Great technological leaps are by definition rare, and it was another half century before Ford proved Colt right. Ford was the first to demonstrate that minimizing costs and maximizing production was a profit-maximizing strategy, allowing companies to tap into a seemingly unlimited consumer market. But as Hounshell has noted, this strategy required better machines that made it possible to produce uniform parts. Well aware of the assembly problems associated with interchangeable parts not being identical, Ford’s engineers made accuracy the prime machine-tool requirement. Special machines were built for this purpose. “Ford’s machinery was the best in the world, everybody knew it,” one contemporary authority on the subject remarked.11 No hand labor for fitting was required in any of Ford’s assembly departments. In 1908, when the Model T left the factory, it was the first product to meet these standards.
The remaining challenge was assembling the parts. The solution was found in continuous flow production, which allowed workers to remain stationary as parts were moved to them. A prerequisite for the moving assembly line was the diffusion of electric power throughout the factory to provide light and power machines. Electricity triggered a complete reorganization of production. The moving assembly line introduced at Highland Park, just north of Detroit, Michigan, in 1913 successfully harnessed all of this new technology. Electric motors permitted the use of machines of greater accuracy and speed; electric craneways reduced labor requirements in handling and hauling; electric light facilitated precision work; and electric fans made the factories healthier and temperatures more bearable. And most importantly, the flexibility offered by electricity allowed for constant reconfiguration of the factory to speed up production. The assembly of a Model T took around twelve man-hours in 1913. A year later the same car could be assembled in one and a half hours, while electrification allowed for similar time savings in the production of individual components.
To be sure, many factories were electrified before 1900, yet electricity in its early days was mainly used for lighting. Between the opening of Edison’s Pearl Street, New York City, station in 1882 and World War I, the cost of household lighting declined by 90 percent due to the availability of better bulbs and improvements in power generation and transmission. Though the benefits of electric light are hard to quantify, it clearly had significant technical advantages over gas. Electrification made working conditions healthier by reducing the level of air pollution in the factories. It made the workplace safer by reducing the risk of fire, which lowered fire insurance costs. And, brighter light improved accuracy, allowing interchangeable parts to be made sufficiently uniform to eliminate hand fitting. In short, for a variety of reasons it benefited businesses and workers alike. Reports suggest that worker absence due to illness decreased by 50 percent following the introduction of electric light. It is therefore hardly surprising that when the U.S. Government Printing Office allowed workers to choose between electric light and gas, all chose electricity.12 The superiority of electricity was simply overwhelming in every conceivable way. As an electrician at one printing office pointed out: “The advantage to be gained from changing over from belted steam driving to individual electric motor for printing-press work is not alone in power saved, but better grade of work, less spoiled sheets, cleaner, healthier rooms for employees, less repairs to machinery, and most of all, an increased product without a corresponding decrease in value of the presses by running at too high speed. There has never been a hitch in the motive power; not a motor has given out. In fact, such a freedom from interruption of power has never been known in the history of the office.”13
The use of electric motors long remained confined to traction, however. At the beginning of the twentieth century, steam and water still provided more than 95 percent of the mechanical power in American factories. But during the early part of the century, supply-side changes propelled factory electrification, and electric motors supplied 80 percent of the mechanical drive in 1929.14 From Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic Coast to the Great Plains, contemporaries observed that America was experiencing a “giant power transformation … comparable only with the industrial revolution that began a hundred years ago.”15 This new power transformation, a reporter for the New York Times wrote in 1925, was “bringing a Second Industrial Revolution.”16
One reason for the delay is that electric drive required motors that were sufficiently reliable and efficient to outperform mechanical systems driven by steam or water. Such motors gradually arrived after 1884, when Frank J. Sprague developed the first practical DC motor. Tests soon showed the virtues of the new electrical system: energy loss from friction created by the gears, shafts, and belts of mechanical systems made the benefits of the electric motor all the more apparent. The shift to electric motors was gradual but relentless. As their capacity grew almost sixtyfold over the first half of the twentieth century, their use surged—making electricity by some margin the chief prime mover of industry. Another contributing factor was the arrival of the AC motor, developed by Nikola Tesla, which could be adapted to drive just about any machine: “Tesla’s contributions to the introduction and rapid diffusion of AC electric motors was [thus] no less important than Edison’s efforts to commercialize incandescent light.”17 In fact, the contribution of electric motors to American productivity was far greater than the productivity effects of electric light. Electricity could no longer just light things, it could power them as well.
