industrial union, labor union composed of all the workers in a given industry, regardless of skill, craft, or occupation (as opposed to the craft union, in which all members are of one skill, such as carpenters or electricians). The industrial union is sometimes referred to as a vertical union, since it accepts workers from the least to the most skilled as members. Prior to the 1870s, unions in the United States had been organized on a craft basis; a modified form of industrial union appeared with the Knights of Labor. The successor to that organization, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), organized new members on the basis of their craft. But the idea of an industrial union survived with the Industrial Workers of the World, which was founded in 1905. Adopting a policy of accepting everyone, skilled or unskilled and regardless of race, sex, or creed, the IWW's membership ranged from mine workers, to even migrant agricultural workers. Within the AFL in the 1930s one segment of unions, under the leadership of John L. Lewis, began to organize in the mass production industries, i.e., to form industrial unions. These unions, initially named the Committee for Industrial Organization, were expelled (1936) and were renamed (1938) the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The newly formed CIO was basically an industrial union. Three kinds of industrial unions were recognized—those consisting of all employees working on the same commodity (e.g., electrical workers or brewery workers), those using the same tools to work on different materials (e.g., textile and aluminum workers), and all employees of a given factory regardless of their particular skill. Following the merger of the AFL with the CIO in 1955, an Industrial Union Department (IUD) was organized within the merged organization. Although industrial unions have traditionally attempted to organize manufacturing or mining employees, such unions as the Service Employees International Union are now attempting to organize workers in service industries and the public sector. But organizing office workers who perform different tasks in various offices in separate buildings has been much harder than organizing a large automobile factory where all employees work on the same assembly line. See bibliography under American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

industrial policy, government-sponsored economic program in which the public and private sectors coordinate their efforts to develop new technologies and industries. Government provides the financial support and capital to the private sector by direct subsidies, tax credits, or government-run developmental banks. Industrial policy emphasizes cooperation between government, banks, private enterprise, and employees to strengthen the national economy. In the 1980s and 90s, industrial policies enjoyed some success in Germany and Japan. In the United States, such direct government involvement in business planning has traditionally been viewed with suspicion. However, the Advanced Technology Program, begun in 1990, has been instrumental in the research and development of promising, high-risk technologies. U.S. government subsidies can also be found in such areas as defense, energy, transportation, and home construction.

industrial management, term applied to highly organized modern methods of carrying on industrial, especially manufacturing, operations.

The Rise of Factories

Before the Industrial Revolution people worked with hand tools, manufacturing articles in their own homes or in small shops. In the third quarter of the 18th cent. steam power was applied to machinery, and people and machines were brought together under one roof in factories, where the manufacturing process could be supervised. This was the beginning of shop management. In the next hundred years factories grew rapidly in size, in degree of mechanization, and in complexity of operation. The growth, however, was accompanied by much waste and inefficiency. In the United States many engineers, spurred by the increased competition of the post-Civil War era, began to seek ways of improving plant efficiency.

The Development of Industrial Management

Studies of Worker Performance

The first sustained effort in the direction of improved efficiency was made by Frederick Winslow Taylor, an assistant foreman in the Midvale Steel Company, who in the 1880s undertook a series of studies to determine whether workers used unnecessary motions and hence too much time in performing operations at a machine. Each operation required to turn out an article or part was analyzed and studied minutely, and superfluous motions were eliminated. Records were kept of the performance of workers and standards were adopted for each operation. The early studies resulted in a faster pace of work and the introduction of rest periods.

Management of the Machine

Industrial management also involves studying the performance of machines as well as people. Specialists are employed to keep machines in good working condition and to ensure the quality of their production. The flow of materials through the plant is supervised to ensure that neither workers nor machines are idle. Constant inspection is made to keep output up to standard. Charts are used for recording the accomplishment of both workers and machines and for comparing them with established standards. Careful accounts are kept of the cost of each operation. When a new article is to be manufactured it is given a design that will make it suitable for machine production, and each step in its manufacture is planned, including the machines and materials to be used.

