assembly line definition us history

assembly line definition us history

The Evolution and Impact of the Assembly Line in U.S. History

1. Introduction to the Assembly Line

Willard Brainard discussed the differences between changing an individual’s job and changing lots of people’s jobs. There seem to be differences in the episodes of breakthroughs in the assembly line and Kaldor-Hicks compensation. This paper will discuss the evolution of the assembly line and its impact on the distribution of jobs in the United States. The description of assembly lines at the beginning of the paper may be skipped. You may think that it has been overdone, but the last section is a general description of the modern tire industry and its assembly line. That is the one I meant to overdo. Of course, some members have publicly stated that the unions of the United States and Ontario’s “assemblies” do the same thing as the tire factories, but they are not believed. The last paragraph lists the important classes of jobs that have been created due to the assembly line. They are important. Ask the graduates.

The assembly line has been one of the major changes in the evolution of U.S. history. Professor Porter would say it was even more important. My husband, who is interested in the history of automobiles and not management, cannot understand all the books we own about the Robber Barons and industry at the turn of the century. He, of course, is interested in cars of that era. Someone looking at U.S. history through the assembly line would need to read some books on engine and automobile history. He would understand how Ford put all those things Henry Johnny and thousands of others, like him, were doing on a broad scale. The evolution of a technology may be more important than the technology itself.

2. The Birth of the Assembly Line in the U.S.

Even though the assembly line and its consequent expanding American middle class are conspicuous in U.S. history, the birth of this production process is vague, and not attributable to a single source. It has been suggested that the employment of the interchangeable part concept and associated machine tools in the U.S. in the creation of firearms by government armories manufactured products by a machine-paced, repetition-based machine operation student over 10 years if labor seized in the production of firearms by gun makers. Such active participation is a factor for the exposition of a more complete assembly line technique as the nation gradually increased the quantity and variety of products produced pursuant to the acceptance of the concept.

The assembly line provided the means for the mass production of products by breaking down the manufacturing into steps that each of which could be performed by a worker. This innovation also led to the creation of numerous dull, repetitive, machine-paced jobs with unskilled and semi-skilled labor substantially at variance with the traditional building of products requiring skilled craftsmanship and pride in workmanship. The progressive industrialization of the nation, making possible a higher output level for the same amount of labor exertion than was possible prior to the industrialization, has permitted the United States to evolve from a country where most of its citizens earned their living through backbreaking labor in agriculture to a country where most of its citizens earn their living in a service sector which is mainly white collar in character.

3. Technological Innovations and Efficiency Gains

To solve this basic problem, finesse (which usually required the development of either a technology or a management system) would lead either to a production step in which much could be achieved followed by another step in which little could be done until its companions were similarly produced, or to find ways by which much work could be coordinated between shipment of supplies and production effort. In short, early adoption of production improvements led to lines of work.

Under the craft system, a skilled worker—or craftsman—paid meticulous attention to every aspect of the making of a product, from the design to the actual assembly of the pieces. Thus, when one breaks a piece of merchandise into its component parts, one essentially finds that a single craftsman performed all the various duties and myriad of tasks involved in the entire production process. As a result, no one part could be made unless all the other parts—not to mention the myriad of other tasks—were completed, and therefore, the professional had to supervise and perform the specialization for every part in order to complete the entire piece.

4. Labor Conditions and Worker Resistance

The strict time-wage compensation plan used by Henry Ford is related to a controversial labor-cutting device, the lengthening of the working day. Work rhythms characteristic of automatic mass production also metamorphosed other traditional elements of working conditions. In the stringent resistance to these demands for increased capitalist authority, the industrial worker spurred changes in government and labor policy that were pivotal influences in the emerging New Deal during the 1930s. Differences, including important ambiguities, in the response of unskilled, semi-skilled, and skilled workers to adjustments in working life, sharpened the image of the types of workers who either would or would not fit well into the new industrial setting.

American workers were divided with respect to the factories that dominated industrial capitalism. Historians’ huge generalization – increasing capitalist authority over workers – contained another tendency highly relevant to benchmark formative conditions of the new industrial worker. As the assembly line began to break out of the factory specifically designed to contain the new industrial system, time and motion studies, speed up, and resistance to increased capitalist authority accompanied the further movement of the assembly line throughout American industry.

5. The Assembly Line’s Socioeconomic Impact

By the 1920s, the conveyor had evolved into the assembly line—a fully integrated, smoothly progressing, and labor-saving system for progressive production. Not only were employers happier, but consumers also generally benefited from the increased availability, reliability, economy, and quality of the manufactured goods. Thus, the gross socioeconomic impact of the assembly line soon turned U.S. attention toward the often controversial need for continual technological innovation and the results of every specific innovation. As an anonymous observer remarked in 1851, “If labor is cheap, good workers are dearly bought. In proportion to its cheapness, it is increased in proportion to the lack of it.” Few employers or consumers would disagree. Indeed, as the U.S. factory economy began to evolve in the second half of the eighteenth century, attempts to increase labor efficiency caused property rights to workers, disputes over assigned workloads, and efforts to stabilize the workforce by means of tight community control and employer-employee relationships.

Mill owners had long sought to match the ferocious pace of industrial machines with an equally rapid and efficient human labor force that, in manufacturer Horace Wilcox’s approving phrase, would “keep the globes turning night and day.” Utilitarian as this desire had proven, the endurance of single workers already had long been strained beyond some restrictively accommodative level by workdays of ten hours or longer. Moreover, the American factory work force was expanding more slowly than the economy or productivity, generating labor shortages. Turnover was notably high, and unreliable workers consistently disrupted production schedules. These symptoms of labor unrest plagued virtually all employers striving to maximize profits in an industrial economy already resting on the foundation of cost-efficient mass production. American enterprise in the 1890s was anxious for a solution. Fortunately for employers and consumers but not for unskilled labor, Charles Parsons’ conveyor of 1883 soon led to the creation of a workable system that could quickly, profoundly, and lastingly change U.S. industrial structure and employment patterns.