But the more important reason why the prime contribution of electricity to productivity took so long to take effect was that realizing the full benefits of factory electrification required experimentation with reconfiguring the factory: “Just as electrifying the city was not merely a matter of substituting streetlights and trolleys for gaslight and horsecars, electrifying the factory was more than a simple substitution of motors for water wheels and steam engines.”18 Electrification, reorganization, and modern management were all part of the same process. As Paul David has noted, the main boost to American manufacturing productivity was delivered only in the 1920s, two generations after the first factories were electrified.19 This was in large part due to the relatively late transition to unit drive, which has been outlined in some detail by the economic historian Warren Devine Jr.20 Before 1900, direct drive—by which machines were connected to a centrally located power source, most often a steam engine or water wheel, through a mechanical link—had been the predominant production system. In this system, steam engines and water wheels were simply replaced by electric motors as the source of power, but there was no reorganization of production. The entire network of line shafts and countershafts still operated continuously once the central power source was started, regardless of the number of machines in use. And if the central power source broke down, all of the machines ceased to work, meaning that production was down until the power source had been repaired. Like in steam- and water-powered factories, the power source was often housed in its own room, and thus a jungle of leather belts, pulleys, and rotating shafts was required to distribute power throughout the factory. The basic design of factories had barely changed since the days of water power, when the distribution of power dictated the organization of production.
Dispensing with the apparatus for mechanically distributing power throughout the factory was a critical step in harnessing the flexibility of electricity. Yet fully appreciating the virtues of electric motors as a means of driving machinery took a long time, as mentioned above. Group drive was an intermediate stage in the evolution of the factory that allowed medium-size motors with shorter shafts to drive groups of machines. Then electrical engineers found that they could get rid of the shafts altogether by equipping each machine with smaller electric motors. The switch to unit drive unleashed a revolution in factory design. The flexibility of unit drive allowed factory workflows to be reconfigured to accommodate assembly line techniques, as machinery could now be arranged according to the natural sequence of manufacturing operations. To take full advantage of assembly-line techn
iques, new factories like Ford’s in River Rouge were single-storied, which had further benefits—including substantially lower construction costs per square foot. And the elimination of the system for mechanically distributing power made it easier to install overhead cranes for the hauling of interchangeable parts, as rotating shafts were no longer hanging from the ceiling. Many of these changes saved more capital than labor, and most labor savings were related to construction and maintenance tasks rather than operations. Harry Jerome noted this at the time:
Changes in industrial technique not altering materially the amount of labor involved in the operation immediately affected, may, nevertheless, alter substantially the labor required in other processes; for example, through a reduction in the floor space required, in reduced waste of materials or damage to product, or through savings in fuel, power, supplies, or wear and tear on machinery. All these—floor space, materials, equipment—require labor in their construction, and any economies in their use have an indirect effect on the demand for labor. Thus the electrification of the power department of a factory may reduce maintenance labor owing to the absence of belts and shafting.21
How did workers fare as a result of electrification? We shall return to this question in chapter 8, but apart from the health benefits described above, it is noteworthy that working Americans also saw their incomes grow rapidly. Mass production not only put an array of new goods within the reach of average American households but also put labor on a virtuous cycle in which the explosive growth of manufacturing required an ever-growing number of operators whose skills were made more valuable by more capital being tied up in machines. Factory jobs were simple compared to the emerging jobs in today’s tech industries, and workers could learn most tasks swiftly on the job. As the historian David Nye has pointed out, “One advantage of making the tasks brief was that every job could be learned quickly. Not only could virtually anyone work at Ford; workers could be moved around.”22 To be sure, as will be discussed in chapter 7, the speedy churn in the labor market brought some adjustment problems. But on the whole, in the period up until the 1970s, most people could expect to see their wages rise. As the economist Frederick C. Mills observed in the 1930s, “Under the pressure of mechanization men have had to learn to do new things in new ways.”23 In the glass industry, for example, Jerome notes that the “potential displacement of hand blowers [had been] met successfully … by the conversion of jar blowers into blowers of other forms of ware unaffected by the machine; or by placing hand blowers in positions as machine workers.”24 In many industries, not just glass, hand labor shifted to machine-aided operations. As factories were electrified, some workers were replaced in maintenance and hauling tasks, but the enlargement of machine operations meant that more productive and better-paying jobs emerged for them (chapter 8). The greatest virtue of the Second Industrial Revolution was that it created entirely new jobs for average people at the same time as making new goods available to them. The flood of electric appliances that entered American households benefited people in their capacity as consumers and producers alike.
