{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":164,"pdf_page":172,"physical_index":172,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"a86b620c895a630a9b2949564a053375f3ecd8adef1ee233de44aa5d530c9f7e"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Part of the motivation behind pinning down products through the creation of standard specifications was the felt need to bring some stability to what was becoming a very dynamic marketplace for consumer products, especially durables. The idea was that standard specifications for goods, made accessible to the public through certification and labeling, would bring some clarity to what had become a confusing flux of consumer products. Economist Charles Wyland (1937) reports that in 1928 the US consumer market ofered around 1,000 brands of canned peach, 2,500 brands of perfume, and 10,000 brands of wheat flour. In the late 1920s, sewing machine needles came in nine diameters and varied in length by as little as one-thirty-second of an inch (Chase and Schlink 1927, p. 174)). Robert S. Lynd noted in 1934 that “in a single city the size of Milwaukee, the consumer must choose from among 250 kinds of toothbrushes, 100 kinds of washing machines, 160 kinds of fountain pens, 50 kinds of motor oil and so on through the long list of things he must buy,” while a department store like Macy’s ofered 350,000 “possible choices” (p. 6). Standardization would, so its advocates argued, incrementally reduce this chaotic plenitude of products to a more manageable selection of choices. But the justification for standard specifications for commodities to which most weight was given was that standards would establish minimum acceptable quality levels for products.48\n\nWhile the National Bureau of Standards cooperated with the American Standards Association (ASA), which represented industry, in creating standards, it was not clear that both organizations were on the same page when it came to protecting the public interest. When in 1933 the Department of Commerce suggested for budgetary reasons that the functions of the Division of Simplification be outsourced to the ASA, the response from the standards community was suficiently negative that the Commerce Department was moved to reconsider the matter. “There can be no substitute for standards promulgated by or under Federal auspices,” commented Dr. F. M. Williams, chairman of the Home Economic Association’s Committee of Consumer Standards.49 Robert Lynd, who was a prominent member of the Consumers Advisory Board, which had been set up by Roosevelt as part of the National Recovery Administration, went even further. He wrote a well-publicized report (the ‘Lynd Report’) in which he suggested that both the ASA and the NBS were too beholden to business (Agnew 1934).\n\nThe greater eficiency with which standardized goods could be produced, of course, meant cheaper product prices, and much was made of the savings passed on to consumers. According to one estimate, given by the Society of Automotive Engineers, the standardization of parts and the pooling of patents by 1930 were in combination responsible for reducing the cost of automobiles by 30 percent.50 However, the advantage of standardized products was not just a matter of their cheapness. In addition, standardized products were, as we have seen, represented as being more reliable, more uniform in quality, and more transparent in function. The idiosyncratic and therefore often unpredictable products of the prestandardized era were to be replaced by standardized products with stable and regular properties. The point of standardization, as early consumer activists Stuart Chase and Frederick Schlink put it, was to set standards for consumer goods, which would ensure “performing excellence” in products, while forcing “persistently inferior types of the market altogether.”51\n\n164\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":163,"next_page":165}