Unskilled In The American Industrial Revolution

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The Skills of the Unskilled in the American Industrial Revolution By James Bessen* 2/02 Abstract: Were ordinary factory workers unskilled and was technology “de-skilling” during the Industrial Revolution? I measure foregone output to estimate the human capital investments in mule spinners and power loom tenders in ante-bellum Lowell. These investments rivaled those of craft apprentices. Although factory workers were unskilled in a sense, the implementation of this technology depended on the development of a labor force with substantial human capital. From 1834-55, firms made increasing investments in skill, allowing workers to tend more machines, thus raising labor productivity. This growing investment was motivated partly by changing…show more content…
1] succinctly summarizes the de-skilling hypothesis for the Industrial Revolution: new technology brought about “a substitution of mechanical devices for human skills” and “inanimate power—in particular, steam—took the place of human and animal strength.” By several measures, ordinary factory workers were unskilled. Compared to workers in craft and professional occupations, factory workers earned lower wages. Also, factory jobs did not require formal education, training periods were brief, factory work was monotonous and factory workers lacked both social status and market power. Thus a wide body of evidence supports deskilling as a description of the change in the nature of the labor supply. But the de-skilling hypothesis is also about technology. De-skilling technology implies that no significant investment in developing the skills of ordinary workers was required. Although millwrights and engineers needed new skills, the hypothesis implies that ordinary workers’ skills imposed no significant requirements on the adoption and implementation of this new technology. Technological change appears as an elite process, driven by inventors, entrepreneurs and a narrow stratum of supporting skilled craftsmen; the de-skilling hypothesis corresponds to the “heroic” view of invention. But far less evidence supports this aspect of the de-skilling hypothesis. At least since Adam Smith [1776], economists have recognized that factory workers develop skills on the…show more content…
From this perspective, the innovation of the power loom was a broad social process, driven by more than an elite of inventors and entrepreneurs. Previous researchers have explored human capital development in the factories. Boot [1995] obtains estimates of the human capital investments made by male workers in the Lancashire cotton industry. His estimates correspond quite closely with my estimates for male cotton mule spinners in Lowell in the 1840’s. However, in addition to this investment made by employees, I find a much larger investment made by employers in the human capital of their employees. Several researchers have studied the sustained rapid labor productivity growth at Lowell during the 1830s and 1840s [Davis and Stettler, 1966, McGouldrick, 1968, Zevin, 1975, David, 1975, Nickless, 1979, Williamson, 1972]. David and several others find strong growth in the multi-factor productivity residual, which David attributes to learning-by-doing. However, this learning effect could arise from worker skills or instead, as Zevin [1975, p. 5] suggests, from managerial or “organizational” learning. Using data on individual workers, I find that individual experience, and the associated human and physical capital investments, explain almost all of the growth in labor productivity. This implies that labor productivity grew over two decades as firms found ways to increase the skill level of the workforce. Other
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