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Production Relations, Labor Productivity, and Choice of Technique: British and U.S. Cotton Spinning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

William H. Lazonick
William H. Lazonick
Affiliation:
Department of Economics at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138.
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Extract

The role of capital-labor relations in the transformation of inputs into output is central to the Marxian theory of capitalist development but is neglected by neoclassical theory. By comparing the development of cotton spinning in Britain and the U.S. in the last half of the nineteenth century, this paper analyzes the ways in which capital-labor relations affected the level and structure of wages, labor productivity, and choice of technique. This case study demonstrates the descriptive and predictive limitations of the neoclassical theory of choice of technique while at the same time pointing the way towards the development of a more incisive, and historically relevant, theory.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 491 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1981

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References

He wishes to thank Stephen Marglin, who offered considerable advice that helped to improve the analysis presented here. The author also benefited from discussions with Thomas Brush, Robert McCauley, and William Mass as well as from a number of suggestions made by participants at the Cliometrics Conference, University of Chicago, May 1980. The comments of an anonymous referee were extremely useful in compelling the author to clarify his arguments. Thomas Brush provided research assistance. This paper is based upon research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES 78–25671 and by a grant-in-aid from the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum. A related paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, September 1980 in Boston and was published in this JOURNAL in March 1981.Google Scholar

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4 See Lazonick, William H., “Industrial Relations and Technical Change: The Case of the Self-Acting Mule,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 3 (09 1979), 236–37.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., pp. 238–45.

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16 See e.g. CFT, 16 March 1888.Google Scholar

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21 Lintner, “Social History,” ch. 3; Silvia, Philip T. Jr “The Spindle City: Labor, Politics and Religion in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1870–1905” (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1973), chs. 3–4;Google ScholarHoward, “Progress,” pp. 219–33; Mass. BSL, 11th Report, pp. 30, 36–42, 53–63; Mass. BSL, 13th Report, pp. 201–07.Google Scholar

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27 Mosely Industrial Commission to the United States of America, October-December 1902, Reports of the Delegates (n.p., n.d.), p. 126.Google Scholar

28 See Pollard, Sidney, The Genesis of Modern Management (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp. 51–66;Google ScholarHobsbawm, Labouring Men, pp. 297–300;Google ScholarButtrick, John, “The Inside Contract System,” this JOURNAL, 7 (Summer 1952), 205–21;Google ScholarMontgomery, David, Workers' Control in America (New York, 1979), ch. 2.Google Scholar

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30 See Lazonick, “Industrial Relations,” pp. 242–46.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., pp. 236–46.

32 CFT, 1 May 1885, 12 Feb. 1886, 26 Feb. 1886, 3 March 1894, 21 Dec. 1894, 19 Nov. 1897;Google ScholarLomax, J. W., Fine Cotton Spinning (Manchester, 1913), p. 116.Google Scholar

33 CFT, 13 Feb. 1885;Google ScholarCatling, Harold, The Spinning Mule (Newton Abbott, 1970), p. 149.Google Scholar

34 See Lazonick, “Industrial Relations,” pp. 248–50; Chapman, “Some Policies.”Google Scholar

35 Taggart, William S., Cotton Mill Management: A Practical Guide for Managers, Carders and Over-lookers (London, 1923), pp. xix–xx.Google Scholar

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37 Jewkes and Gray, Wages and Labour, p. 16; Hobsbawm, Labouring Men, pp. 286–87.Google Scholar

38 CFT, 13 March 1885, 3 April 1885, 20 Nov. 1885, 11 May 1888, 22 June 1888, 6 July 1888, 7 Dec. 1888, 22 May 1891, 7 Dec. 1894;Google Scholar“Trade Union Problems,” Journal of the National Federation of Textile Works Managers Associations, 5 (1925–1926), pp. 36–37.Google Scholar

