Tim Harford charts the history of the factory, from "dark, Satanic mills" to the sprawling industrial parks where today's consumer goods are assembled. Have factories made workers' lives better - and what does their future look like?
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Sources
ΜύJustin Corfield βLombe, Johnβ in Kenneth E. Hendrickson III The Encyclopaedia of the Industrial Revolution in World History Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p568.
ΜύJoshua Freeman Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World WW Norton: London 2018 pp1-8
Adam Smith An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations 1776Μύ
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Picture the Past β Belper Round MillΜύ
The life and adventure of Michael Armstrong, the factory boyΜύ
Bill Cahn Mill Town Cameron and Kahn: New York 1954Μύ
Friedrich Engels The Condition of the Working Class in England 1845Μύ
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Daniel Wren and Arther Bedeian βThe Taylorization of Lenin: Rhetoric or Realityβ International Journal of Social Economics 31 (3) (2004) cited in Freeman Behemoth pp174-175. See also Stephen Kotkin Magnetic Mountain University of Chicago Press: Chicago 1997; Loren Graham The Ghost of the Executed Engineer Harvard University Press: Cambridge 1996Μύ
Myself included: Tim Harford The Undercover Economist (Oxford University Press, New York 2005). For a detailed account of conditions for women in Chinese factories see Pun Ngai Made In China Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2005. An intriguing study of Ethiopian factories is summarised by Christopher Blattman and Stefan Dercon βEverything We Knew About Sweatshops Was Wrongβ The New York Times 27 April 2017.
Wolfgang Streeck βThrough Unending Hallsβ The London Review of Books Vol. 41 No. 3 Β· 7 February 2019 pages 29-31Μύ
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Charles Babbage On The Economy of Machinery and Manufactures London: Charles Knight 1832 (Reprinted Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2009)Μύ
β 31 January 2019 and Richard Baldwin The Great Convergence Harvard University Press 2016
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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy
The stories of inventions, ideas and innovations which helped create the economic world
