Conspicuous Production: Automobiles and Elites in Detroit, 1899–1933 by Donald Finlay Davis

Abstract

316 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Conspicuous Production: Automobiles and Elites in Detroit, 1899—1933. By Donald Finlay Davis. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. Pp. xiii+ 282; illustrations, tables, notes, index. $29.95. Despite repeated calls for studies of technological failures, histori­ ans of technology rarely address that provocative model. Failures matter primarily because their stories tell us a great deal about the contingent character of technological successes; they remind us that things need not have turned out as they have. Donald Davis attempts just such a task, chronicling the failure of Detroit’s turn-of-thecentury elite to maintain control of the automobile industry and, eventually, of their city. In the process he challenges a major paradigm for U.S. automotive history—“the myth that the founders of the American automotive industry were mostly self-made men” (p. 13). Davis argues that Detroit’s auto-manufacturing founders were not typified by Henry Ford and James Couzens, or by the New Yorkbased managers of General Motors and Chrysler. The magnitude of their eventual success, together with the mythic quality of Henry Ford, have blinded historians to the essentially patrician origins of the city’s dominant industry. Thus they obscure the story of Detroit’s failed auto aristocracy. For Davis that failure reveals the profoundly symbolic power of automotive production and helps explain the peculiar 20th-century fortunes of the nation’s Motor City. The argument, in brief, runs as follows: Almost all the early Detroit auto manufacturers succumbed to a passion for “conspicuous pro­ duction,” which, much like the “conspicuous consumption” from which the term is taken, sought to reaffirm elite status by manufac­ turing upscale cars fit only for their peers. Luxury cars proved such a small segment of the market that by 1910 most manufacturers sold their holdings, leaving the field open to the maverick Henry Ford and the non-Detroit leadership of General Motors and Chrysler. Bitter hostility between Ford (and his lieutenant James Couzens) and the city’s establishment, together with CM and Chrysler’s indifference to the city’s internal fate, led to a crushing defeat when the elite’s economic power base in the city’s banking system collapsed during the depth of the Great Depression. All this makes a great deal of sense and adds considerably to a revisionist interpretation of the origins of the auto industry and to the history of Detroit as a unique American city. Davis also raises provocative questions about the role of the automobile as an Ameri­ can symbol. His hypothesis adds a nuance to the commonplace observation that the automobile operates more as an ego enhancer, a symbolic vehicle for social and sexual status, than as a physical tool for the movement of bodies and freight. On the other hand, Davis’s single-minded pursuit of the conspicuous production hypothesis seems to have led him to overlook other major factors that help explain Detroit’s penchant for showy, gas-guzzling be­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 317 hemoths. One could argue, for example, that the big three’s commitment to massive cars originated in GM’s redefinition of auto marketing in the 1920s. “Sloanism” combined GM’s mix oflow- to high-priced models with advertising that emphasized the automobile as status symbol. Sloanist marketing climaxed each year in the spectacular striptease of the fall model unveilings, a social ritual in which Chrysler and Ford soon par­ ticipated with full vigor. From this perspective, Sloanism represents an economically rational response to the 1920s saturation of the virgin car market. To sustain mass- production profitability, manufacturers had to wean consumers from Ford’s unchanging (and unstylish) Model T and to whet their appetite for next year’s sexy arrivals. Davis also ignores a key dimension of Henry Ford’s motivation. While Ford’s Model T clearly “democratized” automobile ownership during its heyday, Ford’s other great innovation—the moving assem­ bly line—moved in a radically undemocratic direction as skilled artisans were replaced by highly regulated line workers whose adult judgment about the production process was treated with contempt. Davis rightly calls attention to Ford’s hostility toward Detroit’s elite class, but he ignores Ford paternalism, best seen...