Howard P. Segal. Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford's Village Industries. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. xvi + 244 pp. $34.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-55849-481-7.
Reviewed by Rob Vaughan
Published on H-Utopia (March, 2007)
From the 1910s until his death in 1947 Henry developing a system of scaled-down factories lo‐ Ford developed and expanded his mammoth cated in nearby rural areas and small towns. It Michigan automobile production complex at Riv‐ was a dream of the great innovator to create a er Rouge in Dearborn. At the time, it was among network of what he called "village industries" to the largest, most centralized industrial facilities in supply the needs of River Rouge and other facto‐ the world. Every day tons of raw materials and ries. But they would do more than that. The vil‐ small parts were delivered by ship, truck, and rail lage industries would act as vehicles of social as to one end of the factory complex. Out the other well as technological change. Ford believed that end came a steady stream of cars, trucks, and these shops, often located in the abandoned saw farm equipment. Inside, thousands of managers, mills and grist mills of the southeastern Michigan engineers, designers, craftsmen, and common la‐ countryside, would preserve America's rural val‐ borers toiled as cogs in an intricately complex ues and folk culture; balance the country's agri‐ manufacturing machine. Outside, the sky was cultural past with its technological future; im‐ turned black by smoke-belching foundries, mills, prove employee morale (as well as employee and power plants. Henry Ford's River Rouge was morals) by allowing workers to keep "one foot in an industrial marvel, admired throughout the industry and another foot in the land"; discourage world. It made him a hero of the new machine labor unrest and put a check on union organizing; age and an avatar of America's industrial future. foment closer bonds between managers and During this era of explosive growth the Ford workers; and, most signifcantly, improve quality Motor Company, like most of its industrial rivals, and profts for the Ford Motor Company. was becoming more centralized in its manufac‐ Howard P. Segal's Recasting the Machine Age turing and managerial functions. However, it was is the frst systematic study of Henry Ford's village also a time when Henry Ford personally em‐ industries. It is an excellent examination of this barked on a plan to decentralize production by often overlooked aspect of America's industrial H-Net Reviews past. Segal, Bird Professor of History at the Uni‐ in metropolitan congestion. A farm boy who has versity of Maine Orono, is a noted scholar whose kept his love of the land, Ford now visions the 'lit‐ specialty is the history of technology. Originally tle factory in a meadow' as the future shape of inspired to undertake this project in 1980 while American industry.… Henry Ford is convinced on a guided tour of ten of the original nineteen that, for happiness and security, the worker of the village industries sites, Segal builds upon the future must divide his time between factory and work of previous scholars, such as business histo‐ farm" (p. vi). Thus, Segal poses the frst of several rian David L. Lewis. He also adds to the growing questions regarding Ford's reasons for instituting body of literature on technology's infuence on the village industries project. First, was Henry culture and society. Recasting the Machine Age Ford's dream of a "little factory in a meadow" just joins such books such as Cecelia Tichi's Shifting a knee-jerk reaction to the changes in the land his Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Mod‐ huge factories helped unleash? Did the sight of his ernist America (1987), David E. Nye's American massive foundries and stamping presses trigger in Technological Sublime (1994), and John F. Kasson's him nostalgia for the more human scale of Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republi‐ Longfellow's village smithy? Second, were there can Values in America (1976). other, more sinister motives involved? By decen‐ In researching Recasting the Machine Age Se‐ tralizing production and transferring work to the gal has amassed a wealth of resources from countryside was Ford really just trying to stymie dozens of archives and collections. In addition, he union organizers who were, despite the union- has taken several oral histories of the men and busting eforts of his notorious "Service Depart‐ women who worked in these experimental pro‐ ment," already fexing their muscle at his urban duction facilities. He has woven this extensive re‐ plants? Third, were the village industries just an‐ search into an informative narrative that re‐ other way to streamline operations by decentral‐ counts the story of Henry Ford's dream of re-es‐ izing production, cutting costs, and maximizing tablishing small-scale manufacturing in rural profts? Was this just one more example of the America. He also explores the larger theme of de‐ great innovator tinkering with his assembly line centralization in American business, a theme that and experimenting with a new method of vertical had been advocated by both industry and govern‐ integration? Fourth, and most important, was ment leaders since the early twentieth century. In Henry Ford's plan ultimately a utopian quest of addition, Recasting the Machine Age connects social and mechanical engineering? Would the vil‐ Ford's village industries with more recent devel‐ lage industries, the twentieth-century version of opments, such as the "small is beautiful" move‐ Leo Marx's "machine in the garden," be used to re‐ ment of the 1970s and the growth