“Commercial Battles of Self-Support”: Concrete Construction and the Disabled World War I Veteran

Abstract:As the First World War drew to a close, its demobilization— or the redistribution of labor in the war’s aftermath— became a pressing question across industries in the United States, including the field of reinforced concrete construction. This essay explores an emerging conceptualization of disability in these years as it informed how other forms of work might be understood. A provocation by Albert Kahn (on the possibility of incorporating injured soldiers into the production of reinforced concrete) and the research of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (on concrete and on the retraining of disabled soldiers and workers) offer starting points in understanding a new economic subjectivity that was entailed in the work of industrial building.