Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:27:05.639Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Men and Monotony: Fraternalism as a Managerial Strategy at the Ford Motor Company

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Wayne A. Lewchuk
Wayne A. Lewchuk
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics and Labour Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L85 4M4.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The introduction of mass production transformed many skilled tasks into repetitive and monotonous jobs. In industries such as automobiles, the workforce remained predominantly male despite contemporary assessments that women could efficiently do many of these jobs. This article explores why. It is argued that employers such as Ford concluded that the conversion of labor time into effort would be more difficult in a mixed-gender workforce. The paper shows how Ford developed a fraternalist labor strategy, a men's club, whose objective was to accommodate men to monotony and maximize labor productivity.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 824 - 856
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arnold, Horace L., and Faurote, Fay L., Ford Methods and the Ford Shops (New York, 1916).Google Scholar
Auto Worker (Chicago, various dates).Google Scholar
Auto Workers News (Detroit, various dates).Google Scholar
Baron, Ava, “Contested Terrain Revisited: Technology and Gender Definitions of Work in the Printing Industry, 1850–1920,” in Wright, B., ed., Women, Work and Technology (Ann Arbor, MI, 1987), pp. 58–83.Google Scholar
Baron, Ava, ed., Work Engendered: Towards a New History of American Labor (Ithaca, NY, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, Ava, “An ‘Other’ Side of Gender Antagonism at Work: Men, Boys, and the Remasculinization of Printers' Work, 1830–1920,” in Baron, Ava, ed., Work Engendered, pp. 47–69.Google Scholar
Blewett, Mary H., Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in New England Shoe Industry, 1780–1910 (Chicago, 1988).Google Scholar
Blewett, Mary H., “Manhood and the Market: The Politics of Gender and Class among the Textile Workers of Fall River, Massachusetts, 1870–1880,” in Baron, Ava, ed., Work Engendered, pp. 92–113.Google Scholar
Burr, Christina, “ ‘The Rights of Labor Are the Rights of Man’: Masculinity and Labour Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Toronto” (Photocopy, University of Toronto, 1993).Google Scholar
Burr, Christina, “Defending ‘The Art Preservative’: Class and Gender Relations in the Printing Trades, 1850–1914,” Labour/Le Travail, 31 (1993), pp. 47–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carnes, Mark C., Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, 1989).Google Scholar
Clawson, M. A., Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton, 1989).Google Scholar
Cockburn, Cynthia, Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change (London, 1983).Google Scholar
Cooper, Patricia, Once a Cigar Maker: Men, Women, and Work Culture in American Cigar Factories, 1900–1919 (Urbana, IL, 1987).Google Scholar
Cooper, Patricia, “The Faces of Gender: Sex Segregation and Work Relations at Philco, 1928–1938,” in Baron, Ava, ed., Work Engendered, pp. 320–50.Google Scholar
Cross, Gary, A Quest for Time: The Reduction of Work in Britain and France, 1840–1940 (Berkeley, CA, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cruden, R. L., “No Loitering: Get Out Production,” The Nation (06 12, 1929), p. 698.Google Scholar
Dublin, Thomas, “Women, Work, and the Family: Female Operatives in the Lowell Mills, 1830–1860,” Feminist Studies, 3 (Fall 1975), pp. 30–39.Google Scholar
Dunn, Robert W., Labor and Automobiles (New York, 1929).Google Scholar
Engineering Employers Federation, Modern Record Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry.Google Scholar
Faue, Elizabeth, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991).Google Scholar
Fine, Lisa, “ ‘Our Big Family,’ Masculinity and Paternalism at the Reo Motor Car Company of Lansing” (Photocopy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 1991).Google Scholar
