Minding the Machine: Languages of Class in Early Industrial AmericaUniversity of California Press, 2004 M08 30 - 243 pages In this innovative book, Stephen P. Rice offers a new understanding of class formation in America during the several decades before the Civil War. This was the period in the nation's early industrial development when travel by steamboat became commonplace, when the railroad altered concepts of space and time, and when Americans experienced the beginnings of factory production. These disorienting changes raised a host of questions about what machinery would accomplish. Would it promote equality or widen the distance between rich and poor? Among the most contentious questions were those focusing on the social consequences of mechanization: while machine enthusiasts touted the extent to which machines would free workers from toil, others pointed out that people needed to tend machines, and that that work was fundamentally degrading and exploitative. Minding the Machine shows how members of a new middle class laid claim to their social authority and minimized the potential for class conflict by playing out class relations on less contested social and technical terrains. As they did so, they defined relations between shopowners—and the overseers, foremen, or managers they employed—and wage workers as analogous to relations between head and hand, between mind and body, and between human and machine. Rice presents fascinating discussions of the mechanics' institute movement, the manual labor school movement, popular physiology reformers, and efforts to solve the seemingly intractable problem of steam boiler explosions. His eloquent narrative demonstrates that class is as much about the comprehension of social relations as it is about the making of social relations, and that class formation needs to be understood not only as a social struggle but as a conceptual struggle. |
Contents
1 | |
1 The Antebellum Popular Discourse on Mechanization | 12 |
The Mechanics Institute Movement and the Conception of Class Authority | 42 |
The Manual Labor School Movement | 69 |
Popular Physiology and the Health of a Nation | 96 |
Steam Boiler Explosions and the Making of the Engineer | 115 |
Other editions - View all
Minding the Machine: Languages of Class in Early Industrial America Stephen P. Rice Limited preview - 2004 |
Minding the Machine: Languages of Class in Early Industrial America Stephen P. Rice Limited preview - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
abolitionism Academy of Pennsylvania Alcott American Annals Annals of Education Annual Report antebellum antebellum Americans argued arts Automaton Automaton Chess-Player Board of Trustees boiler explosions Boston Mechanics Chess Cincinnati City of New-York decades discourse on mechanization discussion early Easton exhibition Explosions of Steam factory Farmer and Mechanic Franklin Institute George Junkin Graham Graham's Magazine head and hand History humans and machines industrial instance Insti James Madison Porter Journal July June knowledge labor school movement Lafayette College laws Library Maelzel's managers Manual Labor Academy manual labor schools manual labor system manufacturing mental middle class mind Mitchell moral nation neurasthenia New-York Evening Post nineteenth century North American Review noted observers Ohio Mechanics Oneida Institute operations Penn Philadelphia popular discourse production proponents published relation Scientific American sions social steam boiler explosions steam engine Sylvester Graham tion tute ual labor Weld women workers workplace writers and lecturers wrote York