73. M. I. Nadiri and T. P. Mamuneas, 1994, “Infrastructure and Public R&D Investments, and the Growth of Factor Productivity in U.S. Manufacturing Industries” (Working Paper 4845, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
74. D. M. Bernhofen, Z. El-Sahli, and R. Kneller, 2016, “Estimating the Effects of the Container Revolution on World Trade,” Journal of International Economics 98: 36–50.
75. G. Horne, 1968, “Container Revolution Hailed by Many, Feared by Others,” New York Times, September 22.
76. Ibid.
77. “The Humble Hero: Containers Have Been More Important for Globalisation Than Freer Trade,” 2013, Economist, May 18, https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2013/05/18/the-humble-hero.
78. R. H. Richter, 1958, “Dockers Demand Container Curbs,” New York Times, November 27.
79. Ibid.
80. On the federal court’s dismissal, see D. F. White, 1976, “High Court Review Sought in Case Involving Jobs for Longshoremen,” New York Times, October 17.
81. Jerome, 1934, “Changes in Mechanization,” 152.
82. J. Lee, 2014, “Measuring Agglomeration: Products, People, and Ideas in U.S. Manufacturing, 1880–1990” (working paper, Harvard University).
83. Ibid.
84. Alexopoulos and Cohen, 2016, “The Medium Is the Measure.”
85. D. L. Lewis, 1986, “The Automobile in America: The Industry,” Wilson Quarterly 10 (5): 50.
Chapter 7
1. W. Green, 1930, “Labor Versus Machines: An Employment Puzzle,” New York Times, June 1.
2. F. Engels, [1844] 1943, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844. Reprint, London: Allen & Unwin, 100.
3. A keyword search for “technological unemployment” in the New York Times archives yields 13 hits in the 1920s and 356 in the 1930s, as the term became increasingly popular.
4. G. R. Woirol, 2006, “New Data, New Issues: The Origins of the Technological Unemployment Debates,” History of Political Economy 38 (3): 480.
5. J. J. Davis, 1927, “The Problem of the Worker Displaced by Machinery,” Monthly Labor Review 25 (3): 32.
6. Ibid.
7. Quoted in Woirol, 2006, “New Data, New Issues,” 481.
8. I. Lubin, 1929, The Absorption of the Unemployed by American Industry (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution), 6.
9. R. J. Myers, 1929, “Occupational Readjustment of Displaced Skilled Workmen,” Journal of Political Economy 37 (4): 473–89.
10. Another study by Ewan Clague and W. J. Couper of shutdowns of two rubber factories in New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut (closed in 1929 and 1930, respectively), further shows that the bulk of workers fared worse economically in their new jobs (1931, “The Readjustment of Workers Displaced by Plant Shutdowns,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 45 [2]: 309–46).
11. On mechanization in music, see H. Jerome, 1934, “Mechanization in Industry” (Working Paper 27, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA), chapter 4.
12. See Woirol, 2006, “New Data, New Issues.”
13. L. Wolman, 1933, “Machinery and Unemployment,” Nation, February 22, 202–4.
14. Quoted in “Technological Unemployment,” 1930, New York Times, August 12.
15. “Durable Goods Industries,” 1934, New York Times, July 16.
16. M. Alexopoulos and J. Cohen, 2016, “The Medium Is the Measure: Technical Change and Employment, 1909–1949,” Review of Economics and Statistics 98 (4): 793.
17. F. D. Roosevelt, 1940, “Annual Message to the Congress,” January 3, by G. Peters and J. T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-message-the-congress.
18. R. M. Solow, 1965, “Technology and Unemployment,” Public Interest 1 (Fall): 17.
19. A keyword search for the new expression in the New York Times archives yields no hits for the 1940s. But in the 1950s, “automation” appeared in 1,252 news stories.
20. See U.S. Congress, 1955, “Automation and Technological Change,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization of the Congressional Joint Committee on the Economic Report (84th Cong., 1st sess.), pursuant to sec. 5(a) of Public Law 304, 79th Cong. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office).
21. Quoted in E. Weinberg, 1956, “An Inquiry into the Effects of Automation,” Monthly Labor Review 79 (1): 7.
22. Quoted in ibid.
23. D. Morse, 1957, “Promise and Peril of Automation,” New York Times, June 9.
24. Ibid.
25. “Elevator Operator Killed,” 1940, New York Times, February 10.
26. “Elevator Units Fight Automatic Lift Ban,” 1952, New York Times, October 7.
27. “New Devices Gain on Elevator Men: Operators May Be Riding to Oblivion,” 1956, New York Times, May 27.
28. G. Talese, 1963, “Elevator Men Dwindle in City,” New York Times, November 30.
29. A. H. Raskin, 1961, “Fears about Automation Overshadowing Its Boons,” New York Times, April 7.
30. On fears about government jobs, see C. P. Trussell, 1960, “Government Automation Posing Threat to the Patronage System,” New York Times, September 14.
31. J. F. Kennedy, 1960, “Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Presidential Campaign Files, 1960. Speeches and the Press. Speeches, Statements, and Sections, 1958–1960. Labor: Meeting the Problems of Automation,” https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKCAMP1960/1030/JFKCAMP1960-1030-036.
32. President’s Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Policy, 1962, The Benefits and Problems Incident to Automation and Other Technological Advances (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), 2.
33. J. F. Kennedy, 1962, “News Conference 24,” https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-24.
34. L. B. Johnson, 1964,” Remarks Upon Signing Bill Creating the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress,” August 19, http://archive.li/F9iX8.
35. H. R. Bowen, 1966, Report of the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), xii.
36. Ibid., 9.
37. G. R. Woirol, 1980, “Economics as an Empirical Science: A Case Study” (working paper, University of California, Berkeley), 188.
