If Britain Had Used US Good Practice from 1933?

perfectgeneral

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by James Hull
Introduction
A March 1943 editorial in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Canadian Engineering Standards Association (CESA) noted the role being played by technical standards in the growing U.S. trade hegemony in Central and South America. (1) Stirred but not shaken by evidence that the days of Britain's informal Latin American empire were over, the editor warned that Canada must respond appropriately. In fact, by this time Canadian business had for decades been involved as a junior partner with the U.S. in the development of North American technical standards. Such standards--roughly, agreements among makers and users of manufactured items on their dimensions and other characteristics--are crucial to the workings of advanced industrial economies. (2) They are a little-noticed part of how, literally at a nuts and bolts level, the two nations' economies were integrated. As such, they should be seen along with such traditionally cited factors as levels of U.S. equity investment in secondary manufacturing, shared consumer tastes, and the north-south grain of the continental geography in explaining why, when, and how such integration occurred. (3) There is a particular irony in the position of the CESA. Founded in response to a British initiative, the Association had a formal commitment to bringing British technical standards to Canada while remaining at arms length from the U.K.'s standard-setting protocol. But from its earliest work, the CESA acted as a major conduit for the flow of U.S. standards into Canada, standards that came to dominate Canadian manufacturing.
What you know, Who you know

Mired in social networks, British financial, industrial and management practice struggled to compete with American efficiency. What if the 1929 world financial collapse brought about a cultural change in Britain. A cultural change that put decisions into the hands of able people over connected people.

What would that look like?
How would it change things?
 
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Extract from Technical Standards and the Integration of the U.S. and Canadian Economies
...The formation of a Canadian standards organization would await the First World War. During that conflict Canada established both its own standards and research organizations, the Canadian Engineering Standards Association and what became the National Research Council of Canada. In both cases, these institutional developments responded in part to domestic pressures from Canadian industry but were sparked by inquiries from London. In both cases, Canada was eager to make clear that while it was part of the Empire it was not simply part of the Empire; Canada chose not to become part of the British institutional structure--respectively the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the British Standards Association. (16) Organized by a small group of Montreal engineers, the CESA would, according to one trade journal, "adapt... British and other standard specifications to Canadian conditions." (17) The editor of The Canadian Engineer took a broader, if more jingoistic, view, claiming that the standards bodies of the U.S., U.K., and now Canada "will be linked together in work which will help to stimulate allied trade... resist German penetration [and] increase the industrial supremacy of the English-speaking nations." (18) Whatever may have been on the mind of the CESA's first head, Sir John Kennedy, the workings of the organization would soon make clear which way the industrial winds blew.


The Spread of Standards between the Wars


The 1920s have been called the "Golden Age" of standards in Herbert Hoover's America. As Albert Batik has written, "mass production manufacturing and widespread industrialization made standards and standardization an absolute necessity. Equally important, many of the great corporations were headed by technical people who understood and supported standards." (19) The interwar years were also a golden age for the rapid penetration of American standards throughout the industrial order in Canada. Canadian technical personnel continued to be involved with the standardization work of U.S. trade and technical associations. The American Society for Municipal Improvements, drawing up tentative new specifications for sewerage, sent them for publication in The Canadian Engineer so that engineers working in cities north of the border could comment. (20) William Aldrige, Assistant City Engineer for Winnipeg, chaired the American Public Works Association's Specifications Committee on Subgrade and Foundations. (21) P.A. Bor den, Secretary of the Toronto Branch of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) sat on the Institute's Instruments and Measurements Committee. (22) Arthur Hewitt of the Canadian Gas Association served as a member of the American Gas Association's Advisory Council as well as a member of its Committee on Gas Standards. (23) R.B. Young of the Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario (that is, Ontario Hydro) gained recognition as one of the continent's leading experts on concrete and concrete standards. A director and member of the board of the American Concrete Institute, he served as a member of the Institute's Winter Concreting Specifications Committee. As well, Young was Secretary of the ASTM's Committee on Cement and received the organization's Award of Merit for his work. Young, who also chaired the CESA's own Concrete Committee would eventually be named to the Canadian Engineering Hall of Fame. (24)
References to published U.S. technical standards proliferate in contracts and business-to-business communications during the interwar years in Canada while, conversely, references to U.K. ones are virtually absent. As early as 1919, the Steel Company of Canada (Stelco) rivaled Carnegie Steel and the Southern Pine Association as the largest purchaser of the right to reprint ASTM standards. (25) Ferranti Electric, a Canadian subsidiary of an English firm, informed customers that its transformers' efficiency guarantees accorded with the rules of the AIEE. (26) The City of Toronto's contract for the construction of a pumping station insisted that cast iron conform to ASTM standards and that wire and cable be insulated to AIEE standards. (27) G.M Horton Steel Works assured the H.G. Acres Company of consulting engineers, that its structural steel met ASTM specifications. (28) Canadian industry relied on the standard U.S. Saybolt viscosity tester. (29) Ontario Hydro, which administered the Canadian Electrical Code f or the CESA, in its own transformer specification stated that AIEE rules applied "unless superseded by clauses here-in." (30) The Canadian 'Lectromelt Limited order for an 800 kV transformer for the furnace of Manitoba Steel Foundries required that it be tested to AIEE rules, while a Toronto Iron Works order to Stelco insisted that rivets conform to ASTM standards. (31) ASTM cement standards helped pave Canadian roads while the guidelines of the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers helped heat Canadian homes. (32)


