A British Business Elite: The Chief Executive Managers of the Railway Industry *850-1922

Business History Review

Volumn 47, Issue 3, 1973, Pages 289-316

  Gourvish, Terence R ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84971795292     PISSN: 00076805     EISSN: 2044768X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3113266     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. Charlotte Erickson, British Industrialists: Steel and Hosiery, 1850-1950 (Cambridge, 1959).
2. Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 1845-1890: The Business Mind in Action (Cambridge, Mass., 1953).
3. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., “The Railroads: Pioneers in Modem Corporate Management,” Business History Review, 39 (Spring, 1965), 16-40.
4. Brian R. Mitchell, “The Coming of the Railways and United Kingdom Economic Growth,” Journal of Economic History, 24 (September, 1964), 315-336.
5. Malcolm C. Reed, ed., Railways in the Victorian Economy (Newton Abbot, 1969).
6. John R. Kellett, The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities (London, 1969).
7. Ronald S. Edwards, “Some Notes on the Early Literature and Development of Cost Accounting in Great Britain,” The Accountant, 107 (1937), 193.
8. Gourvish, Mark Huish, 262-267.
9. Harold Perkin, The Age of the Railway (Newton Abbot, 1971), 172.
10. James Grierson, Railway Rates, English and Foreign (1886).
11. A. Kaye Butterworth, A Treatise on the Law Relating to Rates and Traffic on Railways and Canals (1889).
12. George Findlay, The Working and Management of an English Railway (1889). The authors were all chief executives of large railways.
13. David Stevenson, Fifty Years on the London & North Western Railway (1891);.
14. George P. Neele, Railway Reminiscences (1904).
15. Joseph Tatlow, Fifty Years of Railway Life (1920). An exception is Felix J. C. Pole: His Book (1954); Pole was general manager of the Great Western Railway, 1921-1929.
16. Michael Robbins, The Railway Age (London, 1962), 92, and see also Harold Pollins, Britain's Railways (Newton Abbot, 1971)
17. C. Hamilton Ellis, “Lewin Papers Concerning Sir George Gibb,” Journal of Transport History, 5 (November, 1962), 226, and North Eastern Report on General Reorganization, 1902, NER4/56, British Transport Historical Records (hereafter BTHR). Wedgwood, a member of the famous pottery family, became general manager of the company in 1922 and general manager of the newly created London & North Eastern in 1923.
18. Michael Sanderson, The Universities and British Industry, 1850-1970 (London, 1972), 184-185.
19. Frank Musgrove, “Middle-Class Education and Employment in the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd. series, 12 (August, 1959), 104-111.
20. A. Kaye Butterworth (North Eastern), Guy Granet (Midland), and James Inglis (Great Western), appointed before and Donald Matheson (Caledonian), Percy Tempest (South Eastern & Chatham), Henry Thornton (Great Eastern), Arthur Watson (Lancashire & Yorkshire, London & North Western), and Ralph Wedgwood (North Eastern), appointed after 1910. All but one of these men had joined the industry after 1885. The exception was Inglis, who began his railway career in 1875.
21. Gibb, born in 1850, had experience of both engineering and law before first joining the railways as a solicitor with the Great Western in 1877. He left to take up private practice in 1880, rejoining the industry as solicitor of the North Eastern in 1882. Butterworth, born in 1854, acted as a barrister and solicitor before joining the railways in 1883, also with the Great Western. He became clerk to Bedfordshire County Council in 1890, leaving to join the North Eastern in 1891.
22. Granet, born in 1867, spent much of his early career as a barrister. His first connection with railways came in 1900, on his appointment as secretary to the Railway Companies' Association. His first experience of a railway company came with his appointment as assistant general manager of the Midland in 1905.
23. R. Bonavia, The Organisation of British Railways (London, 1971), 14-19.
24. W. F. Mills, The Railway Services: Its Exigencies, Provisions, and Requirements (London, 1867).
25. D. MacGregor, Railway Superannuation Funds: Their Operation and Suggested Improvements (Edinburgh, 1887).
26. C. Ansell, Select Committee on Civil Service Superannuation, B.P.P. 1856, 9, QQ. 3176-3232. Executives received life annuities, related to length of service and average salary (payments varied between about 25 per cent and 60 per cent of salary). They were often supplemented by additional bonuses. Managers with limited pension rights were usually granted lump sums, representing six months' or a year's current salary. After 1900 some managers were able to negotiate fixed-term employment contracts, with compensation to be paid if the contract were terminated prematurely. It cost the Midland 19,500 to end Frank Tatlow's contract when the company was wound up in 1922” Midland Mins, 1922, MID1/30, BTHR.
27. Sidney Pollard, in The Genesis of Modern Management (London, 1965), 144, suggests that “top managers” were earning between E500 and £2,000 per annum in the period 1790-1830. However, he concedes that “many, if not most, of these men were partners in their firms.”.
28. Guy Routh, Occupations and Pay in Great Britain, 1906-60 (Cambridge, 1965), 70, and compare Table 11. Note that Routh was concerned with current earnings and not with starting pay.
29. G. Routh, “Civil Service Pay, 1875 to 1950,” Economica, new ser. 21 (August, 1954), 206, and compare Table 11.
30. Daniel Gooch, Locomotive superintendent of the Great Western, 1857-1864, was knighted in 1866 for his contribution to Atlantic cable communication (he was chairman of the G. W., 1865-1889).
31. Richard Creed and C. R. Moorsom, both of the London & North Western, are notable exceptions to the rule.
32. William R. Lawson, British Railways, A Financial and Commercial Survey (London, 1913), 219.
33. Joseph Tatlow, general manager of the Midland & Great Western Railway of Ireland, who on retirement in 1912 became a director. He later wrote: “I had long cherished the hope that when in the course of time, I sought to retire from the active duties of railway management, I might perhaps be promoted to a seat on the Board of the Company.” Tatlow, Fifty Years of Railway Life, 197.
34. Geoffrey Channon, “A Nineteenth-Century Investment Decision: The Midland Railway's London Extension,” Economic History Review, 2nd series, 25 (August, 1972), 448-470.
35. Daniel Gooch, ex-locomotive superintendent of the Great Western, chairman of the company, 1865-1889.
36. J. S. Forbes, Granet, Pole, and Wedgwood. Insurance: Allport, J. S. Forbes, and Granet.
37. Hawke, Railways and Economic Growth, 384-385.
38. Gourvish, Mark Huish, 265-266.
39. William Miller, “American Historians and the Business Elite,” and “The Business Elite in Business Bureaucracies,” all in William Miller, ed., Men in Business (New York, 1962), 193-211, 286-337; and Newcomer, Big Business Executive, 52-82.
40. Compare Miller, “The Business Elite in Business Bureaucracies,” in Men in Business, 287-288.
41. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York, 1956), 118-146.
42. Thomas B. Bottomore, Elites and Society (London, 1966), 77-82.