| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Amy E. Slaton. Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building, 1900–1930. (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology.) Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2001. Pp. xiii, 255. $42.50.

In her preface, Amy E. Slaton suggests her book is a "labor history" (p. ix), and, indeed, it is, but her approach will surprise those readers expecting a focus on construction workers. Instead, she concentrates on elites, analyzing the mechanisms by which manufacturers, builders, and engineers transformed construction practice around the values of science, efficiency, and uniformity in ways that consolidated their power at the expense of workers. It was the adoption of reinforced concrete between 1900 and 1930 that carried this socially conservative agenda into work sites, construction firms, and engineering schools. Slaton explains that "as concrete replaced wood and masonry in many contexts, it brought to building an extreme division of labor that called for a relatively small coterie of highly trained specialists to supervise the work of many . . . much lower-status, laborers" (p. 1). This new organization bypassed existing systems of hiring, supervision, and training sustained by craft unionists, and it permanently diminished workers' roles and their social possibilities. 1

This book will be of interest to a larger audience than simply labor historians. The heart of this study is the "marriage of science and commerce" (p. 5). Slaton argues that the modern hierarchical organization of work, which mirrored developments in industry, was achieved through the cooperation of scientists, engineers, and managers. Despite the conflict in ideologies between science and business, these two groups shared social values based on class, gender, and race that allowed for science to enhance the productivity of business, and for industry to offer unprecedented opportunities to the technically trained. . . .

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