of high-tech mold American industry (and its growing work‐ business parks in California's Silicon Valley and force) into Henry Ford's vision of the ideal soci‐ along Massachusetts' Route 128 corridor. ety? Recasting the Machine Age begins with an Supplying answers to these questions is no epigraph drawn from a 1938 Life magazine profle easy task, for Ford, like most historical fgures, of the great industrialist and his village industries was an amazingly complex and often contradicto‐ dream. "Henry Ford would be less than the man ry man. Segal himself admits that "Henry Ford's he is if, walking by the River Rouge, he did not motives for building and funding the village in‐ thrill at the sight of his huge plant growing huger dustries are multiple and murky" (p. ix). Despite and huger by the day. But the old man's dearest this opacity, however, Recasting the Machine Age dream is no longer of piling building on building quite ably manages to sift through the various ra‐ tionales ofered by Henry Ford, his publicity de‐
2 H-Net Reviews partment, suspicious labor leaders, Ford employ‐ food. Thus, village industries workers would be ees, contemporary journalists, and business histo‐ able to keep "one foot in industry and another rians. The result is a compelling story about the foot in the land"--while driving a Ford between dream of an iconic industrialist and his eforts to the two. Small-town America would be revital‐ use his village industries to transform both indus‐ ized, as would American agrarian values and folk trial production and American society. life. Rooted to the land, the rural workforce would First, the village industries were, in part, a re‐ help balance the ill efects of big city factories. action to the social fallout associated with large- So, Ford's solution to the problems of the scale manufacturing. As Segal points out, Henry modern factory was not simply a headlong retreat Ford remained conficted about the threats to into the past. His village industries were not just America's agrarian way of life (caused in good reconstructions of old manufacturing buildings part by his factories and the machines that they and a duplication of the antiquated production churned out). "[He] never resolved his mixed feel‐ methods they once housed. His make-over of grist ings about modernity: above all, the congestion, mills and other small-scale industrial buildings heterogeneity, rootlessness, impersonality, in‐ scattered around the Michigan countryside was equality, and materialism of twentieth-century nothing like the reconstruction of Colonial American cities. 'The modern city has done its Williamsburg, which was undertaken at about the work and a change is coming,' Ford told the jour‐ same time.[1] nalist Drew Pearson in a 1924 interview. 'The city At Ford's converted mills there would be no has taught us much, but the overhead expense of displays of old-time crafts such as candle making, living in such places is becoming unbearable…. quilting, or butter churning. His dabbling in his‐ The cities are getting top-heavy and are about toric preservation was not meant to display an ob‐ doomed'" (p. 3). Ford realized that the giant facto‐ solete past with buildings and production prac‐ ries of industrialized America were attracting ru‐ tices trapped in amber. There would be no evok‐ ral and immigrant workers to the big city. Many of ing of nostalgia for a bygone era. Rather, the vil‐ these employees were unattached, single men lage industries were for showcasing a usable past, who stayed in boarding houses and cheap hotels. one that would couple the best of previous eras In their of hours they frequented saloons, bur‐ with the latest technology. As Segal writes, Ford's lesque shows, and bordellos. Freed from the con‐ village industries were to be "sophisticated alter‐ straints of the family farm and village life, the native forms of [an] emerging technological soci‐ modern factory worker was increasingly suscepti‐ ety, intended as models for others to emulate" (p. ble to the temptations of the depraved city. If left 7, emphasis in original). They were not recre‐ unchecked, such a situation would no doubt lead ations of village life, but rather industrial succes‐ to an unreliable workforce and the demise of ev‐ sors to the nineteenth-century Massachusetts erything Ford believed America stood for. manufacturing towns of Lowell, Lawrence, and Workers in Ford's village industries, on the Waltham, which were also pioneering industrial other hand, were expected to be part-time farm‐ communities located in pastoral locales. Although ers, running up to hundred-acre spreads in their Ford's village industries might have been located of hours and during slack seasons at the plant. in old grist mills, complete with functioning water Ford believed so much in farming's benefts to wheels and set among bucolic greenery, these mind, morals, and health that he was even willing small-scale plants were equipped with the latest to provide garden plots to landless factory work‐ technology, with machinery that converted soy‐ ers just so they could raise some of their own
