Labor in the 1910s

Servant to the Machine.

In the early years of the twentieth century, American industrial workers were confronted with incredible technological advances. The autonomous craftsmen of earlier times were replaced by less-skilled workers who depended on advanced machinery to increase productivity. The assembly line, coupled with the time-motion studies of efficiency experts, allowed manufacturers to increase production by subdividing tasks and making work as mindless, repetitive, and routine as possible. The machinery provided the skill in the new system, not the worker. Henry Ford's rentroduction of the Model T in 1913 remains the shining example of this movement toward greater industrial efficiency. In this era the worker became the servant of the machine that performed the actual work. The American worker was dehumanized in the process and exerted little control over his job. The employee simply carried out the simple, yet endless,...

[The entire page is 1375 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass