alternatehistory.com


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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