General Motors during the 1930s, Sloanism, and the film "Master Hands" (1936)

"Master Hands" was made the same year as the creation of the United Auto Workers, 1936. It is a fascinating statement of how Fordism was taken to another level in terms of speed and accuracy, in part due to the use of the transfer machine. There is irony here as hands have little to do with the making of the Chevrolet. Rather its is stamping, welding, and the movement of  machines operated by unskilled labor supported by skilled machinists and mill wrights.

With the advent of Alfred Sloan’s idea of a car “for every purse and purpose,” and his choice of executive leadership in the likes of Kettering, Grant, and production genius William Knudsen, General Motors came to dominate the automobile industry. In the third phase of the production process, from the mid-1920s into the 1950s, Fordism was modified and intensified, thus evolving into what became known as “Sloanism.” Sloanism can be thought of as an ongoing structural process by which an organization is shaped and decisions made in such a way as to facilitate effective positive change in the workplace and marketplace. By the 1930s, Sloanism translated into committees that set policies and decentralized operating divisions managed by individuals. 

Sloanism was an idea at GM as early as 1925, first introduced on the shop floor in 1928, and fully implemented by 1932 and 1933. With machines that were flexible, rapid model change was now possible. Some assembly line positions were reskilled under Sloanism, as “vital maintenance and repair workers made up nearly 10 percent of the industry’s labor force.”¹⁹To fit machines to new models, a new class of mechanics was created. They were paid to think, solve problems, and define the task that they had to accomplish.²⁰Flexible mass production marked an important change for organized labor, but Fordism remained the productive motif for most Americans working in automobile assembly plants.²¹Stephen Meyer noted the continuity: “The Sloanist flexible production system retained the Fordist features of routinized work and work processes; it remained monotonous, repetitive, and machine paced.”²²For semiskilled and unskilled workers, the new machines furthered degraded skills and intensified the pace of the assembly line. 

In the 1920s, managers and foremen aimed to increase output per worker to meet the insatiable demand for cars. Though the annual model change appealed to the American consumer, it frustrated the autoworker. “The annual model change meant several days or weeks of fussing and fumbling until they adjust to the new routines and rhythms of their work.”²³As Joyce Shaw Peterson indicated, early autoworkers sometimes opted to keep doing the same monotonous job in order to “space out” or daydream, rather than having to learn a new job.²⁴The increased demand was met with a speed-up of the assembly line. James Flink noted that “Sloanism thus had the effect of intensifying the amount and pace of dehumanizing work in automobile manufacturing . . . there was degradation of labor to lower skill levels and intensification of the production process.”²⁵

Flexible mass production persisted into the Great Depression. At General Motors, the process paid off; during the Depression they reported profits every year.²⁶Indeed, by the late 1930s GM was no longer considered as “Big Business,” but as “Colossal.” Even during the darkest days of the Great Depression, the firm had over 250,000 employees working in 110 manufacturing plants located in 14 states and 18 countries.²⁷

By the mid-1920s the GM strategy of a car for every purse and taste was markedly cutting into Ford sales. GM exemplified what the power of technology and organization, harnessed together, could do to dominate the American automobile industry. Chevrolet, the lowest priced of the GM models, was not only a key to GM’s success, but emerged as the car for everyman by the end of the 1920s. Chevrolet was created by race driver Louis Chevrolet and Billy Durant before WWI. Originally an expensive automobile with a 6-cylinder engine, it later became a low-priced car with a smaller engine. During GM’s financial crisis in 1920, discussions took place during which it was proposed that Chevrolet would be dropped as a product line, but in 1922 William Knudsen was hired to head production and Richard Grant sales. By 1927, Chevrolet had outsold Ford and became the largest customer for the various GM parts subsidiaries, like Delco-Remy, Fischer, Harrison, and Guide Lamp.²⁸The 1929 Chevrolet, with features that included the reliable “stove-bolt” six (labeled so because of the stove bolts which held many of the engine parts together), set the benchmark for low-priced cars. As shown in Table 3, by the mid-1930s Chevrolet sales consistently outpaced Ford’s, reflecting both GM’s ascendancy and Ford’s relative decline in the American, and indeed world market place.

Table 3: Ford vs. Chevy Passenger Car Production, 1928-1942

Year	Ford	Chevrolet
1928	713,528	786,670
1929	1,715,100	856,384
1930	1,261,053	647,520
1931	626,579	623,901
1932	420,824	323,100
1933	334,949	486,378
1934	563,921	556,666
1935	942,349	793,106
1936	791,812	971,595
1937	848,608	866,885
1938	410,048	489,143
1939	532,152	645,905
1940	599,175	894,178
1941	600,814	928,477
1942	43,407	45,393

Source:  Ray Miller, Chevrolet:  The Coming of Age, 1911-1942(Oceanside, CA: Evergreen Press, 1976), p.319.