Taylored Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor, Veblen, and Ford by Martha Banta

Abstract

846 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE this day January 1,1857] is dedicated to my children and is devoted to their gratification and instruction” (p. 3). By aiming high he has flown well over the head of this reader, since I was looking less for moral instruction than for grubby technological details. Gorgas of­ fers almost no description of his wartimejob, his later work, or his military or civilian associates. He has far more to say about egg prices than about Confederate ordnance costs or accomplishments. Most of the journal is a pretty tedious repetition about his family and friends, their visits, their illnesses, and an indirect account of the war and political goings-on around him. Social historians will appreciate what he tells us about how war­ time and postwar society operated, and Gorgas’sjournal also illumi­ nates how much or little was known or believed about some impor­ tant campaigns, generals, or battles by intelligent and well-informed Confederates. But there are few comments on his personal involve­ ment in the war, except during the retreat from Richmond when he expressed unhappiness at the burning ofthe railroad bridges that set most of the city ablaze during the Confederate retreat (p. 159). Similarly, of the details of his later iron-founding business we learn almost nothing. Local or social historians may find the journal valu­ able, but it offers little to military, political, or technological histo­ rians. Russell I. Fries Dr. Fries is the manager of Technical Information Services at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He taught the history' of technology at the University of Maine for ten years and worked on the history of interchangeable manufacturing in the government armories and the transfer to private firearms firms. Tailored, Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor, Veblen, and Ford. By Martha Banta. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1993. Pp. xiii+431; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95 (cloth). In Taylored Lives Martha Banta suggests that during the transition to modern management techniques, especially those guided by Tay­ lorism, many stories were told to persuade workers (and nonwork­ ers) that these ideas represented the foundation ofa new and better society. Based on that premise, Taylored Lives asks interesting ques­ tions: In whose language were those stories told? Whose stories were they? Who was listening? In other words, how did the proponents of scientific management use language and narrative to help them usher in the new techniques? In her introduction, Banta describes her focus as both “the histor­ ical moments when Frederick Winslow Taylor told his stories and practiced his theories between the mid-1880s and 1915” and “the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 847 1930s, when his disciples provided sequels to his urtext for work­ place control” (p. 4). “Disciple” is used loosely, for the storytellers in this book are not the engineers who were the actual disciples of Taylor. The stories recounted here stem from fiction in women’s magazines, Henry Ford’s autobiography (Ford would not be happy to be referred to as a disciple of Taylor!), and William Faulkner’s novels, among others. Except for one short, twenty-two-page chap­ ter, Taylor and his own stories are not treated in the book. The strength of the book is in the breadth ofmaterials consulted: from Max Weber’s observations on Chicago packing houses and nu­ merous short stories published in popular magazines that lured their readers toward a life ofgreater efficiency and productivity, to novels, government reports, and autobiographies. This strength is also the book’s weakness; Banta reviews dozens of diverse authors and texts without adequately explaining why they are included, what they have in common, or what they have to tell us. In chapter 1, for example, we read about HenryJames, Thorstein Veblen, Max Weber, Theo­ dore Roosevelt, stories of the Civil War and the War of 1812, and Henry Adams. There are threads that might link these various texts, but those threads are not articulated. Other chapters are stronger. Chapter 2 considers three books— Richard Harding Davis’s Soldiers ofFortune and The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, and Theodore Roosevelt’s TheRough Riders—about soldiers “committed to the culture of management” (p. 59). Chap...