Other Aspects of Management

The principles of scientific management have been gradually extended to every department of industry, including office work, financing, and marketing. Soon after 1910 American firms established the first personnel departments, and eventually some of the larger companies took the lead in creating environments conducive to worker efficiency. Safety devices, better sanitation, plant cafeterias, and facilities for rest and recreation were provided, thus adding to the welfare of employees and enhancing morale. Many such improvements were made at the insistence of employee groups, especially labor unions.

Over the years, workers and their unions also sought and often won higher wages and increased benefits, including group health and life insurance and liberal retirement pensions. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, cutbacks and downsizing in many American businesses substantially reduced many of these benefits. Some corporations permit employees to buy stock; others make provision for employee representation on the board of directors or on the shop grievance committee. Many corporations provide special opportunities for training and promotion for workers who desire advancement, and some have made efforts to solve such difficult problems as job security and a guaranteed annual wage.

Modern Trends

Modern technological devices, particularly in the areas of computers, electronics, thermodynamics, and mechanics, have made automatic and semiautomatic machines a reality. The development of such automation is bringing about a second industrial revolution and is causing vast changes in commerce as well as the way work is organized. Such technological changes and the need to improve productivity and quality of products in traditional factory systems also changed industrial management practices. In the 1960s Swedish automobile companies discovered that they could improve productivity with a system of group assembly. In a contrast to older manufacturing techniques where a worker was responsible for assembling only one part of the car, group assembly gave a group of workers the responsibility for assembling an entire car.

The system was also applied in Japan, where managers developed a number of other innovative systems to lower costs and improve the quality of products. One Japanese innovation, known as quality circles, allowed workers to offer management suggestions on how to make production more efficient and to solve problems. Workers were also given the right to stop the assembly line if something went wrong, a sharp departure from U.S. factories. By carefully controlling the manufacturing process, Japanese managers were able to cut waste, improve productivity, and reduce inventory, thus significantly reducing costs and improving quality. By the early 1980s, Japanese companies, which had once been criticized for producing for producing low-quality goods, had established a reputation for efficiently producing high-quality, high-tech products. In the 1980s and early 90s many U.S. companies looked to increase their competitiveness by adapting Japanese methods for improving manufacturing quality.

industrial engineering: see engineering.

industrial alcohol: see ethanol.

arbitration, industrial, method of settling disputes between employer and employees by seeking and accepting a decision by a third party. Such arbitration may be compelled by the government, as in New Zealand (since 1894), Australia (since 1904), Canada (since 1907), Italy (since 1926), and Great Britain (since World War II). In other cases, it may be by voluntary agreement, as is often the case in the United States, where the government occasionally intervenes in the case of a strike affecting the public welfare (see Taft-Hartley Labor Act) by persuading the parties concerned to accept the decision handed down by the arbitrator. Additionally, the Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that companies can insist that employment-related disputes (such as discrimination suits) go to arbitration rather than to court. Arbitration machinery in the United States has been set up at both federal and state levels in the form of mediation and arbitration boards. The American Arbitration Association, founded in 1926, has nearly 17,000 members who help settle labor disputes. In voluntary arbitration a formal agreement is usually made to abide by the decision.

United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), specialized agency of the United Nations. Headquartered in Vienna, it was organized in 1966 and made a specialized UN agency in 1985. UNIDO's mission is to promote industrial progress in developing nations. It mobilizes knowledge, skills, information, and technology in order to promote employment, aid in creating competitive economies, and foster a healthy environment in those nations it assists. UNIDO works with the cooperation of 172 member states, and has 36 country and regional offices and a variety of other offices. It acts as a global forum and as a technical cooperation agency, both generating and disseminating vital knowledge and designing and implementing specific programs to help in the industrial development of its client states.

