“Taylor loved to argue that workers should be selected on the same “sensible” basis on which draft animals were discriminately chosen for separate tasks. The working class was divided by nature into groups of weak mules, ordinary drays, and superstrong work horses.” (Mike Davis, “The Stop Watch and the Wooden Shoe” 85, in the Radical America Reader _Workers’ Struggles, Past and Present_. The article is excellent in addition to this interesting bit.) Davis also notes that at McKees Rocks prior to the 1909 strike “nearly a worker a day was killed in an industrial accident.” (87.)
Andrew quoted several things that sounded fascinating in his excellent paper he sent me, which I still need to respond to in greater depth. Among them was Taylored Lives, which I’m going to have to look up now, and Producing Hegemony.
I’ve read bits of Taylor but not read him depth. That’s another one to do. Davis references volume one of the Report and Testimony of the Commission on Industrial Relations, Taylor’s references to animals being somewhere in pages 765-810. The animal selection of the proletariat links to the bare life stuff I’ve been kicking around, biopolitics and so on. I’m sure someone somewhere has done work on biopolitics and industrial relations. I don’t have the Foucault chops to do that myself but I’m educable. (On IR, I just read the intro and final chapter of Bruno Ramirez’s _When Workers Fight_, which is awesome. Bit of trivia, Ramirez quotes Tronti a few times, was part of Zerowork and/or Midnight Notes, and had work in the volume on the IWW along with Gisela Bock that was important for Primo Maggio et al.)
Another tangent, looking up stuff on the Commission on Industrial Relations I found this testimony.