This chapter traces mass production to its beginnings in the United States, where it emerged from the distinctive ideology of Midwestern populism. Why did Detroit, of all places, pioneer the industry that would shape the twentieth century like no other? Was Detroit simply lucky, as it were, to count a Henry Ford and a Ransom Olds among its citizens — incarnations of the American genius for innovation and entrepreneurship? Figures like Ford and Olds acted within the political economy of the Midwest and shared the characteristic populist commitments that suffused the region. These two factors — political economy and political ideology — go a long way toward explaining why, at the turn of the twentieth century, southeastern Michigan was in an auspicious position to get ahead of rapid technological developments and to spread its fruits widely. Experts with machines and metal, Midwestern mechanics gave their producerism a characteristic technological spin. This kind of producer populism permeated Detroit politics. The chapter then looks at a series of very different conflicts which honed Henry Ford's conviction that automotive mass production should reflect a producer-populist orientation.