THIS BOOK WOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE work of generations of scholars, journalists, and writers who shared a fascination with big factories and their social and cultural importance. Their publications, cited in my notes, collectively represent a stupendous intellectual achievement, indispensable for understanding the past and present. I owe them all a great debt.
As I finished this study, at the same time that my father, Harold Freeman, reached his one-hundredth birthday, I realized how much his sensibility pervades it. Throughout his life he combined a deep interest in technical matters with a critical political stance and broad familiarity with European and American culture, a kind of Enlightenment outlook once common in the working-class milieu in which he grew up. I vividly remember him taking me along as a child on a work-related visit to a glass factory, watching a worker pull a still glowing-red Coke bottle off the line, stretching and twisting it with tongs for our amusement. In that bit of magic, I suspect, lies the origin of this project.
I have been fortunate to learn about the factory and its implications not only from scholars but from workers and unionists, too. My summer sojourn as an eighteen-year-old in a cosmetics factory opened my eyes to the dense human drama that takes place within the walls of a production site, the combination of boredom, pride, fatigue, and solidarity; the gossip, storytelling, and arguing; the differing experiences and beliefs rubbing against one another; the skills of work, survival, and maneuver that working women and men have to master. In the years since, in other jobs and in my work with the labor movement, I have been privileged to learn more about what the poet Philip Levine called “What Work Is.” I am grateful to the many labor activists and workers who, often without realizing it, enriched my understanding of toil, unionism, politics, and working-class life.
An embryonic version of this study appeared in the journal New Labor Forum as one of a series of columns I wrote with Steve Fraser under the heading “In the Rearview Mirror.” Steve came up with the idea of a column that looked at historic precedents for current events. His notion of how to link the past and the present sparked the idea for what became Behemoth, which I sometimes think of as one of our columns writ very large. The encouragement of my colleagues at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at the City University of New York, who heard a lunchtime talk I gave on the history of giant factories, convinced me the subject was worth pursuing further. Brian Palmer pushed me along when he suggested I submit a version of that talk for publication in Labour/Le Travail, the lively, sophisticated journal, of which he was the long-time editor.
A year-long fellowship at the Advanced Research Collaborative at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York made possible research for this book. I am greatly thankful to its director, Donald Robotham, and my fellow fellows for a remarkably stimulating and fruitful year. Additional support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.
Mark Levinson from the Service Employees International Union and Cathy Feingold from the AFL-CIO, along with Robert Szewczyk and Dorota Miklos from NSZZ Solidarność, helped arrange my meeting with Solidarity union leaders in Nowa Huta. Stanisław Lebiest, Roman Natkonski, Krysztof Pfister, and their colleagues (with able translation by Piotr Smreczynski) were extraordinarily generous in devoting their time to discussing the history of the plant and their union and giving me a tour of the mill. May Ying Chen and Ruting Chen from the Murphy Institute and Lu Zhang from Temple University made extensive efforts to arrange a visit to Chinese factories. Though in the end the trip proved impossible, I deeply appreciate their attempts and the great deal I learned from them about China.
Many others helped along the way. Early on, Carol Quirke gave me valuable suggestions for reading about industrial photography. Dave Gillespie, John Thayer, and Maayan Brodsky provided research assistance. Josh Brown was extraordinarily generous in helping me with illustrations, sharing his incomparable knowledge of nineteenth-century graphics and personally scanning images to make sure they came out right. My students at Queens College put up with good humor my use of them as guinea pigs for many of the ideas in this book, in a global history course that focused on factories and industrialization. Daniel Esterman accompanied me on a research trip to Lowell and engaged in numerous discussions of this project as it unfolded, providing a sounding board and many good ideas. I also talked about factories on repeated occasions with Edgar Masters, whose long career in the textile industry and efforts to preserve industrial sites have made him a repository of information and insight.
I am especially grateful to colleagues who read drafts of chapters about places I was writing about for the first time: Timothy Alborn (chapter 1), Kate Brown (chapter 5), and Xiaodan Zhang (chapter 7). Their expertise and advice proved invaluable, even when my interpretations differed from theirs. These chapters are much improved as a result of their generosity. Jack Metzgar once again became an unflagging supporter as I worked on this book, reading every chapter in draft, providing detailed comments, and, most importantly, reassuring me that I was on to something when my doubts swelled. No one could ask for a more generous colleague and friend.
Steve Fraser was there at the end, just as he was at the beginning, reading the full manuscript and responding as I have come to take for granted, with comments both detailed and sweeping, raising historical questions and seeing connections I missed and making suggestions for structural changes that greatly strengthened the narrative. His friendship and our collaboration over the years have been enormously important to me. Kim Phillips-Fein put aside other things to read the first chapters of the manuscript as I approached the finish line, helping clarify and deepen them.
Nearly two decades ago, Matt Weiland edited a book I wrote and it was a terrific experience. The opportunity for a reprise has been one of the pleasures of this project. Once again, Matt got right away what I was trying to do, encouraging me to be bolder and more expansive, combining a sense of adventure with some necessary realism. Remy Cawley shepherded me through the publication process with good cheer, good advice, and a remarkable ability to keep track of never-ending details. I want to thank as well William Hudson, for his copyediting; Brian Mulligan, for the beautiful design of the book; and everyone at W. W. Norton for their extraordinary professionalism.
Finally, I want to thank my family for their love and support, especially my partner through the many years, Deborah Ellen Bell, who among many other things read the manuscript for this book and provided her usual good advice, and our wonderful daughters, Julia Freeman Bell and Lena Freeman Bell.