Whose Standards? Workers and the Reorganization of Production in the United States (1900–1920)
Overview
Timeframe and debate: In the first two decades of the twentieth century, both managers and workers in America's large-scale factories sought to reorganize the human relationships involved in industrial production. The authority of foremen and the autonomy of skilled craftsmen came under attack as production scaled up and complexified.
Two directions of change:
Workers: Craftsmen developed collective, formal rules through unions and covert codes of ethical on-the-job behavior to regulate trades and defend autonomy.
Employers: Owners and managers pursued direct, systematic controls over production (cost accounting, interchangeable parts, specialized machines, standardized processes, and incentive pay).
Central reform movement: The scientific management movement led by Frederick Winslow Taylor and his followers argued for centralized planning, detailed task analysis, close supervision, and wage designs intended to induce compliance. These ideas clashed with craft unions and highlighted weaknesses in craft-based unionism.
Four core elements of scientific management (as framed by Taylor and followers):
1) Centralized planning and routing of production phases,
2) Systematic analysis of each distinct operation,
3) Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker for his discrete task,
4) Wage payments designed to induce workers to follow instructions,Three focal issues in the conflict over work relations: (1) standardization of tasks, (2) conversion of laborers into machine tenders, and (3) incentive pay schemes and job classifications. The discussion centers on metal-working industries and the Bridgeport, Connecticut munitions sector as a key illustration of worker-driven innovations.
Outcome framing: The war and postwar periods intensified the struggle for power at the point of production. Workers leveraged new forms of organization and wage demands; managers pushed standardization and time-and-motion controls. The debates helped shape the postwar labor movement and fed ideological divides (Left vs. Right) within American labor.
Key concepts and terms
Scientific management: A systematic approach to improving efficiency by precise standardization, measurement, and control of work processes.
Time study: A method for measuring how long a task should take, used to justify standard times and wage schemes.
Stint: The craftsman’s traditional, self-regulated output limit (a discretionary pace or output control by workers) which Taylor saw as “soldiering”; in practice, the stint transformed into covert sabotage of management’s direction.
Open shop: A plant where union membership was not a prerequisite for employment; a key demand of employers resisting union power.
Piecework / incentive pay: Wages tied to the amount produced or to bonuses for meeting/exceeding time standards; central to managerial reform but a frequent source of labor conflict.
Class wages vs individual wages: A debate over paying workers according to a single rate for a craft (class wage) versus individualized pay according to measured performance (scientific wages).
Time clocks and work tickets: Devices used to enforce standardized methods and track time, often resisted by workers as surveillance.
Stages of worker organization: System federations, shop committees, metal trades councils, local and national unions (IAM, AFL), and government-supported mechanisms (War Labor Board, NWLB).
Labor in Bridgeport, CT: A focal case of wartime labor struggles in a major munitions hub, highlighting shop committees, wage classifications, and radical political currents within a traditional craft union setting.
Standardization of tasks
Taylor’s view on standardization:
Quote: "It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured," with the duty to enforce resting with management." .
Managerial rationale for standardization:
Needs: cost accounting, interchangeable parts, and integrated departments in large-scale manufacturing.
Aimed to improve efficiency and flow of material through successive operations.
Consequences for craft practices:
Standardization undermined traditional craft autonomy and the discretionary control crafts workers exercised over their work and helpers.
Craftsmen fought back via formal union rules and informal codes of ethical behavior (e.g., restrictions on more than one machine per worker, multiple helpers, hidden production, or accepting piecework).
Worker response and discipline:
Workers defended autonomy with codes designed to maintain honor and rationality of their craft tasks.
Taylor denounced these codes as “soldiering” (restricting output), but workers defended tacit knowledge that they believed only they possessed.
Time study as “the basis of all modern management”:
Purpose: to extract craftsmen’s tacit knowledge and convert it into engineering knowledge in the hands of managers.
Practical demonstrations: a machinist in the Waterbury arsenal expressing willingness to accept better planning but rejecting “having a man stand back of you and taking all the various operations you go through.”
Reactions to time-study and clocks:
Time clocks and work tickets provoked strikes and violence in several plants (e.g., Pittsburgh’s ALCO, Norfolk Navy Yard 1915, Starrett Tool employees).
