The municipal reform ethos imported empiricism and scientific management from industry

Evidence

But this trio—known among reformers as “the ABC”—added to the reform ethos new elements derived from two other passions of the era, natural science and scientific management. The emphasis of natural science on empiricism, on firsthand observation, on the obtaining of facts, led them to conclude that it was vain to talk about changing the philosophy of government before learning the facts of government, and they said therefore that the first step toward reform should be analysis of government operations. From scientific management—the age was marveling at the assembly-line techniques introduced by Henry Ford—they concluded that after government operations had been analyzed, the next step should be not a change in philosophy but an improvement in such operations to make them “efficient” and “economic,” to insure that the city would get far more for each dollar spent than in the past, and would therefore be financially more able to do what the voters desired. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 255

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what distinguished the Bureau of Municipal Research’s program from older reform sentiment: facts and efficiency instead of philosophy.
• XREF: connects to: Municipal government was the focal point of Progressive reform energy — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 252; Science is subordinated to industry within the social division of labor; Structural urban change arrived bundled with industrial and political revolution — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 303 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Structural urban change arrived bundled with industrial and political revolution #corroborates (0.78) — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 303
• Science is subordinated to industry within the social division of labor #expands (0.75)
• 1930s planning consensus elevated bureaucracies and the M-form over individual entrepreneurship #corroborates (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 271