Henry Hammett’s endeavor to build a modern textile mill proved an absolute model for southern revitalization after the Civil War, and this one a goal for Hammett. Building the mill would be only one of many successes Hammett accomplished, but behind his professional triumphs, stood a man who struggled to manage his business.
In the early nineteenth century, the way America and many parts of the world produced goods and services began to change. Instead of most products crafted in small artisanal shops with a boss and a handful of employees, products began being made in large factories. With this change, there were numerous lessons learned as businesses transformed from small shop work mostly sold locally, to large scale production sold nationally and internationally.
The railroad will be the first American industry to solve many of these issues. One of the most important issues though, how do you manage employees, logistics and finances of businesses operations on large scale, compared to small artisanal production? You have to develop management practices that allow business leaders to control portions of their company over long distances or manage not a handful of employees, but hundreds of thousands of employees. The railroad led this movement, creating mid-level management.
During the late nineteenth century, mid-level managers were a new position. And while this seems so basic of a concept, hiring someone to assist a businesses owner in leading his company was not a common practice. Something so new, that Henry Hammett struggled with this. Reading over his daily business letters, held in the Henry P. Hammett collection, Hammett filled his day completing simple tasks that today are delegated to assistants, secretaries, and mid-level managers. He wrote letters ordering coal, lumber, and cement, while arguing back and forth over the price of an organ for the village church. Today these mundane duties would never come across a CEO’s desk, let alone tie up his valuable time, but for Hammett they did tie up his time.
While Henry tackled the tedious of work, normally resigned for a secretary, his letters are also filled with complaints that he has no time for vacation, or time to accomplish anything outside of managing his textile mill. And in 1891, Henry Hammett passed away before he ever takes his vacation, but his ordering of cement will be in his last few letters.
In his life Hammett had many great accomplishments as a businessman, but he never figured out how to transition his business to incorporate managers and assistants that would handle the day-to-day work. Many looking at his letters today might regard Hammett as a “micro-manager”, but that is a short-sighted response. Hammett, like many businessmen of his time sometimes struggled to adapt to this new changing industrial of the world. His letters provide a great reflection of a hard driven businessman who let the minute details devour much of his time and life.
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