Ford Archives, Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI.Google Scholar
Ford, Henry, My Life and Work (New York, 1923).Google Scholar
Ford Man (Ford Motor Company, various dates).Google Scholar
Ford Times (Ford Motor Company, various dates).Google Scholar
Ford Worker (The Ford Shop Nuclei of the Worker (Communist) Party of America, Detroit, various dates).Google Scholar
Fordson Worker (Ford Motor Company, various dates).Google Scholar
Gabin, Nancy, Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935–1975 (Ithaca, NY, 1990).Google Scholar
Gartman, David, Auto Slavery: The Labor Process In the American Automobile Industry, 1897–1950 (London, 1987).Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, Understanding the Gender Gap (New York, 1990).Google Scholar
Grossberg, Michael, “Institutionalizing Masculinity: The Law as a Masculine Profession,” in Carnes, Mark C. and Griffon, Clyde, eds., Meanings for Manhood: Construction of Masculinity in Victorian America (Chicago 1990), pp. 133–51.Google Scholar
Hartmann, Heidi, “Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex,” in Blaxall, M. and Reagan, B., eds., Women and the Workplace: The Implications of Occupational Segregation (Chicago, 1976), pp. 137–69.Google Scholar
Hewitt, Nancy A., ‘The Voice of Virile Labor’: Labor Militancy, Community Solidarity, and Gender Identity amongst Tampa's Latin Workers, 1880–1921,” in Baron, Ava ed., Work Engendered, pp. 142–67.Google Scholar
Hounshell, David, From the American System to Mass Production (Baltimore, 1984).Google Scholar
Janiewski, Dolores, “Southern Honor, Southern Dishonor: Managerial Ideology and the Construction of Gender, Race and Class Relations in Southern Industry,” in Baron, Ava, ed., Work Engendered, pp. 70–91.Google Scholar
Keene, A. Perry, “Production—A Dream Come True,” Journal of the Institute of Production Engineers, 11 (1916/1917), pp. 385–99.Google Scholar
Kessler-Harris, Alice, Out To Work, A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (New York, 1982).Google Scholar
Kimmel, Michael S., “The Contemporary Crisis of Masculinity in Historical Perspective,” in Brod, H., ed., The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies (Boston, 1987), pp. 121–53.Google Scholar
Kimmel, Michael S., “The Cult of Masculinity: American Social Character and the Legacy of the Cowboy,” in Kaufman, M., ed., Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power and Change (Toronto, 1987), pp. 235–49.Google Scholar
Kossoudji, Sherrie A., and Dresser, Laura J., “The End of a Riveting Experience: Occupational Shifts at Ford After World War II,” American Economic Review, Proceedings, 82 (1992), pp. 519–25.Google Scholar
Labor Age (various dates).Google Scholar
Land, Hilary, “The Family Wage,” Feminist Review, 6 (1980), pp. 55–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leibowitz, Lila, “In the Beginning …: The Origins of the Sexual Division of Labour and the Development of the First Human Society,” in Coontz, S. and Henderson, P., eds., Women's Work, Men's Property: The Origin of Gender and Class (London, 1986), pp. 43–75.Google Scholar
Lewchuk, Wayne, American Technology and the British Vehicle Industry (Cambridge, 1987).Google Scholar
McClelland, K., “Some Thoughts on Masculinity and the ‘Representative Artisan’ in Britain, 1850–1880,” Gender and History, 1 (Summer, 1989), pp. 164–77.Google Scholar
Marquart, Frank, An Auto Worker's Journal: The UAW from Crusade to One-Party Union (University Park, PA, 1975).Google Scholar
May, Martha, “The Historical Problem of the Family Wage: The Ford Motor Company and the Five Dollar Day,” Feminist Studies, 8 (Summer 1982), pp. 399–424.Google Scholar
Mead, J. E., “Rehabilitating Cripples at Ford Plant,” Iron Age, 112 (09 26, 1918), pp. 739–43.Google Scholar
Meier, August, and Rudwick, Elliott, Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW (Oxford, 1979).Google Scholar
Meyer, Stephen III, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908–1921 (Albany, 1981).Google Scholar
Milkman, Ruth, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II (Urbana, IL, 1987).Google Scholar
Montgomery, David, Workers' Control in America (Cambridge, 1979).Google Scholar
