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Managerial Employees in Anthracite, 1902: A Study in Occupational Mobility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2011
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- Copyright © The Economic History Association 1954
References
1 Several relevant papers are contained in recent issues of the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces. See also Davidson, Percy. E. and Anderson, H. Dewey, Occupational Mobility in an American Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1937);Google ScholarCenters, Richard, The Psychology of Social Classes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949);Google ScholarMiller, Delbert C. and Form, William H., Industrial Sociology (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951), pp. 668–76Google Scholar.
2 Miller, William, “American Historians and the Business Elite,” JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTCRY, IX (November 1949). 184–208;CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Miller, “Recruitment of the American Business Elite,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, LX1V (05 1950), 242–53;Google Scholar, Miller, “The Business Elite in Business Bureaucracies,” in , Miller, ed., Men in Business: Essays in the History of Entrepreneurship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 286–305:Google Scholar Frances W. Gregory and Irene D. Neu, “The American Industrial Elite in the 1870's,” in ibid., pp. 193–211.
3 An industry-wide strike in anthracite, involving more than 140,000 workers, began May 12, 1902. The strike was still in effect the following autumn, and a shortage of anthracite seemed imminent. President Roosevelt then appointed a seven-man commission to hear testimony on the dispute and recommend a settlement. The testimony of the managerial employees who appeared for the operators before the commission dealt chiefly with events from 1899 to 1902, focusing on the technology of anthracite production or on alleged insubordination by production workers. But many of these managerial employees, presumably in order to validate themselves as expert witnesses, gave outline sketches of their careers.
4 United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1945 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1949), Series G 13–18, p. 142.Google Scholar
5 For descriptions of the inside contract system in other industries, see Navin, Thomas R., The Whitin Machine Works since 1831 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), pp. 140–49;CrossRefGoogle ScholarButtrick, John, “The Inside Contract System,” The Journal of Economic History, XII (Summer 1952), 205–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Such as sinking shafts, driving gangways, robbing pillars, etc.
7 United States Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902–1903, Proceedings, XLVI, 7910. Copies of this mimeographed transcript may be found in the Library of Congress and in the United States Department of Labor Library.Google Scholar
8 Of the eighty-nine managerial and clerical employees to testify for the operators before the Commission of 1902–1903, not one bore a surname from eastern or southern Europe.—Ibid., passim.
9 Ibid., LIV, 9559, 9691–92; LV, 9787.
10 Warne, Frank Julian, The Slav Invasion and the Mine Workers (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1904), pp. 87–88.Google Scholar
11 See document labeled “German Copy,” no date, in John Mitchell Papers, Catholic University of America.
12 Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902–1903, Proceedings, XLVI, 7927–30.Google Scholar
13 One general superintendent testified: “Even in Lackawanna County two collieries adjoining each other are vastly different. Even gangways in the same vein, conditions are different; sometimes chambers in the same gangway have different conditions, the conditions are so varying that it would be impossible to make a uniform day rate for a miner.” Ibid., XXXVII, 6152.
14 This method of payment by the linear yard perhaps needs some explanation. The usual width of a chamber was twenty-four feet, and the depth of the excavation was squared off and measured each payday. Thus the miner was actually paid according to the cubic feet of coal he had mined, whether it was loaded immediately or not. This system was used in areas where the veins of coal pitched steeply. la these cases, much of the coal could not be removed until the chamber was worked out, because the miner stood on the loose coal to reach the face of the workings and because removal of the loose coal would hinder the movement of fresh air up to the face.
15 Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902–1903, Proceedings, XL, 6746–48, 6791–92.Google Scholar
16 For the relevant testimony, see ibid., XXXI, 4917–51, 4974–80, 5025–28, 5031–41, 5041–53, 5053–62; XXXIV, 5542–58, 5558–79, 5579–5601, 5603–21, 5615–31; XXXVIII, 638081, 6395, 6416–17, 6429; XL, 6702–3; XLI, 6905–6, 6938–41; XLII, 7106, 7111–12. 7114–5; XLV, 7790–91, 779½–97, 7801–2; XLVII, 8110.
