Main questions
- What is the relationship between capital and labor?
- How does standardization, mechanization, and industrialization impact American workers?
- What did the workplace look like before Taylorism? After Taylorism?
Key concepts and terms
- Trachtenberg on the “incorporation of America” and the “-izations”:
- Industrialization (Lowell Mill Girls)
- Standardization of time / interchangeable parts
- Mechanization
- Urbanization and immigration (tenements)
- Bureaucratization
- Historical changes in white American identity (e.g. Irish Catholics)
- 1892 Homestead Strike
- Eight Hour Workday
- Self-made man (individualism) vs. the worker (communal solidarity)
- “Modern Times,” Charlie Chaplin
- Taylorism
- Fordism (assembly line interchangeability)
- Time as the “soul of capital”
- Autonomy of the worker
- Human toll of mechanization (getting caught up in the gears of the machinery)
- Relationship between quantification and standardization
Key individuals
- Andrew Carnegie (vertical integration)
- Frederick Taylor (scientific management)
