The Technology Trap
Page 45
45. A. Ure, 1835, The Philosophy of Manufactures (London: Charles Knight), 20.
46. Quoted in P. Gaskell, 1833, The Manufacturing Population of England, 174.
47. The early jenny was “awkward” for adults but managed “with dexterity”’ by children ages 9–12 (M. Berg, 2005, The Age of Manufactures, 1700–1820: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain [London: Routledge], 146).
48. C. Tuttle, 1999, Hard at Work in Factories and Mines: The Economics of Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press), 110.
49. Ure, 1835, The Philosophy of Manufactures, 144.
50. On the upsurge in child labor, see Tuttle, 1999, Hard at Work in Factories and Mines, 96 and 142. See also Wallis, 2014, “Labour Markets and Training,” 193.
51. P. Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England, trans. M. Vernon (London: Routledge), 410.
52. Quoted in S. Smiles, 1865, Lives of Boulton and Watt (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott), 227. See also Mokyr, 2011, The Enlightened Economy, chapter 15.
53. Baines, 1835, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, 452.
54. L. Shaw-Taylor and A. Jones, 2010, “The Male Occupational Structure of Northamptonshire 1777–1881: A Case of Partial De-Industrialization?” (working paper, Cambridge University).
55. M. Berg, 1976, “The Machinery Question,” PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2.
56. Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 408.
57. Old Bailey Proceedings, 6th July 1768, Old Bailey Proceedings Online, version 8.0, 01 January 2019, www.oldbaileyonline.org.
58. On Limehouse, see Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 401–8.
59. Ibid.
60. T. C. Hansard, 1834, General Index to the First and Second Series of Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates: Forming a Digest of the Recorded Proceedings of Parliament, from 1803 to 1820 (New York: Kraus Reprint Co.).
61. R. Jackson, 1806, The Speech of R. Jackson Addressed to the Committee of the House of Commons Appointed to Consider of the State of the Woollen Manufacture of England, on Behalf of the Cloth-Workers and Sheermen of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Wiltshire, Somersetshire and Gloucestershire (London: C. Stower), 11.
62. Quoted in Mantoux, 1961, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 408.
63. J. Horn, 2008, The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750–1830 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), chapter 4, Kindle.
64. Annual Registrar or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature for the Year 1811, 1811 (London: printed for Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy), 292.
65. On Liverpool and Kenyon, see Berg, 1976, “The Machinery Question,” 76.
66. Horn, 2008, The Path Not Taken, chapter 4.
67. On the machines destroyed, see B. Caprettini and H. Voth, 2017, “Rage against the Machines: Labour-Saving Technology and Unrest in England, 1830–32” (working paper, University of Zurich).
68. E. Hobsbawm and G. Rudé, 2014, Captain Swing (New York: Verso), 265–79.
69. Caprettini and Voth, 2017, “Rage against the Machines.”
70. D. Acemoglu and P Restrepo, 2018a, “Artificial Intelligence, Automation and Work” (Working Paper 24196, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
71. Allen, 2009b, “Engels’ Pause.”
72. E. S. Phelps, 2015, Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 47.
73. Quoted in ibid., 46.
74. O. Galor, 2011, “Inequality, Human Capital Formation, and the Process of Development,” in Handbook of the Economics of Education, ed. Hanushek, E.A., Machin, S.J. and Woessmann, L. Amsterdam: Elsevier), 4:441–93.
75. For an overview of trends in human capital, see Wallis, 2014, “Labour Markets and Training,” 203.
76. M. Sanderson, 1995, Education, Economic Change and Society in England 1780–1870 (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press); D. F. Mitch, 1992, The Rise of Popular Literacy in Victorian England: The Influence of Private Choice and Public Policy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).
77. N. F. Crafts, 1985, British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 73.
78. Landes, 1969, The Unbound Prometheus, 340. David Mitch also shows that the jobs of the early Industrial Revolution did not require much education or even literacy (1992, The Rise of Popular Literacy in Victorian England). However, in the late nineteenth century, literacy became increasingly desirable, according to job advertisements (D. F. Mitch, 1993, “The Role of Human Capital in the First Industrial Revolution,” in The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective, ed. J. Mokyr [Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 241–80.]).
79. Tuttle, 1999, Hard at Work in Factories and Mines, 96 and 142; Wallis, 2014, “Labour Markets and Training,” 193.
80. C. Goldin and K. Sokoloff, 1982, “Women, Children, and Industrialization in the Early Republic: Evidence from the Manufacturing Censuses,” Journal of Economic History 42 (4): 741–74.
81. L. F. Katz and R. A. Margo, 2013, “Technical Change and the Relative Demand for Skilled Labor: The United States in Historical Perspective” (Working Paper 18752, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA), 3.
82. P. Gaskell, 1833, The Manufacturing Population of England, 182.
83. See G. Clark, 2005, “The Condition of the Working Class in England.”
84. However, the skill premium in itself is not necessarily suggestive of the demand for skills, as it also depends on supply factors: a skill premium will emerge only if the demand for human capital outpaces its supply. And the supply of skills increased throughout the century.