17 United States Geological Survey, 22nd Annual Report, 1900–1901 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1902), Part III, p. 98.Google Scholar
18 Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902–1903, Proceedings, XLVI, 7592, 7574–75.Google Scholar
19 Ibid., XXXIV, 5541–58; XLI, 6905–6.
20 Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902–1903, Proceedings, XXX, 4725–26.Google Scholar
21 Ibid., XXXI, 4897.
22 In the Reading company, as noted above, these men were called “district superintendents” and “division superintendents.” They were designated by other titles in other companies. But for simplicity of exposition a single term was needed, and the writer arbitrarily fixed on the word “supervisor.”
23 For the relevant testimony, see ibid., XXXIII, 5401–4, 5430–38; XXXIV, 5523–42; XXXV, 5741–44, 5839–41; XXXVI, 5917–20, 5937–40, 5967–70, 5981–6000; XXXVIII, 6293–94, 6454; XXXIX, 6461, 6464–65, 6629–31; XL, 6661, 6782–83; XLV, –7677–78; XLVI, 7925–27 7997–98, 8010; XLVII, 8118–19, 8136,8139.
24 The Reading company, which employed nearly 20 per cent of the industry's labor force, had only fourteen employees at this level of management. The smaller one-mine companies, constituting together a substantial part of the industry, had none at all. Therefore the estimated total of 100 supervisors seems quite liberal.
25 For the relevant testimony, see Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1901–1903, Proceedings XXX, 4720, 4729–30, 4732;Google Scholar XXXII, 5235–37; XXXIII, 5363–64. 5375. 5381; XXXIV, 5470–5523; XXXVI, 6007–9; XXXIX, 6564b, 6591–92; XL, 6652–53, 6762–63; XLI, 6844–46. 6864, 7003, 7043, 7067; XLHI, 7320–21, 7343; XLV, 7613–14. 7628, 7661, 7674; XLVI, 7820–21.
26 The seven men are Baer, George F., Fowler, Thomas P., Markle, John, Olyphant, Robert M., Thomas, Eben B., Truesdale, William H., and Walter, Alfred. The following analysis is based on biographical data given in Who's Who in America, 1903–1905; Who Was Who in America, 1897–1942; Biographical Directory of the Railway Officials of America, Edition of 1906 (Chicago: Railway Age, 1906);Google Scholar obituaries in the New York, Times, April 27, 1914, p. 11, col. 3 (of Baer), September 5, 1919, p. 11, col. I (of Thomas); A Century of Progress: History of the Delaware and Hudson Company, 1823–1923 (Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1925), pp. 161–63, 232–33, 279, 285. 325 (Olyphant);Google ScholarSpence, Robert J., ed., John Markle: Representative American (New York: Leonard Scott Publication Co., 1929)Google Scholar.
27 Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902–1903, Proceedings, XXX, 4724.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., XXXIII, 5303.
29 For similar conclusions, sec the articles by Miller, and by Gregory and Neu, cited in footnote 2 above; , Davidson and , Anderson, Occupational Mobility, especially pp. 164, 169, 184–85;Google Scholar, Miller and , Form, Industrial Sociology, pp. 675–76;Google ScholarMoore, Wilbert E., Industrial Relations and the Social Order (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1946), pp. 486–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Anthracite Coal Strike Commission, 1902–1903, Proceedings, XLII, 7164–68.Google Scholar
31 This estimate was made as follows: From 1881 to 1902, there were about five occupational fatalities per year for each 1,000 300-day employees.—United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Series G 144–58, p. 154. This figure has been projected backward to 1865, since there is no reason to think that the fatality rate was lower from 1865 to 1880 than from 1881 to 1902. We have assumed that the 200 employees in the sample, fronr 1865 to 1902, have worked on the average fifteen 300-day years. The entire 200 have then worked 3,000 300-day years in the anthracite industry. The occupational fatalities in the group would be fifteen men for the period 1865–1902.