In chapter 4 of Back To The Cottage, John Sipple assesses the loss of the Cottage business with the growth of the Industrial Revolution and the introduction of modern management:
The advent of power systems: steam, electricity, and the gasoline engine, opened the possibility of developing machines and manufacturing processes to mass produce and distribute products that had always been built — if they were built at all — one at a time and delivered locally. New products, like the automobile, electric lights, and the radio might be prototyped in Cottage settings but they could be produced affordably only when scaled for mass production.
Industrialization made textiles uniform and dirt-cheap. In Europe, machines made things happen faster and faster. In North America, Henry Ford prototyped the efficiencies of assembly line manufacturing, and then paid his workers the remarkable sum of $5 dollars a day so they could become his customers. All of this revolutionized economic life and the social order — but not for free. Part of the price was a shift in our perception of the value of each individual. The age of machines enabled large factories employing hundreds and even thousands of workers and requiring new thinking about maintaining order and getting things done. “Management” was born and, strangely I think, much of what had gone on in the Cottage for thousands of years was tossed — the baby with the bathwater.
Click here to download Back To The Cottage: Chapter 4
