Hello Europe !

After 1918, the first challenge Europe faced was to reconstruct factories, farmland and homes damaged by the war. More generally, the European powers needed to keep up with the pace of technological change, moving from steam power to electricity for example. In European industry, problems centred on the need to modernise what factories produced and how they produced it.

The average worker in American factories now produced twice as much per hour worked as his or her counterpart in Europe, thanks to new technology and methods of working. This made American products cheaper than those made in Europe.
Thanks.

(01-06-2010 05:46 AM)andrewan Wrote:  Hello Europe !

After 1918, the first challenge Europe faced was to reconstruct factories, farmland and homes damaged by the war. More generally, the European powers needed to keep up with the pace of technological change, moving from steam power to electricity for example. In European industry, problems centred on the need to modernise what factories produced and how they produced it.

The average worker in American factories now produced twice as much per hour worked as his or her counterpart in Europe, thanks to new technology and methods of working. This made American products cheaper than those made in Europe.
Thanks.

Don't want to wake sleepy dogs! But did not one of the problems that helped the Nazis in Germany to win votes - was the large US investments into building factories because German labour was cheaper than US labour? And this caused resentment with the German workers because they were not paid enough --- than with the crash of 1929 Germany was worse hit than most because all those US investments were gone with as result a huge number of German workers out of work! Ford was one of the main investors in Germany after 1918 and did keep investing in Nazi Germany even right through the war (there were even forced labourers in his Germany factories - I should know as Belgian I know of 'older' Belgians who were forced to work there during the war and were never paid for it!) A forgotten history it seems!