Early resistance in nonunion shops: managers could push time study with less resistance; workers in some nonunion plants embraced premium pay as a compensating device.
The “stint” as sabotage:
In the rise of time study, workers transformed overt caps on output into covert forms of disruption—thereby turning the management’s tool into a weapon for resistance.
Critical examples and anecdotes:
Molders, rollers, glass blowers, bricklayers, coal miners, machinists, jiggermen, lasters, and others who enjoyed broad autonomy and defended a code of ethical behavior.
Some shops faced clashes with time-study staff; the social and cultural dimensions of resistance helped fuel broader labor mobilization.
Summary takeaway: The standardization movement promised rational control and cost reductions, but it provoked an insurgent response from skilled workers who used their craft knowledge to resist and redirect the reforms toward more autonomous collective bargaining and resistance strategies.
Laborers and machine tenders (dilution of skilled trades)
The wartime shift in worker composition:
By the end of World War I, the largest group in major metal-working industries became machine tenders (unskilled or semi-skilled operatives).
Industry composition (example from the automobile sector, 1923):
Skilled machinists or die sinkers: of workers (≈9%).
Common laborers: ext{<}0.09 ext{ (less than 9%)}.
Assembly-line workers:
Machine tenders:
Note: these categories sum to less than 1, reflecting further categories not itemized here.
Consequences of dilution for workers:
Creation of a large supervisory layer to direct newly centralized, subdivided work.
Promotions for skilled workers into foremen and for laborers into operator roles.
Women in wartime production:
Many women were trained as welders (oxyacetylene) in railroad car shops and other metal-work environments; for these women, the welder role often provided significant economic gains, sharpening tensions with male welders who saw it as an erosion of male-dominated trades.
Growth in the number of skilled-support trades:
The war-era expansion of metal-working led to the emergence of the tool and die maker as a new skilled trade. The postwar development of this occupation reflected the need for specialized tooling to enable mass production with standardized parts.
Quantitative development:
Wartime labor force dynamics and the dilution of skilled trades correlated with sharp growth in machine-operating and support roles.
Tool and die makers: from in 1900 to by 1920 (a rapid wartime- and postwar-driven expansion).
Ford’s Highland Park plant as a case of extreme dilution:
Scale: 15,000 workers fabricating a single product (Model T) with highly specialized tools and dedicated fixtures.
Production regime: a plant designed for the high-volume production of a single model; reliance on numerous, highly specialized machine tools set up for a single operation; minimal emphasis on worker experience.
Staffing: 240 tool makers, 50 tool-fixture draftsmen, 105 pattern makers; 255 machine-shop overseers with authority to fire any worker.
Economic structure: wages based on hourly rates rather than incentive pay; no use of experience as a job determinant.
Worker flow and turnover: dramatic turnover; to maintain a steady workforce of , Ford hired (turnover rate ≈ 4.16 imes 10^2 ext{%, i.e., about 416%}).
Social engineering: Ford introduced an 8-hour day, a $5/day wage for workers over 22 who supported the family or others, English-language classes for immigrants, and an “Americanization Day” festival with thousands of participants.
Public reaction: strong demand for Ford work and social engineering measures, including a large influx of applicants and occasional riots at plant gates.
Economic and social implications:
The dilution of skilled trades produced improved incomes for some unskilled workers and new status for some previously skilled workers but eroded traditional craft-based unions and led to conflicts with female workers (e.g., new welders).
The mass-production regime reduced the direct influence of craft unions in metal-working industries, shifting power toward management practices and new labor-capital negotiation structures.
Summary takeaway: The dilution of skilled trades fostered new wage structures, career paths, and gender roles, but it also created tensions around autonomy, status, and control, contributing to a broader reorganization of industrial labor relations.
Incentive pay: types, conflicts, and outcomes
History and policy background:
Incentive pay had a long history in late 19th-century metal trades; employers experimented with premium payments and differential piecework rates.
The International Association of Machinists (IAM) took a hard stance against every form of premium or piecework in its 1903 constitution, prohibiting members from operating more than one machine or accepting piece-rate or contract work.
Post-1903 developments:
By 1909, many machinists and operatives were paid under “scientific” wage schemes beyond IAM standard rates.
