The man who gave his name to The H. M. Rowe Company dreamed of becoming a locomotive engineer when he was growing up in western Pennsylvania. But the career of Harry Marc Rowe was to follow a completely different course.

Initially, it appeared that Rowe would devote his life to teaching, but he soon realized that the classroom was too restrictive for him. Even switching to business education and eventually becoming president of Curry College in Pittsburgh was not enough to satisfy him. He wanted to go into business for himself. Calling upon his experience in teaching accounting, he became a bookkeeper. At the time, this was a dramatic step because the profession was in its infancy. H. M. Rowe became one the earliest practicing accountants in America.

A meeting with Warren Sadler, the owner of a Baltimore business school, propelled Rowe into publishing in 1894. He was asked to spend three or four weeks in Baltimore editing a bookkeeping manuscript that Sadler wanted to publish.

Rowe never returned to Pittsburgh. Instead he wrote his own bookkeeping manuscript, incorporating many ideas he had formulated while working as an accountant in Pittsburgh. The result was his Budget System adaptation of Bookkeepers and Office Practice. It was an instant success. Gone was the dry theory, and in its place was a practical workbook format. Two years after Rowe first arrived in Baltimore, he became Sadler's partner.

With Rowe at the helm, the renamed Sadler-Rowe Company became more prominent. In 1907 he bought out his old partner. Sadler died two years later, and in 1911 the firm became The H. M. Rowe Company. It boasted more than 30 titles, covering every subject taught in the business schools of the day. Rowe's proudest achievement was the publication in 1910 of his own book, Bookkeeping and Accounting, which quickly became a standard text.

"I laid myself out on that book," he wrote later. "I spent twice as much time and worked twice as hard on it as I have anything else I have written."

Rowe's interest in business education was widespread. He was a founder in 1897 of the Eastern Commercial Teachers' Association (now called the Eastern Business Education Association) and its president in 1904. In 1912 he gathered together a group of prominent industrial leaders and convinced them of the need to establish schools to train their employees. This led to the formation of the National Association of Corporation Schools of America. With a membership of 125 companies, representing a total capital of some $20 billion, Rowe's brainchild become one of the forerunners of vocational education in America.

H. M. Rowe was known for his forthright comments in The Rowe Budget, the company's official publication. He billed himself as the "Quiet Observer" who offered "Some Random Thoughts."

Writing on business and government in 1915, he said, "Life is becoming a burden to the man of affairs, whether he is in business for himself or in the service of others...Municipal and State governments lie awake nights trying to find new things to tax so that they will have more money for what most of us believe is extravagant expenditure. The Federal Government is becoming as persistent a tax gatherer as the Caesars of Rome."

Rowe recognized and reacted to the changing world around him. He realized early the impact that the automobile would have on this country, and was one of the prime movers in the fledgling American Automobile Association. After holding various executive positions with the Maryland AAA in the early years of this century, he became president of the national body in 1916 and served in that capacity until 1918. He was one of the main proponents of the "Good Roads" movement and frequently represented the AAA at Congressional hearings in Washington.

In the years leading up to his death in 1926, life became busier than ever for Rowe. He was president of the Carozza-Rowe Construction Company, a firm with many big engineering contracts in the Baltimore area. He also operated a fully-equipped dairy farm and owned a herd of choice Holstein cattle. In his spare time, he contributed articles to the Maryland Farmer and other agricultural journals.

H. M. Rowe showed uncommon foresight during his life. "New things come so rapidly that what is new today is old tomorrow," he wrote in 1914, "and the true significance of many of our most stupendous achievements are realized by a relatively small number of all the people." Rowe could well consider himself one who did.

* This article originally appeared in the Spring, 1981 issue of Punchline.