Behemoth (2018) - 2021 Book #11

This week I finished reading the eleventh book toward my goal of 50 for 2021 – Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World by Joshua Freeman.

Behemoth was published in 2018, and according to Amazon has a print length of 440 pages. It took me 11 days to read. I started it on Saturday, March 13, and finished on Wednesday, March 24. Eleven days for a single book – that pace is not going to get me to 50 for the year. Oof.

While I enjoyed it, this book was a slog for me, as you might infer from the relatively slow reading pace. It got better the further I got into it, as I’ll explain below.

What Behemoth is about

Behemoth is a history of the factory, starting with English textile mills and running through today’s huge facilities in China and Vietnam. One of the strengths of the book is its focus beyond the factory walls. Freeman explains how these factories came into existence, including the creation of new communities to serve as employees. Labor strife plays a huge role in the book.

We get helpful portraits of what factory owners hoped to accomplish, contrasted with the realities that quickly emerged. We also get some exposure to the geopolitics at play, particularly when the Soviet Union first, and China later, relied on industrialization to drive quick improvements in broad-based living standards. It’s a multidimensional book, in a good way.

Why did I choose Behemoth?

This is the rare case where I didn’t rely on any recommendation. Behemoth was included in an email newsletter I received about digital books on sale. Like I mentioned in earlier reviews, I’m using my 2021 year of reading in part to get further up to speed with my day job, where I focus on industrial reliability. I read Cadillac Desert and The Grid earlier this year, giving me helpful context around the challenges faced by water and power utilities, respectively. Behemoth was another step in this journey, with its focus on the world’s manufacturing infrastructure.

Why you would like Behemoth

If you like economic or sociological history, you would probably like Behemoth. If you like reading about the evolution of the relationship between capital and labor, you would probably like Behemoth. If you are interested in business theory, and the forces at play between centralization and decentralization, you would probably like Behemoth.

Why you would not like Behemoth

If you prefer your history in a light and breezy style, you probably would not like Behemoth. If you are turned off by reading about social unrest or the political implications of big business, you probably would not like Behemoth. If you want a deeper dive into just modern factories, without the historical development over the past couple of hundred years, you probably would not like Behemoth.

Specific passages that captured my attention

Even early in the nineteenth century, the benefits of economies of scale of large factories were well recognized. Here is Freeman’s characterization of the writing of Charles Babbage in On the Economy of Machinery and Manufacturers (1832):

He also noted various economies of scale. These included the cost of maintenance and repair workers and accounting staff, who would be underutilized in too small a factory. Additionally, centralizing various stages of production in one building reduced transportation costs and made one entity responsible for quality control, making lapses less likely.

One strength of Behemoth is the stories around the difficulty of working conditions in many large factories. The anecdote below about working in an early Ford factory really struck me. I found the “Nut No. 86” line simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking:

One worker complained, “The weight of a tack in the hands of an upholsterer is insignificant, but if you have to drive eight tacks in every Ford cushion that goes by your station within a certain time, and know that if you fail to do it you are going to tie up the entire platform, and you continue to do this for four years, you are going to break under the strain.” Another said, “If I keep putting on Nut No. 86 for about 86 more days, I will be Nut No. 86 in the Pontiac bughouse.” Ford workers complained that assembly-line work left them in a nervous condition they dubbed “Forditis.” Speed, dexterity, and endurance, not knowledge and skill, were the attributes needed for assembly-line work. Men aged quickly on the line, no longer considered desirable workers well before middle age.

Finally, here’s one summary observation from the book:

Recently built factories in China and Vietnam are not held up as sources of national pride, as steel mills in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and Nowa Huta once had been. Unlike the showcase factory giants of the past, the new massive factories in China and Vietnam are largely foreign owned, run by foreign managers, making goods largely for consumption out of the country. Rather than symbolizing how advanced their host countries are, they serve as reminders of how much catching up they have to do to match countries like South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan in technology, design, and management.

My overall impression of Behemoth

While I’m glad I read the book, it was a bit of a slog. More precisely, I struggled to push through the early parts, where Freeman covers the history of textile mills in considerable detail. I found the story more compelling, and more easily readable, as we go into the twentieth century developments. From there, I easily kept pace and felt pulled from one anecdote to the next.

I recommend this book if you have a deep interest in the world of manufacturing. There aren’t many people that’ll find Behemoth spellbinding. But if you’re looking for something to feed your professional development, or if you have a niche interest in the history of manufacturing, it offers a nice bit of value.

On Thursday I started reading High Output Management by Andrew Grove, the late former CEO of Intel. It’s already fantastic. I quickly saw why it’s so highly regarded. I plan to publish my review of it early next week.

As always, thanks for stopping by.