Thread by @DjangoWexler

Because I am a COOL AND EXCITING person I am reading a book about the development of modern managerial practices in the US between 1850 and 1920, and it is making me think @maxgladstone thoughts.

I'm used to thinking of the trappings of bureaucracy -- reports, procedures, and so on, as sort of conformity for conformity's sake. Which they are sometimes! And the book contains somewhat alarming sentences like this.

However, they come about in response to genuine problems!

See, in the pre- or early industrial days, a business was usually organized around one person or a small group, who could just tell everyone else what they wanted them to do.

To the extent that people wrote things down or used a system to figure out, say, which nails went in which barrel, it was just whatever Bob the foreman had thought up.

If you have ever worked at a small business with a few other people where there are a million jury-rigged procedures and workarounds but they all function if you know them, you understand this perfectly.

"See, I have this system for keeping track of which pencils go where, and which boxes we use for what..." etc.

And you dealt with only a few other businesses, suppliers and customers, so you just learned their little peculiarities and whatnot.

If you wanted to start a branch of the business in another town, you'd get your brother-in-law who you kind of trust, and you'd sent him off in a wagon with a bag of money and hope for the best.

BUT (and here is where it gets @maxgladstone -y) along come RAILROADS. And with railroads come RAILROAD ACCIDENTS and new and exciting ways to be horribly mangled.

@maxgladstone And the old "holler at Bob until he explains his stupid system" wasn't cutting it anymore, because the railroad was a) too physically big to be controlled by a single Bob and b) the consequences of getting something wrong involved high-speed impact of tons of hot iron.

@maxgladstone So the railroads developed the beginnings of written procedure manuals, safety reports, and the whole shebang, because they needed to standardize -- when you're riding from one person's area of responsibility to another at 50 mph, you need to be able to read the signs.

@maxgladstone And the thing that struck me today is that this is about *scale*. Written procedures became necessary when the scale of the enterprise became more than human -- farther then a human could shout or see, faster than a human could react.

@maxgladstone You have this *thing* now and you need written incantations to bind and control it.

@maxgladstone To segue back into my own wheelhouse, something very similar happened to armies in the age of mass conscription -- they became large enough that the traditional modes of administration no longer worked.

@maxgladstone First the French Revolutionary, then the Napoleonic and later Prussian armies and everyone who followed suit required new systems which involved, among other things, huge amounts of paperwork.

@maxgladstone Anyway. Today's history contemplations brought to you by CONTROL THROUGH COMMUNICATION, THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR, and the letter 3.