Henry Ford’s success centers on the advent of two machines: the car and the assembly line belt. Both are revolutionary concepts that significantly affect the workplace and society at large. Yet while each has its advantages in terms of mobility and efficiency, each also has drawbacks. Thus, Sinclair illustrates that while technology and progress is important, it is not unilaterally positive, particularly because it often exacerbates issues that society’s poorest members face.
First, Sinclair demonstrates the benefit of Ford’s automobile, or “horseless carriage,” because it gives people freedom of mobility. Henry Ford builds a car that can convey people “to any place on the land-surface of the globe except a few mountain-tops.” Abner hopes to own a car because he likes the idea of taking his wife, Milly, and their kids into the country to visit his brother, illustrating how cars can tangibly connect people and improve their lives. There is also economic utility in the car: Ford tells Abner, “Suppose it’s ten cents a day, that’s thirty dollars a year—and for one person. There’s no reason a wagon like this shouldn't be built to carry four people at once.” In this way, a car provides a cheaper option for transportation. In addition, having a car would allow Abner can travel to cheaper farms, where his family could buy vegetables at half the price charged at the corner grocery. This is yet another economic utility of the car.
The new cars also have drawbacks, however, which particularly affect the working classes. For a long time, few working-class people are able to buy cars, only exacerbating class inequality because they cannot access the same economic benefits that cars bring for middle- and upper-class people. The car also comes with additional costs like building a garage and gas money. Additionally, the cars start to have wide-ranging effects on the economy. For instance, farmers notice more people driving out to buy their products, so they raise their prices. In this way, the widespread use of cars creates economic inflation that hurts working-class people, as they’re forced to pay more for consumer goods without experiencing any of the economic benefits of car ownership.
The assembly line also represents a major technological innovation, as it enables greater efficiency and helps Ford produce more cars a year. Before the assembly line, cars are built on one spot in the factories. Due to this structure, many men are constantly running around with parts and tools, bumping into each other. But when the assembly line is set up along a moving belt, the work is divided among 84 different men, and the time it takes to build a motor is cut by more than 40 percent. Before the assembly line, a man making a complex motor part called a magneto could make one every 20 minutes; after the assembly line is instated, the work is divided among 29 different men. Likewise, the time of assembling a chassis is cut from 12 hours to 90 minutes. As Sinclair describes, “It was a revolution”: it not only allows Ford to employ more men, but to expand the business (and the profits) even more.
Yet Ford also pushes the assembly line to its breaking point, demonstrating how even this revolutionary technology still has major drawbacks on the workers. Sinclair explains that once the assembly line is established, Ford continues to speed it up. He writes, “You simply moved a switch, and a thousand men jumped more quickly. It was an invisible tax.” While the workers increase their productivity, their stress levels increase, and their quality of life suffers as they’re pushed to their limits. As a result of the assembly line, people are constantly injured. Sinclair writes, “[Ford’s] ‘safety department’ was overruled by his speed-up department, and there was a saying in the plant that it took one life a day.” Thus, even though the increased efficiency benefits Henry Ford, it comes at the cost of the workers’ well-being.
In the book’s final passage, Sinclair sums up the dual nature of technology and progress in Henry Ford’s conversation with his wife. Ford’s wife, Clara, says, “You have done a great deal of good in the world.” Ford responds, “Have I? […] Sometimes I wonder, can anybody do any good. If anybody knows where this world is heading, he knows a lot more than me.” In this exchange, Ford’s wife acknowledges how much Ford has improved the world with his cars and his factory structure—but at the same time, Ford himself recognizes that there have been drawbacks to each of these innovations. While progress can be beneficial, it can come with great costs as well.
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Technology and Progress Quotes in The Flivver King
And while Abner and Milly were thus fulfilling their dream, Mr. Ford was occupied with his; to bring it about that when the little Shutts grew up—and likewise the little Smiths and Schultzes and Slupskys and Steins—they should find millions of little horseless carriages available at second-hand prices, to convey them to any place on the land-surface of the globe except a few mountain-tops.
Some persons would not have cared for this life, but Abner didn’t know any such persons, and had no contact with their ideas. He did not think of the Ford plant as an immense and glorified sweatshop; he thought of it as a place of both duty and opportunity, where he did what he was told and got his living in return. […] If you had asked him to tell you his ultimate dream of happiness on this earth, he would have answered that it was to have money enough to buy one of those cars—a bruised and battered one, any one so long as it would run, so that he could ride to work under shelter when it was raining, and on Sundays could pack Milly and the kids into it, and take them into the country, where his oldest brother worked for a farmer, and they could buy vegetables at half the price charged at the corner grocery.
Never had there been such a device for speeding up labor. You simply moved a switch, and a thousand men jumped more quickly. It was an invisible tax, like the tariff, which the consumer pays without being aware of it. The worker cannot hold a stopwatch, and count the number of cars which come to him in an hour. Even if he learns about it from the man who sets the speed of the belt—again it is like the tariff in that he can do nothing about it. If he is a weakling, there are a dozen strong men waiting outside to take his place. Shut your mouth and do what you’re told!
He loathed war as a stupid, irrational, and altogether hideous thing. He began to give less and less of his time to planning new forges and presses, and more and more to writing, or at any rate having written, statements, interviews, and articles denouncing the war and demanding its end. To other business men, who believed in making all the money you could, and in whatever way you could, this propaganda seemed most unpatriotic; the more so as many of them were actively working to get America into the conflict, and multiply their for- tunes overnight.
Henry Ford was doing more than any man now alive to root out and destroy this old America; but he hadn’t meant to do it, he had thought that men could have the machinery and comforts of a new world, while keeping the ideas of the old. He wanted to go back to his childhood, and he caused millions of other souls to have the same longing.
With every month of the depression these things had got worse and worse. The twenty-five thousand workers were driven until they went out “punch-drunk.” Sometimes one went out on a stretcher, because men so driven couldn’t handle machinery without accidents. On no subject had Henry written more eloquently than on the importance of safety; but again and again his “safety department” was overruled by his speed-up department, and there was a saying in the plant that it took one life a day. They had their own hospital, and there was no way to get any figures.
“You should let yourself be happier, dear,” the wife was saying. “You have done a great deal of good in the world.”
“Have I?” said the Flivver King. “Sometimes I wonder, can anybody do any good. If anybody knows where this world is heading, he knows a lot more than me.”
