David A. Houndshell's widely acclaimed history explores the American
"genius for mass production" and races its origins in the
nineteenth-century "American system" of manufacture.
Previous writers on the American system have argued that the technical
problems of mass production had been solved by armsmakers before the
Civil War. Drawing upon the extensive business and manufacturing records
if leading American firms, Hounshell demonstrates that the diffusion of
arms production technology was neither as fast now as smooth as had been
assumed. Exploring the manufacture of sewing machines and furniture,
bicycles and reapers, he shows that both the expression "mass
production" and the technology that lay behind it were developments of
the twentieth century, attributable in large part to the Ford Motor
Company.
Hounshell examines the importance of individuals in the diffusion and
development of production technology and the central place of marketing
strategy in the success of selected American manufacturers. Whereaas
Ford was the seedbed of the assembly line revolution, it was General
motors that initiated a new era with its introduction of the annual
model change. With the new marketing strategy, the technology of "the
changeover" became of paramount importance. Hounshell chronicles how
painfully Ford learned this lesson and recounts how the successful mass
production of automobiles led to the establishment of an "ethos of mass
production," to an era in which propoments of "Fordism" argued that mass
production would solve all of America's social problems.
