Daniel McCallum


Daniel Craig McCallum was a Scottish-born American railroad engineer, general manager of the New York and Erie Railroad and Union Brevet Major General during the American Civil War, known as one of the early pioneers of management. He set down a set 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 and required less maintenance than previous designs. One such at Lanesboro, Pennsylvania over the Susquehanna River, drew national attention for its durable construction.
In the early 1850s, the New York and Erie Railroad promoted McCallum to the superintendent of the Susquehanna Division, one of the railroad's five operating divisions. About two years later he received another promotion, becoming the railroad's General Superintendent and succeeding Charles Minot during Homer Ramsdell's presidency. In this position, McCallum supervised the entire railroad, as well as restructured it to make it more efficient and safe. New management and communication methods used the telegraph. McCallum also described these new management principles, and introduced the first modern organizational chart. On 25 February 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 , 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, 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

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.
The St. Josephs Church was originally built 1843-1846 in the simple monumental tradition of the Greek Revival, with a gray stone facade of series of arched bays on the exterior facade. The simple church was enlarged 1849 into cruciform plan that sat a thousand. The interior was remodeled in 1895. The first steeple added in 1859 and replaced with a tower in 1909, designed by Joseph Oberlies. Nowadays only the preserved facade of St. Joseph's Church has remained.

McCallum's Patent Timber 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. An editorial notice from Appletons' Mechanics' Magazine, edited by Julius W. Adams commented on McCullam's Patent Timber Bridge, built in 1851 over the Susquehanna River, near Lanesboro', Pennsylvania, for the New York and Erie railroad.
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 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

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 it 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, 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. 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

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. It further describes:
Furthermore, a table is added showing the number of offices and employees classed. First were listed the employees in the five divisions of the New York & Erie Railroad divided in workers at the station, on trains, on repairs of trucks, and on repairs of bridges and buildings.
The chart was thought lost for years and only located at the Library of Congress after many years of research after Alfred Chandler had suggested its existence. It was found by Charles D. Wrege and Guidon Sorbo Jr. in 2005. They suggested that the visualization of the organizational tree probably was inspired by the shape of a local flower Salix caprea.

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:
McCallum presented the following general principles for the formation of such an efficient system of operations, reprinted in Vose
About the core principle of management, he summarized:
Vose 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.

American Civil War, 1862-65

In the American Civil War 11 February 1862, McCallum got appointed Military Director and Superintendent of the Union railroads, with the staff rank of colonel, by Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War. McCallum had authority to "enter upon, take possession of, hold and use all railroads, engines, cars, locomotives, and equipment that may be required for the transport of troops, arms, ammunition, and military supplies of the United States, and to do and perform all acts... that may be necessary and proper... for the safe and speedy transport aforesaid," he wrote in his 1866 report. 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.
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As McCallum's assistant was appointed Herman Haupt, who also was called to service in early 1862. The two worked practically independent from each other. 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. By the end of the war, the U.S. Military Railroads had, at different times during the war, used parts of 17 railroads as military lines in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania and 23 in Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, and North Carolina. In addition, the small Construction Corps grew from about 300 men in 1863 to nearly 10,000 men by the end of the war.
During his stint as superintendent of the U.S. Military Railroads, McCallum fulfilled the function of liaison officer between the government and the many railroads on the one hand, and manufacturers of railroad equipment on the other. His greatest success was supporting the western operations from Nashville and Chattanooga under Gen. William T. Sherman in the summer of 1864, by successfully supplying General Sherman's army of 100,000 men and 60,000 animals." "The successful supply of Sherman's army in its campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta was the most outstanding achievement of the military railroads," later reported Thomas Weber in The Northern Railroads in the Civil War, 1861–1865.
In 1865 McCallum participated in the organization of the Funeral and burial of Abraham Lincoln. Following his death by assassination, the body of Abraham Lincoln was brought from Washington, D.C. to its final resting place in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois, by funeral train, accompanied by dignitaries. The Department of War designated the route and declared railroads over which the remains passed as military roads under the control of McCallum as director and superintendent of United States Military Railroads. No person was allowed to be transported on the cars except those authorized by the War Department, and the train never moved at speeds of more than an hour to avoid any accidents.
To McCallum was due much of the efficiency of the railroad service during the civil war. He was brevetted brigadier-general of volunteers "for faithful and meritorious services," 24 Sept. 1864, and Major General, 13 March 1865. On 31 July 1866, he was mustered out of the service. In the same year, he published a report on the military railroads during the war, written with James Barnet Fry.

Reception

American timber bridges

The 1863 article entitled "American Timber Bridges" by the Institution of Civil Engineers described that:

The National Cyclopedia of American Biography 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 and metal constructions had taken over.
Nowadays the only remaining example in the world of the McCallum truss is the Percy Covered Bridge, ironically an automobile and footbridge. It crosses the Chateauguay River at Powerscourt, Québec, between the municipalities of Elgin and Hinchinbrooke.

Management principles

Chandler stipulated that:
McCallum's work drew national and international attention. Chandler recalled that
McCallum's ideas were further developed by others, such as Chandler 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