Early strikes (e.g., Pressed Steel Car Co. in McKees Rocks, 1909) and Bethlehem Steel the following year showcased the push toward standard wages and away from premium systems.
Major strike waves and sites (1910s–early 1920s):
Westinghouse Electric (1914–1917): Persistent strikes to abolish premium pay and time-study pressures; a focal battleground for shop floor control.
Mesta Machine Company (1918): About workers walked out during late 1918 as part of demands to end premium systems, adopt standard rates, and gain shop committee recognition; later escalation and government intervention.
General Electric plants (Schenectady, Lynn, Pittsfield, Erie, Fort Wayne): Series of strikes over the same issues (1918–1919), with cross-city solidarity and sympathy strikes.
Key features of the wage-structure debates:
The core demand: replace premium and incentive-based wages with standard hourly or standard-rate pay; establish classifications by skill level instead of purely individualized performance pay.
Workers seeking earnings stability and fairness argued that premiums created chaos, encouraged manipulation of work pace, and undermined discipline.
Employers argued that incentive pay and “time-and-motion” standards were essential to raise productivity and align worker effort with precise production goals.
The Bridgeport and national response to incentive pay:
Bridgeport workers embraced a broad wage-classification scheme, seeking multiple standard rates (six to seven categories) and high minimums for unskilled and women’s work; the IAM’s local leadership clashed with national policy and federation-level control.
Government actors (NWLB) faced internal debate over whether to uphold or modify wage classifications and premium schemes; Loyall A. Osborne (Westinghouse) argued that hundreds or thousands of separate wage rates incentivized self-interest and could not be reconciled by government rule.
The NWLB award of August 28, 1918 (Bridgeport case):
Against changing the method of pay in operation; granted wage increases on a sliding scale, largest increases for the lowest-paid workers; established a minimum wage for women in piece-work (e.g., per hour).
Created a city-wide arbitration panel to hear disputes and government-supervised shop committees recognized by employers; sought to channel conflicts through formal mechanisms rather than strikes.
It did not fully resolve the core debate over multiple wage classifications, which remained a point of contention between craft unions and shop committees.
Implications of incentive-pay conflicts:
They crystallized the broader struggle over power at production: who controls the pace, the standards, and the distribution of rewards.
The AFL’s 1920 convention used the rhetoric of management to argue for replacing autocratic management with cooperative boards of organized workers and employers to democratize industry.
The broader political and ideological context:
Left (Socialist,SPL, IWW) saw wage-class reforms and shop councils as a path to mass action and a socialist industrial democracy.
Right (business and open-shop advocates) framed wage reform as essential to national competitiveness in a postwar world; preferred formal mechanisms and the suppression of militant labor actions.
Summary takeaway: Incentive pay became a central flashpoint in the conflict between management and labor, highlighting fundamental questions about fairness, autonomy, and control. The battles over incentive pay helped catalyze new forms of worker organization and contributed to the postwar push for “democracy of industry” through cooperative governance structures.
Bridgeport, Connecticut: a case study of wartime munitions labor and worker organization
Context and scale:
Bridgeport, CT, emerged as a major munitions and machine-tool center, with Remington Arms and Ammunition Company expanding rapidly in 1915 to employ more than 15,000 workers within months.
The Remington Arms plant became a hub of subcontracting, tool-and-die work, and machine-tool manufacturing, linking bridge-area suppliers and financial institutions (Chase National Bank, National City Bank of NY, International Nickel, Baldwin Locomotive, etc.).
Labor organization and pre-war conditions:
Incentive pay and time study were common in Bridgeport’s machine shops by 1910; the IAM Lodge 30 was weak in 1903 but began revival in 1911 and aligned with Socialist blocs.
The war orders of 1915 strengthened union strength as workers threatened strikes to gain concessions, notably 8-hour days in August 1915.
The conflict and leadership: Lavit, O’Connell, and the IAM
Samuel Lavit (IWW-associated) and Edwin O’Connell (IAM) led a reformist but militant faction within Bridgeport’s machinists.
Their leadership pushed for broad demands: 8-hour day, freedom to join unions, recognition of shop committees, and six standard wage classifications (tool maker, specialist, helper, etc.).
After Remington Arms reduced piece rates for grinders, the strike wave spread, lasting through fall 1917 to early 1918.
