Americans loved to dream. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" spread across the world.
Ford had once dreamed too. His dream was for every self-reliant American to own a Ford and share happy times with their family on God's vast land. To realize that dream, he created the assembly line.
Ford had always denied any connection between himself and Taylorism. He even said his inspiration came from Chicago slaughterhouses: slaughterhouses removed "parts" one by one, while he put parts on one by one.
But in reality, without the standardization advocated by Taylor and the control charts designed by Gantt, Ford's dream would have remained nothing more than a dream.
Many things might begin with good intentions, only to stray from their original purpose later on. Taylorism was meant to raise labor productivity and increase workers' wages. Everyone wanted something for nothing, and workers truly did have a tendency to slack off. London's municipal projects often took years to complete. The workers laying paving stones spent only half the day on site, and even during that half, they spent half their time chatting.
Jesus once told a parable. Workers in a vineyard each received one silver coin a day. Some came in the morning, some at noon, and some arrived just before the end of the workday. The owner told his steward, "Call all the workers and pay them, beginning with those who came last and ending with those who came first."
In the end, they all received the same pay. Those who had come first complained, "We have borne the burden and heat of the whole day, while those who came later worked only one hour. How can you make them equal to us?"
The master answered one of them, "Friend, I have not wronged you. Did we not