Lecture 6 - Capital, Labor, and the Standardization of Work

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)