Industrialization and the Transformation of American Life: A Brief Introduction

A Brief Introduction

Jonathan Rees

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317468042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Business allgemein

This book provides a descriptive, episodic yet analytical synthesis of industrialization in America. It integrates analysis of the profound economic and social changes taking place during the period between 1877 and the start of the Great Depression. The text is supported by 30 case studies to illustrate the underlying principles of industrialization that cumulatively convey a comprehensive understanding of the era.

Varieties of
Industrialization

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Q. Why and how did industrialization affect industries differently?

Industrialization happened most often in factories. “A factory,” explained the economist Carroll Wright in 1882, “is an establishment where several workmen are collected together… for producing results by their combined efforts, which they could not accomplish separately; and for saving the loss of time which the carrying of an article from place to place, during the several processes necessary to complete its manufacture, would occasion.”¹ Even this shortened version of Wright’s definition covers a lot of territory. Many concepts and ideas that shaped industrialization crossed industries during this era. Nevertheless, the exact manner in which industrialization changed the process of manufacturing differed from factory to factory. Sometimes it was different at different facilities that produced the same things. Sometimes it was different in different countries. Industrialization in America proceeded at different rates in different regions (although most of it was concentrated in the Northeast). What is important is that the same external forces that created industrialization affected every industry and nearly every factory differently, wherever it happened to be located.

It is difficult to master the exact details of the production process in one industry, let alone all industries in an economy. Given such limitations, making cross-industrial comparisons allows us to understand common principles that affected industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that continue to affect the American economy down to this day. Similar technologies developed across industries over time. Sometimes people applied old technologies to new uses. For example, both arms manufacturers and sewing machine producers entered the bicycle making business during the 1880s as a second (or sometimes third) line of production because the technology needed to make the components was so similar. Likewise, Thomas Edison got many of his ideas for other inventions simply by working on improving telegraphy. Henry Ford claimed that the inspiration for his assembly line came from the “disassembly” lines in the meatpacking industry. In short, the inspiration needed to produce anything more efficiently can come from a wide range of circumstances.

This chapter (and to a certain extent the rest of this book) will examine such similarities as well as differences between industrial processes. Despite the many differences involved, a few concepts can help the reader assess the nature of industrialization at production sites in different industries, even at different times. Understanding how this works requires a review of these concepts as we begin to examine these processes in a few sample industries.

The definition of industrialization as offered in the introduction to this book is illustrated in Figure 1.1. In this depiction, the size of the arrows between “Mechanization” and “More Stuff” and between “Division of Labor” and “More Stuff” is equal, thereby implying that the impact of these elements on overall production was equal. However, this was not necessarily the case.

Early on in the history of industrialization, textile manufacturers farmed out their work to many operatives who worked at home. About 1815 many American textile manufacturers increased the productive capacity of their operations simply by bringing together operations under one roof. This made it easier to divide labor and benefit from lower transportation costs. Mechanization was available at larger operations, but these smaller operations benefited primarily from the division of labor. Later in the century, production tended to increase more from mechanization than from division of labor. Different mixes of the division of labor and mechanization changed the way any particular business operated, therefore changing the effects it had on society as a whole.

The largest economic actors stood to benefit the most from the division of labor because they had the most labor to divide. Large factories also stood to benefit most from mechanization because they were most likely to have the money to buy expensive machines. Therefore, the size of an operation had an enormous impact on the degree to which its industrialization could affect society at large. In many cases, factories had to be extraordinarily large to gain the optimal benefit from industrializing. The name for this tendency is “economies of scale.”

While it is impossible to cover every factory in every industry, three factories in three important industries can serve as prototypes. The first example is a plant in an industry that depended primarily upon mechanization during the later stages of industrialization. The second example comes from an industry that depended primarily on the division of labor. The third example comes from an industry that exhibited a good balance between both principles. In the course of examining these factories, it will be possible to illustrate how some of the principles related to industrialization applied to these industries and to begin to discuss the effects of these operations.

Figure 1.1

The Edgar Thomson Works of the Carnegie Steel Company

Steel mills are perhaps the quintessential example of late nineteenth-century industrialization because of their importance to the American economy and because of their dependence upon mechanization. Indeed, the contribution of mechanization to the industrialization of steelmaking was much greater than the contribution of the division of labor because mechanization allowed steelmaking to operate on a much larger scale than ever before. That difference greatly affected the operation of the industry and therefore changed the nature of its impact on American society. To understand this impact, it is necessary to recognize that steelmakers sold their product not to consumers, but to producers of other goods. Mass marketing of steel was impossible, but mass production was possible thanks to a series of technological innovations that reflected the principles of industrialization across industries. The firm that came to be named the Carnegie Steel Company pioneered many of these innovations.

Steel, of course, is a substance that has been made for many centuries. However, up to the mid-nineteenth century it could be made only in small batches. The reason for this limitation was the time needed to produce it and the difficulty that even the most skilled workers faced when working. Most companies made iron instead, even though it required skilled labor to make. Iron puddlers (the workers who made the judgments needed to guarantee the quality of a successful batch of iron or steel) were among the best paid and most respected members of the mid-nineteenth-century American working class. The invention of the Bessemer converter in 1856 began to change that. These devices made it possible to make steel in large batches for the first time by blowing air through the molten slag that came out of a blast furnace. This process guaranteed a successful batch (a superior batch to hand-puddled steel, in fact) every time. It also greatly increased the amount of steel that one facility could produce. With an increased supply of steel and lower labor costs (since steelmaking facilities no longer required puddlers), steel prices dropped sharply. Because iron and steel were close substitutes, steel quickly came to replace the much softer and more brittle iron in important products like railroad ties and tall buildings.