Not surprisingly, Canadian branch plants of U.S. corporations relied heavy on U.S. standards. A catalogue of the Canadian Ohio Brass Company took customers through the various requirements of ASTM, NELA, AIEE, the American Standards Association, the American Transit Engineering Association, American Railway Association, and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. (33) Such firms, however, were not particularly conspicuous in such usage. The Montreal based but international engineering firm of Robert W. Hunt inspected pipe to the standards of the American Water Works Association (AWWA). A company booklet printed the Association's specifications as well as those of the United States Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry Company (whose products were manufactured in Canada by the National Iron Corp. Ltd. Of Toronto) which in turn were based on the U.S. government's pipe specifications. (34) A promotional sheet of T. McAvity & Sons, a Canadian brass and iron products manufacturer, noted that their chart of fittings gave ASME dimensions. Perhaps most telling is an advertisement by the John E. Russell Company of Toronto. (35) In it, a drawing of the cover of an ASTM specification is used to illustrate the firm's claim that its sewer and culvert pipe was "manufactured in accordance with, and guaranteed to comply with" such specifications. Presumably, the company expected that ASTM's graphics would be instantly recognizable to and carry some weight with prospective customers. (36)
Engineering work in Canada blended indigenous and imported standards. The contract specifications for a Toronto sewage treatment plant included, from Canada, CESA standards, Ontario Hydro regulations, the city's building by-law and the Lightening Rod Act of Ontario, and, from the U.S., ASTM, AIEE and AWWA standards plus the Manual of the American Railway Engineering Association. Engineers picked and chose. Frederick A. Dallyn oversaw the construction of municipal waterworks in towns across Ontario. In the contracts he supervised, structural steel was to ASTM but reinforcing steel to CESA standards. For Oshawa's new filtration plant Dallyn received a bid which promised that the overhead crane's rail was to American Society of Civil Engineers standards while the St. Catharine's Ontario subsidiary of a U.S. firm informed him that the steel for use in a sludge-bed would be to the specifications of the American Institute of Steel Construction. For concrete the cement had to be to CESA standard but the sand tested per ASTM. Dallyn told the Commissioner of Works for York Township that, for concrete and vitrified tile pipe he preferred ASTM standards to the Ontario Department of Health's. Two points are worth noting. Dallyn was not a concrete expert and it is hard to believe that his choice did not have something to do with the grudge he felt towards the department for his recent, very public, firing. As well, Canada's R.B. Young was taking a leadership role in developing those U.S. concrete standards. But it is in tiny battles such as this that standards wars are won and lost. (37)


