[inaudible conversation] welcome to the graduate center. we are delighted to have you as our guest this evening and to listen to some words on this new book by our colleague josh freeman. i am the professor of anthropology and director of the

research collaborative here at the grad center where josh spent a useful year in 2014, 2015 which partly, only partly helped produce the book. we have a little claim to helping this realization of this marvelous and important book. this book is intriguing because while everyone is talking about labor market polarization and the growth of the service sector and artificial intelligence and automation and so on, josh takes a somewhat different approach. his emphasizes the continued importance of large skill manufacturing of a massive kind. it looks like it justified the price that should have been charged over there. i urge you to purchase your copy

as soon as possible. we are absolutely delighted that you are here with us. let me introduce steven greenhouse, correspondent of the new york times. mr. greenhouse is the preeminent labor correspondent in the united states. [applause] i looked briefly at all of these things and it's very impressive. i looked at the recent article on fast food workers and i even went to his twitter. : :

>> with a constant theme of the issue of social justice. an unrelenting focus that affects ordinary people and ordinary working people by whatever race, color, creed. there's an unrelenting and i would say perhaps rare focus on this kind of person and their destiny today. among other things, tough times for american worker got a prize in 2009. he's got in other words journalist award so we have a person in our presence to

discuss this work whose hearts are beating along the same rhythm i would say. joshes professor of history he here, he is a distinguished professor of history which is important and deservedly so. his books include american empire 1945 to 2000, rise of a global power, life since world war ii and 1933 in 1966 which got the history book award. his got other awards the labor award and of course fellowships

from the american council of the national endowment for the humanities and the list goes on. but i will not. ladies and gentlemen, our guest. [applause] >> thank you for that introduction. i am honored to be asked to interrogate doctor friedman. one thing is that my first thing with the new york time was covering steel. then i was writing about sweatshops and josh writes a lot about steel and sweatshops and much in between. this is a wonderful book. not just about factories but the history of manufacturing in the world. it goes from the very beginning to the united states and talks

about conditions and what inspired marks to become marks talks about hendry for the 40s on. and fast forwards to -- with her 300,000 workers many who are working ipads and iphones. it's a really excellent read. we don't expect academics to write so well but sometimes they do. i was that manufacturing began in the late 1700s. you write about a factory in 1721 in england. the first factory in the world. can you tell us about it? and what it meant for humankind?

>> i just want to thank donna my program here from the support in sponsoring this in publishing. they were just wonderful in my editor. i cheated but now going to answer your question. in derby, england the foundation of a foundation that started in 1721. it's an extraordinary thing because if you look at a lithograph you go it's a factory and yet in many ways it was a complete pioneer and made silk thread. there was a move for luxury goods in new england and the thread this process was done by

hand extremely slow. the factory was built to use machinery to do it. they got the mist machine design by stealing them. a man sent his brother to go and sneak around. it was illegal to export the machinery. he memorized it, hired a few italian workers and went back to derby and built the factory. it had 300 people. mostly children, integrated production and all the components that we think of as a factory. instantly people think something new is happening. so read this genius description

and later boswell go there. people recognize something is happening and it becomes important not because of the silk industry but it's a template for the cotton industry in the first large can't factories are in that same area that they developed. >> men over the next century a lot of tech factories are springing up in england and scotland. a lot of employees 7-year-old some prefer ten and 12 -year-olds seven factories the only adults are the overseers what's up with that? that's a good question. you have to recognize the problem with assembling a workforce is a new problem.

you can have armies and unusual circumstances but on an ongoing basis nobody had that many people in a factory. so factory like kids because they were cheap and intimidated bowl. many cases their course to be there, sometimes from the parents were desperate further intern. some kids were in orphanages with a sign contracts with the textile mills that commit the kids to working them. his criminal activity kids could be arrested for doing so. it's a very pliable and cheap workforce. have small fingers and are nimble.

