ABSTRACT
Until recently, belonging to a specific social group has largely meant sharing the same occupation and workplace, with profound impacts upon the evolution of the human self-field which are inextricably tied to that of social class. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the young women of America had grown tired of the cotton mills, with their low pay, long hours and heavy workload, and were finding alternative forms of employment in the cities and other parts of the country opened up by the railroads. The combination of standardisation and continuous flow production epitomised in the Model T, changed ideas about manufacturing and factories for the next half century, and what it meant to be a ‘worker’ in a modern industry. The overwhelming majority of the Ford workforce was also comprised of newly arrived immigrant workers from Europe, many of whom spoke little English, presenting further problems of communication.
