By Patrick Allitt, Emory University
The first Industrial Revolution had been in textiles, iron and steel manufacture, railroads, and oil production. But, the second Industrial Revolution was principally in consumer goods and mass production. Read on to know more about how it all started.
Selling Products Cheaply
Back in the mid-19th century, manufacturers such as Samuel Colt—the gun manufacturer—and Isaac Singer—the sewing machine maker—began to mass-produce industrial products that could sell cheaply in large numbers through nationwide advertising campaigns.
Now, the early manufacturers of mass-produced consumer goods, like Colt and Singer, approached manufacture by turning out almost identical components, which would then be assembled into the finished item.
The Bottleneck of ‘Fitters’
Singer and Colt didn’t enjoy sufficiently high-quality machined tools to make the parts of a device absolutely identical, though, and so there was a bottleneck in the way in which these products were made.
The bottleneck came with a group of people called the “fitters”; they were the people who had to bring the parts together and make one unit, and sometimes they’d have to file little bits off or add things here, or try another one because one component didn’t quite fit.
When they’d made all the parts work together in one machine, they’d then mark all of them very carefully, disassemble them, and then those particular parts would be properly painted and finished. Then, they’d be assembled again, so it was a bottleneck, slowing down the production of the finished goods.
This is a transcript from the video series A History of the United States, 2nd Edition. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Singer’s Contribution
Isaac Singer went on to become a great industrial baron in his own right. By the 1870s, he was selling 200,000 sewing machines per year; that is, manufacturing something close to 1,000 per day.
A common sight throughout post-Civil War America was the traveling sewing machine salesman, the man who would encourage particularly women, who were the chief consumers, to buy them, and he was one of the very first people to use installment payments.
That is, the consumer would be able to have the product before they could afford to pay for it in full. They’d pay in a series of stages with an interest rate over the course of time. Obviously, that’s become one of the standard principles of consumerism right up to the present.
Singer’s Sales Tricks
Singer also had the idea of nationwide advertising and sales franchising techniques, of the kind that are still used up to the present by companies like McDonald’s.
He also created, in the growing towns, showrooms where skilled women were on display using Singer sewing machines, so potential customers could go into the showroom, talk with her, discuss possibilities and things the machine could do, and they could be demonstrated.
In other words, Singer understood the importance not only of making them well, but also finding innovative ways to sell them.
Albert Pope
The man who made the most decisive breakthrough in the improvement of mass production technology was Albert Pope, a bicycle manufacturer, because he produced, for the first time, complete interchangeability of parts.
So each component was made according to such minute tolerances that any one of them would fit onto any one of the finished product since they were identical. This was possible because of improvements in metal alloys and improvements in the quality of machined tools.
Advertising and Mass Production
Advertising developed along with mass production of consumer goods, because it wasn’t enough to make these things; you had to make sure that you could then sell them.
One of the classic devices that is still often used is this—you convince the customer that in some way, that they’ve got a problem, that their life isn’t really quite adequate in some way, so you create the need and then you provide the solution.
Another idea that they picked up very early was to get celebrity endorsements, to find a famous person and make the claim that that famous person uses the product. Already in the First World War, for example, the first generation of movie stars, people like Douglas Fairbanks Senior and Charlie Chaplin, were endorsing cigarettes and endorsing certain types of hats.
From Mass Production to Mass Consumerism
Sex appeal also began to be used extensively in advertising, starting in the middle of the second decade of the 20th century; things like ladies’ stockings, where it was very easy to have a sexy picture associated with the good, so that the lady consuming the good could think, “I’ve taken on the patina of sexiness that is advertised here”.
In the case of some products, almost the whole budget of the corporation making it had to be devoted to advertising. A classic example is the toothpaste industry, where the actual making and packaging of the product costs an infinitesimal cost. It cost something like a quarter of a cent to make a tube of toothpaste, and the reason the consumer in 1920 paid 25 cents for it was because all the rest covered the cost of the advertising campaign.
The same thing was going on at this time with washing machines, vacuum cleaners, radios, gramophones, refrigerators, and all the other booming consumer goods of the prosperous 1920s, and so these are the days in which the foundations were laid for the mass consumerism with which we still live.
Common Questions about How Mass Production Became Popular in America
Isaac Singer came up with the idea of payment in installments, which allowed the consumer to have the product before they could afford to pay for it in full. They’d pay in a series of stages with an interest rate over the course of time.
Albert Pope produced, for the first time, complete interchangeability of parts. Each component was made according to such minute tolerances that any one of them would fit onto any one of the finished product since they were identical.
Advertising developed along with mass production of consumer goods, because it wasn’t enough to make these things; you had to make sure that you could then sell them.
