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The Color Line and the Assembly Line tells a new story of the impact of mass production on society. Global corporations based originally in the United States have played a part in making gender and race everywhere. Focusing on Ford Motor Company’s rise to become the largest, richest, and most influential corporation in the world, The Color Line and the Assembly Line takes on the traditional story of Fordism. Contrary to popular thought, the assembly line was perfectly compatible with all manner of racial practice in the United States, Brazil, and South Africa. Each country’s distinct racial hierarchies in the 1920s and 1930s informed Ford’s often divisive labor processes. Confirming racism as an essential component in the creation of global capitalism, Elizabeth Esch also adds an important new lesson showing how local patterns gave capitalism its distinctive features.
Price: $29.95
Pages: 280
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Series: American Crossroads
Publication Date:
04 May 2018
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520285385
Format: Paperback
"In this exciting contribution to the historiography of the Ford Motor Company, Elizabeth D. Esch reframes a familiar Michigan history topic within historians' rich conversations about race and empire."
Elizabeth D. Esch is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas. She is the coauthor, with David Roediger, of The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in US History.
Acknowledgments
Introduction • The Color Line and the Assembly Line
1 • Ford Goes to the World; the World Comes to Ford
2 • From the Melting Pot to the Boiling Pot: Fascism and the Factory-State at the River Rouge Plant in the 1920s
3 • Out of the Melting Pot and into the Fire: African Americans and the Uneven Ford Empire at Home
4 • Breeding Rubber, Breeding Workers: From Fordlandia to Belterra
5 • “Work in the Factory Itself”: Fordism, South Africanism, and Poor White Reform
Conclusion • From the One Best Way to The Way Forward to One Ford—Still Uneven, Still Unequal
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Introduction • The Color Line and the Assembly Line
1 • Ford Goes to the World; the World Comes to Ford
2 • From the Melting Pot to the Boiling Pot: Fascism and the Factory-State at the River Rouge Plant in the 1920s
3 • Out of the Melting Pot and into the Fire: African Americans and the Uneven Ford Empire at Home
4 • Breeding Rubber, Breeding Workers: From Fordlandia to Belterra
5 • “Work in the Factory Itself”: Fordism, South Africanism, and Poor White Reform
Conclusion • From the One Best Way to The Way Forward to One Ford—Still Uneven, Still Unequal
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index