Some of the new techs, like the new assembly lines, required largely unskilled labor. Others, such as petrochemicals, demanded people who really knew what they were doing, because, you know, explosions.
This passage stuck out to me because my father was a petroleum engineer with Royal Dutch Shell in the 1950s, and he developed the safety procedures for Shell’s refineries that effectively stopped accidental explosions. Shell sent him around the world to teach the other plant managers how to implement the new safety protocols, and while he was teaching in London he met the woman who became my mother.
