ABSTRACT
As a graduate student in sociology at the University of Chicago in the mid-1940’s I discovered it was possible for me to draw upon my earlier training as an engineer. The study of industry as an institution and the factory as a work site was the bridge, and for me Everett Hughes its designer and operator. In those years the university housed a Committee on Human Relations in Industry and Professor Hughes was one of its key members. Many of us participated in one way or another in the work of the committee, and the product of that participation, under Professor Hughes’ guidance, now represents much of the standard work in American industrial and occupational sociology.
