Mechanization of the Mind

Technological advances offered increased productivity and efficiency in the factory system, however, as Oliver Wendell Holmes stated in 1870, “The more we examine the mechanism of thought, the more we shall see that the automatic, unconscious action of the mind enters largely into all of its processes” (Trachtenberg, pg. 45).  Holmes presciently believed that the binary of the American work ethic—the diligence of hard work would equate to individual economic reward, while the undisciplined and under-productive worker was indicative of defects in moral character—could become the source of great anxiety for factory workers.  This social construct permeated every level of American society including the emerging middle class.  Cultural perceptions were that if labor was not mechanically productive they were somehow deficient and not worthy of success.  This is a mode of thought that led to a mechanization of the mind, as industrialization became a part of the daily life in cities with the advent of streetcars, elevators, and other byproducts of industrialization (Trachtenberg, pg. 45-46). 

A shift to a mechanized cultural environment was glaringly evident within population centers.  The previous labor model of agrarianism—a laborer who worked in harmony with the natural cycle of the Earth and meant that daytime was devoted to production, while nighttime meant peaceful rest for the laborer—had been discarded for industrialized capitalism.  The evolution of technology, which provided mechanization and automation and meant factories and cities remain productive around the clock.  This shift did not occur without consequences on human capital, whose senses were now bombarded with constant noise of city life, every day of every week, and every month of every year.  The result of mechanization created the phenomenon of neurasthenia, which became so prevalent in society that researcher George M. Beard, in 1884, initiated a case study of this new phenomenon.  He published his work in a book entitled, American Nervousness.  Using mechanization as a metaphor for the human nervous system, Beard maintained the nervousness and anxiety workers experienced was attributed to the organic mechanized system (a human-being) exhibiting psychological strain as it struggled to adapt to an alien environment (Trachtenberg, pg. 47). 

Beard’s work also discovered that psychological disorders were not exclusive to factory workers.  It extended to the middle class as well, the “four million salaried brain-workers,” which comprised of an educated workforce that began to experience mental breakdown and anxiety due to culturally normalized expectations.  To simplify his research, he asserted the construct of time had become problematic for middle class workers who were expected to arrive at their jobs on time, who were expected to produce a certain amount of work within a predetermined period of time, whose transport to and from work was dictated by the timetable of trains or streetcars, who essentially became enslaved by time itself.  Their entire existence was controlled by time.  According to Beard, time was a contributing factor for middle class anxieties.  However, another source of middle class anxiety, according to Beard, was a perception that “lower orders” of factory workers may “succumb to insanity of the incurable kind,” which meant the middle class experienced great concern that factory workers, unhappy with their labor conditions, would be the cause chaos and anarchy which could then result in a complete breakdown of social order in the cities (Trachtenberg, pg. 48).  Their fear of social Armageddon had some amount of validity as factory workers pushed unions to fight for eight hour workdays, along with an immigrant workforce that promoted European socialism as a prescriptive remedy for their dismal conditions of existence.  An antidote was needed to appease both the impoverished wage-slave, as well as the educated worker who had become slaves to time.  However, the inoculation of all classes of workers against their afflictions would not form until the federal government would shift its attention toward the plight of labor, in general.

Works Cited

Trachtenberg, Alan. "Mechanization Takes Command." The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007. Print.