Mellon Institute of Industrial Research: see Carnegie Mellon Univ.

Jurong Industrial Estate: see Singapore.

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), revolutionary industrial union organized in Chicago in 1905 by delegates from the Western Federation of Mines, which formed the nucleus of the IWW, and 42 other labor organizations. It became the chief organization in the United States representing the doctrines of syndicalism. Leaders included Eugene V. Debs, William D. Haywood, and Daniel De Leon. Its members were called, among other nicknames, the Wobblies.

The aim of the IWW was to unite in one body all skilled and unskilled workers for the purpose of overthrowing capitalism and rebuilding society on a socialistic basis. Its methods were direct action, propaganda, the boycott, and the strike; it was opposed to sabotage, to arbitration or collective bargaining, and to political affiliation and intervention. The organization spread to Canada and Australia and in a very small way to Europe, but its main activities were confined to the United States. It was especially strong in the lumber camps of the Northwest, among dock workers in port cities, in the wheat fields of the central states, and in textile and mining areas. Of the 150 strikes conducted by the IWW, the most notable occurred at Goldfield, Nev. (miners, 1906-7); at Lawrence, Mass. (textile workers, 1912); at Paterson, N.J. (silk workers, 1913); in the Mesabi range, Minn. (iron miners, 1916); in the lumber camps of the Northwest (1917); at Seattle (general strike, 1919); and in Colorado (miners, 1927-28).

The IWW's stand against political action led to controversy among the members, with De Leon emphasizing the Marxist point of view as against those opposing political action. De Leon and his followers were expelled in 1908 and set up an independent organization, which was never more than a splinter group and was dissolved in 1925. In 1924 a split took place in the parent organization between the Westerners and the Easterners over the question of centralization.

At the time of World War I the IWW was antimilitaristic; its members were accused of draft evasion, of fomenting German-paid strikes in order to cripple essential war industries; of sabotage; and of criminal syndicalism. Many of its leaders and members were thrown into jail. Adding to the union's troubles was the fact that a great portion of the membership was made up of migratory and casual laborers, and it was difficult to organize them into a cohesive group. From a probable strength of at least 30,000 in 1912, the membership fell to less than 10,000 in 1930 and in the mid-1990s was less than 1,000.

Industrial Revolution, term usually applied to the social and economic changes that mark the transition from a stable agricultural and commercial society to a modern industrial society relying on complex machinery rather than tools. It is used historically to refer primarily to the period in British history from the middle of the 18th cent. to the middle of the 19th cent.

Nature of the Industrial Revolution

There has been much objection to the term because the word revolution suggests sudden, violent, unparalleled change, whereas the transformation was, to a great extent, gradual. Some historians argue that the 13th and 16th cent. were also periods of revolutionary economic change. However, in view of the magnitude of change between 1750 and 1850, the term seems useful.

Dramatic changes in the social and economic structure took place as inventions and technological innovations created the factory system of large-scale machine production and greater economic specialization, and as the laboring population, formerly employed predominantly in agriculture (in which production had also increased as a result of technological improvements), increasingly gathered in great urban factory centers. The same process occurred at later times and in changed tempo in other countries.

The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain

The ground was prepared by the voyages of discovery from Western Europe in the 15th and 16th cent., which led to a vast influx of precious metals from the New World, raising prices, stimulating industry, and fostering a money economy. Expansion of trade and the money economy stimulated the development of new institutions of finance and credit (see commercial revolution). In the 17th cent. the Dutch were in the forefront financially, but with the establishment (1694) of the Bank of England, their supremacy was effectively challenged. Capitalism appeared on a large scale, and a new type of commercial entrepreneur developed from the old class of merchant adventurers. Many machines were already known, and there were sizable factories using them, but these were the exceptions rather than the rule. Wood was the only fuel, water and wind the power of these early factories.

