Quincy Mining Company and Paternalism - Set 1

Mining Managers Managing Doctors

Context:

Paternalism was built on the idea that people at the top in the company were better equipped to make decisions than those below them, which sometimes resulted in managers making certain choices instead of trained medical staff.

The following letters were from the Quincy Mining Company’s president, William Rogers Todd. Although he lived in New Jersey most of the year, Todd had many suggestions for how the medical department should run day-to-day. He especially cared about “outside practice,” a normal practice in the Keweenaw where company doctors earned extra money treating private patients on top of company work. In these letters, Todd discussed their head of medical staff, Dr. McDonald, and his replacement, Dr. Fischer.

Keep in mind that from 1910-20, copper companies were struggling with market prices, and top executives at Quincy took pay cuts in the 1920s to keep everything running.¹ Could this have affected Todd’s opinion about priorities for the company?

While reading, look past the literal orders Todd gave. Does he reveal how he feels about himself and the doctors? Why did he have so much concern about their actions? What can be understood about the company from these letters?

¹ Larry D. Lankton and Charles K. Hyde, Old Reliable: An Illustrated History of the Quincy Mining Company (Hancock, MI: Quincy Mine Hoist Association, 1982), 142.

An Immediate Resignation in Cipher

Questions about Managing Doctors

A Conference with Dr. "Fisher"

Stop and Reflect:

Keep in mind that from 1910-20, copper companies were struggling with market prices, and top executives at Quincy took pay cuts in the 1920s to keep everything running.

• Could this have affected Todd’s opinion about priorities for the company?

• Does Todd reveal how he feels about himself and the doctors?

• Why did he have so much concern about their actions?

• What can be understood about the company from these letters?

Historian's Perspective:

President Todd may be used as a demonstration of how paternalism was set up to make powerful people believe themselves to be skilled in everything. This is not to say Todd’s ideas were wrong or right, but that he had a pattern of assuming he was needed for correct answers. The archives are full of examples of company managers getting personally involved with complicated projects, such as designing an entire hospital instead of allowing for the expertise of architects. When Todd said he preferred “not to meddle,” perhaps he inferred he wished they could read his mind, not that he thought the doctors should handle it alone.

One focus point is his concern about doctors' outside practices. While companies like Calumet and Hecla encouraged some outside patients because they felt it kept their doctors up-to-date with modern medicine, Todd implied it was the cause of most issues in the Quincy medical department. To Todd, doctors spent time and energy on work that wasn’t for the company. His second letter reveals that part of the issue he had about outside practice was a supposed lack of gratitude on the part of doctors. He also said he wanted to be “informed a little better than we are at present,” which implies that he saw the department as somehow separate or beyond his usual sphere of control.

What might have prompted his opinions? Maybe it was just in Todd’s personality to want more oversight, or maybe the tighter profit margins made him worried about how each part of the company was performing. While it is impossible to know what he was thinking without a source like a diary, researchers do their best to make connections when they can. A good place to start would be to look back further through the archives to see if the medical department always had tension with management, which could tell you when issues began.