This article examines the size and significance of labour costs in modern manufacturing industry. Labour costs are doubly salient because wages are both part of the input costs of production and a way of distributing net output. The evidence on British manufacturing shows that labour accounts...

This article questions the stereotypes of Fordism and mass production. It does so by demonstrating that there is a contradiction between the stereotypes and the reality of Henry Ford's manufacturing practice in production of the Model T at the Highland Park factory between 1909 and 1919....