HST 210 Lecture 4: HST 210 Lecture 4 and 5 (Week 3)
Document Summary
** lecture 3: ended off with american exceptionalism** Workers are the economic engine of the gilded age. Before gilded age, goods are produced in small workshops in small batches by skilled artisans who had significant control over the work process. Mechanization shifts the site of work to the factory where large batches of goods are produced by semi and unskilled workers using machines. Factory workers lose control over the work process and are subject to round the clock surveillance (foreman/supervisor) Taylorism produces significant tension between workers and supervisors over shop floor control (ie. over the pace of work, arbitrary treatment or foreman, and unsafe working conditions) Garments are precut in the factory, but contractors or middlemen have the pieces sewn together in the tenement homes of workers or in small sweatshops. Sweatshop workers labor long hours and are paid by piecework.
