Taylored Lives

Scientific management: technology spawned it, Frederick Winslow Taylor championed it, Thorstein Veblen dissected it, Henry Ford implemented it. By the turn of the century, practical visionaries prided themselves on having arrived at "the one best way" both to increase industrial productivity and to regulate human behaviour. This work examines various texts ranging from mail order catalogues and popular romances to the works of Henry Adams and Nathanael West to trace the effects of the efficiency craze on the full fabric of American culture.