Small, Medium, Large - by Colleen A Dunlavy (Hardcover)

About the Book

"We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows without thinking about it, many everyday goods - from beds to batteries to printer paper - are available in a finite number of "standard sizes." What makes these sizes "standard" is an agreement among competing firms to make or sell products with the same limited dimensions. But how did firms - often hotly competing firms - reach such collective agreements? In exploring this question, Colleen Dunlavy puts the history of mass production and distribution in an entirely new light. She reveals that, despite the widely publicized model offered by Henry Ford, mass production techniques did not naturally diffuse throughout the U.S. economy. On the contrary, formidable market forces blocked their diffusion. It was only under the cover of collectively agreed-upon, industrywide standard sizes - orchestrated by the federal government - that competing firms were able to break free of market forces and transition to mass production and distribution. Without government promotion of standard sizes, the twentieth-century American variety of capitalism would have looked markedly less "Fordist."Small, Medium, Large will make all of us think differently about the everyday consumer choices we take for granted"--Amazon website.

Book Synopsis

We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows without thinking about it, many everyday goods - from beds to batteries to printer paper - are available in a finite number of "standard sizes." What makes these sizes "standard" is an agreement among competing firms to make or sell products with the same limited dimensions. But how did firms - often hotly competing firms - reach such collective agreements?

In exploring this question, Colleen Dunlavy puts the history of mass production and distribution in an entirely new light. She reveals that, despite the widely publicized model offered by Henry Ford, mass production techniques did not naturally diffuse throughout the U.S. economy. On the contrary, formidable market forces blocked their diffusion. It was only under the cover of collectively agreed-upon, industrywide standard sizes - orchestrated by the federal government - that competing firms were able to break free of market forces and transition to mass production and distribution. Without government promotion of standard sizes, the twentieth-century American variety of capitalism would have looked markedly less "Fordist."

Small, Medium, Large will make all of us think differently about the everyday consumer choices we take for granted.

Also available as an audiobook.

Review Quotes

"Colleen Dunlavy's Small, Medium, Large is a tour de force, providing a fresh take on the triumph of mass production and mass consumption in the United States. Debunking much of the conventional wisdom, Dunlavy provides a compelling account of the crucial role that state policy played in actively promoting the standardization that was foundational to the Fordist production model and to America's consumption-driven growth regime. This is essential reading for students of American political and political-economic development."
Kathleen Thelen, MIT

"This is a must-read volume for anyone interested in the history of the U.S. economy. Dunlavy's prodigious archival research is persuasive in replacing Henry Ford with the unlikely figure of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as the principal architect of standardized mass production."
Fred Block, University of California, Davis

"With a rare confluence of expertise in the histories of technology, business, and policy, Dunlavy compellingly challenges a century of explanations for America's industrial upsurge after World War I. In a tightly packed yet elegant narrative, her robust evidence and argument show - to our surprise -that federal policies protected manufacturers from inefficient market forces, making possible the nation's industrial ascent."
Pamela Walker Laird, University of Colorado Denver

"As the world struggles to shift the trajectory of technology from dirty to clean, Colleen Dunlavy's fascinating history of the success of the standardization movement in American manufacturing reminds us of just how plastic technology can be, and how responsive to political determination."
Charles Sabel, Columbia Law School

"This book, based on extensive archival research, shows that the standardisation on which today's economies depend is the product of a close partnership between US public and private sectors, subsequently spread across the world."
Martin Wolf, The Financial Times, Best summer books of 2024: Economics

"interesting and thought provoking"
Diane Coyle, Enlightenment Economics

"An engaging look at a cornerstone of economic growth."
Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Colleen Dunlavy is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research explores the historical relationship between political and economic change in the U.S. and Europe. Her publications include the prize-winning Politics and Industrialization: Early Railroads in the United States and Prussia. She lives in Washington, DC.