%0 Journal Article
%T WORKING ON THE RAILROAD: WORKERS AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD¡¯S PENSION PLAN
%A Charles W. Cheape
%J Essays in Economic & Business History
%D 2007
%I The Economic & Business History Society
%X In 1900 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company implemented a pioneering pension plan that became a model for American business in the twentieth century. Although scholars have described the two-stage creation as management¡¯s effort to achieve corporate efficiency and control over its labor force, this paper demonstrates a more complicated, untidy evolution. Employees played a vital, active role in the quarter-century development of the pension scheme, repeatedly shaping the process and its results directly and indirectly, consciously and unconsciously. Furthermore, the plan¡¯s evolution was a messy, often decentralized, and incremental process considerably at oddsw ith the firm¡¯s reputation for systematic, analytical management.
%U http://www.ebhsoc.org/journal/index.php/journal/article/view/214