3.Specialization. In the influential Principles of Scientific Man-
agement(1911), Frederick Taylor proposed that production
would be more efficient if it were broken up into a series of
single tasks, with each worker responsible for performing one
task in the most efficient manner possible. Instead of a toy
maker hammering, sewing, and painting every toy from start
to finish, perhaps taking two entire days to complete one doll,
it would be more efficient for one person do nothing but affix
arms. Where 20 start-to-finish toy makers could produce 10
dolls in a day, 20 specialized toy makers could produce 600.
In 1910, Henry Ford’s Model T automobiles were selling for
$780 each. Automobiles have many more parts than dolls, and
they must be connected with minute precision. But when Ford
put Taylorism to work in his plant in Highland Park, Michigan,
in 1914 with an assembly line, productivity increased tenfold,
and the price dropped to $360. Without mass production,or
Fordism,the goods and services of the Industrial Revolution
would be out of reach for the vast majority of the population.4.Wage labor. Instead of being paid for the end result of their
labor, workers got a regular paycheck in exchange for perform-
ing a specific task. Usually they never saw the end result. They
received the same pay, no matter how successful their product
was, while the handful of people who owned the factories kept
all of the profits. The owners were able to manipulate the political system for
their own purposes, setting the stage for many conflicts, some deadly, as work-
ers fought to improve their working conditions.5.Separation of work and home.The family farm was both home and workplace.
But the coming of the industrial factory meant that home and work were sepa-
rate, with enormous consequences for both realms.Consumption and the Modern Economy
As more efficient machines and factory assembly lines made manufacturing increas-
ingly simply, the emphasis of industrial economies shifted from production(how to
get more goods out there) to consumption(how to decide from among the goods avail-
able). Advertising became an essential part of business rather than an afterthought.
Products received brand names, trademarks, slogans, and spokespeople. General
stores were replaced by department stores like Harrod’s in London and Wanamaker’s
in the United States. In 1904, Macy’s, on Herald Square in New York City,
was advertised as “the largest store on Earth,” with nine stories, 33 ele-
vators, four escalators, and a system of pneumatic tubes. “Window shop-
ping,” looking through shop windows for items that one would like to
possess, became a common pastime (Lancaster, 1995).
In 1912, Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption
to mark the shift from the Protestant ethic described by Max Weber, where
prestige came from savings and thrift, to a new form of prestige based on
accumulating as many possessions as possible and showing them off.
Veblen argued that the real symbols of wealth were those that made it
look as though you didn’t have to work: Fashions like long fingernails,
high heels, and tight skirts for women were a sign that they were pam-
pered and didn’t need to work; and wealthy men were shown sailing, ski-
ing, and otherwise experiencing the leisure that only true wealth can bring.420 CHAPTER 13ECONOMY AND WORKJIndustrialization ushered
in large-scale factories,
assembly-line production, and
more routinized labor, and
thus transformed the experi-
ence of work itself. [Assembly
line at a generator factory of
the Ford Motor Company].
In 1916, cartoonist “Pop” Momand
introduced a strip in the New York World
called “Keeping Up with the Joneses,”
about Aloysius and Clarice McGinnis, their
daughter Julie, and their maid Belladonna,
all hatching wild schemes to convince
everyone that they had bigger and better
possessions than the neighbors. The phrase
is still common today.Didyouknow