Today in class we looked through two major wars in American history and how they affected American life and the efficiency movement.

First we did a basic introduction to the Cold War, one I don’t feel the need to repeat. It was more interesting when we went into the military-industrial complex. While World War I gave us the modern managerial state, World War II gave us the national-security state: a permanent war state on our shores. The war department became the defense department, the CIA was created, and the military budget grew beyond proportion to its new global mission. This of course created a huge bureaucracy, and the need for “information management”: the acquiring and organizing of information. The development of this kind of information management was closely linked to central planning.

We then moved back in time, to an older example. We discussed General Montgomery Meigs, the Army’s Quartermaster General during the Civil War. We learned how his methods of centrally planning army acquisition during the war, and his leadership of the soldier’s pensions bureau after the war (the beginning of the U.S. welfare state) was a stepping stone to modern information management. Meigs specifically designed a building in the capital to store a card catalogue system. I don’d think I dealt with that system outside of grade school but I do remember being taught about it during library sessions. The content I have no memory of because I didn’t even pay attention then, but I do remember the lessons happening.