again where factories don't want his craft workers. the don't want workers with a sense of their knowledge and autonomy. they want someone with no knowledge that they can control. >> can you talk about the movement of them being taken away? >> that one of the inheritances we have at the moment. sometimes people don't usually have an idea of where could be pups which are coming from. sometimes it's not the workers themselves but this will

undercut not only their livelihood but those with self-respecting workers. this is prior to the suffrage. working-class men don't have the right to vote. there's draconian laws of this is in the aftermath of the french revolution where the english are very worried. so the machine becomes a mode of protest and their waves of this the armies mobilize and somewhere hung the kind that

goes down to this even now. >> i see they had a thing about factory conditions in england. the bosses then there and then you see this is where dickens comes from our marks his writing. then you get an idea that manufacturing was really horrible. can you talk about how it may have inspired the dark vision of capitalism? >> cyrus evolutionary of sorts was unaware that existed there money is exiled then he reunites with frederick angles he becomes

very engaged with what's going on in these factories. while his inherited biases and stored merrily concrete. the family was part owner of a cotton mill. with detailed information when you read the description of capitalism he uses the example of the cotton mill. they're not looking just a best transformations, they are acutely interested in the day-to-day struggles. this is the moment of the day.

it becomes a central imagery of capitalism. a lot of the is to angles. angles subsidize them. let's look at the early history of manufacturing and i was having dinner and just as england stole technology from italy other stole it from england. the right at length -- they

tried to make it into a benevolent manufacturing community attracting the daughters of yeoman farmers and women were happy to leave the farms and discover outside life. they bit passable factories. it is a much better image than i had ever thought. can you talk about the boston capital. >> shortly after 12 francis low robert low who was in england came back in the united states and decided to set up manufacturing using and improving the kind to seal the

technology and improve it. but they were aware that the american political lexicon manufacturing seems threatening. "alexander hamilton" has a lot of critics who feel that what distinguishes us from the old world is precisely the old autonomy. then like child labor and pollution people think that's manufacturing. they want to avoid that for political reasons. these mills were waterpower is available they don't have children and where to get workers from. the united states has a labor shortage. they think of young women coming

to age to come. after sure there parents that this is a respectable safe thing to do. one contemporary newspaper i found the head at boarding houses with rules. they have to choose the employment and they set out to make it attractive. so i have to make it attractive. for a while people like dickens come from the united states. they'll go this is amazing.

for a while and may have been a little oversold. it changes. >> when the air is filthy using one country some of avoid the creation of a -- i thought that was a fascinating thought. again it's pretty early in a different kind of society. there should be no great social distinction or a huge economic

distinction. the system meets a lot of cultural and political needs. >> there's a subtexts in the book driving in new england but who is providing the raw material. >> thank you for bringing that up. this is indebted in slavery. is the reason why it's very -- lots of people that slavery was going to die out the united states. it seemed less profitable and ideological problematic.

it creates a huge review of cotton. that's where the bulk of the english cotton is coming from. these things rise together. not only do they use the slaving cotton but the english probably are crude cloth. they're so back to the south. it's inseparably bound i will point i tried to make us ideologically rethink manufacturing essay kind of freedom. and maybe that's true but it's abound with its origin they rise together.

>> licenses that factory conditions were pretty bad. where all of these children of strikers because they cannot afford to keep them. so something went south and wrong. you have this horrible strike i what happened in the earlier days these mills have very low competition. have a lot of capital so they have a huge a jumpstart. by the 1830s and 40s some have the expiration of patents and

sellers competition. a competition means there's pressure on costs. i'm in labor. so they began to push down salaries and used to be that now you have 46 that it was getting worse and they begin to walkway. the don't really need these jobs, their school teachers and go back home. luckily for the mill owners along comes the irish family that bailed them out. you get this flood of irish immigrants coming in the mid- 1840s and rapidly within decades

