Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
rubber tires, which made transport slow and uncomfortable, until 1888, when
John Dunlop invented the air-
lled pneumatic tire, which absorbed shocks.
The mass production and mass consumption of cars, however, was a distinct-
ively American phenomenon. Henry Ford's introduction of the moving
assembly line at the Highland Park factory near Detroit in 1913 initiated a
vast revolution in the world of work and production, taking mass production
to new heights of productivity and pro
fi
tability. By pioneering a form of
production centered on vertically integrated
fi
firms and enormous economies
of scale, Ford developed an entire ensemble that became the model for most
forms of manufacturing throughout much of the twentieth century. (A simi-
lar system was adopted by Alfred Sloan of General Motors, who also intro-
duced planned obsolescence.) The process worked spectacularly, generating
millions of jobs, relatively high wages (and unions), and raising standards of
living. Fordism was part of the “virtuous linkage of mass production tech-
niques, mass consumption and advertising based on the nuclear family house-
hold, Taylorist work organization, collective wage bargaining, the hegemony
of the large corporation, Keynesian demand management, the welfare state
and the mass production of standardized housing” (Graham and Marvin
2001:67).
An integral part of this dynamic was Frederick Taylor's time-and-motion
studies, which reduced workers' control over their work time, applying his
“scienti
fi
c system” of labor organization by using the stop-watch to break
tasks into elementary operations, rendering them passive to the tempo of the
machine and accelerating the alienation that underpinned much of the labor
unrest and class con
fi
icts of the early twentieth century. Taylor's agenda
involved the separation of manual and mental labor (i.e., blue collar assembly
and white collar of
fl
ce work, respectively) and the elimination of ostensibly
super
uous motions, thus enacting a strict time discipline over the bodies of
laborers (Cresswell 2006). Taylor himself was well aware of how his approach
inculcated the calculus of productivity in the labor force, writing that “After
the men acquiesce in the new order of things, it will take time for them to
change from their old easy-going ways to a higher rate of speed, and to learn
to stay steadily at their work, think ahead, and make every minute count”
(quoted in Gleick 1999:214). Taylorism greatly elevated the importance of
clock time as the regulator not only of working hours, but of public life in
general.
It was in the U.S. that the automobile, like the bicycle,
fl
first came into
widespread use, democratizing access to transportation to an unprecedented
degree. In 1895, only four automobiles were registered in the entire country,
although this number grew to 8,000 by 1900 and to 458,000 by 1910 (Flink
1988). Autos soon displaced rail as the dominant intercity carrier of goods
and people. What Ford called the “family horse” evolved into the Model T,
the
fi
first automobile to gain mass acceptance, whose price dropped by half
between 1913 and 1916, initiating a privatization of transportation unparal-
leled in history. The acceptance of the automobile was hardly automatic,
fi
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