Unit 6: Mass Production, the Labor Movement, and the Consumer Society
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a so-called "Second Industrial Revolution" centered on electronics and chemicals, bringing new changes to industrial production and everyday life. While the inventions and early successes of the first Industrial Revolution were the work of small businessmen and individual capitalists, the innovations of the second phase came out of large business organizations. Fierce competition among these companies led to the consolidation of industries by monopoly firms or the creation of cartels.
New ideas changed how people worked within these giant firms, resulting in even more significant improvements in the speed and efficiency of production. Workers reacted to these changes by forming political associations and seeking bargaining power with large capitalists. This period represented a transition to a mass society for all classes, characterized by the large-scale marketing and distribution of products, services, and ideas. New machines and new media turned individuals living in limited regions into consumers of products and information from a vast national or international community.
In this unit, we examine the institutional, political, and social changes that came to industrialized societies in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 12 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- analyze major changes to the way companies organized and managed themselves;
- explain how inventions affected the growth of such things as oligopolies, cartels, and monopolies;
- discuss the development of organized labor;
- compare organized labor's conflicts with capitalists in the United States, Europe, and Asia;
- examine changes in agriculture caused by industrialization; and
- describe methods of mass communication and advertising in the late 19th and early 20th century United States.
- analyze major changes to the way companies organized and managed themselves;
6.1: Large Corporations
A second Industrial Revolution occurred during the late 1800s to early 1900s with the rise of the modern corporation. Powerful business leaders created large companies that focused on manufacturing products such as automobiles, steel production, oil, railroads, and telegraph (later telephone) communications. Electrification of factories allowed manufacturers to introduce new machinery to the production process to improve productivity.
Read this article about how historical forces shaped big business. Of particular interest is the global perspective.
Read this article about Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR. It offers multiple arguments around the topic. Does the format help you see the issues of CSR from a broader perspective?
6.2 Invention and Protection of Trade Secrets
The Industrial Revolution's technology spread as it developed in England. Despite efforts to keep the construction and processes of its machinery secret, England could not keep valuable knowledge under wraps for long. Enterprising individuals brought copies of the English fabric processing machinery to the United States and created similar machines and factories in places like Lowell, Massachusetts.
While patents may protect an invention and make the inventor wealthy, these legal agreements often failed in the long term. Inventors simply produced similar machines or were able to profit in other ways. The invention of spinning jennies, water frames, and power looms initiated the Industrial Revolution in England. However, the single most important and influential invention in the United States was Eli Whitney's cotton gin. This machine made cotton production profitable, helped kickstart the Industrial Revolution in the United States, and changed the course of American history by reinvigorating slavery and causing it to spread throughout the southern states.Read this article about the important inventions of the Industrial Revolution and how they propelled it forward. Also, watch the video depicting these inventions and their impacts in greater detail.
Read this article about the inventors who created some of the important inventions of the Industrial Revolution. How did they contribute to the rise of big business?
Read this article explaining how monopolies form. Note the distinctions between natural and legal monopolies and how each develops.
Read this article to find out how the telephone and electric light fueled the growth of large corporations in the United States and the culture that made them possible. The inventors Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) and Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) had a great deal of contemporary competition. Still, each inventor had a unique and clever approach, which ultimately allowed them to win the patents for their inventions.
6.3: Cartels and Monopoly Capitalism
Large corporations frequently created trusts, cartels, and monopolies to increase their profits by driving their competitors out of business. This led to new government legislation that attempted to curtail these unfair practices. Meanwhile, workers were reduced to working on endless assembly and production lines, where they repeated the same monotonous tasks all day long.
Read this article to learn how an oligopoly works. Neither monopolies nor various kinds of competitive environments behave quite the same way.
Watch this video about "crony capitalism", or collusion between the business and political classes. This era not only saw the rise of big business and the making of the so-called robber barons, but it also shaped the economic and political landscapes for decades to come.
Read this article from the late 19th century to learn about industrial trusts and cartels and why people objected. Lloyd is especially critical of the robber barons.
6.4: Standardization and Industrial Management: Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor
In 1901, Henry Ford (1863–1947), the American industrialist and business magnate, founded what would become the Ford Motor Company and further developed the assembly line technique of mass production. The company introduced the Model T in 1908, an affordable, easy-to-drive, and easy-to-repair car. Ford elicited a vast marketing and publicity machine that ensured every newspaper carried stories and ads about the vehicle. A network of local dealers made it ubiquitous in almost every city in North America.
The concept of social Darwinism referred to the belief that the most productive and efficient industries would survive and prosper while those less competitive would fail. Some industrial manufacturers studied principles of scientific management, such as those pioneered by Frederick Taylor (1856–1915), in which managers aimed to eliminate unnecessary motions by workers, which slowed the production process. While some admired this examination of workplace efficiencies, others complained they reduced workers to mere robots.Read this biographical article about Henry Ford. He revolutionized transportation by making an affordable car; he also revolutionized the way factories built products.
