Craft Labor and Mechanization in Nineteenth-Century American Canning

Author:

Brown Martin,Philips Peter

Abstract

The development of new machinery in nineteenth-century American canning followed two paths. Automative, labor-saving devices were developed to replace labor in unskilled tasks while deskilling, human-capital-saving machinery was designed to make craft labor more replaceable. Cannery operators appear to have focused on deskilling machinery as the key to greater managerial control over production. Craft workers through organizational power and pressing for higher wages seem to have stimulated the early and sustained search for deskilling machinery. Because human-capital-saving machinery allowed wage cuts, they could be adopted prior to their being used as labor-saving devices.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Subject

Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous),Economics and Econometrics,History

Reference36 articles.

1. Judge Edward S. , “The Past, Present and Future of the Canning Industry,” p. 56. These data for one tomato cannery are consistent with the recollections of the Canning Trade editor, Edward Judge. When Judge stated that Cox's cappers could do no more work than the “ordinary man” but when “properly served and operated” cut capping costs by “about one-third,” Judge was confirming the findings in Tables 1 and 2. Capper productivity, if anything, remains constant after mechanization, but because wages fell from $3.00 to $1.44 per day, total unit costs (allowing for the cost and durability of Cox's capper) probably fell by Judge's assertion of “about one-third.” An 1885 Maryland report on the effects of can-making machinery on wages and productivity is also consistent with these data for one tomato cannery.

2. Underwood W. Lyman , “Incidents in the Canning Industry of New England,” in A. Judge, History of the Canning Trade, p. 13. Underwood was a professor at MIT in the 1890s and a relative of the first American canner, William Underwood. Lyman Underwood along with S. C. Prescott helped pioneer university study of the canning processing techniques. The mid-1890s saw the first American scientific study of why the canning process worked.

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