{"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":166,"pdf_page":174,"physical_index":174,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"3b1d9e057841caf641c890f2140dd825c4ac447ac85f8860c6c61b3d8226cdeb"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"A further advantage of standardized products was that they ensured parity of quality across samples of a given product. For example, an oficial spokesperson for Maxwell, a car manufacturer, argued that standardization brings uniformity of product quality, which is essential from the point of view of fairness for consumers. For, he claimed, it is “only fair to consumers to make cars uniform, so that two cars bought by diferent customers do not vary in quality.”58 Interpreting this reasoning in terms that resonate with the theory argued for in Chapter 4, fairness obtains when the purchasing power represented by a given wage (and therefore by a given quantity of labor), measured by the objective use value endowing properties of wage goods, is invariant. Arbitrary diference in product quality violates this condition, insofar as it results in arbitrary diferences in the purchasing power of identical wages. Invariance in the quality of standardized products was interpreted as having the added benefit of reducing risk for the consumer. Frank Hughes, sales manager of the Greer-Robbins Company, Chrysler distributers for Southern California, commented in 1927 that “standardized quality at one step eliminates ‘purchaser’s risk,’ ends the buyers doubts and fears as to quality. . . . This is because . . . cars are built to the same quality standards, and must pass the same inspections in relation to the tasks they are asked to perform.”59\n\nAs noted, the paradigmatic standardized consumer good, the most prominent representative of the new class of products fabricated by modern techniques of manufacturing, was the automobile. Commentators were sometimes quite absurd in their breathless enthusiasm for the standardized automobile. Homer McKee, auto advertising executive, marketing guru, and enthusiastic exponent of standardization, in trying to convey the great virtues of the standardized motor car, was moved to deploy his most lyrical voice (and most purple prose): “Thus it came about that the strength of the oak, the speed of the winds, the soft pad-footed stealth of the panther, the tirelessness of the seasons, and the beauty of the vines that cling were gathered together by the great Brain and the great Hand and put into a single thing which should be the all-powerful servant of man. And they called that thing—the Motor Car.”60 Even as early as 1910, commentators noted how widespread standardization was in car design and manufacture. Journalist Earle C. Anthony, attending an early automobile show in LA, found that, “The most striking feature of the exhibit . . . was standardization of models. All of the manufacturers are working toward an ideal car, which is sure to come. Then we will have embodied in one car all the good features of many.”61 The degree to which early automobiles were commonly seen as standardized products suggests that Henry Ford’s vision of the standardized car, characterized by business historians Richard Tedlow and Thomas McCraw (1998) as unique and even quirky, was in fact continuous with quite widespread conceptions about how automobiles and other mass-produced consumer durables should be built. The ideal characteristics of the standardized industrial product—reliable, durable, free of waste and excess, eficient—reflected a general understanding of the desiderata in the industrial design of early mass consumer goods. This conception of what industrial products should be informed the early consumer testing organizations, Consumers’ Research and Consumers Union. As economist Edith Ayres (1934, p. 161) noted, these organizations: “By emphasizing the engineering point of view in consumption [sought to encourage] a change in consumers’ values away from standardization on the basis of appearance and towards standardization on the basis of physical function.”\n\n166\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":165,"next_page":167}