he replaces the new england workforce. the context is different there fleeing starvation so they began to cut early for the next half century. slowly but surely there are the mill towns and right before world war i they go from a commercial utopia. >> the steel industry was developing and still is kind of a symbol of a nation of industrial might. can you talk about why the steel industry is so important white

located in the pittsburgh area? >> is different because it's mostly making capital goods from other industries. in the beginning the key is the rail system. that's what the industry grows up on eventually you have machineries and armaments is economically important and symbolically important and a great age or the eiffel tower. i think many countries come to

believe they can have full sovereignty as a nation unless you have a nice steel industry. it becomes the most capitalized in the united states and out of those gross fortunes that have never been seen. carnegie get seton by the morgans, essentially symbolic and technically and economically to a new nation. >> with regard to the rise of steelers machinery one thing that was eye-opening was we all heard about the crystal palace but i hadn't realized what the main purpose was to reduce people to machinery but you can't resist it.

it's a hundredth anniversary is this world fair type thing. the centennial exhibition and the centerpiece of it is a building of machinery it's a steam engine that has shafts they open the fair they happen to be around at this moment. it's also an odd way that has to do with the declaration of independence. the notion of national greatness what is national greatness come from.

>> here we are in new york will carnegie hall in the springs us to the leaders of the steel industry. it's just south of pittsburgh. so they brought in for the strikes and they started sharing and then conditions got bad. then they get half the day off

and they would switch shifts for two weeks. can you talk about the importance of homestead and how it made things worse? >> homestead is by carnegie. it's very well unionized which is about the largest steel mill in the united states. they have a sliding scale they get paid by the time. workers had a big chunk of that. the mayor of homestead was a union and carnegie wanted to control his own mill.

it comes at the end of an era of an extraordinary rising of american labor. in the 1880s and 1890s american labor was an important force in shaping the country. it was a number of moments where the tide turns. it's when morgan integrates with other companies carnegie becomes largest corporation in the world.

>> not long after henry ford was in detroit and you explain very well how you do difference with what henry ford paid. can you tell us more? >> i get very interested in the details here. >> ford you can associate with the assembly line but the assembly line is the culmination of the series of development. extreme standardization of the product and the present goes into it which is made with specialized machinery. along production line of a single product and you can

invest it incomes the assembly line. used to be you could do a sewing machine or car and it's like a kid playing lego. you take one in a big pile and they would build up the car with the sewing machine. you have the workers stand still on the part moving in front of them and each with extremely minute motion of drilling something. turns out to be an efficient system. and enables them to turn it into mass production product. when people see it this way it's a whole new way of life. farmers and workers have things like cars. it's a social system.

it's a phrase in the 1920s before first mass production would. >> i see it mentioned many times on things i read and some people say ford assignments great brought efficiencies and low-cost goods. that made america what it is today. brought us the 5-dollar day other people say it stank created different workers. what's your thoughts? >> it's all of the above. whether they're inseparable or not is the question. there's no question that it's

made possible to this day our ability to get huge amounts of stuff cheaply. on the stump people don't like stuff but the commandos improving our lives. it's so unpleasant that with high wages the actual content of the job is so debilitating. for this am has both sides of it. the sophisticated discussions about it. looking at the -- brothers i think 1924 almost immediately. he said that holds the promise for better life.

and said this is boring. but boredom is not nice but starvation is worse. eventually they would get shorter hours and so forth. people are grappling with the problem for a long time. >> you write about this in michigan and there's a hundred 2000 workers. a lot of people so the turnover rate was 300%. this wonderful quote worker saying if i keep putting on not number 86 or 86 more days i'll be not number 86 in the bunkhouse. so what are the efficiencies of

building this? >> he had extreme -- basically parts of every ford in the americas were made in this one factory. he also vertically integrated to a degree that nobody does. most companies today don't make most of the things in their cars. ford makes everything. starting with the glass of the glass factory. he buys force in northern michigan to make wooden parts. there's an object in the american life is called king ford. you put in charge of the factory.