As the 18th cent. began, an expanding and wealthier population demanded more and better goods. In the productive process, coal came to replace wood. Early-model steam engines were introduced to drain water and raise coal from the mines. The crucial development of the Industrial Revolution was the use of steam for power, and the greatly improved engine (1769) of James Watt marked the high point in this development. Cotton textiles was the key industry early in the Industrial Revolution. John Kay's fly shuttle (1733), James Hargreaves's spinning jenny (patented 1770), Richard Arkwright's water frame (1769), Samuel Crompton's mule (1779), which combined the features of the jenny and the frame, and Edmund Cartwright's power loom (patented 1783) facilitated a tremendous increase in output. The presence of large quantities of coal and iron in close proximity in Britain was a decisive factor in its rapid industrial growth.

The use of coke in iron production had far-reaching effects. The coal mines from the early 1700s had become paramount in importance, and the Black Country appeared in England at the same time that Lancashire and Yorkshire were being transformed into the greatest textile centers of the world. Factories and industrial towns sprang up. Canals and roads were built, and the advent of the railroad and the steamship widened the market for manufactured goods. The Bessemer process made a gigantic contribution, for it was largely responsible for the extension of the use of steam and steel that were the two chief features of industry in the middle of the 19th cent. Chemical innovations and, most important of all, perhaps, machines for making machines played an important part in the vast changes.

The Industrial Revolution did not in fact end in Britain in the mid-1800s. New periods came in with electricity and the gasoline engine. By 1850, however, the transformation wrought by the revolution was accomplished, in that industry had become a dominant factor in the nation's life.

The Worldwide Revolution

France had in the 17th and most of the 18th cent. kept pace with Britain, but it later lagged behind in industrial development, and the British victory in their long-standing commercial rivalry kept markets away from France. The revolution did not make the rapid progress that it did in Britain, but after 1830 it developed steadily. The railroad and improved transportation preceded the introduction of the revolution into Germany, which is conventionally said to have accompanied the formation of the Zollverein; industrial Germany was created after 1850.

The United States made some contributions to the early revolution, notably the cotton gin (1793) of Eli Whitney. But the transformation of the United States into an industrial nation took place largely after the Civil War and on the British model. The textile mills of New England had long been in existence, but the boom period of industrial organization was from 1860 to 1890. The Industrial Revolution was introduced by Europeans into Asia, and the last years of the 19th and the early years of the 20th cent. saw the development of industries in India, China, and Japan. However, Japan is the only country of E Asia that may be said to have had a real Industrial Revolution. The Russian Revolution had as a basic aim the introduction of industrialism.

Its Effects

The Industrial Revolution has changed the face of nations, giving rise to urban centers requiring vast municipal services. It created a specialized and interdependent economic life and made the urban worker more completely dependent on the will of the employer than the rural worker had been. Relations between capital and labor were aggravated, and Marxism was one product of this unrest. Doctrines of laissez-faire, developed in the writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, sought to maximize the use of new productive facilities. But the revolution also brought a need for a new type of state intervention to protect the laborer and to provide necessary services. Laissez faire gradually gave way in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere to welfare capitalism. The economic theories of John Maynard Keynes reflected this change. The Industrial Revolution also provided the economic base for the rise of the professions, population expansion, and improvement in living standards and remains a primary goal of less developed nations.

Congress of Industrial Organizations: see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Committee for Industrial Organization: see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a federation of autonomous labor unions in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, and U.S. dependencies, formed in 1955 by the merger of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). As of 2006, the AFL-CIO included 52 national and international unions that had a U.S. membership of 9 million. Heavily involved in politics, the AFL-CIO's primary function is to lobby on behalf of organized labor and mediate disputes between its member unions. The AFL-CIO has campaigned actively against the so-called right-to-work laws, which outlawed union shops (see closed shop), has worked to repeal the Taft-Hartley Labor Act, and has fought other legislation deemed inimical to organized labor's interests.

