadelphia, 1941), p. 249Google Scholar.

14 The bulletins, circular letters, and other documents referred to in this section are in GE files.

15 Lamme, B. G., Electrical Engineer: An Autobiography (New York, 1926), p. 55Google Scholar.

16 Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, Annual Report, June 23, 1897, p. 8.

17 These documents, principally letters, are in the historical files of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

18 See p. 382.

19 I am indebted to Professor F. F. Stephan of Princeton University for this point and for other helpful suggestions.