![]()
Section II: Business/Finance
Travel Accounts from the United States and their Influence on Taylorism, Fordism and Productivity in Austria
Helmut Lackner
Preliminary Remark
The number of German-speaking travel accounts from United States is legion and fills libraries. The majority is written by Germans.1 However, this article attempts to separate the reports of Austrians and to examine their influence on technical and economical development in Austria. The reports of Austrians follow those of the Germans who dominated the process of discussion.2 For instance, Karl Wittgenstein, an important Austrian entrepreneur, renounced in his report on the United States a comparison with "österreichische VerhĂ€ltnisse" in 1898. He confronted the Deutsches Reich face to face with the United States instead.3 To correct this picture, the Wiener MĂ€nnergesang-Verein, among others, travelled to the United States with more than 300 persons in 1907, "[...]es war vielmehr die löobliche Ansicht der Vereinsleitung, und diese ist glĂ€nzend gelungen, das Deutschtum in Amerika zu stĂ€rken und zufördern und, was jedenfalls noch bedeutend mehr hervorzuheben wĂ€re, das Interesse an unserer Monarchie, das leider so wenig gepflegt wird, zu krĂ€ftigen und zu erhöhen."4 But the participants of the tour hoped for help, "Unser Aufenthalt in Amerika soll fĂŒr uns ein Stahlbad der Energie sein, das uns in der Heimat krĂ€ftigen soll."5
Introduction
In the second part of the nineteenth century, the United States alternated with Great Britain as a patter and first travel destination of industrial world. A person had to travel to Soho near Birmingham to see James Watts' steam engine around the year 1800, but one hundred years later, a person had to go to the United States if he or she didn't want to miss the connection.
Although New York was the main port of arrival on the east coast, the central lowland in the North, the region around Great Lakes called the Manufacturing Belt, soon came into sight of travellers to the United States. Chicago with its slaughterhouses was opened to travellers in 1865 with Pullman, McCormick, and skyscrapers; Milwaukee with his breweries; Detroit with its car factories, especially that of Henry Ford; Pittsburgh, Cleveland, or Gary with steel industry; and Niagara Falls as an overwhelming natural phenomenon, comparable to economic success on the occasion of organized circular tours.
Proceeding chronologically, this article first examines early travels to the United States. Next, the article explores the era of travels around the year 1900, with a focus on the adoption on Taylorism and Fordism during interwar period. Finally, the new enthusiasm about the United States in connection with Marshall Plan under the catchword ProduktivitÀtssteigerung after 1945 is examined. Thus, this article provides a short survey of one century of Americanization on Austria's economy and technology,
"Das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten"6 and "Das Land des unbehinderten Erwerbes"7 â Travels to the United States until the Turn of the Century
A part from individual travellers during the 1830s and 1840s, tor example, the mechanical, bridge building, and railway engineers Franz Anton von Gerstner, Carl Culmann, Carl Ghega, and Mathias Schönerer, a great number of Austrians travelled to the United States for the first time on the occasions of the world's fairs in Philadelphia in 1876, Chicago in 1893 and St. Louis in 1904,8 The overwhelming appearance of the United States' rising economic power in Philadelphia 1876 could correct from Deutsches Reich not before 1893. However, in this match Austria played only a subordinate role.9
In connection with the M. Louis World's hair, a great congress of international scholars took place, too. This was the beginning of a busy exchange of scientists between the United Sates and many European nations, especially Germany, in the following years.
In St. Louis, Austria participated in the world's fair primarily by displaying handicraft products. In connection with the world's fair, Karl Machalla from Niederösterreichischer Gewerbeverein, who followed the beaten track from New York to Chicago and back by Niagara Falls,10 and Adolf Schwarz, secretary of Ăsterreichisch-Ungarischer Export-Verein, who stayed in the States for several months,11 both published printed travel accounts. Schwarz dealt with many aspects of American culture and criticized the economic backwardness in Austria, "Wieder einmal hat man die Bedeutung Amerikas verkannt."12
One part of the economic-oriented discussion on the comparison between the New and Old World was focused on prior art and especially on machine-tool building until the turn of the century. Many observers were overwhelmed by their first impressions and noticed a superiority of American technology. In early accounts, Austrians were impressed by the dimension of industry in the United States as compared to that in Austria. All appeared bigger and superior, but was very strongly concentrated in certain regions and cities.13 Austrian visitors to the United States before World War I saw a nation on the move. Here they could study the birth and development of the new economic power in the twentieth century.
