The assembly line is a mixed blessing. While it allowed for items to be built with speed, and for cheaper, it reduces the laborer to a monkey, constantly repeating the same motion, day in day out, for years, assuming the job was kept for that long. The problem is division of labor ultimately reduced the role of the laborer as simply another cog, where the worker could be replaced according to the whims of the company.
Been reading John Ruskin or William Morris? If not then you should be.
I haven't read them, but I think I should now. I've always hated assembly line type of work, but Marx and John Zerzan wrote about it well.
You can get a few of Morris' essays in a Penguin Great Ideas edition ($8 on amazon). It's only short (c. 100 pages) and includes 'Useful Work v. Useless Toil', 'Gothic Architecture', 'The Lesser Arts', and 'How I Became a Socialist'. Morris wrote rather prodigiously I believe so there's plenty around. For Ruskin, I recommend his Seven Lamps of Architecture, but there is also a Penguin Great Ideas edition of 'On Art and Life' by him and I think you can also get 'The Lamp of Memory' (one of his seven lamps) too. Some of these are probably available to read online as well - googlebooks perhaps?
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