Customer Reviews

From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Studies in Industry and Society)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hounshell is a serious academic historian, which means that he doesn't put words in the mouths of dead people, and he draws prudent inferences from period documents, drawings and photographs. It makes him credible, if a bit plodding at times and overly concerned with always crediting the right inventors. What you learn in this book is surprising and contradicts many popular beliefs. For example:

1. Eli Whitney had nothing to do with it.

2. Thomas Jefferson picked up the idea in France when he was ambassador. It was abandoned overthere while he, as president, started a pattern of government funding for research that took 50 years to bear fruit.

3. Early adopters don't always win. In his account of the sewing machine industry, he shows how the early adopters of interchangeable parts technology lost out to Singer, which only adopted it 30 years later.

If you are interested in the subject and you like your beliefs to be convincingly challenged, check out this book. Even if you are not a history buff but a citizen concerned about the role of the federal government in technology development, this book will give you a valuable perspective.

I saw a reference to this book in Womack et al's The Machine that Changed the World, a book about Toyota's lean production system and automobile manufacturing in general. That book starts with the shift from craft production to Just-In-Time production and necessarily passes through Ford's production system. Hounshell ends his book with Ford in the Depression and the struggle against GM.

Hounshell begins with armory manufacture. As another reviewer has pointed out, the idea of making guns with interchangeable parts started in the French Army and introduced in the US by both Thomas Jefferson and a French officer who was instrumental in the founding of West Point. Eli Whitney took a stab at it, but he was more adept at self-promotion than achieving interchangeability. It took almost another generation or more before the system was perfected at the Springfield and Harper's Ferry armories; had it not been part of the West Point curriculum, it is not clear whether the idea would have borne fruit even that quickly.

Hounshell goes on to follow the development of manufacturing technology from guns to sewing machines, reapers, clocks, wooden furniture, bicycles, and finally the automobile. I was surprised at some of the twists and turns: Singer actually achieved dominance through a superior marketing and retail network and only adopted the "armory system" of gages later. The McCormicks were more adept at selling and servicing than at manufacture, but did introduce annual model changes; early on, they were afraid of making too many because they thought they would flood the market and put themselves out of business. The bicycle industry in the 1890s was necessary for the development of the automobile because it introduced the idea of personal mechanical transportation to the masses and refined the process of metal stamping, which has become crucial. Throughout the pre-automotive period, most of the industries that finally adopted "the American System" did so after hiring someone who had previous experience in a New England gun manufacturer. Thus, the history of mass production owes much to the French (who abandoned the idea early on), to government investment (through the Army), and to the Yankee mechanic.

Woven throughout, it is easy to see the simultaneous development of modern quality control methods, but this is not explicitly discussed. Hounshell augments the narrative with photographs of early machine parts and of the revolutionary gage system. Setting and maintaining standards was the only way to achieve interchangeability, which led to faster and cheaper assembly by eliminating the need for skilled "fitters" who essentially built each machine (gun, reaper, sewing machine, etc.) by custom fitting with files. By making parts to specification, unskilled labor could assemble the system. That idea informs the Toyota JIT system, as does Ford's invention of the assembly line and development of the Rouge Plant (upon which Hounshell sheds light) but also led to the unfortunate Taylorist diversion (which is also briefly described). Unfortunately, Hounshell doesn't concentrate on the link between the gage system and statistical quality control methods as one might find in the work of Shewhart, Deming, or Feigenbaum. The book ends with the rise of Sloan and the GM/Taylorist management paradigm, an unfortunate aberration that is finally coming to an end with the rise of Toyota and JIT.

From what I can tell (I'm no historian), this is an excellent work of history, and the illustrations are plentiful, relevant, and informative.

The early days of the American republic were categorized not by the "American system of mass production" but by determined entrepreneurs who made skilled use of workers. Hounshell tracks several industries including woodworking, International Harvester, Singer Sewing machines and gun manufacturing showing how scale and interchangeable parts came into existence. The first half of his book tries to dispel the myth of the American System of manufacturing and provides great technical insight into each of the industries mentioned above.

The second half looks at how the principles of mass production were applied. Particular attention is paid to Pope bicycles which were among the first items mass produced. You can clearly see how technology built upon one another to form the mass production we know today. The last three chapters of the book focus mostly on Ford and their production models from the Model T to the Model A. Some attention is given to GM and their efforts to undermine the cheap characteristics of Ford and create the car industry as we know it today. It considers the idea of mass production and debates what Ford really did create.

The book does an excellent job of looking at how industries progressed over a long period of time and while getting lost in the details it does come through. There is some thick description were the technological explanation is more than someone would want to know but mostly it is good solid information. This is a great book for those who are just beginning to study the history of technology or for the experts.