39 See Taylor, Frederick W., Scientific Management (New York, 1947), pp. 79–85;Google ScholarWhyte, William F., Money and Motivation (New York, 1955);Google ScholarBrown, Geoff, Sabotage (Nottingham, 1977), Parts II and III;Google ScholarMathewson, Stanley, Restriction of Output among Unorganized Workers (New York, 1931);Google ScholarStone, Katherine, “Origins of Job Structures in the Steel Industry,” Review of Radical Political Economics, 6 (Summer 1974);Google ScholarNelson, Daniel, Managers and Workers (Madison, 1975), pp. 45–46;Google ScholarMontgomery, Workers' Control, ch. 1; U.S., Commissioner of Labor, Eleventh Annual Report, “Regulation and Restriction of Output” (Washington, 1904).Google Scholar

40 See e.g. CFT, 2 March 1894, 13 Nov. 1905.Google Scholar

41 CFT, 4 Dec. 1885; Smith, “Lancashire Cotton Industry,” pp. 392–93; Jewkes and Gray, Wages and Labour, p. 205.Google Scholar

42 See Lazonick, “Industrial Relations,” p. 253; Wood, History of Wages, p. 141;Google ScholarJones, G. T., Increasing Return (Cambridge, 1933), p. 277;Google ScholarAshton, T[homas] S., “The Growth of Textile Businesses in the Oldham District, 1884–1924,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 88 (1926), 573;Google ScholarLazonick, “Factor Costs,” pp. 92–104.Google Scholar

43 For an extensive analysis of the trends in cotton spinning productivity see Lazonick, William H. and Mass, William, “Productivity in the British Cotton Industry, 1870–1940,” photocopy (Harvard University, Sept. 1980).Google Scholar

44 Wood, History of Wages, pp. 53–54.Google Scholar

45 See e.g., CFT, 25 Dec. 1885, 23 Nov. 1888, 14 Dec. 1888, 4 Jan. 1889, 9 Jan. 1891, 1 Jan. 1897. See also Porter, “Industrial Peace”; Smith, “Lancashire Cotton Industry,” pp. 271ff, 394–95, 458–78;Google ScholarWhite, Joseph L., The Limits of Trade Union Militancy: The Lancashire Textile Workers, 1910–1914 (Westport, CT, 1978), pp. 212–15.Google Scholar

46 In 1889 the spinners' union observed: “Some few years ago we noticed that the great majority of our disputes were due to old machinery. Last year the majority were owing to bad work.” Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners, Annual Report for Year Ending December 31, 1888 (Manchester, 1889), p. 14.Google Scholar

47 Porter, “Industrial Peace,” pp. 51, 53; Smith, “Lancashire Cotton Industry,” pp. 458–78; Wiggins, “Cotton Industry,” pp. 230–32; CFT, 22 Jan. 1897.Google Scholar

48 Porter, “Industrial Peace,” pp. 52–57;Google Scholarsee also Dyson, Roger F., “The Development of Collective Bargaining in the Cotton Spinning Industry 1893–1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of Leeds, 1971).Google Scholar

49 Smith, “Lancashire Cotton Industry,” p. 459; CFT, 15 Jan. 1889.Google Scholar

50 Mass. BSL, 11th Report, p. 7.Google Scholar

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52 CFT, 26 March 1886; Mosely, Reports, pp. 125–28;Google ScholarYoung, T. M., The American Cotton Industry (London, 1902), pp. 15, 44;Google ScholarUttley, T. W., Cotton Spinning and Manufacturing in the United States of America (Manchester, 1903), pp. 16, 32, 35, 38;Google ScholarBolton and District Managers and Overlookers' Association, Report of Delegates on American Tour (Bolton, 1920), pp. 75–79.Google Scholar

53 Mosely, Reports, p. 126.Google Scholar

54 Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners, Annual Report, 31 Dec. 1903.Google Scholar

55 I am grateful to lain Murton of Cambridge University for personal communication on the mobility of mule spinners and other related issues; Uttley, Cotton Spinning, p. 27; Young, American Cotton Industry, p. 12; Bolton and District Association, Report, p. 80.Google Scholar