turned out to be recycling the scraps. so he had asked dream critical integration and a vast market. he thinks it would be great efficiencies and there were but also great dangers. all your eggs are in one basket. eventually american manufacturers move away from the model. it's an extraordinary innovation in many ways. most factory workers is important to history. photographers and filmmakers and painters. >> and there is a wonderful section on the great factory and

painting. you write about ford being antiunion in the same with the service department with harry bennett. how did that go to this huge union success at the gm plants there? >> the key is the depression of the new deal. it d legitimizes a little bit like our age you should be in society but this is the claim the credit for the good stuff. on the new deal brings in a new legitimacy for workers.

first it said gm and here's where the model of ford is the most extreme example. if you have one plant making all the engines for chevrolet if you stop that one then you shut down every chevrolet production the united states. the only minority workers a few key places. there's lots of reasons it was so effective. four. it's only in 1941 that he finally cracks when the union goes on strike again.

also now the government is coming down because world war ii is around the corner in the government has to get things set up. the union is stronger when the federal government has a special's. he holds out and then suddenly reverses. think it's the best contract in the industry and gets the union shop and things no one else has. >> you look at manufacturing from the west to vietnam. it has several river ruses. then they have some of the best in some of the worst can you discuss that? >> when people start jumping out the roof of the factories in

2010 buried in the stories were the massive suicide took place at about 200,000 workers. i never heard of the place and the idea with the factory with that many blew my mind. six or 7000 is a huge factory. he got me interested in to that integrate. they're mostly assembly factories although they do make some parts. the model is so similar in that they depended on migrant workers that initially young woman from poor parts of central china. they came to factories before going back home.

but there's a lot of difference in these factories. they're not making products for themselves. without sources of natural pride because there mostly falling they mostly make stuff in the export market. henry ford loved having people these places are hidden. it's very different very similar at the same time. the culmination in an odd way.

>> admitted very vulnerable that one place shut down. we met at one or two factories but apple is not a dumb company why focus it some of them shrink but some stay very large. is the ability of labor it led american manufacturers to say were going to disperse and have small plants.

>> workers have 70000 workers. china, you have to look apple at the communist party and the red army. things get really nasty any of heavy artillery out there to maintain order. you see the rise of these factories and super concentration of production the places where there's not a fear of labor production. there is a huge strike wave going on the most people don't realize success. so local, short strikes. the government tolerates them but if they start getting out of hand there shut down.

>> we talk about labor market polarization there's talk the manufacturing is going to evaporate the slide over the cliff. melanie manufactures workers anymore. what you make of that? >> we have looked at a few factors but at the same time a new factory with 350,000 workers, the iphone ten so it's hard to predict where things will be going. there's multiple models where automation is usually the key to continue to operate. there's lots of low-wage parts of the world left. an extreme example is bangladesh

we see history going backwards. the factories look like -- in the 1900s. these are big new modern factories. this is not some marginal player comments walmart and everyone under the sun. there subcontracting. there is no principle here, have you made money what works and i think it's hard to predict. modernization will continue but i don't think globally will see the disappearance of factory laborers in our world economy. >> put on your philosopher have for a second. what would you do to fix manufacturing or make it better?

what could've been done years ago to make it better for what to do going into the future? >> 80 years ago what should have been done was done. give workers a say what happened on the shop floor but gave them a slice of . this is what people are nostalgic for. when they say make america great again that's what they're thinking about. to own a home in a car. that's one side. even after that happens people don't like the actual job. the physically taxing and there's a deeper action.

is there a fundamental transformation of the technology of production that could officially put out goods keep our lifestyle without the mental on there hasn't been that much experimentation with that. it's really something that only very occasionally been toyed with. can you have the best of both worlds. >> questions from the audience.

