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History of the organization of work

History of the organization of work, history of the methods by which
society structures the activities and labour necessary to its survival. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Work is essential in providing the basic physical needs of food, clothing,
and shelter. But work involves more than the use of tools and Introduction

techniques. Advances in technology, which will always occur, help to Organization of work in preindustrial
extend the reach of the hand, expand muscle power, enlarge the times
senses, and multiply the capacities of the mind. The story of work is still Organization of work in the industrial age
unfolding, with great changes taking place throughout the world and
in a more accelerated fashion than ever before. The form and nature of
the work process help determine the character of a civilization; in turn, a society’s economic, political, and cultural
characteristics shape the form and nature of the work process as well as the role and status of the worker within
the society.

The world of work—comprising all interactions between workers and employers, organizations, and the work
environment—is marked by the constant adaptation to changes in the technological, cultural, political, and
economic environments. The study of historical changes in the organization of work can perhaps lead to a better
understanding of the present problems—now on a worldwide scale—that accompany ongoing technical, political,
and economic changes. (See organizational analysis.) Hence, this article employs both historical and current
perspectives in order to provide a basis for understanding work in today’s world and to consider possible changes
in the future.

Organization Of Work In Preindustrial Times

Prehistory
Organization of work may have begun before the evolution of Homo sapiens. Along with tools, a more complex
brain structure, and linguistic communication, the division of labour (job specialization) may have been
responsible for starting the human conquest of nature and differentiating human beings from other animal
species.

In the earliest stages of human civilization, work was con ned to simple tasks involving the most basic of human
needs: food, child care, and shelter. A division of labour likely resulted when some individuals showed pro ciency
in particular tasks, such as hunting animals or gathering plants for food. As a means of increasing the food supply,
prehistoric peoples could organize the work of foraging and hunting and, later, agriculture. There could be no
widespread geographic division of labour, however, because populations were sparse and isolated. The uncertain
availability of food allowed little surplus for exchange, and there were few contacts with groups in different places
that might have specialized in obtaining different foods.

Age, sex, and class

The most obvious division of labour arose from differences in age and sex. The oldest people in the tribe lacked
strength and agility to hunt or forage far a eld and so performed more-sedentary tasks. The very youngest
members of the tribe were similarly employed and were taught simple food gathering. The sexual division of
labour was based largely upon physical differences, with men taking on tasks such as hunting while women
specialized in food gathering, child rearing, and cooking.

The earliest human groupings offer no evidence of a division of labour based upon class. The challenges of
providing food made it necessary for the whole group to contribute, so there could be no leisure class or even a
class of full-time specialists producing articles not directly related to the food supply. There were, however, part-
time specialists; a person who excelled at fashioning int tools and weapons could produce enough to trade any
surplus for food.

Communal organization

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Throughout human history, work has often required organization. Capture of game and sh required varying
degrees of cooperation among members of the group. Communal activity of this type had important social
implications. Food had to be equitably distributed, and a leader was needed to organize and direct the group.
Because the basic social group was the family tribe, kin relationships—from the tribal chief down—formed the
basis for the “managerial hierarchy.” Bones of large animals killed by hunters have been found in sites of the
Upper Paleolithic Period (about 40,000 BCE to about 10,000 BCE), indicating a high degree of organization in
hunting at this early stage of the human race. Shortly thereafter men began using dogs to assist with hunting.

Pottery
A more complex organization of work came with the development of pottery. While some sort of clay adequate
for making passable pottery can be found nearly everywhere, the best potter’s clay is not universally distributed.
Thus, people in some locations were able to make pottery products that could be traded elsewhere. Skilled
workmanship and specialized tools aided production, perhaps further encouraging specialization. There is no
conclusive evidence that the earliest potters spent their full time at that task or that pottery making was carried
on by women in its earliest stages (before introduction of the potter’s wheel). There is reason to believe, however,
that in prehistoric times some organization of the work existed. In some societies, for instance, the gathering of
the clay and ring materials may have been the work of the men, while the women may have fashioned and
decorated the pots.

Textiles
The same type of specialization might also have been involved in the making of textiles. Early protective garments
were derived from animal skins. The development of agriculture reduced the supply of available skins and
required a substitute material for clothing. To make textiles, yarn had to be spun; the earliest apparatus for this
work consisted of a spindle and a distaff (a forked stick holding the unspun bres).

Agriculture
The assignment of tasks in primitive agricultural societies may have involved a division of work along sexual lines,
with the elds entrusted to the women while the men hunted (although men would have helped with the more
physically demanding tasks such as clearing land). Because crop cultivation began as a part-time means of
supplementing the food source, there was little likelihood of full-time specialization in primitive agriculture. Yet
even in its earliest stages agriculture was signi cant to the organization of work, for it provided a slight surplus
that could be used to support human society’s rst real specialists: makers of metal tools and weapons.

Metallurgy
Although the origins of metallurgy are as yet unclear, the development and use of copper tools and weapons
created a new organization of work in which some persons devoted their full time to mining, smelting, and
forging (see Bronze Age). Although deposits of int for stone tools and weapons were fairly widely and evenly
distributed, copper ores were not. Some of the earlier copper artifacts and remains of early copper mines have
been found in areas where climate and topography most likely prevented agricultural development. Geography
thus made it dif cult for the earliest miners and metalworkers to cultivate crops. Besides, the techniques of
prospecting, mining, smelting, casting, and forging were probably so demanding of physical strength and mental
concentration as to preclude the metallurgist from farming or hunting activities.

Because copper ores are generally located in mountainous regions, the metal had to be transported to its lowland
users. The specializations of mining and metalworking could evolve only after cultivation efforts created yields
that could exceed subsistence levels. Thus, metalworkers and their families were supported by the surplus
foodstuffs of farmers. Not surprisingly, metallurgy developed rst near the farming valleys of the great river
systems of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus, all of which provided a high yield of foodstuffs per acre. If
metalworkers pursued their occupations full-time, then it is likely that other craft specialties developed in a similar
manner. The combination of agricultural surpluses with copper and bronze tools provided the basis for
development of the great irrigation civilizations of the Middle East. There the organization of work developed
along lines that remained unchanged for the next 5,000 years, until the beginnings of mechanization and
industrialization in the 18th century.

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The ancient world

In his seminal book Oriental Despotism (1957), historian and political scientist Karl Wittfogel presented a general
theory of the development of ancient civilizations. He found examples of large-scale systematic organization of
work, the emergence of social classes, and widespread specialization. Wittfogel believed that the development of
irrigation projects in such areas as Mesopotamia and Egypt led to the use of mass labour, to an organizational
hierarchy for coordinating and directing these activities, and to government control for ensuring proper
distribution of the water. (See hydraulic civilization.) Though tribal societies had some form of government, this
was usually personal in nature, exercised by a patriarch over a tribal group related by various degrees of kinship.
Now, for the rst time, an impersonal government as a distinct and permanent institution was established.

Irrigation increased the food supply, allowing larger numbers of people to agglomerate into towns and cities.
Because farmers were vulnerable to attack, armies were needed; this created the development of an of cer class.
Town specialization of labour brought the emergence of potters, weavers, metalworkers, scribes, lawyers, and
physicians, while the new surpluses also created the basis for commerce. The more complex economy created a
need for record keeping, so writing—of which the rst examples come from the bookkeeping records of the
storehouses in ancient Mesopotamia—was born.

Wittfogel’s theory has been modi ed by scholars who point to urban civilizations that lacked large-scale irrigation
works. In their view, several factors, including geographic features, natural-resource distribution, climate, kinds of
crops and animals raised, and relations with neighbouring peoples, entered into the response to the environment.
(The work of these scholars represents a “systems” approach to de ning the origins of organized societies.)

