The Assembly Line, Mass Consumer Markets, and the Decline of Transit Operators

What Led to the Decline of Transit Operators?

By the end of the 19th century frontier expansion was completed, and a mass consumer market began to build itself. Intensified productivity, corporate mergers, and cheap immigrant labor permitted the rapid introduction of assembly line techniques which would advance the automobile industry to epic proportions. In fact, "Fordism" was coined as the model for 20th century industrialization (Aglietta, 1979). The scarcity of skilled labor in 19th century America meant that early mechanization replaced complex, craft-dominated operations. These labor-process changes permitted higher levels of profit, growth, and concentration in the auto industry (Yago, 1983).

The assembly line furthered marketing changes that would increase profits, which, invested in horizontally diversified production, eliminated competition from alternative transportation technologies. Furthermore, economic concentration in the automobile industry led to the extension of motorization to the public transit industry (Snell, 1974). By controlling supply contracts bus, oil, and rubber manufacturers eliminated the competing electrical transit industry. A study supported this hypothesis by showing that the changing structure of concentration within the transportation industry resulted in increased spatial dispersion, declining transit ridership, and increased motorization (Yago, 1983). Finally, data from trade sources indicate that motor buses were not only the least economical transit vehicles, but that their prevalence led to the decline of transit operating firms (St. Clair, 1981).