>> how did you get your information about what's going on in china? >> there's a group of talented ethnically chinese academic. there's a fair amount of information even though it's difficult for ford researchers. tim cook is the current head of apple. apple used to make computers for a while. you simply said we don't want to

make things and he has occasionally talked about it over the years. >> thank you for this interesting conversation. you said why american factories was more acute, how do you apply that to the rise of the technology giants. technology companies are massive in the u.s. we talk about the repatriation of cash. >> that's a great question. i haven't studied as much.

the earliest example of the massive workforce will be walmart. walmart developed a part of the country in the part where the new deal never happened. when you talk about rule arkansas the legal circumstances sica throw back to the 1920s. by the time you get to places like amazon with these warehouses the american labor was so much weaker than it was in 1950 when general electric begins building factories all over the country. i don't think it's in the forefront of the thinkers it's just not something they're particularly worried about. instead of being at the

forefront of work what's on the next plant. it's a whole change in the american political economy. the circumstances different. we've moved back to an earlier context. >> i saw statistic today that when apple introduced the iphone the kia was valued at $110 billion and apple may be worth a hundred. now apple worth 80,900,000,000,000. the value of our ideas in marketing to come up with a smart idea know how to produce over to cheaply for fox kind great things happen for shareholders.

>> this question might be too broad. it's one of definition. you call it a factory take it back to 1731 but a lot of what you're talking about can be generalized to any collective human effort. figure back to any great building projects, cathedrals, pyramids, shipbuilding even fruit pickers and the depressi depression, a lot of the same themes come out. how did you arrive at the unit of analysis you have used. >> your point is well taken. there were large assemblies of working people to build pyramids and such. on the ship is a good example because that's making things with lots of people. most manufacturing when you look

at closer building materials was done by small numbers of people so i was looking at that and a quantum leap in that activity. some of the early examples were important a civil engineer a lot of the practices that make possible like interchangeable parts come out of the military and armories. the military wants to be able to repair them. even the language of labor you see that, the ticket and the strike and that sort of thing. i think the common notion of the

consumer good that's what i was focusing on. i guess i was looking at it backwards. the templates of the future of today will the previous versions of it? the case study? >> the book opens up with the very first factory building in the world a shipbuilding was going on with the greeks and romans here's a factory, the first in the world and first are thinking you're just going to read a book but it becomes a history of factories could be

from shipbuilding and making cannons. >> i'm intrigued by your comparison. i know the system in general i very much agree with your assessment that is related to specific way it played out in the u.s. if you think about the history of the union movement the union movement in germany was certainly also the victim of oppression by authoritarian governments so was very

contentious up until the 1950s. then somehow there's something in reverse. it started out as freedom of association at some point. now when i come from germany i'm actually pretty shocked about how the legal obstacles that they sometimes face. i'd be interested in hearing your opinion about what happened there. >> the german industry in the mid- sites for to some extent it

helps and is ironic. his into the firm itself. their main production of 30,000 people. for the last 20 years things sort of reverse i want a lot of

the new literatures argued is the business class was never really -- their practical and pragmatic and understood what they could and could not too. they were moving people out of these fortresses. were in cleveland. to weekend and then the ideological moment comes it's not like the other industry d unionized itself. i think there is a business culture in the united states which is deeply hostile on both practical and ideological and spiritual ground. anything that interferes with the freedom and right to manage.

that might be stronger here than in europe. >> thank you. i want to ask a question of whether the value creation and what values created intrinsically in the factory as a unit and the values created by funded research and infrastructure without it like ford for example wouldn't be able to have his cars used. is there any way to track the shifting of the unit from the

factory what the entered dependencies of that with infrastructure in the governme government? can i be interested if it you can make a parallel. >> that's a lot there. i know i can do all of it. let me look at a couple of angles briefly. there's a lot of debate at the time and now about why this model was adopted. the more you look at it the more complicated it gets. some people say the original argument is mostly rejected. most people don't think that but there's lots of things about the