Social classes
In any case, by the time written history began, distinct economic and social classes were in existence, with
members of each class occupying a certain place in the organization of work. At the apex of the social pyramid
stood the ruler (often worshiped as a divinity in Mesopotamia and Egypt) and the nobles (probably grown out of a
warrior group that had subjugated its neighbours). Closely aligned with them were the priests; possessing
knowledge of writing and mathematics, the priests served as government of cials, organizing and directing the
economy and overseeing clerks and scribes. The traders and merchants, who distributed and exchanged goods
produced by others, were below the noble-priest class in the social pyramid. A sizable group of artisans and
craftsmen, producing specialized goods, belonged to the lower economic classes. Even lower in the social
hierarchy were the peasants, and at the bottom of the social scale were the slaves, most likely originating as war
captives or ruined debtors. The social structure in Classical Greece and Rome followed these lines. For relatively
short periods of time, some democracies did away with the ruling group, substituting a class of free landholders
and providing a citizen army of warriors, but the basic economic organization remained unchanged.

Certain characteristics of the ancient organization of work emerged from the social strati cation described above.
Chief among these was the hereditary nature of occupations and status. At certain times and places—in the later
Roman Empire, for example—heredity of occupation was enforced by law, but tradition was usually suf cient to
maintain the system. The social structure remained remarkably stable and was reinforced by the organizations of
workers engaged in the same occupation. These groups—some voluntary and some required by law—can be
viewed as prototypes of the medieval guilds.

Agriculture
The family farm
The basic agricultural work unit in the ancient world was the family. Even in certain regions where the state
owned the land, farms were allocated by family. Furthermore, when large farming estates were formed during the
Roman Empire, the structure of rural society was little affected, because the owners commonly left cultivation of
their land to peasants who became their tenants.

Work within the family farm unit often was divided along sexual lines: the men commonly bore chief responsibility
for such seasonal tasks as plowing, sowing, tilling, and harvesting, while the women cared for children, prepared
food, and made clothing. If slaves were available, their work was similarly divided. During planting and harvesting
seasons, the entire family performed eldwork, with sons and daughters entering into an apprenticeship under

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their parents. Technology also in uenced work organization. The usual draft team in antiquity—a pair of oxen—
required two operators: a driver for the team and a guide for the plow.

Estates
In the large estates, or latifundia, of the Roman Empire, the complex organization of work resulted in the creation
of a hierarchy of supervisors. The Greek historian Xenophon (5th–4th century BCE) and the Roman statesman
Marcus Porcius Cato (3rd–2nd century BCE) wrote handbooks for the management of such estates. Cato also
outlined the work organization for a medium-sized farm. For an estate of 150 acres (60 hectares) with olive trees,
he recommended one overseer, a housekeeper, ve farmhands, three carders, a donkey driver, a swineherd, and a
shepherd. To these 13 permanent labourers, Cato recommended the hiring of extra hands for the harvest period.

On the larger latifundia that developed from about the 2nd century BCE, the owner was usually nonresident, often
because he had many scattered estates. Direction of the affairs of each was left in the hands of a bailiff under
whose command slaves, numbering in the hundreds or even in the thousands, were divided into gangs charged
with speci c duties.

Crop specialization
Ancient agricultural work was also characterized by specialization in crops: vineyards and olive groves were
concentrated in Greece and Italy, while cereals were cultivated in the richer soils of Sicily, North Africa, and Asia.
Wine and oil required craftsmen to produce amphorae for storage and conveyance, as well as tradesmen and
small sailing vessels for transport.

Crafts
Economic growth, sophistication of taste, and enlarged markets ultimately brought mass production of a sort,
with large workshops dedicated to the production of a single item. These workshops, however, never achieved the
size of even a small modern factory; a building in which a dozen persons worked was considered a large factory,
though a few workshops were larger.

The earliest specialized craftsmen were probably itinerant, gravitating to wherever their services were in demand.
As market centres developed, however, craftsmen had less of a need to travel, because their products could be
traded in these centres. Eventually, market development and economic growth increased the number of
specialized crafts, fostered the organization of guildlike groups, and contributed to a geographic division of labour,
with members of one craft located in a special quarter of a city or in one area of a country. In the pottery industry,
specialization was carried even further, with shaping, ring, and decoration sometimes done in separate
establishments and with workshops specializing in cooking pots, jars, goblets, and funerary urns.

Slaves were put to work in a variety of areas, including the crafts workshops. The chief examples of large-scale
production by slaves were in mining and metallurgy, in which the conditions of labour were harsh and the
organization of work was highly structured. In the silver mines at Laurium, in ancient Greece, the master miner
commanded three gangs of labourers. The strongest workers handled picks at the ore face, weaker men or boys
carried ore from the mine, and women and old men sifted the ore-bearing rock. The miners worked 10-hour shifts
(followed by 10 hours of rest) in dark and narrow passages with smoky lamps that made the air almost
unbreathable. Aboveground, the master smelter supervised the workshops, in which the strongest men worked
the mortar and the weakest the hand mill. Metallurgical working of the ore was carried out by small units,
because the small leather bellows limited the size of the furnace. Metallurgy thus remained essentially a
handicraft.

After weapons and tools, the chief use of metal was for ornamentation. The metalworker was more artisan, or even
artist, than industrial worker, and in the trade there were patternmakers, smelters, turners, metal chasers, gilders,
and specialized goldsmiths and silversmiths.

Large-scale building
The monumental public-works projects of the ancient world demonstrate a remarkable degree of human
organization in the absence of power and machinery. The Great Pyramid at Giza, built about 2500 BCE, before the

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Egyptians knew the pulley or had wheeled vehicles, covers 13 acres (5.3 hectares) and contains the staggering
total of 2,300,000 colossal blocks of granite and limestone weighing an average of 5,000 pounds (2,300 kilograms)
each. There exists no complete historical or archaeological record of the exact methods of quarrying,
transportation, and construction of the pyramids, and what evidence remains is often contradictory. Obviously,
the need to organize the work on a systematic and rational basis was superbly met. It is estimated that some
100,000 workers were involved over 20 years in building the Great Pyramid, and the logistic problem alone,
housing and feeding this large army of workers, required a high degree of administrative skill.

The master builder, who planned and directed the erection of the pyramids and other great structures, occupied
a high position in society. Ancestor of the modern architect and engineer, he was a trusted court noble and
adviser to the ruler. He directed a host of subordinates, superintendents, and foremen, each with his scribes and
recorders.

Although some slaves were employed in building the pyramids, most of the builders were peasants, drafted as a
form of service tax (corvée) owed the state and employed when the Nile was ooding their elds. Workers were
not regarded as expendable; overseers and foremen took pride in reporting on their safety and welfare. In a record
of a quarrying expedition to the desert, the leader boasted that he had not lost a man or a mule. The labourers
were organized into gangs: skilled workers cut granite for the columns, architraves, doorjambs, lintels, and casing
blocks; masons and other craftsmen dressed, polished, and laid the blocks and probably erected ramps to drag
the stones into place.

The Greeks and Romans used advanced organizational techniques in the building of monuments. The Roman
road network, aqueducts, public buildings, public baths, harbours, docks, and lighthouses demanded exceptional
skill in organizing materials and workmen, implying in turn a rational division of labour among craftsmen.

Medieval farming and craft work

The organization of work and division of labour, which might be said to have reached a peak during the Roman
Empire, declined as the empire disintegrated. The social and political fragmentation and economic decay of the
late empire reduced most of western Europe to small-scale, self-suf cient economic units. As this happened, the
market for specialized production disappeared until trade and town life revived in the form of the new feudal
society. The growth of interregional commerce stimulated demand for specialized crafts that would serve growing
markets.

Important technological innovations in agriculture, power, transportation, metallurgy, and machines created new
forms of specialization. The emergence of the new burgher (middle) class, with rapidly growing wealth and
breadth of enterprise, provided the basis for a more rational management of production. These social forces
hastened the rise of industrialization.

Class structure
Social divisions, or class structure, in the medieval world re ected a division of labour. The noble class essentially
contributed to the organization of work. Because they controlled the land, basic to production in this agrarian
society, the nobles alone possessed the wealth to purchase the products of artisans, to buy goods brought from a
distance, to acquire the weapons and armour made by metallurgists, and to construct castles and fortresses. The
lords also decided, in accordance with prevailing custom, how the farmwork should be organized.