56 Silvia, “Spindle City.” pp. 265–68; Lintner, “Social History,” pp. 62, 119, 139;Google ScholarGarraty, John A., ed., Labor and Capital in the Gilded Age (Boston, 1968), pp. 33–36.Google Scholar

57 Fall River versus the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics(Fall River, 1882), p. 8.Google Scholar

58 Textile Manufacturer, 15 July 1884; New England Cotton Manufacturers Association (henceforth NECMA), Transactions, 21 (1879), p. 40; CFT, 1 March 1886; Mosely, Reports, pp. 127–29; Uttley, Cotton Spinning, p. 13; Young, American Cotton Industry, p. 12;Google ScholarCopeland, Melvin T., The Cotton Manufacturing Industry of the United States (Cambridge, MA, 1912), p. 61;Google Scholarwinterbottom, James, Cotton Spinning, Calculations and Yarn Costs, 2nd ed., (London, 1921), p. 204.Google Scholar

59 See Mass, William, “The Adoption of the Automatic Loom,” photocopy (Harvard University, 04 1980); Lazonick and Mass, “Productivity,” pp. 22–31.Google Scholar

60 See footnote 39 above for evidence on this restrictive behavior drawn from a number of industries. No detailed study of this phenomenon exists for Fall River mule spinning rooms. Thomas Brush has found ample evidence, however, of piece-rate cuts accompanying increases in productivity in an antebellum Lowell weave room along with the development of restrictive psychology on the part of the workers. See Brush, Thomas, “Lawrence Mill, #2, Upper Weave Room, 1834–1855: The Nature of the Labor Force and its Relation to Productivity,” photocopy (Harvard University, 04 1981).Google Scholar

61 Copeland, Cotton Manufacturing, p. 184; see also Silvia, “Spindle City”, p. 603.Google Scholar

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63 Based on average hourly earnings in 1891 and 1897, the wages of a Massachusetts mule spinner were 32 percent and 44 percent greater than those of an Oldham minder and 174 percent and 203 percent greater than those of an Oldham big piecer. Mass. BSL, Twenty-Seventh Annual Report (Boston, 1898), p. 6;Google ScholarWood, History of Wages, p. 54.Google Scholar

64 Unit labor cost figures were derived from the sources cited in notes 61 and 62. For data on cotton prices by grade and staple length, see Winterbottom, Cotton Spinning, p. 232ff.Google Scholar

65 See Lazonick, “Factor Costs”; idem., “Competition.” A detailed and, in some ways pioneering, neoclassical analysis of the rings versus mules question can be found in Sandberg, Lars, Lancashire in Decline (Columbus, 1974), chs. 2–3.Google Scholar

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67 For more discussion on this point, see Lazonick, “Industrial Relations,” pp. 256–57.Google Scholar

68 See e.g., CFT, 17 April 1885, 31 Dec. 1886; Webb and Webb, Industrial Democracy, pp. 424–25.Google Scholar

69 While ignoring the relative magnitudes of unit cotton-cost differentials in the two countries, Sandberg and, following him, Harley have argued that it was the higher unit labor-cost differentials of mule yarn over ring yarn in the United States as compared to Britain that accounts for the relatively rapid diffusion of ring spinning in New England. Sandberg, Lancashire, ch. 2;Google ScholarHarley, C. K., “Skilled Labour and the Choice of Technique in Edwardian Industry,” Explorations in Economic History, 11 (Summer 1974), p. 399. Sandberg, however, overestimates the unit labor costs on mules in both countries as well as output per spindle on ring-frames in the United States, and as a result overstates the relative unit labor-cost advantage of rings in the U.S. When correct data are used, we find that, while the labor-cost saving of rings over mules favored the introduction of rings in both the United States and Britain, it was an insignificant factor in accounting for the differences in the rate of diffusion of the newer technology.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSee Lazonick, , “Factor Costs,” and productivity data in Whittam, William, Report on England's Cotton Industry (Washington, 1907), p. 19;Google ScholarMason Machine Works, Cotton Machinery (Taunton, MA, 1898), pp. 122–26;Google ScholarMosely, Reports, pp. 129–30.Google Scholar