The organization has five operating levels. Ultimate authority is vested in those attending its biennial convention, but between conventions the organization is run by an executive council, which is composed of the executive officers (president, secretary-treasurer, and executive vice president) and 51 vice presidents. Executive officers handle the day-to-day operations of the organization, and they are advised by a general board consisting of the executive council members, a chief officer of each affiliated union and of each programmatic department within the AFL-CIO, and four regional representatives from the 51 state federations. In addition to these levels of authority, the AFL-CIO carried over autonomous departments from the AFL (such as the Building Trades Dept.) and added an Industrial Union Dept. to handle the problems of the former CIO unions. The union's 13 programmatic departments handle the work of the federation, including labor organizing, political education, legislation, civil rights, and worker safety and health.

History

American Federation of Labor

In 1881 representatives of workers' organizations, meeting in Pittsburgh, formed the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in the United States and Canada. In 1886 at another conference in Columbus, Ohio, this group reorganized as the American Federation of Labor. Opposed to the socialistic and political ideals of the Knights of Labor, the AFL was, instead, a decentralized organization recognizing the autonomy of each of its member national craft unions. Individual workers were not members of the AFL but only of the affiliated local or national union. From its inception the AFL emphasized organization of skilled workers into craft unions (composed of a single occupation such as painters or electricians), as opposed to industrial unions (where all the workers in the automobile or steel industry would belong to one union).

Opposed to the idea of a labor party, the AFL was a relatively conservative political force within the labor movement of the late 19th and early 20th cent. But the union did help secure for its members higher wages, shorter hours, workmen's compensation, laws against child labor, an 8-hr day for government employees, and the exemption of labor from antitrust legislation (see Clayton Antitrust Act). Under the leadership of Samuel Gompers, William Green, and then George Meany, the AFL became the largest labor federation in the United States, with a membership of over 10 million at the time of its merger with the CIO in 1955.

Congress of Industrial Organizations

Within the AFL in the early 1930s a strong minority faction evolved, advocating the organization of workers in the basic mass-production industries (such as steel, auto, and rubber) on an industry-wide basis. John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers of America led this faction in forming a Committee for Industrial Organization in 1935. This group (changing its name in 1938 to Congress of Industrial Organizations) immediately launched organizing drives in the basic industries. The spectacular success of those drives, particularly in the automobile and steel industries, enhanced the CIO's prestige to the point where it seriously challenged the AFL's hegemony within U.S. organized labor. After fruitless negotiation the parent body revoked the charters of the 10 dissident international unions.

The CIO, under the presidency of Lewis until 1940 and then of Philip Murray until his death in 1952, followed more militant policies than the AFL. The CIO's Political Action Committee, headed by Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, played an active role in the CIO's attempt to urge its membership into more active political participation. The CIO grew rapidly until its affiliated international unions numbered 32 at the time of the 1955 merger, with an estimated membership of five million. Its growth, however, was marked by internal dissension; the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) withdrew in 1938 and the UMW in 1942. While the AFL was grappling with the problem of gangster-dominated affiliates, the CIO decided in 1948 to bar Communists from holding office in the organization, and in 1949-50 it expelled 11 of its affiliated unions, which were said to be Communist-dominated.

Merger to the Present

During the entire period of the alienation of the CIO from the AFL, the idea of merger was being considered by elements in both federations, and labor's concern over the apparent antiunion policies of President Eisenhower's administration (the first Republican administration in 20 years) gave new impetus to the movement for labor unity. The death in 1952 of the presidents of both organizations and the appointment of George Meany to head the AFL and Walter P. Reuther to run the CIO paved the way for a merger in 1955.

At its first convention the merged organizations, now called the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), elected Meany as its president. In 1957 the AFL-CIO adopted antiracket codes, and the convention expelled the Teamsters Union for alleged failure to meet the parent organization's ethical standards. The AFL-CIO took a major step in 1961 in the direction of settling internal disputes by setting up a mandatory arbitration procedure.

