Streamlining Labor
In the late 1930s, International Harvester hired the industrial design firm Raymond Loewy Associates to modernize its tractors. From his Chrysler Building exhibits at the 1939 “World of Tomorrow” New York World’s Fair to his 1973 designs for NASA’s Sky Lab, Lowey had a long and influential career as an industrial futurist.
During the depression, he was famous for his streamlined trains, cars, appliances, product packaging, and commercial architecture, and he also streamlined the Farmall and Caterpillar tractors, topping or completely encasing their engines with a smooth metal shell. As Jeffrey L. Meikle puts it, based in ideas about aerodynamics, streamlining “expressed the public’s desire to overcome the economic and social frictions of the depression, to flow through time with as little resistance as a teardrop auto through air.” Streamlining promised to smooth over conflict by projecting an alternative future of friction-free accelerated progress. Or, to paraphrase Joshua C. Taylor, International Harvester’s redesigned product line represented “the dream of a fascinating future world” where tractors go faster, “mechanisms are eager to function well for the good of man, and every form slips easily into its purposeful role.” Based in the elimination of resistance, streamlining symbolically promised a world beyond material contradictions including, I would argue, labor conflict.
During the depression, he was famous for his streamlined trains, cars, appliances, product packaging, and commercial architecture, and he also streamlined the Farmall and Caterpillar tractors, topping or completely encasing their engines with a smooth metal shell. As Jeffrey L. Meikle puts it, based in ideas about aerodynamics, streamlining “expressed the public’s desire to overcome the economic and social frictions of the depression, to flow through time with as little resistance as a teardrop auto through air.” Streamlining promised to smooth over conflict by projecting an alternative future of friction-free accelerated progress. Or, to paraphrase Joshua C. Taylor, International Harvester’s redesigned product line represented “the dream of a fascinating future world” where tractors go faster, “mechanisms are eager to function well for the good of man, and every form slips easily into its purposeful role.” Based in the elimination of resistance, streamlining symbolically promised a world beyond material contradictions including, I would argue, labor conflict.
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