In "Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980," education historians David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot (1982) offer a model for understanding the evolution of U. S. public school leadership from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. The authors assert that prior to 1890, common school "crusaders" campaigned among a largely rural, Protestant population (Tyack and Hansot 1982, 5). They promoted public education as essential to the development of a capitalist nation during a period when the U. S. economy was "small-scale and decentralized." Tyack and Hansot's sectional dichotomy raises the question of how educational leadership evolved in the border states--the five slaveholding states remaining in the Union during the Civil War. In this essay, the author examines the experience of one of those states--Missouri--and argues that its public school leadership differed in important ways from the Tyack-Hansot model for the North or South. Utilizing 50 years of state superintendent reports written by 10 men who occupied the office between 1865 and 1915, this paper shows that--well before 1890--Missouri's educational leaders saw public schools as active partners in promoting an industrial economy; they drew on metaphors from business (and occasionally science) to accomplish that end. Although after 1890 the reports cited explicit comparisons between school districts and corporations in making the case for reform, the earlier reports also show evidence of an industrial and corporate mindset, a desire for greater professionalism, and support for increased state control.