The clergy were both consumers and producers whose primary responsibility was the spiritual care of their
parishioners. The monasteries were self-suf cient agrarian units that often produced a surplus for trade; indeed,
the monks experimented in improving farming techniques and in producing special cheeses and wines that were
sold outside the monastery. Finally, the great churches required specialists in stained glass, bell founding,
stonemasonry, wood carving, and other trades.

The bulk of the population comprised farmers of varying legal and social status. Most were serfs bound to the
plots of ground their ancestors had tilled and provided services or goods to the lord of the manor, who extended
protection in return. A few inhabitants of the manor were tenant farmers, or sharecroppers, who rented land in
return for payments of a share of the produce. Fewer still were free farm labourers who worked for wages. Slavery
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had all but disappeared. Because the manor was practically self-suf cient, peasants of whatever status performed
a variety of tasks connected with their agricultural occupation.

Agricultural production
Four interrelated factors determined the work organization of medieval agriculture: the economic self-suf ciency
of the manor, the development of mixed agriculture based on crops and livestock, such technological
improvements as the heavy wheeled plow and rigid horse collar, and the system of land tenure and division of
holdings. Each peasant household produced nearly everything it needed. Exceptions included the use of a feudal
mill or winepress for which the peasants paid not in money but with a percentage of the crop being processed.

While stock raising and crop production had been separate enterprises in antiquity, the two were combined
during the Middle Ages in northwestern Europe. Livestock was raised for use as draft animals and for food, and,
because the yield of the grain elds did not greatly exceed human requirements, stock was pastured on poor land
or harvested elds. Thus, a certain amount of land was reserved for pasturage, and some villager, usually an older
member of the community, became a herdsman.

Communal organization was favoured by the land-tenure arrangements and by the way in which arable land was
divided among villagers. In order to assure an equitable apportionment, the land was divided into large elds.
Each peasant held strips in each eld, meaning that the work of plowing, planting, and harvesting had to be done
in common and at the same time.

The wheeled plow, gradually introduced over several centuries, further reinforced communal work organization.
Earlier plows had merely scratched the surface of the soil. The new plow was equipped with a heavy knife (colter)
to dig under the surface, thereby making strip elds possible. Yet because the new plow required a team of eight
oxen—more than any single peasant owned—plowing (and indeed all heavy work on the manor) was pooled. Such
a system allowed little room for individual initiative; everyone followed established routines, with the pace of the
work set by the ox team.

The craft guilds

In contrast to the land-bound serfs, townspeople of the Middle Ages were free. Some engaged in commerce and
formed groups known as merchant guilds. The majority, however, were small merchant-craftsmen, organized in
craft guilds as masters (of highest accomplishment and status), journeymen (at a middle level), and apprentices
(beginners). The medieval master was typically many things at once: a skilled workman himself; a foreman,
supervising journeymen and apprentices; an employer; a buyer of raw or semi nished materials; and a seller of
nished products. Because medieval craftsmen employed simple hand tools, a workman’s own skill determined
the quantity and quality of his output. Apprentices and journeymen underwent long periods of learning under
the guidance of a more experienced workman. When he could produce a “masterpiece” that met the approval of
the guild masters, the craftsman would gain full admission into the guild.

Craft guilds were organized through regulations. By controlling conditions of entrance into a craft, guilds limited
the labour supply. By de ning wages, hours, tools, and techniques, they regulated both working conditions and
the production process. Quality standards and prices were also set. Monopolistic in nature, the guilds, either singly
or in combination, sought complete control over their own local markets. In order to attain and protect their
monopoly, the guilds acquired a political voice and in some locations achieved the right to elect a number of their
own members to the town council. In some towns, such as Liège, Utrecht, and Cologne, guilds achieved complete
political control. The 32 craft guilds in Liège, for example, so dominated the town after 1384 that they named the
town council and governors and required all important civic decisions to be approved by a majority vote of their
membership.

Craft guilds reached their peak prosperity in the 14th century. Specialties had become so differentiated that larger
towns typically had more than 100 guilds. In northern Europe, for example, at the beginning of the period,
carpenters built houses and made furniture. In time, furniture making became a new craft, that of joinery, and the
joiners broke from the carpenters to establish their own guilds. The wood-carvers and turners (who specialized in
furniture turned on a lathe) founded guilds also. Those who painted and gilded furniture and wood carvings were
also represented by a separate guild.
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This era of intense specialization was marked by a countermovement toward amalgamation of different crafts—a
tendency that re ected the growth of the market and the desire of enterprising masters to expand their trading
abilities. This came at the expense of the handicraft function. As craft differentiation proliferated, numerous crafts
wound up producing the same or similar articles. This stimulated competitive forces among craftsmen who
needed to assure themselves of raw materials and a market. Because of this, masters were tempted to employ
members of other crafts, and con icts inevitably arose.

The same widening of the market led to differentiation of classes within a craft. As the trading function grew more
important, those who remained craftsmen fell into a condition of dependence upon the traders. Eventually,
merchant guilds—originally representatives of traders only—absorbed the craft guilds.

The craft guilds also suffered a breakdown in structure. Because the masters sought to retain the pro ts of the
growing market for themselves, they made it increasingly dif cult for journeymen to enter their class, preferring
instead to employ them as wage workers. Apprentices similarly had little hope of rising to mastership. Thus, the
master-journeyman-apprentice relationship gave way to an employer-employee arrangement, with the master
performing the functions of merchant while his employees did craftwork. Conditions for development of the early
industrial system rose out of the disintegration of this craft-guild system. The excluded journeymen eventually
became a class of free labourers who practiced their craft for wages outside the town walls—and outside the
limitations of the guild regulations.

Medieval industry
The putting-out system
Certain industries that were small at the outset of the Middle Ages grew to be quite large in scale, and this growth
in uenced changes in the organization of work. The most important of these was the wool-cloth industry.

For reasons of cost and availability, wool was the basic clothing material in western Europe until the beginning of
modern times. Linen and silk were too costly for any large-scale use, and cotton was grown only in small volumes.
The production of cloth from wool involved several time-consuming steps: cleaning and carding (straightening
curled and knotted bres sheared from the sheep), spinning the bres into thread, weaving the thread into cloth,
shearing off knots and roughness, and dyeing. All these processes could be carried on within a single peasant
household, for they required only simple apparatus and rudimentary skills. Typically, children carded the wool,
women operated the spinning wheel, and men worked the loom shuttles.

The cloth produced by such crude tools and relatively unskilled workers was rough but serviceable. Those above
the peasant class, however, desired the more comfortable and attractive clothing that was produced by skilled
craftsmen. The resulting demand for better textiles caused the industry to outgrow the peasant household means
of production. A new organization of work, called the putting-out system, was instituted in which a merchant
clothier bought raw wool, “put it out” to be carded, spun, and woven into cloth, and then carried the cloth through
the nishing processes with the help of skilled craftsmen. Because the spinners and weavers remained peasants,
they also earned part of their living from the plots on which their cottages stood, meaning that agriculture and
industry were pursued as something of an integrated enterprise. The man could work in the eld while his wife
spun, and in winter the man helped with textile production. At harvest time every hand was out in the elds,
leaving the spinning wheels and looms temporarily idle.

The putting-out system differed from peasant household production in that the merchant clothier, or
entrepreneur, bought the raw wool and owned the product through all stages of its preparation (the cottage
workers still owned their own spinning wheels, looms, and other tools). Thus, the peasant farmer came to work on
materials that did not belong to him. On the other hand, the work was performed at home (known as the cottage
system or domestic system) rather than in a factory, and work proceeded at the worker’s pace. The merchant
simply organized the work by arranging the order and sequence of the various technical processes—he did not
supervise the workers’ actual performance. Nevertheless, the merchant clothier who began putting out cloth
came to control the entire production process. This represented a step toward the industrial capitalism that
emerged in the 19th century.

Advances in technology
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Growth in the scale of commerce during the Middle Ages was coupled with advances in technology. Both these
phenomena helped transform the nature of work. Of central importance were the applications of wind power and
waterpower; these marked the beginning of the replacement of human labour by machine power. Starting in the
late 10th century, waterwheels, long used for grinding grain, were applied to many industrial processes that
included tanning, olive pressing, sawing wood, polishing armour, pulverizing stone, and operating blast-furnace
bellows. The rst horizontal-axle windmill appeared in western Europe in 1185, and within a short time windmills
could be found from northern England to the Middle East.

