Pharoh, Pharoh

J.P. Morgan, in Ragtime, becomes infatuated with the work and personality of Henry Ford, thinking that he, "saw in Ford's use of men a reincarnation of Pharoism,"(109).    This struck me as an interesting way in which to consider entrepreneurship and capitalism, if viewing it from an unjust, cynical point of view (such that some of the Ragtime characters would likely consider it.) This goes along with the ideas of my previous post concerning hegemony, as Ford's assembly line and conception of mass production helped spur on the notion even further that anyone could work in business, despite the reality that skilled worker jobs were soon to be cut in favor of machinery and the unskilled worker on an assembly line.  Tateh discovers this himself, finding, “thus did the artist point his life along the lines of flow of American energy.  Workers would strike and die but in the streets of cities an entrepreneur could cook sweet potatoes in a bucket of hot coals and sell them for a penny or two”(102).   However, the reality is that only a few can succeed as entrepreneurs, and interestingly viewed as a form of Pharoism, these entrepreneurs control everyone else below them with the necessity of continual work in order to survive, as Ford did with his Model-Ts and Assembly Line, ultimately changing the face of American capitalism so that people fell into the pattern of unskilled workmanship, year by year making their ability to rise up in social class more difficult.   Thank you fictional J.P. Morgan for such a curious insight.