Talk:American system of manufacturing/Archives/2013

Labor force growth

"If the system used "relatively little labor", why did the manufacturing workforce grow so quickly?

A couple of things happened: The transportation revolution resulted in a great reduction in transport cost, which lowered prices. The manufacturing techniques also lowered prices. Both increased demand. The number of reapers sold in the U.S. before 1850 was a few thousand. From 1850-8 there were 70,000 sold, coinciding with railroads being built in the grain belt. Another factor was new products, such as the sewing machine.

But it is correct to say that less labor was used per unit of production. Phmoreno (talk) 14:26, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Both correct simultaneously. Phmoreno is correct that less labor was used per unit of production compared to the past. But Bob is also right when he points out that manufacturing long demanded huge volumes of labor from the workforce. Growth is a big part of the reason why both were able to be true simultaneously. (1) Economic productivity started so small that there was lots of room for it to grow. Preindustrial ways of producing things (food and clothing being the two most important examples) were (by our standards today) extremely labor-intensive (quantity of labor time per unit of output); (2) the entire economy of preindustrial times was so much smaller than ours today (much fewer people in existence X much lower per-capita standard of living); and (3) the industrial era created so much economic growth over the decades (ever higher populations of people X increasing per-capita standard of living). There were always more products to be made and more people to consume them, so plenty of demand for labor, even despite productivity perennially increasing. — ¾-10 14:58, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Criticism

"Now, about factories. As we are told by old, experienced foremen and workers, the introduction of the American system is one of the greatest evils. Working on an assembly line governed by the theoretician’s stopwatch; that is work without a soul, harried work without quality. Let’s eliminate the American system from our factories and do German quality work with soul, industriousness, joy – and do it with precision –, for again we are German and are producing wares that are presentable. It is good to use technology to help humanity, but it must not rule over them, or deprive many people, very many people, of bread, for then technology is no longer a blessing. It is in fact soulless.

Therefore craftwork above all, German quality work. Let that be the reputation of German work throughout the world. So far as concerns the poverty of the labour force today, it consists of precisely this excessive power of technology and the need of the unemployed, but Social Democracy, which calls itself first of all a working man’s party, has in twelve years found no solution to this problem of widespread unemployment.

Out with the American system, then a year of work service for the young, prohibit people from holding two jobs, give men priority for jobs, retirement at the age of sixty for workers or government officials, and then we’ll see how many unemployed people still remain.”

Elsa Walter, Dec. 1930, Letter to Hitler Phmoreno (talk) 18:49, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Rename

The title term is unknown in the UK, and is unsuitable for the title of an article in an international encyclopaedia. What is described is very similar to what is more commonly known as Fordism. Deipnosophista (talk) 15:58, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

You are partially right. The problem is that the term is historical, not current. It had currency in the UK and US in the 1850s (for example see the 1850s portion of the history section of the article on Colt's Manufacturing Company), but it is not used today except when in reference to that time period. It is kind of like calling an automobile a "horseless carriage". No one calls the latest Lexus model a "horseless carriage". But that doesn't mean that Wikipedia shouldn't have any coverage of the term "horseless carriage". We just have to think about how to do it right. Fordism was a technological sequela of the armory system, so you are right that it sounds familiar, but it's not the case that "Fordism is what people really mean when they talk about the armory system." I will go have an attempt at modifying this article to address your point. — ¾-10 00:33, 13 February 2013 (UTC)