85. G. Clark, 2005. “The Condition of the Working Class in England.”
86. J. Bessen, 2015, Learning by Doing: The Real Connection between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), chapter 6.
87. Mokyr, 2011, The Enlightened Economy, chapter 15.
88. See D. H. Aldcroft and M. J. Oliver, 2000, Trade Unions and the Economy: 1870–2000, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing).
Part 3
Epigraph: The second epigraph is from P. Zachary, 1996, “Does Technology Create Jobs, Destroy Jobs, or Some of Both?,” Wall Street Journal, June 17.
1. J. Horn, 2008, The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750–1830 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
2. On guild restrictions in Prussia, see T. Lenoir, 1998, “Revolution from Above: The Role of the State in Creating the German Research System, 1810–1910,” American Economic Review 88 (2): 22–27.
3. On education and industrialization in Prussia, see S. O. Becker, E. Hornung, and L. Woessmann, 2011, “Education and Catch-Up in the Industrial Revolution,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 3 (3): 92–126.
4. On catch-up growth, see A. Gerschenkron, 1962, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press).
5. P. H. Lindert, 2004, Growing Public), vol. 1, The Story: Social Spending and Economic Growth Since the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), table 1.2.
6. M. Alexopoulos and J. Cohen, 2016, “The Medium Is the Measure: Technical Change and Employment, 1909–1949,” Review of Economics and Statistics 98 (4): 792–810.
7. D. Acemoglu and P. Restrepo, 2018b, “The Race between Man and Machine: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares, and Employment,” American Economic Review 108 (6): 1489
Chapter 6
1. Quoted in G. Tucker, 1837, The Life of Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States: With Parts of His Correspondence Never Before Published, and Notices of His Opinions on Questions of Civil Government, National Policy, and Constitutional Law (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard), 2:226.
3. E. W. Byrn, 1900, The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Munn and Company), 1.
4. R. J. Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 150.
5. D. Hounshell, 1985, From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press), 307.
6. Ibid.
7. Quoted in B. Bryson, 2010, At Home: A Short History of Private Life (Toronto: Doubleday Canada), 29.
8. N. Rosenberg, 1963, “Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry, 1840–1910,” Journal of Economic History 23 (4): 414–43.
9. Quoted in D. Hounshell, 1985, From the American System to Mass Production, 19.
10. Ibid., 17–19.
11. Quoted in ibid., 233.
12. On electricity and working conditions, see D. E. Nye, 1990, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 232.
13. Quoted in T. C. Martin, 1905, “Electrical Machinery, Apparatus, and Supplies,” in Census of Manufactures, 1905 (Washington, DC: United States Bureau of the Census), 170.
14. P.A. David and G. Wright, 1999, Early Twentieth Century Productivity Growth Dynamics: An Inquiry into the Economic History of Our Ignorance (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
15. E. Clark, 1925, “Giant Power Transforming America’s Life,” New York Times, February 22.
16. Ibid.
17. V. Smil, 2005, Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867–1914 and Their Lasting Impact (New York: Oxford University Press), 53.
18. Nye, 1990, Electrifying America, 232.
19. P. A. David, 1990, “The Dynamo and the Computer: An Historical Perspective on the Modern Productivity Paradox,” American Economic Review 80 (2): 355–61.
20. W. D. Devine Jr., 1983, “From Shafts to Wires: Historical Perspective on Electrification,” Journal of Economic History 43 (2): 347–72.
21. H. Jerome, 1934, “Mechanization in Industry” (Working Paper 27, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA), 48.
22. D. E. Nye, 2013, America’s Assembly Line (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 23.
23. F. C. Mills, 1934, introduction to “Mechanization in Industry,” by H. Jerome (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research), xxi.
24. Jerome, 1934, “Mechanization in Industry,” 104–5.
25. Quoted in J. Greenwood, A. Seshadri, and M. Yorukoglu, 2005, “Engines of Liberation,” Review of Economic Studies 72 (1): 109.
26. Strasser, S. (1982). Never Done: A History of American Housework. (New York: Pantheon), 57.
27. Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth), 123.
28. Quoted in “Farm Woman Works Eleven Hours a Day,” 1920, New York Times, July 6.
29. Quoted in Nye, 1990, Electrifying America, 270.
30. J. Greenwood, A. Seshadri, and M. Yorukoglu, 2005, “Engines of Liberation,” Review of Economic Studies 72 (1): 109–33.
31. Calculations are based on the Muncie, Indiana, median family income level (see Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 121.)
32. “The Electric Home: Marvel of Science,” 1921, New York Times, April 10.
33. S. Lebergott, 1993, Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
34. V. A. Ramey, 2009, “Time Spent in Home Production in the Twentieth-Century United States: New Estimates from Old Data,” Journal of Economic History 69 (1): 1–47.
35. R. S. Cowan, 1983, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic).
36. “French’s Conical Washing Machine and Young Women at Service,” 1860, New York Times, August 29.
