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Mass Production and the U.S. Tire Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Daniel Nelson
Daniel Nelson
Affiliation:
Professor of history at The University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325.
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Abstract

The study of mass production has been strongly influenced in recent years by two dissimilar bodies of work—that of Alfred D. Chandler and that of Harry Braverman and others who argue that mass production helped managers “deskill” and “control” industrial workers. The history of the U.S. tire industry between 1910 and 1930 underlines the value of Chandler's analysis and the limited applicability of the deskilling and control hypotheses.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 329 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1987

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References

1 See Hounshell, David A., From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore, 1984), pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

2 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in America (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 240–44;Google Scholar and Chandler, , “The Emergence of Managerial Capitalism,” Business History Review, 58 (Winter 1984), pp. 474, 480–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The best known works are Braverman, Harry, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1974), esp. pp. 146–50;Google ScholarEdwards, Richard, Contested Terrain: The Transformation of The Workplace in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1979), pp. 20, 111–25;Google Scholar and Gordon, David M., Edwards, Richard, and Reich, Michael, Segmented Work, Divided Workers (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), pp. 131–33.Google Scholar For a discussion of the deskilling debate see Littler, Craig R., The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies (London, 1982), pp. 6–35.Google Scholar

4 See Chandler, Visible Hand, pp. 242–43.Google Scholar

5 See Babcock, Glenn, History of the United States Rubber Company: A Case Study in Corporate Management (Bloomington, 1966), pp. 29–47.Google Scholar

6 See “The Rubber Trade in New Jersey,” India Rubber World, 60 (May 1, 1919), p. 606. Michelin abandoned the U.S. market in the early 1920s. Dunlop remained but was an insignificant producer until the 1930s.Google Scholar

7 Babcock, U.S. Rubber, pp. 212.Google Scholar

8 See Allen, Hugh, The House of Goodyear: Fifty Years of Men and Industry (Akron, 1949), p. 12;Google Scholar and Lief, Alfred, Harvey S. Firestone, Free Man of Enterprise (New York, 1951), pp. 40–52.Google Scholar

9 Frank, Ralph William, “The Rubber Industry in the Akron-Barberton Area: A Study in the Factors Related to Its Development, Distribution and Localization” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1952), p. 144.Google Scholar For similar data see Babcock, U.S. Rubber, pp. 338–39;Google Scholar and Howard, and Wolf, Ralph, Rubber: A Story of Glory and Greed (New York, 1936), p. 466.Google Scholar

10 The quoted phrases are from Rosenberg, Nathan, Perspectives on Technology (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 111–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Gaffey, John Dean, The Productivity of Labor in the Rubber Tire Manufacturing Industry (New York, 1940), p. 90.Google Scholar For descriptions of machinery see Pearson, Henry C., Pneumatic Tires (New York, 1922).Google Scholar

12 See Killeffer, D. H., Banbury the Master Mixer, A Biography of Fernley H. Banbury (New York, 1962);Google ScholarGaffey, Productivity, p. 90; Babcock, U.S. Rubber, pp. 230–31.Google Scholar

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15 See Chandler, Alfred D., “The Structure of American Industry in the Twentieth Century: A Historical Overview,” Business History Review, 43 (Autumn 1969), pp. 258–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For competition among tire manufacturers see Reynolds, Lloyd G., “Competition in the Rubber Tire Industry.” American Economic Review, 28 (09 1938), pp. 460–66Google Scholar and French, Michael, “Structural Change and Competition in the United States Tire Industry, 1920–1937,” Business History Review, 60 (Spring 1986), pp. 28–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Federal Housing Administration, “Akron, Ohio Housing Market Analysis” (Washington, D.C., 1938), p. 218.Google Scholar

17 Stern, Boris, “Labor Productivity in the Automobile Tire Industry,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 585 (July 1933), p. 39.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., pp. 40–41.

19 Ibid., p. 49.

20 Ibid., pp. 50, 52.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid., p. 70.

23 U.S. Department of Commerce, Fourteenth Census of he U.S. Vol. 10: Manufactures 1919 (Washington, D.C., 1923), p. 1001;Google ScholarFifteenth Census, Manufactures 1929 (Washington, D.C., 1933), vol. 2, p. 781.Google Scholar

24 Stern, “Labor Productivity,” p. 61.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 61.

26 See Drucker, Mary J., The Rubber Industry in Ohio (Columbus, 1937).Google Scholar

27 “Summary of Enrollment,” National Labor Relations Board Papers, National Archives, RG 25, Box 2116, File 1832.Google Scholar

28 See Drucker, Rubber Industry for descriptions of each job.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 34.

30 This statement is based on interviews with veteran workers.

31 See “Some Labor Problems in the Rubber Industry,” India Rubber Review, 62 (April 1, 1920), p. 413; “War News of the Rubber Industry,” India Rubber World, 59 (October 1, 1918), p. 6; “War News of the Rubber Industry,” India Rubber World, 59 (August 1, 1918), p. 645; Memorandum, Labor Department File, Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. Archives.Google Scholar

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34 Maher, Amy, Ohio Wage Earners in the Manufacture of Rubber Products, 1914–1928 (Toledo, 1930), pp. 34, 38, 47.Google Scholar

35 See Drucker, Rubber Industry.Google Scholar

36 Gaffey, Productivity of Labor, p. 140.Google Scholar

37 Williams, Whiting to Graham, T. G., October 14, 1934, Whiting Williams Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Box 4, Folder 1.Google Scholar

38 Gaffey, Productivity of Labor, p. 116.Google Scholar

39 This process can be followed in the company histories—Allen's The House of Goodyear; Alfred Liefs The Firestone Story (New York, 1951);Google Scholar and Babcock's U.S. Rubbermdash;Google Scholarand in Nelson, Daniel, “The Company Union Movement, 1900–1940: A Re-examination” Business History Review, 56 (Autumn 1982), pp. 335–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 See Jacoby, Sanford M., Employing Bureaucracy, Managers, Unions and the Transformation of Work in American History, 1900–1945 (New York, 1985), p. 242.Google Scholar

41 See Cowdrick's, E. C. critique of Goodyear wage policy. Memo, 07 16, 1936, Special Conference Committee Records in U.S. Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, Hearings, 76th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C., 1939), p. 17,071.Google Scholar