The mechanization of the process of fulling (i.e., shrinking and thickening) of cloth illustrates ways that technology
changed the nature of work. Up to the 13th century, fulling had been accomplished by trampling the cloth or
beating it with a fuller’s bat. The fulling mill invented during the Middle Ages was a twofold innovation: rst, two
wooden hammers replaced human feet; and second, the hammers were raised and dropped by the power of a
water mill. Only one man needed to keep the cloth moving properly in the trough, which was lled with water
and fuller’s earth. The mechanization of fulling also caused the cloth industry to relocate along streams, often
away from the established urban textile centres.

Perhaps the best example of specialization of labour in the Middle Ages is to be found in the large-scale metal-
mining industry in central Europe, as described by the German scientist Georgius Agricola in De re metallica
(1556), the leading textbook for miners and metallurgists for nearly two centuries. In addition to the Bergmeister
(“master miner”), the chief mine administrator, there was a hierarchy of clerical and technical personnel and a
series of craftsmen and mechanics specializing in different phases of the mining operation: miners, shovelers,
windlass operators, carriers, sorters, washers, and smelters. The mines operated ve days a week on a 24-hour
basis, with the workday divided into three seven-hour shifts and the remaining three hours used for changing
shifts. Animal power was used wherever possible, with teams of eight horses hitched in pairs to turn windlasses
and raise buckets of ore or drain water from the mine. Agricola’s illustrations show many types of pumps for mine
drainage: crank-operated, treadmill-operated, and waterpower-operated. There were also suction pumps of
varying degrees of complexity. All were operated by specialized mechanics.

The bellows for mine ventilation were operated either by human and animal power or by waterpower. Other
mining processes were less mechanized and were carried on much as they had been in antiquity. Ores brought to
the surface were taken to a sorting table on which women, boys, and old men separated the pieces by hand,
putting the good ores into wooden tubs to be carried to the furnaces for smelting.

Monumental construction
The mechanization that was changing the organization of work throughout the medieval period was little
apparent in the construction of castles, cathedrals, and town walls. Technologies that involved in the lifting of
weights, for instance, had made little progress during the Middle Ages, and, because the freemasons declined to
handle large blocks of stone, the Romanesque and Gothic structures were built with smaller stone blocks,
nevertheless achieving grandeur in scale. The organization of labour differed greatly from that employed in
antiquity. These great monuments were built by free labourers such as carpenters, glaziers, roofers, bell founders,
and many other craftsmen in addition to the stonemasons.

Much can be learned about the nature of medieval construction by studying the records of these projects as well
as the monuments that were built. For a long time it was believed that medieval craftsmen, especially those
engaged in the building of cathedrals, were humble, self-effacing artisans who laboured piously and anonymously
for the glory of God and for their own salvation. Scholars have dispelled this myth. Medieval builders often left
their names or signatures upon their work, and surviving records show names, wages, and occasionally protests
over wages. There was a high degree of individualism. The artisans were by no means anonymous: historians have
uncovered more than 25,000 names of those who worked on medieval churches. It has since been concluded that
the medieval craftsmen were relatively free and unfettered when compared to their counterparts in antiquity.

Directing the guild craftsmen was the master mason, who functioned as architect, administrative of cial, building
contractor, and technical supervisor. He designed the molds, or patterns, used to cut the stones for the intricate
designs of doors, windows, arches, and vaults. He also designed the building itself, usually copying its elements
from earlier structures upon which he had worked, either as a master or during his apprenticeship. He sketched

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his plans out on parchment. As administrator, he kept the accounts, hired and red the workers, and was
responsible for procurement of materials. As technical supervisor, he was constantly present to make spot
decisions and plans. In the largest projects he was assisted by undermasters.

From the 16th to the 18th century

The proliferation of industry during the early modern period (immediately preceding the Industrial Revolution)
arose from four factors: (1) the growth of wealth, derived partly from the in ux of precious metals from the New
World but also from developments in commerce, banking, and the very concept of money, (2) the growth of
markets, (3) the introduction of new products, and (4) the development of new technologies. These helped
increase the scale of manufacturing industries throughout Europe, which in turn prompted changes in the
organization of work.

The growth in the size of the market was caused only partially by the geographic explorations of the preceding
era and subsequent colonization. Most of the new demand for goods stemmed from the emergence of the new
middle class (or bourgeoisie)—a phenomenon that raised the standard of living for an enormous population
group and stimulated demand for quality goods. The markets also bene ted from the demise of small medieval
feudalities, which eventually gave way to larger political units—the royal kingdoms. When economic in uence
extended over a larger jurisdiction, it tended to eliminate many of the local restrictions on trade and commerce
established by the previous smaller political units. Many new products—including spices from Asia and sugarcane
from the New World—were also introduced into Europe, either directly, by the explorers, or indirectly, through
expanded trade with distant points. Increased demand paralleled the growing af uence and new manners of
European society. Handicraft production no longer suf ced as a means of rising to the pinnacle of society, and, as
a result, the power and in uence of the guilds declined.

Genesis of the factory system

Over time the nature of technological change shifted from the introduction of new mechanical contrivances to
developments in the application of power (primarily water and wind) to old devices and—even more signi cantly
—to the organization of work that would allow production on a larger scale. This represented the start of the
factory system. The organization of commerce also changed rapidly. New instruments in the elds of banking,
insurance, and export marketing offered an ef cient means of making capital available for investment in
industrial enterprises.

In Britain the development of commercial concentration—and hence of industrial scale—was mainly the work of
large companies or corporate bodies such as woolen manufacturers, ironmasters, and hatmakers. Government
encouragement was given by means of special legislation, especially grants of monopolistic charters. In France,
however, the practice of mercantilism, a government-directed policy aimed at increasing national wealth and
power, meant that the government itself took an active part in developing industries that were state owned and
operated—among them the Gobelins tapestry works and other manufacturers of furniture, porcelain, or luxury
items.

Although the state-run factories in France represented at least two of the essentials of factory production—the
gathering of large groups of workers in one place and the imposition of disciplinary rules—they did not change
the organization of work. Because they produced small quantities of luxury goods, they operated as large
handicraft operations. Furthermore, despite their size, the French Royal Manufactories did not possess the third
prime element of a true factory system: mechanization. The great historical change in the organization of work
came in 18th-century Britain with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, largely as the result of the new
technology of power-driven machinery.

The Industrial Revolution

Mechanization
The new machines introduced in the 18th century demanded a rational organization of job functions that differed
greatly from that of the old handicraft tradition. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776) gave the classic
description of the new production system as exempli ed by a pin factory:

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One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fth grinds it at the top for
receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business;
to whiten the pin is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of
making a pin is in this manner divided into about 18 distinct operations.

According to Smith, a single worker “could scarce, perhaps with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and
certainly could not make 20.” The new methods enabled a pin factory to turn out as many as 4,800 pins a day.

Increases in productivity depended far more upon the rational organization of processes than upon individual
skill. In the textile industry, manual dexterity and alert response proved to be more valuable than experience; this
led to the use of more-inexpensive woman and child labour in the early mills. Some vestiges of the medieval guild
apprenticeship, however, still remained in the early textile factories, with children sometimes bound as
apprentices for a period of at least seven years, usually up to the age of 21. In some areas the old cottage system of
textile production was moved to the factory, with the entire family employed as a work team. In those cases the
father would be employed for any heavy work while supervising his wife and children at the machines.

Division of labour in the workplace

The high cost of machinery could be justi ed only if a heavy and continuous demand existed for its output. The
value placed on machines created a division of labour between the owner of the machines and the employees
who operated them. The owner supervised his workers, compelling them to work at the pace of the machine.
Even in enterprises that were not yet fully mechanized, the advantages of factory discipline were apparent at an
early stage of the Industrial Revolution. Josiah Wedgwood designed his pottery works at Etruria in England “with
a view to the strictest economy of labour.” His plant was laid out so that the pots were rst formed and then
passed through the painting room, the kiln room, the account room (for inventory control), and to storage before
shipping. In potteries before this time, the workers could roam from one task to another; in Wedgwood’s, the
employees were assigned a particular post and worked at one task only. Out of 278 men, women, and children
employed by Wedgwood in 1790, only 5 had no assigned post; the rest were specialists.

