Managers and Workers: Origins of the Twentieth-Century Factory System in the United States, 1880-1920, 2d ed.

Managers and Workers: Origins of the Twentieth-Century Factory System in the United States, 1880-1920 by Daniel Nelson, 2nd ed. University of Wisconsin Press, 262 pp., $40.00 ($17.95 paper). Nelson's well-written account opens by documenting changes in factory architecture, building materials, and power sources. He suggests that improved working conditions (better lighting, heating and ventilation) were an unplanned consequence of technological innovations rather than a response to the demands of labor. Clearly demonstrated differences between plants, industries, and regions give us a view of the coexistence of diverse technologies as well as the eclipse of the industrial revolution's "dark, satanic mills.". "Fragmented" authority characterized factories at the turn of the century; day-to-day management remained with foremen and skilled workers. The foreman's functions included hiring, training, rate-setting, and discipline. Centralized control emerged through attempts to reorder the manufacturing process, to integrate the plant's physical layout and work flow. Production organisation, cost accounting, and quality control were gradually defined as management functions. The influence of centralized authority on worker skills and shop floor relations is inadequately treated.

The increasing size and complexity of factories and the entrance of engineers into management gave rise to both systematic management and Frederick Taylor's scientific management. Interestingly, Nelson argues that time-andmotion studies and bonus-wage schemes were not core elements of scientific management. Taylor's system, most often implemented piecemeal, was popularized as a "partial solution to the labor problem." Nelson details attempts to improve labor supply and quality through welfare work, company towns, native labor, and safety movements. Yet the influence of "labor market turmoil" on union activity and management strategy remains unclear. This rich account of socioeconomic transformation could be strengthened through closer attention to worker-management interaction.

* Susan McCabe