internalization of actions by integrating think someone space and labor control is greater. there's theories that are being put forth about why it might be more efficient. there is never a self-sufficient entity. the fact that you can't exist without a structure. how do you get the cotton in steel places and waterfalls? factory owners built the road the cup longer years ago i drove on. there's a good book by another

that said it's always subsidize. epstein's by the states and other enterprises. he makes the argument that there should be social input and decisions because they cannot exist that way. i think that's true. this is beyond my capacity. >> how important you think it is that we have manufacturing and's country as opposed to contracting it out overseas? >> is one of the few things that

sheriff our president. i think it's good to have manufacturing there are multiple reasons why think it's important. some of it is that these are good jobs. right now they are better paid and have good benefits. they have a multiplier effect and they create other jobs which is important as well. people make national security arguments as well but some people argue that if you have a hollowed out economy ultimately political power has to be

reduced. i think those are all reasons why we might want to have manufacturing here. some companies like ge who disaggregate arguing that design benefits from the production process. one reason why they get crummy as they didn't know how they were can be made there's many arguments put forth humanlike articles about spiritual well-being. that there's something creepy about depending upon the expectation of other people far away see don't see it. were exploiting the questions that we need to confront.

what's the price were willing to pay? if you don't see that price being paid think it's a disast disaster. little's utterly sustain the role. it will crash and burn. some is because were oblivious to sustaining our way of life. it's really hard to fight images of these factories. >> the steelworkers union says if we like china put all american steel mills out of business some point time they say were gonna stop exporting steel to that could

hypothetically leave her military industry in a vulnerable position. maybe we could get it from brazil or romania but it could create vulnerabilities. >> one thing which is neat is when you take forward is him and transferred to soviet russian soviet poland on their introduce interested in it but in a different sociology. connect that to stephen st about what you would fix and you didn't say anything about workplace control. i wonder if workplace control in the boardroom is good enough or do you need workplace control in the shop floor.

i think very few americans not. american companies are very heavily involved in designing factories and staffing matters so you transport that into a different social system. what was remarkable is how robust that system was and how impervious it was to change. the question was greatly debated at the time in the soviet union. the position was what matters is who gets the prize.

if it goes to the state and the people that makes it differently capital. another is that these are inherently oppressive systems. wished i would different organization of work in terms of technology and who control certain what should be the role of workers. that position was mostly defeated. it was less dangerous for them to criticize. when people get executed in the soviet union some managers that the workers. they do make some gestures in that direction but not fundamentally. retained the notion of a hierarchical notion.

but they want to put this work to benefit the whole society. the only place of experimentation is in china. there are also disastrous for many reasons. i don't know see a moment ago more people raise these questions in a profound way. it was fascinating to look at it under a communist regime. >> this story you tell is from fox con looking backwards. manufacturing doesn't change

that much, it changes location essentially and disempowered workers. the connection between fracturing and authoritarianism becomes greater. the factory is not a democracy. soon the modern world manufacturing is one more 13 area practice. from a global perspective. this is where the germany example is interesting and says more about the future. if we are successful in raising the standards from the bottom up

and setting some global standard or floor not just on wages but on rights and so then the application and the recent manufacturing doesn't change his kids it doesn't have to. have a global, low road manufacturing system. occurs much less than it would if it were pressured by rising wages which you kind of see in germany, the history of manufacturing is not necessarily the future manufacturing if we are successful in raising the standards globally. >> my conclusion that i argue is

this model is not sustainable for anyone place almost none of those places still exist. they depend on using an old-fashioned phrase of the communication. others closer chinese peasant children any kind of exploit them but then, lots of things can happen. unions come along and wages go up, if huge fixed cost and what was once an innovative technology. in a hundred years later the factories gone.

so maybe germany could improve the rules of your tears but so far. >> you run out of places to run to. >> the spending my entire life think you're gonna run out of things. >> i'm not optimistic note, thank youer david

cameron testifies about global security. unfoldsn, where history daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events aroundington, d.c., and the country. c-sp