Technology and the Workplace: Skilled and Production Workers at Allis-Chalmers, 1900–1941

Abstract

Technology and the Workplace: Skilled and Production Workers at Allis-Chalmers, 1900—1941 STEPHEN MEYER Every epoch has its technology, and this technology has the style of the epoch. A style that shows to what extent human acts link and interface with each other: How, if you like, technology undergoes the influence of what we call general history: and, at the same time, acts on history. Here again we have a double problem. It has been called, since Marx, by a contradictory word: the problem of historical materialism. That is, at bot­ tom, nothing more than the problem of total history. [Lucien Febvre, “Reflections on the History of Tech­ nology,” 1935]' The problem with the current practice of the history of technology is nothing less than what Lucien Febvre, a founder of the famous “Annales” school of social and economic history, labeled “the problem of total history.” With a few notable exceptions, historians of tech­ nology have tended to avoid the relationship between innovations in production technology and their influence on the work processes and social relations of the workplace. They have written about the ma­ chines and the innovators but not about the people who worked at the machines or about the politics of production. Unless historians of Dr. Meyer, author of The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908—1921, is currently completing a book manuscript, “Work, Class, and Power: The Making and Unmaking of a Militant UAW Local at Allis-Chal­ mers, 1900—1950,” and is researching workers and technology in the United States automobile industry. He teaches history and labor studies at the University of Wis­ consin—Parkside. He wishes to thank Phil Scranton, Margo Anderson, Stephen Victor, and Lindy Biggs for their comments on earlier versions of this essay. One version was presented at the 1984 Cambridge, Massachusetts, meeting of the Society for the History of Technology. ’Lucien Febvre, “Reflections on the History of Technology,” Annales d'histoire economique et sociale 6 (1935): 532 — 35; reprinted in Technology and History 1 (October 1983): 15.© 1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/88/2904-0004$01.00 839 840 Stephen Meyer technology move beyond their partial explanations of the technical past, they will remain condemned to the periphery of the larger his­ torical profession.2 A truly meaningful examination of technological innovation re­ quires more than the view from the top—that is, from the perspective of the manufacturers, the managers, and the engineers. For workers, modern production machines, methods, and processes were much more than artfully crafted devices. The new “labor-saving machines” frequently brought anxious stirrings to factory life. Such devices al­ tered the workers’ world—their shop traditions, their level of skills, the patterns of control, and the social relations of the workplace. In this article, the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company serves as a means of entering “the hidden abode of production” and ex­ amining the technical dimensions of “the hidden history of the work­ place.” Most important, it offers an inclusive view of technical practice from both sides of the capital-labor divide, rather than simply pre­ scriptive tales of engineering ideals. Skilled Workers and the “Big Stuff” The Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. originated as the E. P. Allis Co. in 1863. At the turn of the century, that firm specialized in the manufacture of a wide range of industrial equipment—flour and saw­ mill machinery, steam and pumping engines, and electrical genera­ tors. It manufactured “big stuff,” equipment sometimes weighing over 100 tons that required the highly refined skills of molders, pattern­ makers, machinists, and electrical workers. To be sure, some of the Allis products required many duplicate parts, such as turbine blades whose manufacture entailed repetitive mass-production techniques. Yet, the typical Allis product often re­ quired the design of something unique, the creation of patterns to 2John M. Staudenmaier, “What SHOT Hath Wrought and What Shot Hath Not: Reflections on Twenty-five Years of the History of Technology,” Technology and. Culture 25 (October 1984): 719-20, 725-28; David Hounshell, “Commentary: On the Disci­ pline of the History of American Technology,” Journal of American History...