Fordism and the Birth of Mass Consumer Society

'Fordism,' named after the American industrialist Henry Ford, describes a model of industrial production based on the assembly line, product standardization, and mass production at low unit cost. Ford introduced the moving assembly line at his Highland Park, Michigan factory in 1913, fundamentally revolutionizing industrial methods through extreme division of labor and systematic mechanization, which allowed the price of the mass-produced Model T to fall dramatically throughout the 1910s and 1920s. In 1914 Ford introduced the five-dollar workday, significantly above the industry standard, seeking both to reduce labor turnover and to build a base of consumers capable of buying the very products they manufactured -- combining standardized mass production with the creation of a mass consumer market in a virtuous circle between efficient industry and workers' purchasing power.