Although no American would have hoped for war, the complete industrialization of formerly fallow aspects of American industry enabled many Americans to become financially independent again, and proved particularly personally empowering for many women, who were encouraged to work outside the home in nontraditional, better paying factory jobs rather than work at home -- or at non-industrial jobs. A return to industrialization and the expansion of technology empowered all workers, and brought dignity and security to the lives of many Americans, dignity that they had not known since before the Great Depression
After the end of World War II, one might argue that fear of new technology, in the form of the prospect of the Soviet Union using the atomic bomb against America, allowed for the rise of McCarthyism. However, it is important to remember that fear of the unknown and the alien, in this case, the Soviet Union, is not endemic to industrialized society alone. When the playwright Arthur Miller wished to make a historical parallel in the past with McCarthyism, he went all the way back to the Salem witchcraft trials. Fear of the unknown rather than technology itself caused witch hunt -- the fear of old women in colonial America and the fear of bogeyman communists in post-war America.
But what of the Wal-Mart effect? Is this an example of dehumanization and industrialization? Take the example of cheap Chilean salmon: "In just a decade, salmon farming has transformed the economy and the daily life of southern Chile, ushering in an industrial revolution that has turned...
Salmon farming is starting to transform the ecology and environment of southern Chile too, with tens of millions of salmon living in vast ocean corrals, their excess food and feces settling to the ocean floor beneath the pens, and dozens of salmon processing plants dumping untreated salmon entrails directly into the ocean" (Fishman, 2006). But while industrialization has harmed the environment of Chile, and Wal-Mart's labor practices are hardly commendable, it is also quite possible to argue that former subsistence farmers and fishermen would not be willing to work for Wal-Mart, unless they found their original occupations poorly paying and personally frustrating. The answer to the dilemma of course, is not to praise Wal-Mart, but to further the education and empowering rehabilitation of the impoverished area, much in the way the Tennessee Valley was brought into the modern era by President Roosevelt. The answer to poverty in the developing world is not the idealization of the past, pastoral way of life of the farmer, but to use industrialization in a humane manner to enrich workers as well as corporations.
Works Cited
Fishman, Charles. "Global fishiness." Excerpt from the Wal-Mart Effect at Salon.com.
23 Jan 2006. 2 May 2007. http://www.salon.com/tech/books/2006/01/23/walmart_effect/
From the New Deal to a New Century: About TVA." TVA Government Website. 2007.
May 2007. http://www.tva.gov/abouttva/history.htm
