The size and complexity of these corporations forced their personalistic founders, however reluctantly, to delegate authority to salaried managers, accountants, and engineers, paving the way for the impersonal, managerial corporations of the twentieth century. “Swift and Company,” Gustavus Swift said, foretelling the future, “can get along without any man, myself included.” It would be wrong, however, to view the big Chicago packing companies of the 1890s as impersonal organizations. They were, as Paul Bourget saw them, images of the innovators who built them.