Read this article to learn more about Henry Ford, the Ford Motor Company, the assembly line, and the socio-economic impacts they had, both in the United States and worldwide. Can you point to some of these impacts that we still observe today?
Read this biographical article on Frederick Taylor, who sought to improve industrial efficiency and maximize output. It contains some good explanations and critiques of his "scientific management".
- Read this excerpt of Frederick Taylor's work'. It helps understand how "systems engineering" and "scientific management" were theorized to function'.
6.5: Workers and Capitalists in the United States
As the leaders of modern corporations and industrial capitalists were reshaping the world, workers were at a great disadvantage because they could not improve their pay and working conditions. Leaders of the unionization movement began fighting for workers' rights, but the struggle continued for decades until they succeeded in forcing government intervention to prevent abuses. Workers frequently used violence to achieve basic rights, including reduced work hours, increased pay, and enforced safety regulations to protect their health and livelihood.
In the United States, Eugene Debs (1855–1926), an American labor and political leader, helped found the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He was influenced by Karl Marx and supported the struggle for fair pay and better working conditions. He believed basic rights were often linked to social class, an unpopular belief in the United States, where many claimed class did not exist. Samuel Gompers (1850–1924), who held similar views, founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which he led for all but one year from 1886 until he died in 1924.Read this article about the political and social impacts of economic and technological progress in the United States. It covers a full spectrum of changes to the emerging culture: wealth moved and became more concentrated, new immigration and continued urbanization, and attitudes about social roles.
Watch these videos about the forces of capital and labor in the United States and how they impacted American culture and society. The first video focuses on the relationship between capital and labor. The second is concerned with the concentration of wealth and political power. The third deals with social movements and reactions to the terms of the robber barons and political machines.
Read this article about labor relations and what many called "progress" at the time. In particular, it covers "both workers' desire for labor unions and the reasons for unions' inability to achieve their goals".
6.6: Workers and Capitalists in Europe
Europeans reacted differently to the same technological, economic, political, and social forces that shaped American "progress" from the 19th to early 20th century. Contrasting political styles and structures – parliaments, monarchies, and combinations thereof – often prompted leaders to respond differently to the negative effects of industrialization.
Watch this lecture. Focus on how labor movements formed political organizations in Europe.
Read this article about the history of capitalism. Although the term capitalism was coined in the 19th century, its practices are much older.
Read Marx's article about the nature of labor under capitalism. This writing builds on his earlier thinking about political economy and the commodification of labor.
6.7: Workers and Capitalists in Asia
The differences between American and European political and social systems made for different responses to the problems of industrialization, and cultural differences between eastern and western countries were significantly more pronounced. For example, in Japan, large corporations directly funded political parties. Movements that threatened the status quo were not only deprived of this funding; the state often squashed them. In China, the Communist Party organized labor and crushed any political or labor movements that risked becoming too popular or unruly.
Read this article about political protests in Japan. It uses a series of political posters and handbills to organize the historical accounts of the political unrest that spawned them.
Read this article on the history of labor unions in Japan. Pay special attention to the section about the first half of the Meiji Era (1868–1912).
Read this article which describes a labor protest in China. The author attributes the strike's success to cultural unity, suggesting that laborers elsewhere should follow their example.
6.8: Industrialized Agriculture
Industrialization changed the way we work and produce food and what and how we eat. The introduction of large-scale mechanized farming and chemical fertilizers, improved seed strains, and pesticides has produced an abundance of food during the past century. These new farming methods were recently termed the green revolution.
Starvation has been eradicated in many parts of the world, but many argue we are paying for this progress in environmental degradation, public health, and sustainability.Read this article about the history of industrial agriculture. It also explains the interconnection of technology and global trade.
Watch this video about industrial agriculture. It conceptualizes industrial agriculture as being at the intersection of science and technology, economics, and politics and explains the connections visually.
Watch this video on the effects of industrialized agriculture. Specifically, it is most concerned with the environmental impacts.
6.9: Mass Communications and Mass Marketing
In the late 1800s, a mass media culture developed in the United States with a new middle class and growing working class. As with the production of Henry Ford's Model T, this new mass media culture appealed to the new consumerism that accompanied these mass marketing appeals. The sensationalism of news events and compelling product endorsements, which are meant to solve a problem or address a concern, also increased sales within the newspaper industry.
Read this article about penny newspapers' influence on mass media. It details how the penny newspaper changed American society politically, educationally, technologically, and socially.
Read this article about the roles media play in our society and how it came to be this way. For example, some current (and modern) roles of mass media are to 1. entertain and provide an outlet for the imagination, 2. educate and inform, 3. serve as a public forum to discuss important issues, and 4. act as a watchdog for government, business, and other institutions.
Read this article about the consumer culture that emerged in the United States at the end of the 19th century. With goods being produced in greater volume and more cheaply than ever, and people earning wages in urban settings rather than living off the land, consumer culture has taken hold and has yet to let go.
Watch this vintage video about the impact of advertising. It focuses on the positive effects of advertising on economic growth, social improvement, and other areas.
Unit 6 Assessment
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Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
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