When it was built in 1721 beside the River Derwent,in Britain's East Midlands,Lombe's silk mill became something of a tourisl attraclion.Daniel Defoe,one of its many visitors,described its"vast bulk"as"a curiosity of a very extraordinary nature".Employing some 300 people,mostly children in ghastly conditions,the mill was nol large by modern sLandards.But it is widely regarded as the first successful mechanised factory,an innovafion that over the next 100 years transformed the way people lived and worked.Lombe's mill is the natural starting-point for Joshua Freeman's lively chronicle of the factory,which as the title of his book"Behemorth"implies,concentrates on the largesl specimens of cheir time.Mr Freeman,a historian at Queens College in New York,travels from Britam's textile mills to monster steel and carmaking factories in 20th-century America,Europe and the Soviet Union.Mr Freeman rolls up his sleeves and delves into the nitty-gritty of manufaccuring.He successfully melds together those nuggets with social history,on the shop floor and beyond the factory walls,from union bacdes to worker exploitation.Consider,for example,his account of one of the most famous factory bosses of all.Henry Ford launched his Model T in 1908,curning the car from a luxury into a mass-manufactured product.Ford's original facLory used standardised parts and ficted them to vehicles as they travelled along a moving assembly line.The Model T,however,soon became obsolete.As Mr Freeman describes,yhis exposed the weakness of the giant system:it is extremely expensive and slow to switch a giant.factory from one product to another.In 1927 Ford halted produccion and laid o~f 60,000 workers,causing a social crisis in the Delroit area.After six months 15,000 machine tools had been replaced and 25,000 others rebuilt,so that the Rouge was ready to make the new Model A.At its zenith the factory employed 100,000 people.But it was a brutal place to work,with employees subject to harsh discipline and tyrannical foremen.As the switch from Model T to Model A plunged Ford into loss,Alfred P.Sloan,president of General Motors,presciendy observed that carmakers would need to"adopt the'laws'of Paris dressmakers".That meant bringing out new models more often.The shortening of product cycles and the fickle nature of modern markets has duly seen manufacturing atomise into smaller,nimbler,more specialist facLories.The Rouge,for instance,lives on,but with just 6,000 workers making pick-up trucks.Some see offshoring to low-wage countries,particularly in Asia,as the mega-factory's last hurrah.Yet long supply chains and distant plants are leaving producers vulnerable to rapid changes in their home markets,so production has been trickling back.Meamvhile new materials and manufacturing methods,such as 3D printing,are demolishing the economies-of scale that giant factories have relied on.Although Mr Freeman is not ready to write off his behemoths,he has probably written their obituary.
The case of Ford's failure to change from Model T to Model A intends to show
A.the decline of Ford company
B.the defect of the giant factory
C.the importance of making right decisions
D.the consequences of harsh discipline