I don't know if school history still teaches that Eli Whitney invented mass production using interchangeable parts, the way it happened in the '60s, but the real story is far more complicated and interesting. Seldom have I read a revisionist history so completely convincing as David Hounshell's "From the American System to Mass Production."

True, it was published 25 years ago, so I am just catching up. Part of the reason Hounshell is so persuasive is that not only did he make use of corporate documents, but he also was able to take apart a couple of century-old Singer sewing machines at the Smithsonian Institution to see if their parts interchanged. They did not.

If all he had done had been to debunk Whitney, it would not be worth spending 400 pages -- lavishly illustrated pages though they are -- with the book. "From the American System" has a trajectory reminiscent of a Greek play -- not necessarily a tragedy -- with a surprising outcome: After a century of strenuous effort to invent mass production, the system failed within 13 years.

The argument is nuanced. As Henry Ford and his engineers, who put the cap on mass production by inventing the assembly line in 1913, said at the time, mass production was not merely quantity production. Singer had achieved quantity production in the 1880s without even adopting the American system, although after reaching about 500,000 units per year it did have to adopt it.

The story begins in England, where Marc Brunel broke down the craft of making reeving blocks for the Royal Navy into 22 operations, each performed by a specialized machine. Significantly, it was a military demand. The U.S. War Department was instrumental in pushing for mass production by means of interchangeable parts, although for the first 50 years it did not get it.

Even managing to make truly interchangeable parts, which John Hall did at Harpers Ferry in the 1840s, did not mean large production or lower costs. It was the interchangeability itself that was the goal of the army.

Later, Ford used interchangeability, along with single-purpose tools, carefully orchestrated work routines and -- the capstone -- the moving assembly line, to drive costs lower and lower.

Hounshell traces the development through the national and private armories in New England, which influenced sewing machine manufacturers in the `50s. A patent cartel allowed the sewing machine companies to make enormous profits, which perhaps (Hounshell does not make this point) militated against a drive for the lowest cost production. Singer, and others, continually drove down costs, but only by a process of semi-rationalization, with some machine work but still using "fitters" to make the final assembly.

One other manufacturer, Brown & Sharpe, adopted something closer to the American system and competed on costs (apparently) but not on marketing. Throughout, Hounshell emphasizes that business success went not to the firm that was most efficient but to the one that had the best sales and marketing system.

There comes an odd interlude with McCormick farm implements, where the production manager, Leander McCormick, argued for decades against expanding production. His arguments sound odd today, and eventually his brother Cyrus fired him. Production soared tenfold.

Then came bicycles. The design innovations were all European, as was the new technique of stamping steel parts. Eastern makers stuck by the American system, but Western Wheel Works in the Midwest moved decisively toward pressed steel parts. The bicycle business collapsed in 1898, lasting just long enough, and in just the right place, to pass on pressed steel to the auto factories.

Ford, however, went down a blind alley. In order to drive production costs as low as possible, he had to resist multiplication of products, and General Motors ate his lunch with the tiered marketing strategy and frequent style changes.

Hounshell does more than tell the story of manufacturing technology, however. There is much here about corporate organization and governance, labor adaptations to the factory system and the social (but not the political) impacts of mass production. "From the American System to Mass Production" should be read alongside Sean Wilentz' "Chants Democratic" for the reaction of craft workers who were displaced by mass production.

Although it appears that the total number of craft workers actually expanded. The new factories required large numbers of designers, patternmakers, tool and die cutters and millwrights. Although Hounshell does not say so, the machine minders were not, in the end, displaced artisans alienated from their tools but farm boys (and some girls), many from Europe, who would never have been skilled workers anyway.

Because mass production emerged in Detroit, and because it failed there, the book, despite its age, resonates vibrantly with what is happening in Detroit in 2008-2009.

And, although Hounshell only alludes to it without thorough analysis, the phenomenon of mass consumption also resonates deeply with business conditions today.

Hounshell published just as Ronald Reagan established a national policy of disciplining labor by exporting jobs overseas. Instead of encouraging American business, the supposed party of business overthrew a policy almost as old as the republic in the name of ideological foolishness and the deliberate supremacy of finance over production. GM, the victor over Fordism, had led the way 30 years earlier by elevating a financier instead of an engineer to the top.

The decline of GM, once the world's biggest corporation, began then. The sickness of GM was evident by the early `60s, and the company was moribund by the time Reaganomics came in. Anybody could have seen what had to come next. It's too bad ,more people did not read Hounshell when his book was new.

