Linda Downs

Rivera__ admiration for Stalin was equaled only by his admiration for Henry Ford. By the 1920s and _30s, nearly every industrial country in Europe and Latin America, as well as the Soviet Union, had adopted Ford__ engineering and manufacturing methods: his highly efficient assembly line to increase production and reduce the cost of automobiles, so that the working class could at least afford to own a car; his total control over all the manufacturing and production processes by concentrating them all in one place, from the gathering of raw materials to orchestrating the final assembly; and his integration, training, and absolute control of the workforce. Kahn, the architect of Ford__ factories, subsequently constructed hundreds of factories on the model of the Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, which was the epicenter of Ford__ industrial acumen as well as a world-wide symbol of future technology. Such achievements led Rivera to regard Detroit__ industry as the means of transforming the proletariat to take the reins of economic production.