While the argument is sometimes made that the division of labour destroyed skill, the fact is that it might also
have improved the quality of the nished product, for Wedgwood’s pottery was superior to that of his competitors.
It can be said that the division of labour does not so much destroy skill as limit it to a particular eld of
development; within a particular task, the division of labour increases skills by virtue of continued repetition. It is
interesting to note that Wedgwood’s chief dif culty was not so much in training his workers as it was in
introducing them to a novel form of discipline that ran contrary to centuries of independence. It was a constant
test of Wedgwood’s ingenuity to enforce six hours of punctual and constant attendance upon his workers, to get
them to avoid waste, and to keep them from drinking on the job and taking unauthorized “holidays.” Because he
was involved in all the tasks of running an enterprise and could not continually supervise his workers, he
developed a hierarchy of supervisors and managers.

There can be little doubt that the condition of the workers, especially the women and children, in the early textile
factories was miserable: 14 to 16 hours every day spent performing repetitive tasks in noisy, foul-smelling,
unsanitary surroundings. The workers’ homes were equally unhealthy. It was at this period that the “social
question” arose: why should poverty continue to exist in a nation that had the capacity to produce enormous
quantities of goods? Answers to that question were to produce new social philosophies, social movements and
political movements that have had major effects on society and politics ever since.

New industries
The introduction of steam-driven machinery—much of it fueled by coal—brought new industries into being or
transformed older ones. Coal was replacing wood as a fuel especially in England and northern France, where
deforestation had made wood scarce. New demands stimulated growth in the coal-mining industry, yet the
organization of labour remained much as it had when Agricola wrote his description of 16th-century mining. The
pressure on fuel supplies came not only from domestic heating requirements and from the metallurgical trades
but also from the brickmaking, brewing, dyeing, and glassmaking industries. Metalworking trades also underwent

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rapid development, as technological innovations fostered the replacement of wooden machinery with metal and
the manufacture of such items as metal nails, glassware, and iron bearings.

Another factor contributing to the rise of new industries was the religious warfare of the 16th and 17th centuries.
The forced movement of populations helped spread technical capabilities to new areas. For example, the
Protestant Huguenots, expelled from France near the end of the 17th century, carried with them their special skills
in metalworking and glassmaking when they migrated to England, Holland, Germany, and the American colonies.

Urbanization
One of the greatest stimuli toward a more rational organization of work was the growth in population across
Europe from the 17th to the 19th century—especially in the urban centres. It is possible that only a few European
cities—Paris and the great Italian commercial cities of Venice, Genoa, and Naples—had as many as 100,000 people
at the beginning of the modern era. London may have had only about half that number. By the end of the 17th
century, however, London probably had 500,000 inhabitants.

Colonization of the New World

Worldwide division of labour
Although exploration and colonization had originally been carried out in order to secure exotic and expensive
spices, these products had little direct in uence upon the organization of work in Europe; even the enormous
trade in semitropical items such as sugar and coffee had little effect. However, wheat, wool, and meat from the
temperate areas ultimately brought about an international division of labour, with the New World colonies
furnishing agricultural produce to the manufacturing countries of Europe. (See comparative advantage.) In the
20th and 21st centuries the underdeveloped countries of the tropics supplied agricultural and industrial raw
materials to developed areas, yet the dominant agricultural exporters were some of the most-developed
countries, such as the United States and Canada.

Slavery
While slavery has been evident in cultures throughout human history, its use by Europeans in their colonization of
the New World imposed radical changes on the organization of work. Colonial slavery was linked with sugar
production in Brazil and the West Indies and later with cotton in southern North America.

Cultivation of sugarcane, especially its harvesting, required heavy manual labour. Harvested cane was sent to a
mill for grinding within a few hours after cutting; this necessitated establishment of a plantation system in which
the workers would be housed close to the elds and the sugar mill. The requirements of sugar planters brought
about the introduction of agricultural slavery to the Western Hemisphere. It began as early as 1518, when the
Spanish government granted a license to import some 4,000 African slaves into the Spanish colonies. The
plantation system and the consequent demand for African slaves spread during the next two centuries
throughout the sugar-growing areas, including the British West Indies. Indeed, the sugar industries of the British
islands of the West Indies were so pro table that it made more economic sense to devote nearly all the land to
the cultivation and exporting of sugarcane while importing other foods. Because of this dependence on imported
foods, the islands were not self-suf cient.

In the temperate zone, where sugar production was not possible, slaves were little used except in tobacco-
growing areas. The Puritan communities in New England engaged in small family farming, while the Southern
colonies employed indentured servants (white labourers who agreed to work a number of years for some person
who had paid their passage to the New World).

Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made cotton cheap enough to use as a staple for textile
production. As a result, slavery and the plantation system became xtures in the American South. While slaves
were employed chie y as cotton- eld labourers, they also worked as craftsmen, factory hands, and domestic
servants, creating, in other words, a division of labour on the plantation. The regional specialization in production
led to sectional economic and political differences and ultimately to the American Civil War and to the freeing of
the slaves.

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Organization Of Work In The Industrial Age

The coming of mass production
Mass production is the name given to the method of producing goods in large quantities at relatively low cost per
unit. The mass production process itself is characterized by high volume, a highly organized ow of materials
through various stages of manufacturing, careful supervision of quality standards, and precise division of labour.
Mass production cannot exist without mass consumption. Before the expansion of retailing, the only large-scale
demand for standardized, uniform products came from military organizations. As a result, the experiments that
led to mass production were rst performed under the aegis of the military.

Machine tools and interchangeable parts

Advances in mass production could not be made without the development of the machine-tool industry—that is,
the fabrication of machinery that could make machines. Though some basic devices such as the woodworking
lathe had existed for centuries, their evolution into industrial machine tools capable of cutting and shaping hard
metals to precise tolerances was brought about by a series of 19th-century innovators, rst in Britain and later in
the United States. With precision equipment, large numbers of identical parts could be produced by a small
workforce at low costs.

The system of manufacture involving production of many identical parts and their assembly into nished
products came to be called the American System, because it achieved its fullest maturity in the United States.
Although Eli Whitney was credited with this development, his ideas had appeared earlier in Sweden, France, and
Britain and were being practiced in arms factories in the United States. During the years 1802–08, for example, the
French engineer Marc Brunel, while working for the British Admiralty in the Portsmouth Dockyard, devised an
ef cient process for producing wooden pulley blocks. Ten men, in place of 110 needed previously, were able to
make 160,000 pulley blocks per year. British manufacturers, however, ignored Brunel’s ideas, and it was not until
London’s Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851 that British engineers, viewing exhibits of machines used in the United
States to produce interchangeable parts, began to apply the system. By the third quarter of the 19th century, the
American System was employed in making small arms, clocks, textile machinery, sewing machines, and a host of
other industrial products.

The assembly line

Though prototypes of the assembly line can be traced to antiquity, the true ancestor of this industrial technique
could be found in the 19th-century meat-processing industry in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in Chicago, where overhead
trolleys conveyed carcasses from worker to worker. When these trolleys were connected with chains and power
was used to move the carcasses past the workers at a steady pace, they formed a true assembly line (or, in effect, a
“disassembly” line in the case of meat cutting). Stationary workers concentrated on one task and performed it at a
pace dictated by the machine, thereby minimizing unnecessary movement and dramatically increasing
productivity.

Drawing upon examples from the meatpacking industry, the American automobile manufacturer Henry Ford
designed an assembly line that began operation in 1913. This innovation reduced manufacturing time for magneto
ywheels from 20 minutes to 5 minutes. Ford next applied the technique to chassis assembly. Under the old
1
system, by which parts were carried to a stationary assembly point, 12 / man-hours were required for each
2
chassis. Using a rope to pull the chassis past stockpiles of components, Ford cut labour time to 6 man-hours. With
improvements—a chain drive to power assembly-line movement, stationary locations for the workmen, and
workstations designed for convenience and comfort—chassis assembly time fell to 93 man-minutes by the end of
April 1914. Ford’s methods drastically reduced the price of a private automobile, bringing it within the reach of the
growing middle class in the United States.