Industrialization also included the reorganization of the entire production process. At the same time the Bessemer converter and its replacement, the open hearth furnace, came into use, the entire layout of steel factories changed thanks to the willingness of the industrialist Andrew Carnegie to experiment with new technology. Carnegie never worked in a steel mill, but his desire to increase production beyond any of his competitors quickly made his firm the largest in the industry. Better technology led him to build the largest Bessemer steel plant in America, the Edgar Thomson Works, in 1875. Over time, however, his engineers improved on the process by shortening the steps needed to get steel from the blast furnace into the converters. Not content with merely improving efficiency, Carnegie’s company also pioneered the use of open-hearth technology. This process not only improved the quality of the steel that emerged from it, but further decreased the need for skilled labor to operate it. Carnegie used his technological advantage to lower his prices and thereby undercut his competitors. He bought up those competitors whom he did not drive out of business.

The jobs of skilled labor were not divided away at Edgar Thomson. Instead they were automated away. While a puddling mill had as many as fifty skilled workers making iron, a single blower could operate the machinery that covered the same function in a Bessemer steel mill. Puddlers could determine whether iron had reached the proper consistency only by sight and feel, but in an open-hearth furnace frequent samples were taken and analyzed in a laboratory in order to achieve the same result. What made mechanization more important to the industrialization process in steel mills than in most other industries, however, was that many jobs for unskilled workers actually met this same fate too. Human labor was a bottleneck in the continuous operation of steel production. The introduction of skip hoists (small cars or buckets that carried the coke, iron, and other materials needed to make steel from the bottom to the top of a furnace for melting), for example, eliminated a considerable amount of unskilled labor at both ends of the line and thereby improved the efficiency of the entire steelmaking process.

In essence, the division of labor for the workers who tended these machines was an afterthought. Even then, the job of the steelworkers in a Bessemer or open-hearth mill was more complicated than just tending machines. Each part of a steel mill was in continuous operation in order to maximize production. Therefore, workers at each stage of the process had to coordinate with those in front and behind them in order to make sure that production ran smoothly. Although less skilled than puddlers, these workers still had to have diagnostic skill to ensure the continuity of the production process; they could not zone out like those doing repetitious work on an assembly line. They had to keep their mind on how other parts of the production process affected what they did in order for the mill to maintain peak efficiency. The result was not the creation of a new pool of unskilled workers, but a blending of jobs to create a population of machine operators that could rightfully be described as “semiskilled.”

Carnegie, unlike other businessmen of his time, wrote about the changes going on in his industry and others in abstract terms. By doing so, he not only demonstrated his intellect, but justified his policies. In his most famous essay, “The Gospel of Wealth,” written in 1889, he explained how changes “in the manufacture of products” had changed the world for the better by allowing the poor to “enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer has now more comforts than the farmer had a few generations ago.”² For a time this was the case for Carnegie’s employees, but when his company faced greater competition during the late 1880s, their situation became dire.

Once Andrew Carnegie bought the Homestead Steel Works outside of Pittsburgh, he made it the most technologically sophisticated steel works in the world. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Unlike other steel manufacturers, Carnegie recognized the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union in some of his mills. In 1886 he wrote, “My experience has been that trade-unions upon the whole are beneficial to both labor and to capital.”³ However, when the market for the steel rails in which his firm specialized turned sour, Carnegie Steel had to upgrade its facilities in order to switch from steel rails to structural steel for buildings and armor plate, the products that steel customers demanded most starting in the late 1880s. These technological improvements made recognizing the union unnecessary. The Amalgamated Association generally did not object to technological improvements at the mills it represented, but one exception to this rule proved to be Carnegie’s Homestead Steel Works in 1892. In order to break the union, Carnegie’s partner Henry Clay Frick refused to negotiate a new contract with the union workers and locked them and every nonunion worker out of the mill on July 1, 1892. On July 6, the strikers started a gun battle with a barge of Pinkerton guards hired to protect replacements for striking workers. The result was twelve deaths (three Pinkertons, nine strikers) and the summoning of the Pennsylvania National Guard to restore order. That kind of death toll is almost unequaled for a single incident in American labor history. However, even a clash of great significance like this one did not stem the tide toward the virtual eradication of trade unions in the steel industry. They did not return until 1937. Carnegie Steel industrialized in order to take advantage of the remarkable gains in production that these processes brought. The destruction of trade unions was just a financially advantageous side effect.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company

Textile manufacturing was one of the first American industries to industrialize. The sewing machine debuted during the 1850s, but could do only a limited amount of work in the early twentieth-century garment trade. This industry depended upon the division of labor to drive production. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company of New York City was the largest and most established garment-making operation in the city during this era. It would become infamous because of what happened to the mostly female workers there during one tragic day in 1911.

The garment industry consisted of the businesses that took those textiles and turned them into wearable clothes. Unlike industries that depended upon the efficiencies of mass production to drive costs down, garment firms produced their product in batches. Firms that operated in this manner could not depend upon economies of scale or a first mover advantage to gain economic advantage. As a result, they were generally small. They could not depend upon mass distribution to market whatever they produced either.

Retailers would call for a specific number of garments to be delivered by a particular date. The number and the kind of garment in the order often depended upon the particular season. Unlike those produced by tailors, these kinds of garments were not custom-made. Nevertheless, the producers tried to keep up with styles even as they kept costs low. A successful garment-making firm might not be successful very long if the nature of the market changed over time. In order to accommodate rapid changes in products, clothing manufacture was generally farmed out to small shops in small batches.

Many of these small shops were based in New York City, the center of the American garment industry. Competition was fierce, and the easiest way to save money was to scrimp on labor costs because labor made up most of the cost of a garment. For example, the shop where Rose Cohen got her first job had four sewing machines and had sixteen people in it. Other workers had their own sewing machine that they carried from job ...