Not just private firms but public bodies also played crucial roles in the unification of Canadian and U.S. technical standards. Examples of Canada public sector involvement with or adoption into law of U.S. standards abound. John Murphy, an electrical engineer with the Board of Railway Commissioners, represented Canada on the American Engineering Standards Committee on common standards for electric lines crossing over railroads. (38) Provincial electrical inspectors in Quebec accepted any material that was approved by Underwriters Laboratories of Chicago. (39) Ontario regulations for beverage manufacture specified the use of American Public Health Association water analysis standards. (40) The City of Toronto's Building by-law mandated that steel conform to ASTM specifications while the city's Medical Officer of Health relied on U.S. Treasury Department standards for B. Coli in filtered water "which standards are generally accepted in Canada." (41) When the Department of the Interior s Forest Products Laborat ories (FPL) developed creosoting standards for Canadian industry, it took the standards for the creosote itself from the American Wood Preservers Association. However, the FPL-developed standards for determining the sulphite content of newsprint (important inter cilia for the calculation of duties) and for the freeness of pulp (important in controlling the pulping process in mills) became North American standards thanks to the FPL's work with both the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association and the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry in the United States. (42). These two unusual instances of the adoption of Canadian standards in the U.S. can be attributed in part to the excellence of the FPL's work and the integration of the North American pulp and paper industry but also to Canada's dominant position in world newsprint markets. In general, public bodies in Canada appear to have had no systematic preference for Canadian or U.S. standards different from those in the private sector.
The Canadian Engineering Standards Association itself played the largest role in bringing U.S. standards to Canada in the interwar period. Remarkably, it did so in the face of its officially stated position to the contrary. The Association's Yearbook claimed that the CESA "endeavors to follow as closely as practicable the standards prepared by the British Engineering Standards Association" while admitting that "in many cases, on account of established business interests it is found advisable to follow other standards which have been generally adopted in Canada." (43) The point was, however, that the CESA almost never followed British standards while routinely following U.S. ones. As R.J. Durley, Secretary of the CESA, told the Toronto Branch of the Engineering Institute of Canada: "Our close geographic proximity... the extent to which American manufacturing firms are engaged in business in Canada, and the fact that our populations have similar tastes and similar conditions of life, make it very desirable that our requirements should where possible, be met by standards which do not differ widely from those of the United States." He cited the specific examples of highway signage, air safety standards and such rolling stock equipment as couplers and brakes. (44) While Durley found it politic to enunciate such a defense of U.S. standards he had little need to do so. Canada was not abandoning U.K. standards, since it had never adopted them in the first place. Canadian engineers viewed their own U.S.-style manufacturing practice to be superior to that in Britain and had little interest in conforming to U.K. standards. North American mass-production required far closer specifications than did fine British craftsmanship as, for instance, Rolls-Royce engineers discovered to their dismay in World War Two. (45) Further, Canadian engineers were simply not appointed to British standards committees. I have not found a single instance of the BSA appointing an engineer from Canada to a standard-writing committee in the inter war period.***


One of the very first standards prepared by the CESA--on railway bridges--explained Canada's situation in language that would echo through later specifications:
In view of the obvious desirability of agreement between a Canadian specification of this kind and similar documents prepared by authoritative bodies in the United States [we] have carefully considered the bridge specifications of the American Railroad Engineering Association and the specifications for bridge materials issued by the American Society for Testing Materials. It is believed that the Specification in its present form, while not in absolute agreement with the American specifications on all points, will be found to be in substantial agreement therewith, the principal points of difference being such as are found desirable in order to comply with Canadian conditions. (46)
The logic of this position seemed so clear to the members of the committee drafting the standard that they even departed from the existing bridge specifications of the Canadian Department of Railways and Canals. The ensuing controversy, a rare case of a public quarrel over a standard, raised a variety of issues (for example, how detailed a specification should be, whether the data on which the specification was based should be published), but no objections to the principle of bringing U.S. standards to Canada. (47)
Other CESA committees drew the same conclusions and justified those conclusions in similar language. Specifications for steel reinforcing bars stated that those involved in writing them stuck close to the ASTM specification "on account of the similarity between manufacturing and construction methods and conditions" in Canada and the United States. (48) Data used by the CESA committee on machine screws were drawn from "the most up-to-date practices in Canada and the United States" with the screw threads, of course the U.S. standard, adopted by, among others, ASME, and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). (49) At the request of the Bell Telephone Company of Canada--which aggressively championed U.S. standards usage--the CESA adopted a standard for galvanized steel wire which specified that the winding be to ASTM and AT&T practices and the zinc coating tested to the NELA standard. (50) CESA coordination of Canadian work towards the standardization of road traffic signals came at the request of the American Engineering Standards Committee and involved as well provincial, federal, and municipal authorities plus the Engineering Institute of Canada and the Canadian Automobile Association. (51)
***perhaps this could be one point of departure? A Canadian in charge of joint standards for the entire anglosphere? RB Young's standards on concrete are already heading in this direction. Good enough to set the standard in the USA, why not a more broadminded Britain too? Mass production methods being implied in the standards. Best practice through out the anglosphere could proliferate through more widespread publication. Are there British standards that America could have benefited from, but didn't?