3 H-Net Reviews beans into plastic parts or churned out precision engineering? This is, perhaps, the most intriguing gauges, car horns, or headlight assemblies. question raised in Recasting the Machine Age. Second, although some have suggested that Howard Segal has addressed the topic of technolo‐ Ford's attempts at decentralization were primari‐ gy and utopia in previous books, including Tech‐ ly a way to neutralize the growing power of labor nological Utopianism in American Culture (1985; unions at River Rouge, the truth is not so simple. 2005) and Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessings As Segal argues, even though the village indus‐ of Technology in America (1994). In addition, he tries did in fact make it more difcult to organize has written on other aspects of technology and the small, relatively isolated shops, this was not utopia in several published papers and reviews. Ford's primary motive. If union busting was his Recasting the Machine Age can be seen as an ad‐ main goal he would have shifted large branch dition to this outstanding body of work. In short, plants to the South where labor was weak and Segal argues that by the time of the village indus‐ right-to-work laws favored employers. Yes, unions tries project Henry Ford had become both a social sufered under the village industries project, but engineer as well as a mechanical one. He saw Ford saw it more as a benefcial side efect than as himself forging men as well as machines; remak‐ the main motivating principle. ing American society as dramatically as his facto‐ ries had transformed the landscape. Third, the question of whether or not the vil‐ lage industries made economic sense to the Ford Although he was not one to immerse himself Motor Company as a whole, Segal tells us, is large‐ in history books,[2] and it is unlikely Henry Ford ly unanswerable. They remained a private project was acquainted with America's many previous of Henry Ford himself, more laboratory experi‐ utopian experiments, his village industries should ments than proft centers subject to sharp-eyed be seen as part of the utopian tradition in the U.S. corporate accountants. Besides, the haphazard He too felt that by perfecting the nature of work state of the company's books, even as the Ford he could perfect the individual and society. Segal Motor Company became one of the world's largest describes New Lanark, Oneida, and the Shaker manufacturers, made determining proftability of communities, all of which established small-scale individual production units difcult, if not impos‐ industries within rural settings. (Although he does sible. Yet, decentralization was a business princi‐ not mention Brook Farm, it should be noted that ple that Henry Ford embraced wholeheartedly, as they constructed a relatively large, steam-pow‐ did many of his fellow industrialists and govern‐ ered shoe manufacturing plant in the Massachu‐ ment policymakers. Managers at River Rouge saw setts countryside.)[3] Yet, Ford's enterprise was early on that completed Model T's could only ft diferent from these communitarian and coopera‐ four to a railroad car. While in their disassembled tive ventures. As a highly individualistic, self- state, the same rail cars could hold ten to twelve made man Ford found communitarian ventures automobiles. It was not long before Model T's an anathema. As an unreconstructed capitalist were shipped as parts with fnal assembly done in with a top-down view of organizational hierar‐ Ford's California or East Coast plants. If decentral‐ chies, he disdained cooperative schemes as artif‐ ized production like this could produce huge sav‐ cial ways to drive up prices. And unlike George ings, it became accepted that similar economies Pullman, the Sleeping Car King, whose model might be realized in the village industries project. town of Pullman was meant as an example for progressive industrialists, Henry Ford refused to Fourth, was Henry Ford's village industries consider building worker housing because he felt experiment a utopian project, one man's vision of it would destroy their initiative. Nor did Ford creating a more perfect America through social wish to build a "company town." He had no desire
4 H-Net Reviews to control the political or economic lives of his workers. (It is curious, however, that Segal makes no mention of chocolate mogul Milton Hershey's eponymously named model town in rural Penn‐ sylvania, the construction of which overlaps Ford's village industries. It might have made for an instructive comparison, especially regarding the role of work in a pastoral, small-town setting.) [4] Nevertheless, Henry Ford's village industries project was far more than an experiment in man‐ ufacturing decentralization. At its heart was noth‐ ing less than a utopian attempt to transform American society by synthesizing the values of its agrarian past with its technological future. De‐ spite eschewing the communitarian and coopera‐ tive ideologies of the majority of American utopi‐ an experiments, Ford's village industries were conceived in the same transformative spirit. Con‐ structing a "machine shop in the garden," as Hen‐ ry Ford set out to do, is an integral part of Ameri‐ ca's capacity to dream, and to construct the per‐ fect society. Howard P. Segal has written an im‐ portant book that extends the scholarship of both the history of technology in America as well as its utopian ideals. Notes [1]. In fact, the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg was funded largely by John D. Rock‐ efeller, Jr., the oil magnate's son, after Henry Ford declined to become involved. [2]. Once, while under oath in a civil trial, Henry Ford admitted he had never heard of Napoleon. [3]. See Sterling F. Delano's Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia (Cambridge. Mass.: Belknap/ Harvard, 2004). [4]. See Michael D'Antonio's Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Em‐ pire, and Utopian Dreams (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
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Citation: Rob Vaughan. Review of Segal, Howard P. Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford's Village Industries. H-Utopia, H-Net Reviews. March, 2007.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12953
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