ine would be identical to the previous one.
However, the fact that the country was now capable of producing goods faster and more efficiently than in the past did not mean that there was an immediate market for those goods. After all, if consumers were working 12-hour days for only substandard wages (even if those wages represented an increase over what they might have made in an agricultural setting), they would have no leisure time in which to purchase or use the new goods which they helped to manufacture.
This issue of creating a culture where consumerism is viewed as a positive factor is introduced and explored by Ewen, who suggests that Henry Ford's introduction of the five dollar per workday wage was in part to help his workers afford the relatively expensive automobiles on which they worked. By resorting to a standardized workday with standardized wages, Ford was not acting in an altruistic sense in order to provide his workers with a higher quality of life, but in a selfish way to help foster a consumer market so that Ford (and other industrialists) could create a consumer class in the wider culture (Ewen 29).
In creating a shorter workday, captains of industry created more leisure time, and l
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