The strike wave and tactics:
Bridgeport locals organized walkouts and sympathy strikes with Remington Arms’ metal polishers and other subcontractors; local shop committees carried grievances to management.
Lavit’s local press (Bridgeport Labor Leader) openly supported social-democratic and socialist currents, and merged patriotic WWI rhetoric with revolutionary sentiments (e.g., cooperation for industrial democracy, socialist critique of capitalism).
The I AM constitutionally required negotiations with management and a 3/4 member majority before a strike; Bridgeport locals often bypassed these procedures, leading to friction with the IAM leadership.
The anti-war and wartime response:
The government’s policymaking bodies (Ordnance Department, NWLB, CPI) played a mixed role: mediating some disputes, while using patriotic and civic networks to calm unrest.
The Ordnance Department’s Labor Adjustment Board tried to arbitrate at multiple levels and eventually issued wage-classification decisions for key trades.
Escalation and political mobilization:
The Bridgeport struggles gave birth to a city-wide political activism: a local American Labor Party contingent within the IAM; the “Industrial Republic” concept emphasizing shop control and worker democracy.
The Bridgeport Labor Leader and Lavit’s faction linked strikes to broader social-democratic and socialist networks, sometimes overlapping with IWW and other radical groups.
Outcome and consequences:
In late 1918, government contracts were canceled in Bridgeport, and unemployment rose; national and local authorities attempted to manage labor unrest through shop committees and elections for arbitration boards.
By 1919, the IAM’s international leadership moved to discipline Lavit and his adherents; Lavit’s suspension and subsequent arrest diminished his local influence, and by 1920 the Bridgeport labor scene shifted back toward open-shop arrangements.
The Bridgeport case as a microcosm:
It illustrates how a major munitions hub transitioned from craft-based wage scales toward a broader, more centralized wage-classification regime, while simultaneously becoming a laboratory for radical labor organization and the contest between industrial democracy and managerial prerogative.
Summary takeaway: Bridgeport demonstrates how wartime production intensified organizational innovations at the plant level, including shop committees and wage classifications, and also how such experiments could collide with national labor governance and political currents, ultimately contributing to a reconfiguration of labor relations in the postwar era.
Wartime labor organization and the rise of shop committees and metal trades councils
Emergence of “system federations” and shop-level councils:
System federations formed among railroad repair-shop unions and other crafts, linking them with clerks and laborers.
During 1917–1918, shop committees flourished both from worker initiative and government encouragement, becoming battlegrounds for control over production and labor discipline.
Local metal trades councils:
Formed within factories and shipyards to coordinate the struggles of different trades; gained prominence in electrical, machine-tool, automobile, and shipbuilding sectors.
These councils often preempted national union leadership in formulating demands and staging strikes, challenging the central authority of the IAM and AFL.
Tension with national leadership:
AFL and IAM leaders sought to tame or regulate these local councils; in 1919, the AFL organized a conference declaring that local metal trades councils could not strike without authorization from affiliated locals and inter-national bodies.
Employers’ stance:
Manufacturers and trade associations opposed recognizing new worker organizations that bypassed traditional union control.
The Bridgeport case illustrates corporate resistance, with harnessing of the NWLB and government agencies to stabilize production and maintain wage discipline.
Government and policy response:
The NWLB and other wartime bodies attempted to mediate and to shape wage-classification schemes—often resulting in compromises that preserved some degree of worker power at the plant while limiting broad labor upheaval.
Summary takeaway: Wartime production fostered new forms of worker organization beyond traditional craft unions, but the postwar political and economic backlash reduced the staying power of these innovations, paving the way for a reassertion of open-shop production and conventional labor markets in the 1920s.
Left and Right: ideological responses and postwar divisions
Left-wing currents:
Socialist Party, Socialist Labor Party, and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) rallied around mass action, seeking to use worker councils as embryonic forms of socialist control over industry.
The wartime experience reinforced the belief among many leftists that the workplace would be the key site of revolutionary change.
Right-wing and reformist currents:
Business leaders and pro-management reformers argued for restoring discipline and efficiency through centralized control and market competition.