A submerged dispute between George Meany and Walter Reuther, who opposed the AFL-CIO's conservative approach to civil rights and social welfare programs, finally erupted in 1968 and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) withdrew from the union. The AFL-CIO supported the Democratic presidential candidates in 1956, 1960, 1964, and 1968. In 1972 however, Meany led the AFL-CIO into a neutral stance, supporting neither major candidate. Meany decided not to run for reelection in 1979 and Lane Kirkland, who had been secretary-treasurer for the AFL-CIO, was elected president.

From the start of Kirkland's term, the AFL-CIO was forced to adapt to a number of adverse economic trends. Union membership dropped from 33% of all U.S. workers in 1960 to 14% in the late 1990s. To shore up organized labor's declining influence, the AFL-CIO concentrated on organizing service workers and public employees and improving labor unity. In 1981 the UAW rejoined the union; the Teamsters (1988) and United Mine Workers (1989) later followed.

Kirkland retired under pressure in 1995. Thomas R. Donahue, the AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer, was named interim president, but Donahue was challenged for the federation's presidency by John J. Sweeney, who won the first contested election for president in the AFL-CIO's history. In 2005, heads of some of the organization's largest and most active unions, led by Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), unsuccessfuly attempted to secure Sweeney's retirement and to implement other organizational changes, such as the merging of the ALF-CIO's member unions into 20 large unions, each representing a segment of the economy, and the refocusing of its energies to stress the unionization of unrepresented workers. The SEIU, Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers, Laborers' International, and Unite Here subsequently left the AFL-CIO, and with several other unions formed the Change to Win Federation.

or I-O psychology

Application of the concepts and methods of experimental, clinical, and social psychology to the workplace. I-O psychologists are concerned with such matters as personnel evaluation and placement, job analysis, worker-management relations (including morale and job satisfaction), workforce training and development (including leadership training), and productivity improvement. They may work closely with business managers, industrial engineers, and human-resources professionals.

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Process of converting to a socioeconomic order in which industry is dominant. The changes that took place in Britain during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th century led the way for the early industrializing nations of western Europe and North America. Industrialization entailed both technology and profound social developments. The freeing of labourers from feudal and customary obligations created a free market in labour, with a pivotal role for the entrepreneur. Cities attracted large numbers of people, massing workers in new industrial towns and factories. Later industrializers attempted to manipulate some of the elements: the Soviet Union eliminated the entrepreneur; Japan stimulated and sustained the entrepreneur's role; Denmark and New Zealand industrialized primarily by commercializing and mechanizing agriculture.

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Activities that seek to minimize or to eliminate hazardous conditions that can cause bodily injury. Occupational safety is concerned with risks in areas where people work: offices, manufacturing plants, farms, construction sites, and commercial and retail facilities. Public safety is concerned with hazards in the home, in travel and recreation, and in other situations that do not fall within the scope of occupational safety.

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Political body of the French Revolution that controlled France during the Reign of Terror. It was set up in April 1793 to defend France against its enemies, foreign and domestic. At first it was dominated by Georges Danton and his followers, but they were soon replaced by the radical Jacobins, including Maximilien Robespierre. Harsh measures were taken against alleged enemies of the Revolution, the economy was placed on a wartime basis, and mass conscription was undertaken. Dissension within the committee contributed to the downfall of Robespierre in July 1794, after which it declined in importance.

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Darkness of the skin, feathers, or fur developed by a population of animals living in an industrial region where the environment is soot-darkened. The melanization of a population increases the probability that its members will survive and reproduce because it offers protection in the form of camouflage; it takes place over the course of many generations as the result of natural selection of the lighter, more conspicuous animals by predators.

