Chapter 3

With Chapter Three, Productivity Machines moves the discussion from the period before WWII to the period after WWII, and Chapters Three, Four and Five focus on the Marshall Plan’s Productivity Program. While the majority of Marshall funding was spent on immediate relief shipments of food and fuel, about 1% of the total budget (estimates range from 0.5% to 1.5%) was devoted to technical assistance through the Productivity Program that aimed at longer term changes in European industrial practices to aid European postwar economic recovery. Chapter Three introduces the Productivity Program and its values, goals, and officers. In an effort to stave off communist threats during the emerging Cold War, productivity officers promised that higher productivity would lead to higher standards of living for European workers. They linked mass production and distribution to the larger economic and political values of free enterprise, collaborative labor relations, and integrated markets, and they used so-called demonstration projects to show the validity of these values. Seeking to instill productivity-mindedness in Europeans, Marshall officers often displayed a missionary attitude; taking inspiration from their religious beliefs, they sought to convince rather than coerce Europeans.

Everett H. Bellows, “Introductory Remarks”(1952)

While the majority of Marshall Plan funding was devoted to emergency food and fuel shipments, one of the key programmatic goals of the Marshall Plan was to increase productivity in Europe to match the torrid pace of production in the United States…

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Men’s Work Pants (1951)

Between 1951 and 1954, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics created a series of 48 reports that would show, in detail, the productivity of American industries, and give detailed technical information on how these companies achieved their productivity…

“Procedures for Establishing Demonstration Projects” (1952)

The Productivity Plan division of the Marshall Plan strived to increase the productivity of European industries in a variety of ways.  One of their biggest focuses was on the Demonstration Projects, in which European companies would receive some amount of financial aid from the Marshall Plan in return for incorporating productivity measures that were in line with American productivity…