The vast majority of the company’s senior Traffic Department
managers, which included Superintendents of the Line, Traffic Managers,
District Superintendents, District Goods Superintendents and Wagon Masters,
originated from the company’s primary labour market (PLM). This labour market
consisted of the clerical staff and included office lads, junior clerks,
telegraph clerks, clerks, station masters, chief clerks, inspectors, goods
canvassers and goods agents. A ‘rough’ promotional tree in the department is
shown. Furthermore, only a few of the department’s managers came from external
sources or the secondary labour market (which encompassed all non-clerical
posts).
Therefore, future manager’s careers was largely
determined by the position they started in. Research on the position in which
L&SWR’s Traffic Department managers started their railway careers is shown
in the table below and the data is presented by the decade in which they joined
the company.
Overall, only three of the seventy railway managers
sampled started their careers on the secondary labour market (4.28%), two
beginning as porters and one as a ticket inspector. Indeed, those who began
their employment in clerical positions dominated.
However, one feature of the table that should be noted is
that the proportion of future managers who started their L&SWR careers in positions
higher in the hierarchy, for example clerk or chief clerk, diminished over the
period. The proportion in the 1830s and 40s was 57.1%, while in the 1850s it
was 83.3%. However, as the criteria to become a clerk became stricter, being
increasingly restricted to school-leavers, these proportions declined, and only
40% of future managers joined the company in senior clerical positions in the
1860s. Therefore, by the1870s no future managers started in any position in the
hierarchy above ‘Junior Clerk’, ‘Lad’ or ‘Messenger.’
The result of the policy of increasing restricting
entrance into the PLM to school leavers was that as the railway industry
matured the age most managers joined the company also declined through the
decades. The table below shows the ages that seventy-one Traffic Department
managers started their careers between 1850 and 1900. The data is sorted by the
decade in which they joined the company.
The future managers who had begun their L&SWR careers
in the 1830s and 40s had a wide range of ages, with 46.7% joining the company when
they were beyond their teenage years. But, because of the changes outlined
above, the proportion joining above twenty years old diminished. In the 1850s
it was 38.4% and in the 1860s 21.0%. Thereafter, all those who became middle or
senior traffic managers on the L&SWR were in their teens when they joined
the company.
The effect of these changes was that as the decades
progressed, the length of time it took individuals to become middle or senior managers
grew longer. The table below shows the average number of years that it took the
managers to reach their first middle or senior management post. The data is
collated according to the decade in which they reached that point.
While in some decades the sample sizes are small, and
this would have affected the figures, there was a clear change in the 1880s. In
the very early years of the L&SWR new middle or senior managers had on
average only served the company for a short time. While in the 1850s, 60s and 70s, individuals
who were appointed to managerial posts had been employed for an average of between
twelve and sixteen years. However, thereafter, all new middle or senior managers
had been with the company above an average of twenty-five years.
Therefore, what the three sets of suggest is that there
is a change in the starting position, starting age and length of career of new middle
and senior managers around 1880. Before then managers could have begun their
careers in fairly senior positions, above the age of twenty and would have gone
into management after a short space of time. However, thereafter, new middle
and senior managers had started their railway careers in their teens, usually
in the position of junior clerk or lad, and had worked their way through the
ranks of the company.
Therefore, the evidence shows that in the company’s early
years, large numbers of people were appointed to more senior posts in the PLM,
such as Clerk, Station Agent or Chief Clerk. This reflected the emergent nature
of the industry and the fact that trained railway professionals were in short
supply. Yet, as the company matured there were increasingly enough people being
promoted up the hierarchy from below to fill any vacancies that appeared.
Consequently, fewer people were appointed directly into higher positions. Consequently,
after the 1870s the, only way to enter the company’s PLM, and have the chance
of rising into management, was to join it out of school at the lowest point on
the promotional ladder.
All data from
company staff records, and the L&SWR’s Staff Magazine, ‘The South Western
Gazette.’
Sam Fay is an interesting case. Having worked his way up from Junior Clerk on the L&SWR (starting in 1872 aged 15), he gradually climbed the hierarchy until he became Assistant Storekeeper in 1891. He left the L&SWR in 1892 to become General Manager of the much smaller Midland & South Western Junction Railway. Returned to the L&SWR in 1899 as Superintendant of the Line (details from the Railway Year Book). I guess he might not have achieved that position had he stayed at the L&SWR.
ReplyDeleteAfter your period, Gilbert Szlumper is another interesting case - began his career as a civil engineer with the L&SWR and eventually succeeded Sir Herbert Walker as General Manager of the Southern Railway.