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or occupational medicine

Branch of medicine dealing with workers' health and the prevention and treatment of diseases and injuries in the workplace. Workplace hazards include exposure to dangerous materials including asbestos and coal dust, radiation exposure, and machinery capable of causing injuries ranging from minor to life-threatening. Industrial medical programs mandate protective devices around machines' moving parts, proper ventilation of work areas, use of less toxic materials, containment of production processes, and protective equipment and clothing. Good industrial medical programs improve labour-management relations, increase workers' overall health and productivity, and reduce insurance costs.

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Acquisition of trade secrets from business competitors. Industrial spying is a reaction to the efforts of many businesses to keep secret their designs, formulas, manufacturing processes, research, and future plans. Trade secrets may find their way into the open market through disloyal employees or through various other means. Penalties against those found guilty range from an injunction against further use of the knowledge to substantial damages. Seealso patent.

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Application of engineering principles and techniques of scientific management to the maintenance of high levels of productivity at optimum cost in industrial enterprises. Frederick W. Taylor pioneered in the scientific measurement of work, and Frank (1868–1924) and Lillian (1878–1972) Gilbreth refined it with time-and-motion studies. As a result, production processes were simplified, enabling workers to increase production. The industrial engineer selects tools and materials for production that are most efficient and least costly to the company. The engineer may also determine the sequence of production and the design of plant facilities or factories. Seealso ergonomics.

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Illness associated with a particular occupation. The Industrial Revolution's long working hours, dim light, lack of fresh air, and dangerous machinery fostered illness and injury in general, but certain occupations (e.g., mining) carry particular risks (e.g., black lung, a type of pneumoconiosis). Twentieth-century innovations (including use of new chemicals and radioactive materials) caused an increase in certain cancers (e.g., leukemia and bone cancer in workers exposed to radiation) and injuries. So-called “sick buildings” (in which pathogens grow in air circulation systems) contribute to health problems among office workers. Occupational medicine also covers work-related emotional stresses. Seealso asbestosis; industrial medicine.

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Design of products made by large-scale industry for mass distribution. Among the considerations for such products are structure, operation, appearance, and conformance to production, distribution, and selling procedures; appearance is the principal consideration in industrial design. The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design was founded in London in 1957 and within 25 years had members in more than 40 countries. Two significant trends have persisted: streamlining, a design principle pioneered by Raymond Loewy and others in the 1930s; and planned obsolescence, design changes that tempt owners to replace goods with new purchases more frequently than would normally be necessary.

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known as the Wobblies

Radical labour organization founded in Chicago in 1905. The founders, who opposed the moderate policies of the AFL (see AFL-CIO), included William Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners, Daniel De Leon of the Socialist Labor Party, and Eugene V. Debs. In 1908 the IWW split, and a militant group led by Haywood prevailed. To reach its goal of worker control of the means of production, it advocated general strikes, boycotts, and sabotage. Its tactics led to arrests and adverse publicity, though it made gains through strikes in the mining and lumber industries. It opposed U.S. participation in World War I, and some of its leaders were prosecuted. By the 1920s membership had dwindled greatly.

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Process of change from an agrarian, handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacture. It began in England in the 18th century. Technological changes included the use of iron and steel, new energy sources, the invention of new machines that increased production (including the steam engine and the spinning jenny), the development of the factory system, and important developments in transportation and communication (including the railroad and the telegraph). The Industrial Revolution was largely confined to Britain from 1760 to 1830 and then spread to Belgium and France. Other nations lagged behind, but, once Germany, the U.S., and Japan achieved industrial power, they outstripped Britain's initial successes. Eastern European countries lagged into the 20th century, and not until the mid-20th century did the Industrial Revolution spread to such countries as China and India. Industrialization effected changes in economic, political, and social organization. These included a wider distribution of wealth and increased international trade; political changes resulting from the shift in economic power; sweeping social changes that included the rise of working-class movements, the development of managerial hierarchies to oversee the division of labour, and the emergence of new patterns of authority; and struggles against externalities such as industrial pollution and urban crowding.

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