On the Track of Efficiency: Scientific Management Comes to Railroad Shops, 1900–1930

Abstract

In 1910, Louis Brandeis claimed that scientific management could save the railroads a million dollars a day and avoid a rate increase. While Brandeis's claims are well known, historians have neglected the influence of scientific management on the railroads. In 1904, Harrington Emerson introduced repair scheduling techniques in the locomotive shops of the Santa Fe. Scheduling revolutionized repair, and–esponding in part to the regulatory pressures Brandeis helped create–by 1925 most major railroads employed it. In the 1920s, the carriers imported a second new management technique–the “progressive” system that focused on material flows, and introduced batch production techniques to car and locomotive repair. Collectively these methods prevented transportation bottlenecks, raised labor productivity, and reduced capital requirements.