Three jobs came to my mind that existed much after 1940's. Toyota, Trader Joes, and Apple Inc.
Pre-Industrial
Work: Daily life in pre-industrial
times changed very little for Europeans. Almost all people lived and worked in
the country. From 1300 to 1750, for the average peasant, people’s work and
social life mixed, as families lived on small plots of land, growing crops
mostly for home consumption. Children learned to milk cows, churn butter, and
tend to farm animals. Generation after generation, rural families relied on
tools that had changed little over the centuries, such as wooden plows
dependent on beasts of burden to pull them.
Trader Joes Inc: today’s modern day industrial job and provider.
Provides fresh farm raised meats as well as produce, in grocery stores to the
public.
Chain grocery retailing was a phenomenon that took off around the beginning of the twentieth century, and other small, regional players. Grocery stores of this era tended to be small (generally less than a thousand square feet) and also focused on only one aspect of food retailing. Grocers (and most of the chains fell into this camp) sold what is known as “dry grocery” items, or canned goods and other non-perishable staples. Butchers and greengrocers (produce vendors) were completely separate entities, although they tended to cluster together for convenience’s sake.
The Transition
from feudalism to proto-industrialization: The concept of proto-industrialization became an influential one in
economic history in the 1970s and 1980s. The term refers to a system of rural
manufacture that was intermediate between autarchic feudal production and
modern urban factory production. Variously described as rural manufacturing,
domestic manufacture, cottage industry, and a "putting-out" system,
it was a dispersed system of production that used traditional methods of
production and extensive low-paid rural labor to produce goods for the market,
both domestic and international. Unlike modern capitalist manufacturing,
proto-industrialization did not depend on rising labor productivity as a source
of higher profits; instead, merchants increased the scale of their businesses
by extending production to additional households and workers.
Toyota Inc. This changed society to another level. The ability
transporting goods in vehicles that get you to where you need to be faster.
Factories and
technological change: New techniques and technologies in agriculture paved the wave for
change. Increasing amounts of food were produced over the century, ensuring
that enough was available to meet the needs of the ever-growing population. A
surplus of cheap agricultural labor led to severe unemployment and rising
poverty in many rural areas. As a result, many people left the countryside to
find work in towns and cities. So the scene was set for a large-scale, labor-intensive
factory system.
APPLE INC. would be an example of today’s modern
industry. The company changed the world.For more than three decades, Apple Computer was predominantly a manufacturer of personal computers, including the Apple II, Macintosh and Power Maclines but it faced rocky sales and low market share during the 1990s. Jobs, who had been ousted from the company in 1985, returned to Apple in 1996 after his company NeXt was bought by Apple. The following year he became the company's interim CEO, which later became permanent. Jobs subsequently instilled a new corporate philosophy of recognizable products and simple design, starting with the orignal Imac in 1998.
