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Cummings: NCR founder a real leader

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By James Cummings, Columnist 10:25 PM Friday, June 19, 2009

The recent announcement that NCR plans to move its world headquarters out of Dayton after more than a century has generated a lot of conversation locally about “leadership,” or the lack thereof, in the Dayton region.

A look back at the history of NCR founder John H. Patterson can offer an interesting perspective on leadership as it used to exist and as it exists now.

The Patterson story is one of a genuine tycoon who wielded a level of power that no individual in business or in government could hope to approach today.

Patterson, who grew up in the Dayton area, was the son of a colonel and the grandson of colonels on both his mother’s and father’s side, according to a couple of old biographies, “John H. Patterson 1844-1922” and “Builders in New Fields.”

He became acquainted with cash registers, a new invention in his day, when they curtailed employee thefts at the general store of a coal company he co-owned. He bought the company that made the registers and changed the name of the company to National Cash Register in 1884.

Fast-forward to March 25, 1913, and we find wealthy businessman Patterson looking out his window at a rising Great Miami River and declaring, “Dayton will have an awful flood today. We must prepare to house and feed the people who will be driven from their homes.”

That day Patterson ordered food, bought and distributed boats, and converted his factory to a refugee center and hospital.

There is no individual anywhere in this region who, acting alone, could begin to duplicate that kind of emergency action today.

The owner of a company perhaps could decide to divert resources like Patterson, but what locally owned company has the kind of resources required to provide food and shelter for a significant percentage of the city at a moment’s notice?

And the companies operating locally that might have the resources required are led by people who don’t have the authority to suddenly stop buying widgets and start buying rowboats instead.

Dayton City Commissioner Joey Williams, for instance, is president and CEO of Chase Bank in Western Ohio, but he said, “As executives, we work on behalf of a corporation.

“We can work through charities and agencies to get things done in the community, but can we do things the way John Patterson did? There’s no way.”

Patterson also is probably responsible for Dayton adopting a council-manager form of government that puts day-to-day operations in the hands of a professional manager, unlike strong mayor cities. It’s ironic that a man who exercised such immense personal power insisted on a city government without a strong central leader.

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