AFL and IAM leaders attempted to channel worker power into governance mechanisms (e.g., conference boards, shop committees) that could coordinate labor and management while preserving capitalist property relations.
Bridgeport as focal point for left-right clash:
The Remington Arms struggle was not simply about wages and hours; it embodied broader ideological conflicts over industrial democracy, union strategy, and public policy.
Global and domestic implications:
The wartime battles in Bridgeport and other industrial centers shaped the postwar labor movement, contributing to a spectrum of responses from mass action to institutional reform.
Summary takeaway: The early 20th-century labor movement fragmented into competing ideological camps, with wartime experiences providing both a catalyst for mass-worker activism and a justification for stronger managerial or state-led control in the postwar period.
Postwar downturn, open-shop revival, and the consolidation of managerial control (1919–1922)
The postwar depression and wage collapse:
The postwar depression of 1920–1922 saw wages plummet, especially for unskilled workers, and weekly hours lengthened again even as productivity rose.
The open-shop revival:
Employers and trade associations aligned with government, with the goal of reducing labor costs and rolling back wartime gains.
Corporate self-regulation and the push for “waste in industry” reduction became central themes under Republican leadership and with the support of consumer-protection rhetoric (lower prices).
AFL response and organizational reform:
The AFL at its 1920 convention argued that workers were justified to resist waste and mismanagement by management; proposed replacing autocratic management with “conference boards of organized workers and employers” to promote cooperative industrial democracy.
Long-run consequences for the labor movement:
The wartime experiments in shop committees and wage-classification systems left a lasting imprint on how workers and unions organized; however, the postwar economic conditions favored a return to more conservative wage structures and a reemphasis on wage standardization and formal bargaining channels.
Summary takeaway: The postwar era consolidated a hybrid model—industrial democracy rhetoric and shop committees in some sectors, open-shop normalcy in most others—while the AFL and other labor movements adapted to a new economic regime characterized by price deflation, lower wages, and a restructured production system.
Conclusions
Core dynamic: Across 1900–1920, both workers and management sought to reorganize work relations, but they did so in mutually exclusive ways—scientific management vs. craft autonomy—leading to a deep, battleground-level shift in power within factories.
Intensity and timing:
The most intense clashes occurred during periods of abundant employment after 1909, when scientific management spread through metal-working sectors and labor unions faced new challenges from unskilled workers and new wage systems.
Outcomes and trajectories:
Workers successfully imposed new standards and wage schemes in certain contexts, especially during wartime production and in nonunion shops; they also evolved new forms of organization (system federations, shop committees, metal trades councils) that could circumvent traditional union structures.
Employers sought to restore the open shop and to suppress these new forms of worker power; the postwar depression and political realignments further entrenched the open-shop agenda.
Broader significance:
The era laid the groundwork for ongoing tensions between centralized managerial control and worker self-organization that persisted into mid- and late-20th-century labor relations.
Final thought: The exchange between “Which standards?”—the management-driven standardization of methods and pay, versus workers’ rules and wage classifications—shaped the evolution of American industrial capitalism and the labor movement, influencing approaches to cost control, productivity, worker welfare, and democratic governance in industry.
Notable figures, cases, and references (selected)
Taylor, F. W. (Shop Management): central text illustrating the rationale for time study and standardized methods, and the managerial policy behind the scientific management movement.
Hugo Lueders ( machinist in Wo rks at Watertown arsenal ) and Nels Alifas (machinist, IAM member) as representative voices of worker opposition to time study and standardization.
Brighton Mills (Passaic) case (1914–1916): Gantt’s innovations targeted at weavers and production norms, followed by a strike in 1916 demanding an end to the innovations.
Bethlehem Steel and Westinghouse Electric (1910s): key battlegrounds for premium pay and time-study reforms.
Remington Arms (Bridgeport, CT): a focal wartime plant where shop committees, wage classifications, and social-democratic currents intersected with the war economy and postwar policy.
National War Labor Board (NWLB): government body mediating labor disputes during World War I; in Bridgeport and elsewhere, its actions shaped wage policy and shop committee recognition.
AFL and IAM: major unions whose internal debates about shop councils and wage classifications influenced national labor strategy.
Socialist and IWW currents: Mass-action politics and the idea of an “autonomous Industrial Republic” based on shop control and industrial democracy.