Riveras admiration for Stalin was equaled only by his admiration for Henry Ford. By the 1920s and 30s, nearly every industrial country in Europe and Latin America, as well as the Soviet Union, had adopted Fords engineering and manufacturing methods: his highly efficient assembly line to increase production and reduce the cost of automobiles, so that the working class could at least afford to own a car; his total control over all the manufacturing and production processes by concentrating them all in one place, from the gathering of raw materials to orchestrating the final assembly; and his integration, training, and absolute control of the workforce. Kahn, the architect of Fords factories, subsequently constructed hundreds of factories on the model of the Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, which was the epicenter of Fords industrial acumen as well as a world-wide symbol of future technology. Such achievements led Rivera to regard Detroits industry as the means of transforming the proletariat to take the reins of economic production.
