Emil Lederer: Review of Richard Woldt, Der industrielle Großbetrieb (1911)

Lederer’s brief review examines Woldt’s account of modern factory organization, developed first in America and increasingly adopted in Germany. Its central conceptual move extends mechanization beyond machines and manual tasks: the organization and direction of production themselves become mechanically controllable, less dependent on the individual capacities of managers.

Lederer follows Woldt’s exposition from workshop organization and increasingly prescribed production processes to management, the division and mechanization of the foreman’s functions, and industrial costing. Written principally for trade unions, Woldt’s book shows how costing makes work performances calculable and precisely assessable. Lederer identifies this as the organizational change most directly affecting workers:

Von den verschiedenen Wirkungen der Fabrikorganisation, welche eben anzudeuten versucht wurde, berührt am unmittelbarsten die Arbeiter das Kalkulationswesen.

English translation: Of the various effects of factory organization which have just been indicated, the one that touches the workers most immediately is the system of cost calculation.

Yet the review’s distinctive emphasis falls on salaried employees. Organizational mechanization changes not simply the measurement of manual labor but the character of technical and commercial employment:

Es ist klar, daß die Fabrikorganisation als solche jedoch viel wichtigere Wirkungen ausübt auf die große Masse der industriellen (technischen und kommerziellen) Angestellenschaft, die dadurch in Rücksicht ihrer Tätigkeit sehr der Position der Arbeiterschaft angenähert wird.

English translation: It is clear, however, that factory organization as such exerts far more important effects upon the great mass of industrial (technical and commercial) salaried staff, which is thereby brought, in respect of its activity, very close to the position of the working class.

This convergence concerns the nature of employees’ activity; Lederer does not establish an identity of their broader social positions. His closing criticism returns to the book’s union readership: Woldt offers no noteworthy discussion of how workers or unions intend to adapt. Lederer tentatively attributes this gap to union practice itself, which—with exceptions—has scarcely addressed the problem on a substantial scale. The review thus connects a technical account of factory administration to the changing position of salaried labor and an unresolved practical challenge for organized workers.