This well-written book is a first-rate analysis of the emergence of a major, perhaps the major, American contribution to modern industrial organization - the mass production system. By mass production, a term that became widely used only in the 1920s, Hounshell means the integrated use of interchangeable parts, specialty machine tools to substitute for skilled craftsmen, high degrees of quality control, tight organization of the factory floor leading to the true assembly line, and mass marketing. This century long story begins in the early years of the Republic with the quest of the American military to achieve interchangeable parts and concludes with the success (and ultimate partial failure) of Henry Ford's implementation of a true assembly immediately prior to WWI.

While credit for interchangeable parts is popularly assigned to Eli Whitney, Hounshell draws on considerable work by other scholars demonstrating that interchangeability of parts was the result of a systematic pursuit of this objective by the Army Ordnance Dept. As Hounshell shows, not only did the US Armories promote interchangeable parts and the quality control measures needed for interchanageability, they also pioneered specialty machine tools and rational production organization. Many of the personnel trained in the Armories or by Armory contractors went on to be key transmitters of these methods to private industry. The Connecticut River Valley, in particular, benefited from the presence of the Springfield Armory and the latter's influence has a great deal to do with the emergence of New England as a hotbed of industrial innovation. One of Hounshell's crucial points is that these developments would not have occurred without decades of Federal investment.

Hounshell then proceeds to describing the fitful progress towards full blown mass production by describing the development (and in a couple of key cases, lack of development), of different aspects of mass production in different industries in the US. The sewing machine industry, woodworking industry, the McCormick reaper company, and bicycle manufacturing are all discussed. These examples show how change occurred in different industries. Some sewing machine manufacturers were relative pioneers of mass production. The Singer company, which was the most successful manufacturer on the basis of vigorous and successful mass marketing, came to elements of mass production relatively late, as did the McCormick Co. All companies, however, eventually adopted elements of mass production to sustain themselves. Following the development of key technologies and markets in the bicycle manufacturing business, the final form of mass production was developed by Henry Ford with the famous Model T. The Ford factory combined all the prior elements of mass production with the first true assembly line, though the latter was preceded by continuous production lines in other industries like flour milling. Ford arguably also facilitated the other side of the coin of mass production, mass consumption, by paying his employees a generous wage.

The Ford system with its focus on production of a single product, the Model T, fell victim to General Motor's development of annual models, flexible financing (another facilitation of mass consumption), and more flexible production. The GM modification of mass production-consumption set the pattern for much of American industry for the rest of the 20th century.

Among the features stressed by Hounshell are the importance of the initial Federal investment, the creativity of many of the individuals who contributed to the technological improvements that made mass production possible, and the strongly entrepeuneurial atmosphere of much of this period. This is a really revealing book and one that explains a great deal about 19th and early 20th century America. It would have been useful to have some more comparative perspective in this book. Comparison with Germany, the other great industrializing power of the late 19th century would have been particularly interesting, but this may be asking for too much.

In his richly illustrated 'From the American System of Mass Production, David Hounshell explores the development of the 'American system' of manufacturing in the half century before the Civil War and the transition of this system into the 'mass production' of the 20th century.

Previous writers on the American system have implied or argued directly that the technical problems of mass production had been solved by antebellum arms makers, Hounshell argues, however, drawing upon the extensive business and manufacturing records of leading American firms...including Singer Manufacturing, McCormick Harvesting Machinery Co., Brown & Share Manufacturing, Pope Manufacturing, and Ford Motor Com...that the diffusion of arms production technology was neither as fast nor as smooth as has been assumed. Both the expression 'mass production' and the technology was that lay behind it were developments of the 20th C, attributable in large part to the Ford Motor Co.

Hounshell explores the important role of individuals in the diffusion and development of production technology and the central place of marketing strategy in the success of selected American manufactures. While Ford Motor company was the seebed of the assembly line revolution, General Motors initiated the new era of 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 with the change from the Model T to the Model A and then to the V-8 in 1932.

This is an outstanding work, thoroughly researched and well written. The photos and illustrations add much to the telling of the story.

The evolution from interchangeable parts to mass production and then to flexible manufacturing is an underappreciated aspect of the history of technology. Hounshell traces the evolution from firearms through sewing machines, reapers, bicycles and automobiles. There is also good coverage of machine tools and the development of the assembly line.

This is also a good business book with lessons about strategic thinking, planning and marketing.

Lastly, the history of Ford Motor Co. and its iconic founder Henry Ford is a fascinating part of cultural history.

This is well written and researched book. It gives anyone interested in American industry a deep perspective of our emergence as a world manufacturing power. Not only does it provide deep insights, it is written in a style that makes it hard to put down.

Super book