Railway gauge standards would carry implications for tank sizes in the forthcoming WW2. Use of screw pitch and other standards in common with the US would make purchase of additional machine tools cheaper. Export to the US would be easier with common standards. It is often said that an expert 'wrote the book' on a particular field. Any candidates for writing the best practice standards?
 
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Thread_Standard
Table of Preferred_sizes
This would be inter war and in this TL Britain doesn't dig it's heels in for the BA standard.
wiki/ Screw_thread/ History_of_standardization
A tremendous amount of engineering work was done throughout World War I and the following interwar period in pursuit of reliable interchangeability. Classes of fit were standardized, and new ways of generating and inspecting screw threads were developed (such as production thread-grinding machines and optical comparators). Therefore, in theory, one might expect that by the start of World War II, the problem of screw thread interchangeability would have already been completely solved. Unfortunately, this proved to be false. Intranational interchangeability was widespread, but international interchangeability was less so. Problems with lack of interchangeability among American, Canadian, and British parts during World War II led to an effort to unify the inch-based standards among these closely allied nations, and the Unified Thread Standard was adopted by the Screw Thread Standardization Committees of Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States on November 18, 1949 in Washington, D.C., with the hope that they would be adopted universally. (The original UTS standard may be found in ASA (now ANSI) publication, Vol. 1, 1949.) UTS consists of Unified Coarse (UNC), Unified Fine (UNF), Unified Extra Fine (UNEF) and Unified Special (UNS). The standard was not widely taken up in the UK, where many companies continued to use the UK's own British Association (BA) standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_comparator even more widely used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw_thread#History_of_standardization
During this era, in continental Europe, the British and American threadforms were well known, but also various metric thread standards were evolving, which usually employed 60° profiles. Some of these evolved into national or quasi-national standards. They were mostly unified in 1898 by the International Congress for the standardization of screw threads at Zurich, which defined the new international metric thread standards as having the same profile as the Sellers thread, but with metric sizes. Efforts were made in the early 20th century to convince the governments of the U.S., UK, and Canada to adopt these international thread standards and the metric system in general, but they were defeated with arguments that the capital cost of the necessary retooling would damage corporations and hamper the economy. (The mixed use of dualling inch and metric standards has since cost much, much more, but the bearing of these costs has been more distributed across national and global economies rather than being borne up front by particular governments or corporations, which helps explain the lobbying efforts.)
This capital cost would have been a good Neo-Keynesian injection of capital in the early thirties.

Standard_gauge railways goes without saying.
 
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Building Specs

Specifications in North America form part of the contract documents that accompany and govern the construction of a building. The guiding master document is the National Master Format. It is a consensus document that is jointly sponsored by two professional organisations: Construction Specifications Canada and Construction Specifications Institute.
While there is a tendency to believe that "Specs overrule Drawings" in the event of discrepancies between the text document and the drawings. The actual intent is for drawings and specifications to be complimentary with neither taking precedence over the other.
The Specifications fall into 50 "Divisions", or broad categories of work involved in construction. The "Divisions" are subdivided into "Sections", that address specific workscopes. For instance, firestopping is addressed in Section 078400 - Firestopping. It forms part of the Division 7, which is Thermal and Moisture Protection. Division 7 also addresses building envelope and fireproofing work. Each Section is subdivided into three distinct areas: "General", "Products" and "Execution". The National MasterFormat system has been uniformly applied to residential, commercial and much though not all industrial work.
Specifications can be another "performance-based", whereby the specifier restricts the text to stating the performance that must be achieved in each Section of work, or "prescriptive", whereby the specifier indicates specific products, vendors and even contractors that are acceptable for each workscope.
While North American specifications are usually restricted to broad descriptions of the work, European ones can include actual work quantities, including such things as area of drywall to be built in square metres, like a bill of materials. This type of specification is a collaborative effort between a specwriter and a quantity surveyor. This approach is unusual in North America, where each bidder performs his or her own quantity survey on the basis of both drawings and specifications.
Specification writing is a professional trade with its own professional designations, such as "CCS", which means "Certified Construction Specifier". Specwriters can be either employees of or sub-contractors to architects. Specwriters frequently meet with manufacturers of building materials who seek to have their products "specified" on upcoming construction projects so that contractors can include their products in the estimates leading to their proposals.

