John K. Brown

In eight weeks, thousands of workers at the Baldwin Works of Philadelphia would take a custom design from drawings to finished product. By 1905, more than seven engines rolled out of the plant every day. How this was done is the subject of this very interesting book. Baldwin was the premier locomotive manufacturer and ranked at the top of American industry for sixty years. Ironically, the major strength of the Baldwin company, the ability to build custom products efficiently to the customer's specific demands, was to prove a major weakness as the economy changed to a more consumer-driven environment where "standardized products, hierarchical managerial structures, and market control strategies dominated." Builders could not compete with manufacturers who mass-produced standard designs.

Matthias Baldwin began as a jewel smith in Philadelphia, but he was enamored of technology and soon built a small engine. More than a toy, it powered his first shop for forty years and now resides in the Smithsonian. Philadelphia, home of the Franklin Institute, which supported new inventions and technology, was also the home of numerous machine shops, and soon Baldwin had created a shop where he began to design ever better steam engines for railroads. He invented the Jervis leading truck, a pair of wheels that moved along as the track curved, reducing the number of derailments. His flexible-beam design became very popular because it had more driving wheels and with the weight of the engine over the drivers it could pull longer and heavier freight trains. By 1846, his shop made forty-two types of engines, he had paid off all his debts, and he had survived the panic of 1837, a severe market reversal. He had also bought out his early partners, making him the sole owner of the company.

You really have to be a locomotive or railroad buff to enjoy this book (isn't everybody?), but there is also a great deal about capitalism and market conditions in the nineteenth century. The Baldwin Works managed productivity increases on an average of 3.1% per year, as compared with 1.9% nationally, and it accomplished this through organizational and technical changes. By 1906, Baldwin was producing a locomotive every three hours, twenty-four hours a day. Baldwin minimized the risk inherent in the system by engaging in industry-wide price-fixing agreements, and he relied on "just-in-time" inventory supplies to reduce the need for substantial working capital. He drew a great deal of technical expertise from his customers, the railroads. The author suggests that Baldwin's success came also because of his reliance on a core of skilled workers rather than on trying to improve profits by manipulating workers and exploiting them.

That Baldwin rapidly lost ground to the diesel-electric engine may suggest that individual leadership tied to an entrenched way of operation might be a disadvantage in the long run.… (más)