#52 Ancestors 2020 Week 36 Labor: My Cousin Henry Laurence Gantt, Efficiency Expert

 

If you've ever been a project manager and used a Gantt chart to break down the process and show the relationship between various parts of the project, then you are indebted to my cousin, Henry Gantt.  

Henry Laurence Gantt was born in 1861 in Calvert County MD, the fourth of eight children of Virgil and Mary Stewart Gantt. After the Civil War, the impoverished family moved to Baltimore MD, where Henry's mother supported the family by running a boarding house. Henry's father, Virgil, was deaf and not able to contribute much to the support of the household.  

One benefit of the move, however, was that Henry was able to attend the McDonogh School, which

McDonogh students

opened on November 21, 1873 as a free farm school for poor boys. Henry was one of the 21 students from Baltimore who entered the school on the day it opened.  The school was run with strict military discipline and the boys did all of the farming work, rising at 4:30 a.m. in summer to tend to the many tasks needed to keep the farm running. (I am quite sure that Henry's experience at McDonogh was a key factor in his later interest in efficiency!)

Henry was very successful at McDonogh and on graduating in 1878 won a scholarship to Johns Hopkins, living at McDonogh and commuting to the university daily. After graduation, he returned to teach at the McDonogh School for several years. He went on to obtain a master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Stevens Institute in New Jersey.

In 1887, he started work at Midvale Steel in Philadelphia PA as an assistant in the Engineering Department and by 1888 was a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.  Gantt was a practical inventor and in the early 1900's, he took out several joint patents concerned with improving the efficiency of metal-cutting tools. In 1901, however, he began what most consider to be his real life's work with the publication of his paper: A Bonus System of Rewarding Labor, which eventually developed into his first book: Work, Wages, and Profits in 1910.  In 1903, he first published his ideas for graphical charting of production flows which eventually became the Gantt Chart for which he is most popularly known. In 1904, he was invited to present a paper on The Principle of Management to the International Congress of Arts and Sciences at the St. Louis Exposition. 

Henry Gantt's legacy to project management is generally considered as the following: 

* The Gantt Chart: still accepted as an important management tool today, it provides a graphic schedule for the planning and controlling of work and recording progress toward stages of a project. 

* Industrial Efficiency: Industrial efficiency can only be produced by the application of scientific analysis to all aspects of the work in progress.  The industrial management role is to improve the system by eliminating chance and accidents. 

* The Task and Bonus System: He linked the bonus paid to managers to how well they taught their employees to improve performance. 

* The social responsibility of business: He believed that businesses have obligations to the welfare of the society in which they operate. 

Henry married Mary Eliza Snow in Massachusetts in 1899 and they had one daughter, Margaret Heighe Gantt in 1900.

Henry Laurence Gantt died in Montclair NJ 23 November 1919.  At his death, he had a national reputation as a mechanical and efficiency engineer and had worked during World War I for the US Ordnance Bureau. His last book, Organizing for Work, was published in 1918. 

In 1929, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers established the Henry Laurence Gantt award,

recognizing:

 contributions to society in general and management in particular, through speeches, writings and teachings; civic responsibility, as shown by personal participation in community projects; the esteem in which his/her contemporaries in the community hold the nominee; not only distinguished achievement in management, but patterns set in inspiring others in accepting the responsibilities of citizenship; understanding and skill in the field of human relations; participation in and contribution to organizations related to the field of management; understanding the value of engineering to society.

Henry Laurence Gantt was given the first award, posthumously.