HIST363: Global Perspectives on Industrialization

Although the concept of industrial rationalization did not become popular until the 1920s, such thinking grew increasingly widespread in the last third of the nineteenth century – not only in the USA, but also in Europe. Whereas work in early factories was still traditionally based on personal relationships and verbal instructions, now new forms of factory organization arose that were based on written documents and bureaucratization. At the same time, the division of labour and mechanization were promoted and increasingly guided by the notion of production flow.

The introduction of the first assembly line at Ford in Detroit in 1913 led to these ideas being widely discussed in Europe, too, where they were implemented above all by a few big corporations in the automobile and electric industries. Nevertheless, in Germany in 1930, for example, only 80,000 workers were involved in line or assembly line production.

In the late nineteenth century, the factory became more important as a production and social setting. In this sense, too, the USA became a model for European industry. The factory building was no longer a mere shell for production but rather was recognized as an essential element of the technological manufacturing process. An important precondition for the planning and design of a rational factory of this kind was the transition to a new source of energy. The replacement of belt transmissions with individual electric motors became feasible at the turn of the century and was the norm by the 1920s.

Alongside this, new factory concepts also took workers into consideration, whose role in increasing productivity was reflected upon in two ways: the factory building should, first, facilitate the supervision of workers, and second, improve working conditions. Some measures dealt with both aspects. For example, large rooms illuminated by sunlight could be monitored more easily and by fewer supervisors; at the same time, better air and light conditions were an important element in "making factories more beautiful" (Verschönerung der Fabriken). This buzzword appeared in Germany and Great Britain in the 1920s and was accompanied by new interest in factory building on the part of academically trained architects; the field had theretofore been the purview mostly of structural engineers.

Leading exponents of modern architecture like Walter Gropius devoted themselves to the theory and practice of factory building. Furthermore, they emphasized the importance of functional beauty, which was supposed both to simplify the course of production and to increase worker satisfaction. Similar positions for designing the "living space" of the factory were taken by experts from the realms of sociology, ergonomics, and management after the First World War. Thus as early as the 1920s, reflection about the humanization of work was an essential aspect of rationalization concepts and practices.

The Kahn brothers, American architects, played an important role in the spread of factories on the Ford model in Europe. Moritz Kahn, whose brother Albert was responsible for Ford's famous Highland Park and River Rouge plants, had been in charge of Truscon, the London branch of the family business, since 1907. In his influential book The Design and Construction of Industrial Buildings, Moritz Kahn emphasized that one core aspect of rationalization must always be that the design of the work environment have a positive influence on the motivation of workers. The impact of Ford's production model and the Kahns' factory architecture was felt beyond capitalist Europe.

By the mid-1920s, a comprehensive technological transfer from the USA and Germany to the Soviet Union was taking place. In 1928, the latter country ordered a tractor factory from Ford that was built in Stalingrad. Along with a team of experts from Detroit, Moritz Kahn, who was commissioned with filling the order, established a design office in the Soviet Union that was composed of 4,500 architects, engineers, and technicians and that would go on to be responsible for more than 500 factories by 1932.

The influence of rationalization went even beyond the factory, however. The twentieth century in general was characterized by the breakdown of work into individual steps and by the concepts of normalization and standardization. The broad notion of Fordism comprehended the vision and practice of mass production and mass consumption. Working in industry increasingly turned into a profession, on account of which day-labour and fluctuation in the workforce decreased. Then there was the technocratic vision of a society organized according to the guiding principle of efficiency. The period between 1910 and 1975 can accordingly be denoted as the "Fordist century" (fordistisches Jahrhundert).

In a certain sense, this form of the factory combined the advantages of the early modern manufactory and the putting-out system. Whereas the centralization of work in manufactories yielded at best small advances in productivity (due to the state of available technology), the supervision of workers entailed relatively high costs. The Verleger, however, could depend on home workers to exploit themselves, as it was to their direct advantage to produce more goods.

The 20th-century factory united both: on the one hand external forms of disciplining, on the other internal motivation, including the pressure of wage incentives and the introduction of the piece rate. With the joining of human and rationalistic motives, workers were supposed to be encouraged to realize their individual potential. In the historically specific workspace of the modern factory, people were now employed who differed markedly not only from workers in early modern workshops and manufactories but also from the workforce of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century mills.