Assembly Line: An Example Of Mass Production

As we learned in class, capitalism is a social system that allowed private owners to control a country’s trade and industry to gain profit. So, these private owners want to maximize their production in order to gain more money, and we called this mass production. The most distinct example of mass production is assembly line, which is invented by Ford motor company. "By mechanically moving the parts to the assembly work and moving the semi-finished assembly from work station to work station, a finished product can be assembled faster and with less labor than by having workers carry parts to a stationary piece for assembly.” As a result, assembly line reduces a lot of time and cost for a company, but on the other hand, I believe that it also

At the beginning of the move, Chaplin plays a worker who works at assembly line. People who work at assembly line have a lot of pressure, because the conveyor belt moves so fast that they have to finish their task before the product run away. Also, they have to repeat the same action again and again for a long time without stopping, which is very boring and tired. In my opinion, this kind of boring work and a lot of pressure can bring many negative psychology and psychical effects such as mental damage or getting injured to workers. Further more, these workers do not have any chance to learn new skills or to have time for creativity since they have to repeat the same action everyday. This problem leads that workers do not have ability to do other jobs, and it is also difficult to find a same job. Therefore, if one is fired from an assembly line, he/her could not find another job as soon as possible. Nevertheless, the Great Depression is the biggest enemy for workers, because it will causes most of them lose their jobs. As a result, the criminal rate of this kind people is very high, and it will be a big problem for society. Just like Chaplin plays in his movie, after

Comparing his letter to Chaplin’s movie, I notice that he also emphasizes the work pressure of people who works at assembly line. In an assembly line, as Weil describes “work broken down into small processes, and paid by the piece; relations between different units of the firm and different work processes organized in a purely bureaucratic way. One’s attention has nothing worth to engage it, but on the contrary is constrained to fix itself,” owners does not care the about their works too much, and the only thing they care is the speed of conveyor belt, the productivity, the profit. Assembly line workers only have Saturday afternoon and Sunday to have a breath in order to restore their energy. This kind of busy hard work could cause psychological and psychical problem to workers. Psychically, people do not have enough time for relax, and their body could get injured during the work, therefore their ability of work could decrease, which would result in losing their jobs. Psychologically, people suffer too much inhuman mental stress and unfair treat, which could lead them become mental deterioration. As a result, they could become psychopaths who do not have ability to work or take care of themselves. In another letter, he says, “What stimulates is the infliction of humiliation and suffering and the fact of subordination; but it is continually