In the late nineteenth century, one of the best experts on the United States was a group of nobles from Austria-Hungary. They travelled through the whole country concentrating on agriculture and hunting from 1881 to 1882. Their route went from New York to Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California. From San Francisco, they turned eastwards and returned to New York via Utah, Colorado, Kansas, and Illinois which took place over many weeks and involved lengthy hunting trips into virgin regions. Their 800-page account, published by the journalist Robert Meyer who accompanied them, which includes a map is one of the best before 1900, even though their perception is filtered through their admiration and adoration.14
An interesting phenomenon arising from these travels was the use of the word "American" as a synonym of modernity and progress in twentieth century. In 1878, the Viennese journal Metallarbeiter reported on "Amerikanische Werkzeugmaschinen," mainly in reference to tin factories, related to Philadelphia's world's fair.15 A sign of modernity that also showed "Amerikanische Werkzeugmaschinen" was a special exhibition of engines and machines in Vienna in 188416 and the two JubilĂ€ums-Ausstellungen in 188817 and 1898 held there as well. On the occassion of exhibition in 1898, the Viennese branch of Schuchardt & SchĂŒtte,18 a Berlin tool machine factory, presented such machines "weil sie den Stempel ihrer amerikanischen Herkunft an sich tragend, so recht geeignet sind, die auf die Massenfabrikation berechnete, von der Bedienung durch theure und unverlĂ€ssliche MenschenhĂ€nde sich möglichst emancipirende Tendenz ihrer Erbauer erkennen zu lassen."19 Further, Schuchardt & SchĂŒtte was a specialist on American machines shown in a special catalogue in 1911. The newest types of Colburn lathes and drilling machines demonstrated the great expenditure and so "die mĂŒhsamen Arbeiten der Bedienung von Hand zu vermeiden und durch sinnreich gebaute automatisch arbeitende maschinelle Vorrichtungen zu ersetzen."20
European arguments comparing U.S. industry to their own dominated the discussion still longer: mass production (and mass consumption with it) there, luxury production here; semiskilled machine workers there, skilled workers here. Every company that was able to do so imported American machines. Karl Löwenthal, co-owner of the steelworks and sheet metal rolling mill Styria in Wasendorf near Fohnsdorf in Styria, brought a tinplate machine and a steam pickling machine, a Grey system, from the United States in 1903. Both machines made it possible to produce more plates with fewer employees in less time."21
The use of machines tor production, packing, and transportation inside of large-scale enterprises was regarded to be a condition of cheap mass production, to "Schnelligkeit des Arbeitsprocesses," to "weitgehende Arbeitstheilung" and to employment of unskilled workers respectively to substitute for "theur[e] Menschenhand durch die billigere und verlÀsslichere Maschine."22 Almost all reporters noticed these signs of U.S. industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.23
The adjective âAmericanâ was used in an almost inflationary way since the late nineteenth century. For example, Isidor Schnek and Salomon Kohlberger founded a rubber goods factory in Vienna in 1861. Its name was changed to Ăsterreichisch-Amerikanische Gummifabrik AG under the supervision of the Wiener Bankverein in 1889. But there was no American capital or partnership. The only reason for the name change could have been the reference to Kautschuk and the shining example across the Atlantic.24 More concrete was the background of Austro-American Magnesite Company founded in Radenthein in Carinthia by Emil Winter, a German American and steel industrialist in Pittsburgh in 1908.25
About 1900, Karl Wittgenstein, an iron industrialist, was one of the mostimportant and influential "Americans" in Vienna.26 In 1865 at the age seventeen, he ran away from home and spent two years in the United States.27 In 1888, he returned to the United States28 and did so again 1898 for three months on the occasion of a world tour. His prominently placed travel account in Zeitschrift des österreichischen Ingenieur- und Architektenvereins culminated in the statement, "dass Bildung und Freiheit eine Hauptursache der Entwicklung der Industrie in den Vereinigten Staaten [sind]."29 Wittgenstein held the controlling interest in the ĂsterreichischAlpine Montangesellschaft since 1897 and took the initiative to build there "neue Werke [...], die den modernen deutschen und amerikanischen wĂŒrdig zur Seite stehen..." hence the interpretation of the Obersteirische Handels-und Gewerbekammer in Leoben in 1901.30
But there w...