Ford’s accomplishments forced both his competitors and his parts suppliers to imitate his technique. As the
assembly line spread through American industry, it brought dramatic productivity gains but also caused skilled
workers to be replaced with low-cost unskilled labour. The pace of the assembly line was dictated by machines,
meaning that plant owners were tempted to accelerate the machines, forcing the workers to keep up. Such

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speedups became a serious point of contention between labour and management. Furthermore, the dull,
repetitive nature of many assembly-line jobs bored employees, reducing their output.

Effects on the organization of work

The development of mass production transformed the organization of work in three important ways. First, tasks
were minutely subdivided and performed by unskilled or semiskilled workers, because much of the skill was built
into the machine. Second, growth in the size of manufacturing concerns necessitated the formation of a hierarchy
of supervisors and managers. Third, the increasing complexity of operations encouraged employment of
managerial-level employees who specialized in such areas as accounting, engineering, research and
development, human resources, information technology, distribution, marketing, and sales.

Mass production also heightened the trend toward an international division of labour. The large scale of the new
factories often made it economical to import raw materials from one country and produce them in another. At
the same time, the saturation of domestic markets led to a search for customers overseas. Thus, some countries
became exporters of raw materials and importers of nished goods, while others did the reverse. In the 1950s and
’60s some predominantly agricultural countries (particularly in Asia and South America) began to manufacture
goods. Because of the low skill levels required for assembly-line tasks, residents of any background could work in
the new manufacturing sector. Standards of living in developing countries were so low that wages could be kept
below those of the industrialized countries. This made the entire production process less expensive. Many large
manufacturers in the United States and elsewhere therefore began outsourcing—that is, having parts made or
whole products assembled in developing countries. Consequently, developments in these countries have
changed the face of the world economic community. (See maquiladora.)

Industrial farming and services

Agriculture
The tasks involved in running a farm change with the cyclical nature of the cultivation and harvest seasons. The
tasks vary greatly for different crops and depend also upon the degree of mechanization. Starting in the 19th
century, agricultural work underwent a transformation comparable to the change from handicraft to industrial
mass production. At the beginning of that century, farming was primarily a family enterprise that rested upon
age-old techniques and organization of work. Despite some technological innovations, such as the plow and seed
drill, output was relatively small. In the late 19th and especially in the 20th century, output per farmer increased
rapidly until, in the most technologically advanced countries, a small minority of farmers supplied entire
populations with food. These changes stemmed from a series of advances such as improved power sources,
mechanical devices such as the reaper and combine, a scienti c approach to plant and animal breeding, better
food processing and preservation, more-effective fertilizers and pesticides, and application of industrial
management techniques to agriculture.

Factory farms
One of the more-comprehensive examples of agricultural “factory” production is seen in the poultry industry in
the United States. A computerized feed bin mixes the feed and delivers it automatically to the cages. Water is
delivered automatically, and waste is removed by mechanical means. When a chicken reaches the correct weight
for processing, the slaughtering and packaging are performed on an assembly-line basis. Application of these
techniques has sharply reduced the cost per pound of chicken, and a form of protein that was once a luxury has
become a staple item of diet. Similar methods are used to raise veal calves and other meat-producing animals.
Capital investment in such factory farms is high, meaning that production is backed by giant companies.

Migrant labour
The industrialization of agriculture meant that the small farm was being replaced by larger units, and this had
profound consequences for agricultural labour. In the small-scale enterprise that had prevailed since antiquity, the
farm family with perhaps a few hired hands had done all the work of planting, tending, and harvesting the crop,
with neighbours helping each other during peak periods such as the harvest. But the advent of industrialization
drew workers from the farms to the cities, and the increase in mechanization required fewer farm labourers on a

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year-round basis. There was still need, however, for many hands during planting and harvesting, especially for fruit
and vegetable crops that matured at the same time and still required hand harvesting.

Further, mechanization of agricultural processes has reduced some demand for migrant labour. In the United
States, for instance, the harvesting of wheat and cotton, which required the work of many migrants before World
War II, is now largely mechanized and easily handled by regular farm employees. In mature economies migrant
labour contributes little to total agricultural output and only a negligible amount to nonagricultural output.
Nevertheless, the availability of migrant workers at the right time and place can be crucial, because, without
them, large crop losses may occur.

In the United States the need for seasonal farm workers has been met by migrant workers, largely from Mexico
and Latin American and Caribbean countries, although some native-born Americans continue to follow the
harvesting season as it moves from south to north. The employment of these seasonal workers raises a number of
social, political, and economic problems. Migrants are typically paid low wages with no fringe bene ts. Their living
and working conditions remain far below standard. In spite of this, they often look to migrant farm labour as a
means of escaping the worse conditions of their native countries.

State-organized farming
Agricultural mass production takes many forms. In the former Soviet Union sovkhozy, or state agricultural farms,
were owned collectively (that is, by the government). Farmers were, in effect, state employees, but the
organization of work resembled that of the West. Soviet collective farms were in theory cooperative associations of
farmers who combined their land and capital, sharing proceeds in common. Each family on a collective farm,
however, was permitted to own a small plot of land, so that modern and traditional work organization existed side
by side.

Although the Soviets at rst prided themselves on their communal organization of agriculture, it became evident
that the system was not meeting productivity goals. Despite its fertile soil, the Soviet Union was forced to import
agricultural staples such as wheat from countries whose agricultural systems were based on capitalism. Most of
the fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S.S.R. came from the small private plots of collective farmers, who,
being allowed to grow produce for their own pro t, had greater incentives to bring more foodstuffs to the market.
By comparison, the government-set prices and production quotas on the collective farms diminished such
incentives.

Acknowledging the productive capacity of private initiative, the Soviet government in the 1980s began to loosen
the constraints of collective agriculture. In 1989, individual farmers were given the opportunity to lease land and
equipment for 50 years and more. The lessee could decide what to produce and at what price to sell it, and, upon
his decease, his children could “inherit” the leased property. With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989,
agriculture in Russia and in the former Soviet states became increasingly privatized. Because so much of Russia’s
agricultural land is still held collectively, agricultural productivity is far below the standards of most other
countries.

The situation in the People’s Republic of China initially paralleled that in the Soviet Union. Mass collectivization
took place during Mao’s Great Leap Forward of 1958–60. The resulting disorganization of the agricultural system
led to a famine that is thought to have caused the deaths of 20–30 million people. Productivity surged during the
1980s and ’90s, when peasants were allowed to own or lease land and to market their own agricultural products.
This contributed to a rise in the standard of living in rural areas.

Services
For most of recorded history, the vast majority of the world’s population was engaged in farming. Beginning in the
19th century, industrial employment took primacy over agricultural work in many countries. By the 21st century
the service sector had come to represent the fastest-growing area of the workforce in the world’s most-advanced
economies. In the United States, for example, the number of people engaged in service occupations in the 1950s
already exceeded the number of those employed in industry, and the proportion increased thereafter.

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Work in the service sector is marked by diversity. Jobs run the gamut from fast-food waiters to maîtres d’hôtel,
from of ce clerks to advertising executives, from kindergarten teachers to university professors, and from nurses’
aides to surgeons. Also representing the service industry are janitors, business consultants, truck drivers,
nanciers, and government employees ranging from street sweepers and garbage collectors to legislators and
heads of government.

Employment trends and job conditions changed for service workers throughout the 20th century. For example,
the number of domestic servants declined drastically, with full-time live-in domestic help almost disappearing. On
the other hand, the number of government employees grew dramatically as government entities, from local to
regional to national, took on new tasks.

Sophistication of mass production

Scienti c management
American industrial engineer Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915) led the development of an entirely new discipline—
that of industrial engineering or scienti c management. In this approach, the managerial functions of planning
and coordination were applied throughout the productive process.