Machines of Liberation
If the prime feature of the Industrial Revolution was the mechanization of industry, the defining characteristic of the Second Industrial Revolution was the mechanization of the household. While steam power transformed the factory in the nineteenth century, it left the home untouched. Electricity, in contrast, revolutionized the home as well. Companies like General Electric and Westinghouse led the way in expanding the array of electrical appliances available to the average citizen, such as the iron (first introduced in the market in 1893), vacuum cleaner (1907), washing machine (1907), toaster (1909), refrigerator (1916), dishwasher (1929), and dryer (1938), to name just a few. All of these inventions were by no means American, but America was their largest market and the American housewife their greatest beneficiary. The so-called household revolution did not just make the home more comfortable and enjoyable. It also replaced the housewife in an array of unpaid tasks, which allowed women to take on paid jobs in industry, contributed to a rapid expansion of the American labor force, and delivered a boost to household income. Pioneers of electrification foresaw this development. In 1912, Edison told Good Housekeeping: “The housewife of the future will be neither a slave to servants nor herself a drudge. She will give less attention to the home, because the home will need less; she will be rather a domestic engineer than a domestic labourer, with the greatest of all handmaidens, electricity, at her service. This and other mechanical forces will so revolutionize the woman’s world that a large portion of the aggregate of woman’s energy will be conserved for use in broader, more constructive fields.”25
Consider the American home of 1900. Most homes still lacked running water, and very few had electricity and central heating (figure 6). In the absence of electricity, light was typically provided either by candles or kerosene lamps. The danger of fire was part of everyday life, and in the worst cases sparks from open-flame lamps or open hearths could set entire homes ablaze. The discovery of fire during the Stone Age was an invention that the household still relied upon. Before the days of central heating, an open hearth provided most of the heat. Wood or coal had to be carried into the home, and removing the ashes and making up the fire each day was tedious work. And despite the considerable effort involved in keeping the dwelling warm, most rooms were as cold as the outside during the winter: “Rags stuffed into cracks provided the only insulation. Most rooms were hotter near the ceiling, floors almost universally chilly.”26 In American bedrooms, iron ingots or ceramic bricks (which had to be heated in the kitchen stove) placed in the bed provided the main source of heat on cold nights. Moreover, the lack of running water meant that for nearly every American the pleasure of taking a bath entailed carrying a heavy tub made of wood or tin into the kitchen, where it was filled with water heated on the stove: “Even in the early twentieth century, working-class housewives had to haul water from hydrants in the street, a task little different from centuries when farm housewives had brought water from the nearest creek or well. All the water for cooking, dishwashing, bathing, laundry, and housecleaning had to be carried in—and then hauled back out after use.”27
For women in agriculture, who devoted their labor to both the farm and the household, life was particularly harsh. In addition to taking care of the home, nearly all poultry flocks were cared for by women, who were also responsible for feeding the livestock and frequently helped in the fields. A 1920 report by the Department of Agriculture found that women on average worked 11.3 hours per day during the year and 13.1 hours in summer. They had 1.6 hours of leisure time during a summer day and an extra 0.8 hours in the winter. Half of the women surveyed were up at 5:00 A.M. As the majority of farms lacked running water, the day typically began with a walk to the spring or the pump from which water was hauled for the preparation of breakfast—which was made without the help of any electric kitchen appliances. Rural electrification, the report argued, was part of the solution: “As power on the farm is the greatest of time savers for the farmer, so power in the home is the greatest boon to the housewife.”28 Yet rural electrification took off only after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the national law establishing the Rural Electrification Administration on May 2, 1936, which provided funds to local cooperatives that private power companies had neglected.
As more homes electrified, American companies made a push to expand the use of electric appliances by seeking to appeal directly to housewives (figure 6). During the 1930s, a pamphlet handed out in Muncie, Indiana, aptly featured the phrase, “Electricity, the Silent Servant in the Home.” A General Electric advertisement read: “A Man’s Castle is Woman’s Factory.”29 The message was clear: hiring the silent electric servant would free up time spent on household chores. Many tasks that are thought of as simple today were not so simple back then. Take, for example, the task of washing. In 1900, 98 percent of households used a scrub board. Hand washing entailed carrying wood or coal to the st
ove, where the water was heated. Then, the clean clothes had to be wrung out, mostly by hand, and hung on clotheslines to dry. After that, the equally laborious task of ironing began. Instead of an electric iron, heavy flatirons were used, which required continuous heating on the stove. According to one study carried out in the mid-1940s, the electric washing machine saved three hours and nineteen minutes relative to hand washing for every wash. A woman doing laundry by hand walked 3,181 feet to complete the task, but only 332 feet if she used electricity. In similar fashion, the time required for ironing was reduced from 4.50 to 1.75 hours, and the amount of walking required was cut by almost 90 percent.30
FIGURE 6: The Diffusion of Basic Facilities and Electrical Appliances in the U.S.
Source: J. Greenwood, A. Seshadri, and M. Yorukoglu, 2005, “Engines of Liberation,” Review of Economic Studies 72 (1): 109–33.
It is worth noting that electricity became the servant of wealthy and poor alike. New technologies were evidently first adopted by more affluent Americans: even on the same street, some women might be scrubbing clothes by hand as in medieval times, while others had an electric washing machine. Over time, however, along with access to basic household facilities, the relative reduction in the price of appliances made them available to all. When the National Electric Light Association (NELA) surveyed the adoption of electric appliances among Philadelphia households in 1921, it found that only the iron and the vacuum cleaner had reached half of the respondents. Electric refrigerators had a slower start in part because iceboxes provided a cheaper alternative, but also because refrigerators long remained unaffordable to most Americans even if they were willing to replace their iceboxes. In 1928, a refrigerator cost $568, but its price fell rapidly so that the cost was only $137 in 1931—and refrigerator sales skyrocketed in response. Most other appliances were already affordable to most Americans. The cheapest washing machine in 1928 was sold at a price equivalent to three weeks of income; an electric vacuum cleaner cost about a workweek’s pay; and the cheapest electric iron could be bought for less than one day’s pay.31
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