and the pressures of self-seeking interests. However, at the same time, as Fairbank wrote, “He was quick to oppose and resent any tendency of the superior administrative agency to interfere in the executive or ad- ministrative policies of the Bureau.” For the most part, because of the respect he commanded from all the Department heads under whom he served, he was remarkably free of any such interference.
In the actual day-to-day administration of the Bureau, the Chief could not be considered one of the great leaders of management science. He directed the Bureau mainly through individual conferences with a relatively few men in whom he reposed confidence and through memos often produced as a result of these individual conferences. Fairbank mentioned MacDonald’s administrative style:
Conferences with all the division heads jointly were rare almost to the point of total ahsence of occurrence. In his last years in Washington he may have been persuaded that the idea of regular ‘staff’ meetings might he worthy of trial, hut after a few such ‘trials,’ his interest in the idea (never very keen) simply evaporated. . . . Mr. MacDonald was averse to the employment of most of the devices now so highly esteemed by so-called ‘management consultants.’ He had no interest in ‘Suggestion Boxes,’ or the offering of pecuniary rewards for employee suggestions. If there was overlapping of the responsibilities of the several divisions of the organization or lack of clarification of the definition of individual or organic duties, he didn’t worry much about it. As he seemed to have little or no concern about his own salary, he expected a similar avoidance of anything like a request for a raise on the part of every employee. Nothing would more certainly result in the consignment of any member of the organization to the MacDonald doghouse than to be caught agitating for an increase in pay. To paraphrase Lord Nelson’s famous order the simple rule was: The Bureau expects that every man this day will do his duty. And by and large, by golly, they did. The Bureau enjoyed an esprit de corps that many a ‘scientifically managed’ organization of these days couldn’t purchase with all the so-called incentives and rewards that the ingenuity of the doctors of management science can devise.
As head of the Bureau, Mr. MacDonald was called upon to participate as a speaker on many occasions, be it at a congressional hearing, a seminar, or an after dinner speech. Yet in 34 years of public speaking, the Chief never developed a reputation for an eloquent style, and it seems for good reason. Yet at all these occasions, though his style was not eloquent, it was, more importantly, effective. Again, as Mr. Fairbank commented,
His public speeches, especially those before the AASHO were so heavily factual and dry as to impose a serious burden upon the attentiveness of the audience. These speeches he almost always wrote himself; and he often turned from his written text to interpolate remarks which seemed unnecessary and which usually caused both the speaker and the audience to lose the thread of what he had been saying. But when all this has been said the fact remains that he somehow left his hearers in both public and private audiences with a sense of his mastery of whatever the matter was that was under discussion. He was outstandingly effective in his relations with Congressional Committees and individual Congressmen and Senators, often by patient repetition of his recommendations and views converting to their support those who initially opposed or even ridiculed them.
The Chief retired from the Bureau of Public Roads in July 1951, but at the request of President Truman stayed on as interim head until March 31, 1953, when Francis V. duPont assumed the position. In his retirement, however, the Chief continued to work for better roads and general transportation improvement from his new position as distinguished research engineer of the Transportation Institute of Texas A & M College. He saw new challenges in filling the gaps that existed in the knowledge about transportation. Then, on April 7, 1957, the Chief quietly passed away.
His old friend, Pyke Johnson, gave a close, personal look at the man, Thomas H. MacDonald, in an article he wrote at the time of the Chief’s death.
A quiet and modest man, a man of few intimates, a man who found solace in Bertrand Russell, Dr. Toynbee, Erie Stanley Gardner, and A. Conan Doyle, with few writers in between ; a husband, a father, a chef, a photographer, a top engineer and administrator, a statesman who built an enduring monument to himself not so much in roads and bridges as in the lives of people.
Few knew him. But those few knew him as one of the men of history, who with their associates, have profoundly affected the course of modern life.
Thomas H. MacDonald—The Chief.