Taylor believed that a factory manager’s primary goals were to determine the best way for the worker to do the
job, to provide the proper tools and training, and to provide incentives for good performance. Taylor broke down
each job into its constituent motions, analyzed these motions to determine which were essential, and timed the
workers with a stopwatch. With super uous motion eliminated, the worker, following a machinelike routine,
became much more productive. In some cases Taylor recommended a further division of labour, delegating some
tasks, such as sharpening tools, to specialists. (See time-and-motion study.)

These studies were complemented by two of Taylor’s contemporaries in the United States, Frank B. Gilbreth and
Lillian E. Gilbreth, whom many management engineers credit with the invention of motion studies. In 1909 the
Gilbreths, studying the task of bricklaying, concluded that motion was wasted each time a worker reached down
to pick up a brick. They devised an adjustable scaffold that eliminated stooping and sped the bricklaying process
from 120 bricks per hour to 350. Industrial engineering was eventually applied to all elements of factory operation
—layout, materials handling, and product design, as well as labour operations.

Taylor regarded his movement as “scienti c” because of the scienti c principles and measurement he applied to
the work process. Previously, advances in manufacturing had been made by applying scienti c principles to
machines. This scienti c approach, however, neglected the human element, so that Taylor in effect
conceptualized the work process not as a relationship between worker and machine but as a relationship
between two machines.

Scienti c management theorists assumed that workers desired to be used ef ciently, to perform their work with
a minimum of effort, and to receive more money. They also took for granted that workers would submit to the
standardization of physical movements and thought processes. The procedures developed through scienti c
management, however, ignored human feelings and motivations, leaving the worker dissatis ed with the job.
Furthermore, some employers used the time-and-motion studies as a means of speeding up the production line
and raising productivity levels while still keeping wages down.

Industrial psychology
Unions became the mouthpiece for those who opposed some of the consequences of scienti c management.
This was especially true in the decade after 1910, when the principles of scienti c management were being
applied wholesale in the United States. Though the unions approved of more-ef cient production arising from
better machinery and management, they condemned the speedup practice and complained in particular that
Taylorism deprived workers of a voice regarding the conditions and functions of their work. Complaints were also
made that the system caused irritability and fatigue along with physiological and neurological damage among
workers. Quality and productivity suffered. Industrial engineers then faced the problem of motivating the worker
so that the combination of human labour and machine technology would achieve its fullest potential. A partial
solution came from the social sciences through the development of industrial psychology.

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The major premise of this new discipline was that mass production methods affect the worker both in the
immediate job environment and in relations with fellow workers and supervisors. The rst important discoveries
in the social context of mass production technology resulted from experiments made by the American social
scientist Elton Mayo between 1927 and 1932 at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company, in Cicero, Ill.
Mayo, who earlier had studied problems of physical fatigue among textile workers in a Philadelphia plant, was
called in to the Hawthorne works, where industrial engineers were testing the possibility that changes in lighting
could affect productivity. The investigators chose two groups of employees working under similar conditions to
produce the same part; the intensity of the light would vary for the test group but would be kept constant for the
control group. To Mayo’s surprise, the output of both groups rose. Even when the researchers told one group that
the light was going to be changed and then did not change it, the workers expressed satisfaction, saying that they
liked the “increased” illumination, and productivity continued to rise.

Mayo saw that the signi cant variable was not physiological but psychological. Productivity rose when more
attention was paid to the workers. A second series of experiments involved the assembly of telephone relays. Test
and control groups were subjected to changes in wages, rest periods, workweeks, temperature, humidity, and
other factors. Again output continued to increase no matter how physical conditions were varied; even when
conditions were returned to what they had been before, productivity remained 25 percent higher than its original
value. Mayo concluded that the reason for this lay in the attitudes of the workers toward their jobs and toward the
company. By asking their cooperation in the test, the investigators had stimulated a new attitude among the
employees, who now felt themselves part of an important group whose help and advice were being sought by the
company. This phenomenon came to be known as the Hawthorne effect.

Following Mayo’s ndings, industrial engineers and sociologists have recommended other means of improving
motivation and productivity. These include job alternation (to relieve boredom), job enlargement (arranging for
workers to perform several tasks rather than a single operation), and job enrichment (redesigning the job to make
it more challenging).

Mayo’s work broadened scienti c management by drawing the new behavioral sciences, such as social
psychology, into questions concerning work and labour-management relationships. It encouraged the
development of human-factors engineering and ergonomics, disciplines that attempt to design “user-friendly”
equipment. For example, the new engineers try to accommodate human physiology by designing equipment
that can be operated at a comfortable work level, with minimum strain and with controls that are easy to reach,
see, and manipulate.

Automation
In its ideal form, automation implies the elimination of all manual labour through the use of automatic controls
that ensure accuracy and quality. Although perfect automation has never been achieved, in its more-limited form
it has caused alterations in the patterns of employment.

Coined in the 1940s at the Ford Motor Company, the term automation was applied to the automatic handling of
parts in metalworking processes. The concept acquired broader meaning with the development of cybernetics by
American mathematician Norbert Wiener. Through cybernetics, Wiener anticipated the application of computers
to manufacturing situations. He caused alarm during the 1950s and ’60s by suggesting, erroneously, that
automatic machinery would lead to mass unemployment. But automation was not introduced as rapidly as
foreseen, and other economic factors have created new opportunities in the labour market.

Automation evolved from three interrelated trends in technology: the development of powered machinery for
production operations, the introduction of powered equipment to move materials and workpieces during the
manufacturing process, and the perfecting of control systems to regulate production, handling, and distribution.

Devices to move materials from one workstation to the next included conveyor-belt systems, monorail trolleys,
and various pulley arrangements. The transfer machine, a landmark in progress toward full automation, moves
the workpieces to the next workstation and accurately positions them for the next machine tool. It cuts labour
costs and improves quality by ensuring uniformity and precision. The rst known transfer machine was built by an
American rm, the Waltham Watch Company, in 1888; it fed parts to several lathes mounted on a single base. By

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the mid-20th century, transfer machines were widely employed in the automotive industry, appliance
manufacturing, electrical-parts production, and many other metalworking industries.

Automatic controls revolutionized all aspects of the production process. Starting in the 19th century, the simple
cam could automatically adjust the position of a lever or machine element. But cam devices were limited in
speed, size, and sensitivity. True automatic control can occur only when the machine is sensitive enough to adjust
to unpredictably varying conditions. This requirement demands instant responses to feedback—something a
computer can perform in a fraction of a second.

Whereas industrialization made possible the mass production of identical parts for mass markets, the computer
allowed for custom-made small-batch production. During the 1980s and ’90s, American rms made signi cant
investments in information-processing equipment. These developments allowed American manufacturers to
concentrate on “niche” production—that is, supplying a limited segment of the market with a specialized product
and responding speedily to changes in market demand. On the automobile assembly line, niche production
enables many cars containing different options to be fabricated on the same assembly line, with computers
monitoring a system that ensures the proper items will go into each separate car.

Further developments in automation created two new elds: computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided
manufacturing (CAM), often linked as codisciplines under the title CAD/CAM. In a sense, CAD/CAM allows the mass
production system to manufacture customized “handmade” articles. The machinery can be adapted to a
particular product through computer programming, enabling work on small batches to achieve many of the
economies previously available only through mass production of identical objects. Computer-aided design itself
makes possible the testing of production methods and the design of the product by running tests (of such factors
as ability to withstand stress, for example) through the computer. After testing, the product design or the process
can be modi ed without going to the expense and time required for building actual prototype models. See
economy of scale.

Automation not only gives exibility to production but also can cut down costly lead times confronted when
changing from one production model to another, and it can control inventories to provide a continuous ow of
materials without expensive storage requirements or investment in spare parts. Such ef ciencies lower
production costs and help explain the growing strength in world markets of the Japanese, who rst introduced
the practice. Automation has also fostered the development of systems engineering, operations research, and
linear programming.

Automation has not yet reached the level of completely robotized production. The rst generation of industrial
robots could perform only simple tasks, such as welding, for they became confused by slight differences in the
objects on which they worked. To overcome that dif culty, computer scientists and engineers began developing
robots with keener sensitivity, thereby enlarging their capabilities. Although progress has been made, it is clear
that human beings must be available to back up the robots and maintain their productivity.

