Re: [Leica] Red River Leica Glass & Ford Blood

["Bryan Willman" <bryanwi@seanet.com>]

YowZa.

I really started a tangent this time.

In the interest of those who are wondering what
Rouge River was...

(all from memory, better histories easily at hand...)

From sometime after the 1st World War on,
the Rouge River plant was the largest, most
integrated auto plant in the world.  They processed
iron ore into iron (and I think steel), pretty
raw timber into wooden parts, and so on.
It was important for being a huge integrated
facility that could make cars very cheaply.
It was the exact opposite of the outsourcing
and specialization used today.

It was also, by all accounts I've seen, an inhumane
place to work.  Not only were employees turned
into machines in a rather fast paced assembly
line, but a private security force enforced lots
of rude rules.  (Men wrote of being fired because
they were caught sleeping in the bathrooms
while *on their break*)

And, when a group of men later went to
one of the gates to simply *ask* for support
in a time of unemployment, the guards
shot at them.  Bloody labor disputes followed.
The violence was NOT the beginning of 
trouble or harshness at Rouge River, but
it certainly attracted lots of attention.

The relevence to the Leica glass discussion
was simply that "totally vertically integrated"
versus "outsourced and specialized" doesn't
make much difference to the end user, it's
delivered quality that counts.   It was a
sort of counter example made in passing.
I still claim that whether Leica made their
own glass or bought it from some speciality
maker isn't very important.  They might have
gotten as good or better results with glass
from outside suppliers.

bmw