Economist, Mar 3, 2018 (I)

choi

(1) A requiem for the factory | When Giants Ruled the World.
https://www.economist.com/news/b ... ory-giant-factories
(book review on Joshua Freeman, Behemoth; A history of the factory and the making of the modern world. Norton, 2018)

Quote:

"WHEN it was built in 1721 beside the River Derwent * * * Lombe's silk mill became something of a tourist attraction. Daniel Defoe, one of its many visitors, described its 'vast bulk' * * * Employing some 300 people, mostly children in ghastly conditions, the mill was not large by modern standards. But it is widely regarded as the first successful mechanised factory, an innovation * * * [two centuries ago] Britain's textile mills, which centralised tasks that were previously carried out in homes and small workshops * * * His [Freeman's] journey ends in southern China at Foxconn's city-sized plant, which makes iPhones and other electronic gadgets.

"his [Freeman's] account of one of the most famous factory bosses of all.  Henry Ford launched his Model T in 1908, turning the car from a luxury into a mass-manufactured product. Ford’s original factory, just outside Detroit, used standardised parts and fitted them to vehicles as they travelled along a moving assembly line. By 1914 this cut the labour time needed to assemble a Model T from 12.5 hours to 93 minutes. Before long the nearby River Rouge complex became the centre of a vertically integrated empire, designed to produce everything required to make a car.  The Model T [production 1908-1927], however, soon became obsolete.

In 1927 Ford halted production [of Model T] and laid off 60,000 workers, causing a social crisis in the Detroit area. * * * [a new plant was built in Rouge:] Rouge was ready to make the new Model A. At its zenith the factory employed 100,000 people. But it was a brutal place to work, with employees subject to harsh discipline and tyrannical foremen. 'A man checks 'is [his; just like 'fill 'er (her, the gas tank of a car) up'] brains and ’is freedom at the door,' one Rouge worker complained.

"As the switch from Model T to Model A plunged Ford into loss, Alfred P Sloan, president of General Motors, presciently observed that carmakers would need to 'adopt the "laws" of Paris dressmakers.' That meant bringing out new models more often. The shortening of product cycles and the fickle nature of modern markets has duly seen manufacturing atomise into smaller, nimbler, more specialist factories. The Rouge, for instance, lives on, but with just 6,000 workers making pick-up trucks.

Note:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b)
(i) Lombe's Mill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombe%27s_Mill
(ii) Daniel Defoe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Defoe
(1660-1731)

(c) "Ford’s original factory [for Model T], just outside Detroit"
(i) "Although Ford did not invent the automobile or the assembly line, he developed and manufactured the first automobile that many middle-class Americans could afford."  en.wikipedia.org.
(ii) Recall that Detroit, just like New York City and Boston, expanded its boundaries by annexation.
(iii)
(A) Chronology, 1903-2003. Ford Motor Co, undated
https://www.thehenryford.org/col ... company-chronology/
("Dec 1904  Production begins at Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit.
Oct 22, 1906  Henry Ford becomes President of Ford Motor Company.
Oct 1, 1908  First Model T made available to the public. Continues until 1927.
Jan 1, 1910  Manufacturing operations transferred to Highland Park, Michigan Plant")
(B) Ford Model T
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T
("The first production Model T was produced on August 12, 1908 and left the factory on September 27, 1908, at the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit, Michigan. * * * The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant could not keep up with demand for the Model T * **  In 1910, after assembling nearly 12,000 Model Ts, Henry Ford moved the company to the new Highland Park complex")
(iv) Ford River Rouge Complex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_River_Rouge_Complex
(in Dearborn, Michigan)

choi

(2) The reality of war | Fragments and Ruins
https://www.economist.com/news/b ... ne-american-marines
(book review on Matt Young, Eat The Apple; A memoir. Bloomsbury, 2018)

Quote:

"As an alienated young man he joined the Marines in 2005 and served three tours in Iraq during the bloodiest years of the American occupation.

"After a car-bomb blasts his Humvee, he becomes a 'person-thing [which is what he calls himselfright after that blast].'   Confronting the Iraqi onlookers, he steps on a fleshy pile, which turns out to be the suicide-bomber’s face. 'The person-thing thinks it is wonderful and hilarious and physically amazing. It holds the bomber's face in front of his own and screams at the crowd through plump, blood-flecked lips, watching the crowd's reaction through empty eyeholes.'

My comment: There is no need to read the rest of this review. The writer is an ordinary American man, not a celebrity.