The automated workplace

Effect on skilled labour
Robotic machines can perform certain unpleasant and dangerous jobs such as welding or painting. They can
handle loads of up to a ton or more and work ef ciently in temperatures ranging from near freezing to
uncomfortably hot. In many cases automation has eliminated physical and mental drudgery from human labour
and has allowed the worker to change from a machine operator to a machine supervisor.

Automation also boosts productivity (as measured in output per man-hour), even as it reduces the number of
workers required for certain tasks. In the 1950s and ’60s, for example, productivity increased while employment
decreased in the chemical, steel, meatpacking, and other industries in developed countries. Except in the rust belt
regions (older industrial areas in Britain and the United States), no mass unemployment has ever materialized.
Instead, as certain jobs and skills became obsolete, automation and other new technologies created new jobs that
call for different skills.

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Automation has brought about changes in the worker’s relationship to the job. Here the differences between
labour practices in different countries prove instructive. The scienti c management principle of breaking work
down into small, repetitive tasks was based perhaps upon the notion that the worker does not think on the job.
For example, when American factories became mechanized, the workers were not permitted to stop the assembly
line if anything went amiss; that was the task of supervisory personnel. This led to low productivity and poor
quality control. By comparison, workers in Japanese factories were allowed to stop the process when something
went wrong. Workers were assigned to “quality circles,” groups that could give workers a say in the performance of
their tasks and in the process of problem solving. This approach represents an application of Mayo’s Hawthorne
effect—something Japanese managers had learned from American management consultants such as W.
Edwards Deming. By encouraging workers to participate in the quality control efforts, the management approach
improved both productivity and quality.

A similar way of enhancing quality and work performance is what is known as group assembly, which started in
Swedish automobile plants and was also adopted by the Japanese and then by the Americans. With this system a
group of workers is responsible for the entire product (as opposed to individual workers who perform only one
small task). If something goes wrong on an assembly line, any worker can push a button and hold things in place
until the problem is resolved.

As this approach is increasingly employed throughout the world, it brings major changes to the labour force and
to labour-management relations. First, it allows smaller numbers of more highly skilled workers, operating
sophisticated computer-controlled equipment, to replace thousands of unskilled workers in assembly-line plants.
As a consequence, the highly skilled worker, whose talents had been lost on the old-fashioned assembly line, has
again become indispensable. The proliferation of automated machinery and control systems has increased the
demand for skilled labourers and knowledgeable technicians who can operate the newer devices. As a result,
automation may be seen as improving ef ciency and expanding production while relieving drudgery and
increasing earnings—precisely the aims of Frederick W. Taylor at the turn of the 20th century.

The of ce workplace
Of ce automation represents a further mechanization of of ce work, a process that began with the introduction
of the typewriter and the adding machine in the 19th century. The introduction of computers also affected the
organization of work in the information sector of the economy. Just as automated machinery has done away with
the jobs of many machine operators, integrated information-processing systems have eliminated many clerical
tasks. For the production operation, automation provides an exact control over the inventory of raw materials,
parts, and nished goods. Applied to billing operations in the of ce, it often can drastically reduce accounting
costs.

The combination of computers and telecommunications led some to believe that of ce workers would perform
their required functions without leaving their homes, as the computer terminal would take the place of their usual
paperwork. Such predictions for “telecommuting” generally have not materialized, however. Social psychologists
explain this by pointing out the social aspect of the work process, in the of ce as well as on the assembly line.
Workers are, after all, social beings who bene t from interactions with their fellow employees.

Nevertheless, of ce automation affects worker-manager relationships in a number of ways. It allows middle-level

employees a means of providing company executives with reports of production, costs, and inventory. This
removes the dependence on a few subordinates who had traditionally supplied such information. Automation
also creates ways to monitor each of ce worker’s ef ciency: through computerized information, managers can, for
example, count the number of times per hour that a typist strikes a letter on the keyboard. Managers can also
ascertain the number, times, and nature of a worker’s telephone calls, monitor e-mail, or track the number and
nature of Web sites an employee accesses.

Women in the workforce

For most of written history, agriculture was the chief human occupation, and heavy physical labour was not
con ned to men. Women performed physically demanding chores such as grinding grain by hand in a stone

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quern, drawing and carrying water, gathering wood, and churning milk to make butter. Generally, any respite
from these tasks would occur only when a woman gave birth.

The Industrial Revolution changed the work situation for both men and women. Whereas the hearth and home
had been the centre of production and family life, industrialization changed the locus of work from home to
factory. The role of women in the family workforce did not change overnight, however, for at rst many families
worked together in factories as teams.

Not until the mid-19th century did the role of the male as the “good provider” emerge, with women taking over
most household and domestic tasks. This transition may have stemmed from a growing humanitarian protest
against the harsh treatment of women and children in the early factory system. Legislation—most notably in
Britain—raised the minimum age for child labour in factories, set limits on the working hours of women and
children, and barred them from certain dangerous and heavy occupations. Thus, women engaged primarily in
domestic tasks such as child care while the men went out to work. Being the sole wage earner in the family
reinforced the man’s traditional position as the head of the family.

The traditional role of the housewife (whose chief pursuits were motherhood and domesticity) persisted
throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th. The advent of electric power near the close of the 19th century
brought labour-saving devices such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners into the home. Although they
freed the housewife from some drudgery, these innovations did little to lessen the amount of time she spent on
household duties.

Social and economic developments were the critical agents that changed the nature of women’s work. For
example, the growth of public education increased the demand for more teachers, and growing industrial and
commercial enterprises required more of ce workers and salespeople. Whereas men had previously performed
teaching and clerical tasks, employers found they could hire women for these occupations—at lower salaries.
Differences in pay between the sexes were based largely on the assumption that men had to be paid enough to
support a family. Moreover, most women who entered the workforce in the United States before World War II
were single and did not have families to support; hence, they could be paid lower wages. This inequality in men’s
and women’s pay scales, even for equal work, still exists.

Many working women performed tasks closely related to their traditional household work. When clothes were less
often made at home but purchased ready-made at stores, for example, women were hired as seamstresses in the
clothing industry. Even after national emergencies such as the World Wars, during which women were
encouraged to take manufacturing jobs to replace the men who were in military service, women returned to
housekeeping or to traditionally female occupations such as of ce work and nursing.

In the 1970s married women began entering the labour force in great numbers, and the strict segregation of
women into certain occupations began to lessen somewhat as new opportunities arose for female workers in
traditionally male occupations. New technology has meant that many tasks that once required heavy physical
exertion, and hence were restricted to men, can now be performed simply by pushing buttons. Operating a
bulldozer, for instance, does not need muscle power so much as alertness, judgment, and coordination—qualities
as plentiful in women as in men. Nevertheless, the entrance of women into occupations formerly the province of
men proved to be slower than expected. This persistent occupational segregation by sex is largely responsible for
sizable differences in rates of pay that still exist. It would appear that, although rapid technological progress has
enabled women in highly industrialized countries to cast off certain traditional roles, technological determinism—
or technological rationality—does not always prevail over cultural views and social practices inherited from the
past.

Conclusion
With the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the development of powered machinery during the 18th and 19th
centuries, much onerous physical effort was gradually removed from work in factories and elds. Work was still
regarded, however, as something separate from pleasure. The dichotomy between work and play persists even in
today’s highly industrialized society.

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Most recently, the development of automated work devices and processes, the prevalence of computers, and the
growth of the service industry have led some to speak of a “postindustrial society.” This vision has not prevailed. In
fact, industrial production has spread to developing countries, meaning that economic and political questions of
working-class and managerial relationships have altered on an international front, affecting political relationships
on a global scale. (See globalization.) Furthermore, new demands have been placed on educational systems in the
developing countries as they attempt to train their workers for industrial production. Similarly, new demands have
been placed on the educational systems of the developed countries as the older methods of organizing
production, such as the assembly line, are being taken over by “smart” machines.

Melvin Kranzberg

Michael T. Hannan

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