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The Politices of Production: Technology, Markets, and the Two Cultures of American Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Philip Scranton
Philip Scranton
Affiliation:
Department of HistoryRutgers University, Camden and Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society Hagley Museum and Library
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Abstract

As the American economy became more complex and differentiated in the post-1850 decades, so too did the demand for manufactured products, creating wide markets for both mass-produced standard goods and batch-produced specialties among consumers and producers alike. These developments conditioned the emergence of distinctive work cultures within the two broad spheres of manufacturing, as well as distinct approaches to technological selection and use, labor, marketing, and management. As the mass production dynamic has been well documented, this essay focuses principally on elaborating the practices of industrial specialists for comparison with those of “managerial capitalism.” Conditions and controversies in the textile, woodworking, and metalworking trades provide an in-depth example of larger patterns among batch-oriented sectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including issues of the politics (i.e., power relations) in production and the recording of masculine identity and values. The role of public policies in facilitating the universalization of mass production rhetorics and practices is considered at the close.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Summer 1995 , pp. 369 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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