Nation (June 12, 1929).Google Scholar
Nevins, Alan, Ford: The Times the Man, and the Company (New York, 1954).Google Scholar
New York Times (May 9, 1928).Google Scholar
Parr, Joy, Gender of Bread Winners: Women, Men, and Change in Two Industrial Towns: 1880–1950 (Toronto, 1990).Google Scholar
Phillips, Anne, and Taylor, Barbara, “Sex and Skill: Towards a Feminist Economics,” Feminist Review, 6 (1980), pp. 79–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollert, Anna, Girls, Wives, Factory Lives (London, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raff, Daniel M. G., “The Puzzling Profusion of Compensation Systems in the Interwar Motor Vehicle Industry” (Photocopy, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1992), pp. 1–28.Google Scholar
Raff, Daniel M. G., “Wage Determination Theory and the Five-Dollar Day at Ford,” this Journal, 48 (06 1988), pp. 387–99.Google Scholar
Raff, Daniel M. G., and Summers, Lawrence H., “Did Henry Ford Pay Efficiency Wages?,” Journal of Labor Economics, 5 (10 1987), pp. S57–S86.Google Scholar
Reeves, A. W., and Kimber, C., “Comments on a Paper Titled ‘Works Organization,’” Proceedings, Institute of Automobile Engineers, 11 (1916/1917) pp. 385–99.Google Scholar
Reitell, Charles, “Machinery and Its Affects Upon the Workers in the Automobile Industry,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 116 (1924), pp. 37–43.Google Scholar
Reuther Library, Walter P., Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.Google Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel T., The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850–1920 (Chicago, 1974).Google Scholar
Rose, Sonya O., “Gender Segregation in the Transition to the Factory: The English Hosiery Industry, 1850–1910,” Feminist Studies, 13 (Spring 1987), pp. 163–84.Google Scholar
Rose, Sonya O., “From Behind the Women's Petticoats: The English Factory Act of 1874 as a Cultural Production,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 4 (03, 1991), pp. 32–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Sonya O., Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley, CA, 1992).Google Scholar
Rotundo, E. Anthony, “Learning About Manhood: Gender Ideals and the Middle-Class Family in Nineteenth Century America,” in Mangan, J. A. and Walvin, James, eds., Manliness and Morality: Middle Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (Manchester, 1987), pp. 35–51.Google Scholar
Rumely, E. A., “Mr. Ford's Plan to Share Profits,” World's Work, 27 (1914), pp. 664–69.Google Scholar
Russel, Jack, “The Coming of the Line,” Radical America, 12 (1978), pp. 28–46.Google Scholar
Segal, L., Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men (London, 1990).Google Scholar
Sinclair, Upton, The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America (Detroit, 1937).Google Scholar
Thompson, Paul, “Playing at Being Skilled Men: Factory Culture and Pride in Work Skills Among Coventry Car Workers,” Social History, 13 (06, 1988), pp. 45–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolles, N. A., and La Fever, M. W., “Wages, Hours, Employment and Earnings in the Motor Vehicle Industry, 1934,” Monthly Labor Review (03 1936), pp. 521–53.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, DC, 1975).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor, The New Position of Women in Industry, Bulletin of the Women'reau, no. 12 (Washington, DC, 1920).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor, The Effects of Labor Legislation on the Employment of Women, Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, no. 65 (Washington, DC, 1928).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Industrial Survey in Selected Industries in the United States 1919, Wages and Hours of Labor series, no. 265 (Washington, DC, 1920).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Labor Statistics, 1924–26, Miscellaneous series, no. 439 (Washington, DC, 1934).Google Scholar
Valverde, Marianna, “Giving the Female a Domestic Turn: The Social, Legal and Moral Regulation of Women's Work in British Cotton Mills, 1820–1850,” Journal of Social History, 21 (Summer 1988), pp. 619–34.Google Scholar