Sub-contractors tend to try to drive a coach and horses though specifications in the UK and the QS, Contractor and Architect have to work closely to hold them accountable. I hope that an Anglo Master Format would help save time on petty renegotiation.
 

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Decentralized Management

In response to the lack of flexibility revealed in the slow response to the post war crash America slowly adopted a more Decentralized Management style. By the end of WW2 most large industrial concerns in the USA were run this way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_decision_making
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=interwar+business+practice

In 1932 about 25% of America were unemployed. This (1933) was a time of rebuilding.

Manufacturing employment in the United States from 1920 to 1940
800px-US_Manufacturing_Employment_Graph_-_1920_to_1940.svg.png

The National_Industrial_Recovery_Act forced government regulated cartels and monopolies. This helped bring in national standards across industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_in_the_United_Kingdom
3 May - Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald arrives back in Britain after talks with American President Roosevelt on the global economic situation
We would have to suppose that the National Government was not a tariff disaster of the old boy network. Somehow merit takes over from self interest. Perhaps after a very different 1933 Ottawa Conference. Indiscriminate Keynesian public spending increases missed the chance* to overhaul industry and retool, improve infrastructure and boost training.

*Just like Brown's government.
 
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I suppose this is too dry for most tastes, but it is an issue in history that really gets me wondering. How far could Britain go with decent leadership? (not that that will ever happen while the same people that decide who runs the country decide that vox pop TV competitions are worth phoning in about.
 
I don't find this overly dry at all, I only wish I knew enough about the subject to make a valid contribution.

Let me see if I've got the gist correct:

The USA's recovery from both economic disaster (The Depression) and WWII was faster and more robust due to the a more decentralized approach from both the government and the management styles of the businesses themselves.

Further, the belief in the USA/Canada that the cream can/will float to the top as opposed to the UK's view (at this time) of 'the cream is already at the top' helped the USA achieve greater success by having a greater pool of capable leaders to draw from.

I didn't understand the point you were making about the building standards in the last part and how this ties in with the rest.

If I've got this right, and I'm not saying that I did, would not a good departure point from OTL be that the UK sustains much greater damage to the infrastructure during the war and the USA moves in (much like in occupied Japan) to run things for a while, perhaps because of a 'Red Scare'.

The British then learn the North American methods of managing an industrial base and the North Americans learn how to make decent cup of tea.
 

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Rereading the point about building specs, I think it started out as an example of how a meretricious idea can find consensus across national borders, but it veered off into a personal rant about sub-contractors trying it on.

I suppose there is an element of natural justice there as if architects didn't try to run a build by means a sense of superiority they would have to fall back on a sensible plan (and the QS wouldn't make so much sorting it all out)....and I'm off again. I'm starting to see why this one dried up.

Yes. An occupation would stop the Lords from lording it over us. Does it have to be the US? I suppose so. Much as I'd like it to be a combination of the Australians and the Canadians, it is the US citizens that had the most money and enough political clout at the time to get the job done.

Shame they didn't really. The cold war would have be a lot shorter. There was I thinking that they were revolutionary republicans. Not so revolutionary when it came to us eh? Still stuck with the whole comedy tent of aristocracy. No accident. A political sabotage. Much like the sudden rug pull on the lend lease and war loans.

However, getting back to your very good point. The point of departure/deviation should be the American response to Britain's imminent financial, if not military collapse in the face of Nazi aggression. Would you have them offer a takeover deal instead of lend lease (a less Anglophile president?) or maybe run Britain into the ground once a major port on the continent is available to supply troops? A post war occupation would need a pretext of some kind, but I'm open to any ideas on this.

As to the tea, a national drink that can be grown domestically would make more sense. :eek:

Beer
 
Corelli Barnett's Audit of War paints a prety bad picture of British industrial performance prior to WW2. Anything which can lift this performance is a good thing, both for beating Hitler and remaining a great power after the war.
 
As to the tea, a national drink that can be grown domestically would make more sense. :eek:

Beer

I think you will find it already exists, tea is now grown in Cornwall apparently the conditions match the best high altitude plantations in India.

Prefer a pint of Real Ale myself though, I am with Benjamin Franklin

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy
 
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