37. “New Rules for Servants: Pittsburgh Housekeepers Insist on a Full Day’s Work,” 1921, New York Times, January 16.
38. J. Mokyr, 2000, “Why ‘More Work for Mother?’ Knowledge and Household Behavior, 1870–1945,” Journal of Economic History 60 (1): 1–41.
39. Nye, 1990, Electrifying America, 18.
40. Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 227.
41. Greenwood, Seshadri, and Yorukoglu, 2005, “Engines of Liberation.”
42. V. E. Giuliano, 1982, “The Mechanization of Office Work,” Scientific American 247 (3): 148–65.
43. On the term “pink collar,” see A. J. Cherlin, 2013, Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation), 119.
44. A. J. Field, 2007, “The Origins of US Total Factor Productivity Growth in the Golden Age,” Cliometrica 1 (1): 89. See also A. J. Field, 2011, A Great Leap Forward: 1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
45. G. P. Mom and D. A. Kirsch, 2001, “Technologies in Tension: Horses, Electric Trucks, and the Motorization of American Cities, 1900–1925,” Technology and Culture 42 (3): 489–518.
46. Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 227.
47. In the period 1850–80, 80 percent of the residents of Philadelphia were still walking to work.
48. Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 56–57.
49. When the first issue of the periodical came out, the automobile industry was not even sufficiently important to be listed in the census under a separate heading.
50. G. Norcliffe, 2001, The Ride to Modernity: The Bicycle in Canada, 1869–1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
51. M. Twain, 1835, “Taming the Bicycle,” The University of Adelaide Library, last updated March 27, 2016, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/twain/mark/what_is_man/chapter15.html.
52. R. H. Merriam, 1905, “Bicycles and Tricycles,” in Census of Manufactures, 1905 (Washington, DC: United States Bureau of the Census), 289.
53. Daimler, for example, fitted his small air-cooled motor to a bicycle.
54. Quoted in Hounshell, 1985, From the American System to Mass Production, 214.
55. Martin, 1905, “Electrical Machinery, Apparatus, and Supplies,” 20.
56. Quoted in Hounshell, 1985, From the American System to Mass Production, 214.
57. K. Kaitz, 1998, “American Roads, Roadside America,” Geographical Review 88 (3): 372.
58. On automobiles and infrastructure in the U.S., see Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 156–59.
59. Quoted in ibid., 167.
60. In the words of Ralph Epstein, “It is sometimes said that the automobile has caused good roads; sometimes, that the construction of good roads has caused the great development of the automobile industry. Both statements are true; here, as so often in economic matters, cause and effect have constantly interacted” (1928, The Automobile Industry [Chicago: Shaw], 17).
61. J. J. Flink, 1988, The Automobile Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 33.
62. On the economics and adoption of the Model T, see Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 165.
63. Epstein, 1928, The Automobile Industry, 16.
64. Wayne Rasmussen writes: “In general the task for which steam engines proved to be most useful was threshing grain. The engines were too heavy and cumbersome for most other farm work. The peak in the manufacture of steam engines for agriculture came in 1913, when 10,000 of them were made” (1982, “The Mechanization of Agriculture,” Scientific American 247 [3]: 82).
65. On tractor adoption, see R. E. Manuelli and A. Seshadri, 2014, “Frictionless Technology Diffusion: The Case of Tractors,” American Economic Review 104 (4): 1368–91.
66. W. J. White, 2001, “An Unsung Hero: The Farm Tractor’s Contribution to Twentieth-Century United States Economic Growth” (PhD diss., Ohio State University).
67. One of the most important
changes for farmers was the operation of highway common carriers, which transported the major portion of milk to the cities and covering distances of up to seventy miles (see International Chamber of Commerce, 1925, “Report of the American Committee on Highway Transport, June, 1925” [Washington, D.C.: American Section, International Chamber of Commerce], 5).
68. On the widening radius of farm operations, see H. R. Tolley and L. M. Church, 1921, “Corn-Belt Farmers’ Experience with Motor Trucks,” United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 931, February 25.
69. Field, 2011, A Great Leap Forward, table 2.5 and table 2.6.
70. The idea that military research and development during World War II had substantial positive effects that drove American productivity during the subsequent decades remains controversial but is at odds with evidence provided by indicators of technological progress. The number of new technology books did not exceed its 1941 level until the late 1950s (M. Alexopoulos and J. Cohen, 2011, “Volumes of Evidence: Examining Technical Change in the Last Century through a New Lens,” Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue Canadienne d’économique 44 [2]: 413–50). The military buildup, which gained traction only after Pearl Harbor, was attacked in December 1941, was thus seemingly accompanied by a slowdown in innovation as productive resources were allocated to the American war machine.
71. For an overview of advances in trucking and other transportation technologies in the early twentieth century, see W. Owen, 1962, “Transportation and Technology,” American Economic Review 52 (2): 405–13.
72. Quoted in R. F. Weingroff, 2005, Designating the Urban Interstates, Federal Highway Administration Highway History, https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/fairbank.cfm.