Acknowledgment
This monograph was prepared by M. R. Bass, special agent of the Federal Board for Vocational education. Acknowledgment is due to Dr. John Cummings of the research division for editorial assistance.
The purpose of this monograph is to give a brief description of some of the work done in the manufacture of automobiles. No attempt has been made, however, to go into the machine shop side of the industry, a field in which lie possibilities for placing thousands of reeducated men in good positions. The monograph is limited to automobile assembly work.
Manufacturing automobiles and automobile accessories is one of the foremost industries of the United States. One manufacturer alone is known to have turned out more than 3,500 complete automobiles in one day, and to have turned out in one year some 350,000 cars. Many concerns produce from 50,000 to 125,000 cars annually. The 1914 census of the industry gives the value of the automobile products as $632,831,474, and wonderful changes in the last four years have greatly increased the value of the products of this industry, which was practically unknown 20 years ago.
A recent study developed the fact that there are some 85 occupations in the automobile manufacturing industry, which in its various branches offers excellent opportunities to mechanics, apprentices, and men who wish to take up a new trade. A man with even very limited qualifications can surely fit in somewhere.
The industry is still growing rapidly and branching out into what may be called an automotive industry, embracing the manufacture of motor trucks, tractors, and airplanes, as well as of automobiles. A mechanic in one branch of the industry may shift easily to other branches.
Certain factories have discontinued general manufacturing, and have specialized in the manufacture of automobile units or parts, such as engines, transmissions, frames, and axles, and the manufacturer who used to build practically all of his automobile has been persuaded to buy certain units from these specialty manufacturers. Small manufacturers have thus been enabled to build a part of a car and to buy the rest from unit manufacturers, and many small factories have been started in this way.
Work in the various automobile factories varies from purely unskilled to highly skilled labor. The unskilled employments include those of machine operators, assemblers, subassemblers, tool room keepers, janitors, watchmen, and checkers, while the skilled employments include those of special machine men, tool makers, die sinkers, heat-treatment experts, dynamometer testers, ignition experts, inspectors and general mechanical experts.
Good wages are paid, common laborers in some plants receiving from $3 to $5 per day. Well-trained, skilled mechanics, of course, earn much higher rates.
Standardization of automobile parts is gradually bringing about standardization of the automobile as a whole, which greatly simplifies the work of the mechanic who builds and repairs automobiles.
Trucks are being more extensively used by wholesale and retail merchants. Overland freight is being carried by truck trains, between small towns, and even long-distance hauling is meeting with success. This increased motor-truck service is increasing the demand for mechanics in the factories, and also for truck drivers.
Automobile factories are usually located in large cities, where raw material and supplies are at hand. Shipping and labor conditions also are carefully considered. A very large percentage of the automobile output is manufactured in the States of Michigan, Ohio, New York, and Indiana. The State of Michigan alone produced 80 per cent or four-fifths of the pleasure vehicles manufactured in 1914.