The factory, according to Joshua B. Freeman, epitomizes the modern world. It is the most important site of the centralized production of mass commodities, taking traditional manufactories the decisive step forward into the age of industrialism: factories contained, Freeman maintains, “a large workforce engaged in coordinated production using powered machinery” (2). The fusion of new sources of energy and ever more sophisticated machinery made this step a “giant leap for mankind.” This leap propelled centralized manufacturing toward the “giant factory,” the chief protagonist in this wide-ranging book.
The story takes us from the eighteenth-century textile mills in the English Midlands to the overpowering iron and steel plants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the automotive juggernauts of the “age of wheels” in Detroit and, say, Wolfs-burg in Germany, where the first globally sold popular car, the Volkswagen Beetle, rolled off the assembly lines by the millions during...