38. G. R. Woirol, 2012, “Plans to End the Great Depression from the American Public,” Labor History 53 (4): 571–77.
39. W. A. Faunce, E. Hardin, and E. H. Jacobson, 1962, “Automation and the Employee,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 340 (1): 62.
40. F. C. Mann, L. K. Williams, 1960, “Observations on the Dynamics of a Change to Electronic Data-Processing Equipment,” Administrative Science Quarterly 5 (2): 255.
41. W. A. Faunce, 1958a, “Automation and the Automobile Worker,” Social Problems 6 (1): 68–78, and 1958b, “Automation in the Automobile Industry: Some Consequences for In-Plant Social Structure,” American Sociological Review 23 (4): 401–7.
42. C. R. Walker, 1957, Toward the Automatic Factory: A Case Study of Men and Machines (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 192.
43. Faunce, Hardin, and Jacobson, 1962, “Automation and the Employee,” 60.
Chapter 8
1. “Burning Farming Machinery,” 1879, New York Times, August 12.
2. D. Nelson, 1995, Farm and Factory: Workers in the Midwest, 1880–1990 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 18–19.
3. P. Taft and P. Ross, 1969, “American Labor Violence: Its Causes, Character, and Outcome,” in Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. H. D. Graham and T. R. Gurr (London: Corgi), 1:221–301.
4. B. E. Kaufman, 1982, “The Determinants of Strikes in the United States, 1900–1977,” ILR Review 35 (4): 473–90.
5. P. Wallis, 2014, “Labour Markets and Training,” in Tbe Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, vol. 1: Industrialisation, 1700–1870, ed. R. Floud, J. Humphries, and P. Johnson (Camb
ridge: Cambridge University Press), 186.
6. Quoted in D. Stetson, 1970, “Walter Reuther: Union Pioneer with Broad Influence Far beyond the Field of Labor,” New York Times, May 11.
7. H. J. Rothberg, 1960, “Adjustment to Automation in Two Firms,” in Impact of Automation: A Collection of 20 Articles about Technological Change, from the Monthly Labor Review (Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics), 86.
8. G. B. Baldwin and G. P. Schultz, 1960, “The Effects of Automation on Industrial Relations,” in Impact of Automation: A Collection of 20 Articles about Technological Change, from the Monthly Labor Review (Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics), 47–49; J. W. Childs and R. H. Bergman, 1960, “Wage-Rate Determination in an Automated Rubber Plant,” in ibid, 56–58; H. J. Rothberg, 1960, “Adjustment to Automation in Two Firms,” in ibid, 88–93.
9. U.S. Congress, 1984, “Computerized Manufacturing Automation: Employment, Education, and the Workplace,” No. 235 (Washington, DC: Office of Technology Assessment).
10. On improving working conditions, see 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), chapter 8.
11. R. Hornbeck, 2012, “The Enduring Impact of the American Dust Bowl: Short- and Long-Run Adjustments to Environmental Catastrophe,” American Economic Review 102 (4): 1477–507.
12. Ibid.
13. Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 270.
14. “Shocking Death in Machinery,” 1895, New York Times, May 23.
15. “The Calamity,” 1911, New York Times, March 26.
16. D. E. Nye, 1990, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 210.
17. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1960, D785, “Work-injury Frequency Rates in Manufacturing, 1926–1956,” and D.786–790, “Work-injury Frequency Rates in Mining, 1924–1956,” Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1960/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1957.html.
18. Quoted in A. H. Raskin, 1955, “Pattern for Tomorrow’s Industry?,” New York Times, December 18.
19. On automation and health, see O. R. Walmer, 1956, “Workers’ Health in an Era of Automation,” Monthly Labor Review 79 (7): 819–23.
20. Quoted in ibid, 821
21. U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1963, 1962 Agricultural Statistics (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office).
22. On motor vehicles and saved hours, see A. L. Olmstead and P. W. Rhode, 2001, “Reshaping the Landscape: The Impact and Diffusion of the Tractor in American Agriculture, 1910–1960,” Journal of Economic History 61 (3): 663–98. See also M. R. Cooper, G. T. Barton, and A. P. Brodell, 1947, “Progress of Farm Mechanization,” USDA Miscellaneous Publication 630 (October).
23. Nye, 1990, Electrifying America, 15.
24. Jerome, 1934, “Mechanization in Industry,” 131.
25. Ibid., 134.
26. In the period 1940–80, 24.5 million new white-collar jobs were added to the American economy, causing the share of white-collar employment to grow by 10.8 percentage points—with clerical work accounting for almost the entire increase. In addition, 19.9 million professional and management jobs were created, accounting for 27.8 percent of the total employment by 1980.
27. Jerome, 1934, “Mechanization in Industry,” 173.
28. Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, table 8-1.
29. Ibid., 257.
30. Quoted in D. L. Lewis, 1986, “The Automobile in America: The Industry,” Wilson Quarterly 10 (5): 53.
31. On corporate welfare programs, see Nye, 1990, Electrifying America, 215.
32. Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 279.
33. L. Hartz, 1955, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
34. J. Cowie, 2016, The Great Exception: The New Deal and the Limits of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
35. Pioneering work by H. G. Lewis suggests that the union premium fluctuated between 38 percent around the time of the New Deal and essentially zero in the years just after World War II. Although the union premium reemerged in the 1950s, it accounted for only up to 15 percent of workers’ compensation at that time (see H. G. Lewis, 1963, Unionism and Relative Wages in the U.S.: An Empirical Inquiry [Chicago: Chicago University Press]). Other studies confirm that the wage advantage of union membership has varied greatly, not just over time but also across occupations and industries (see C. J. Parsley, 1980, “Labor Union Effects on Wage Gains: A Survey of Recent Literature,” Journal of Economic Literature 18[1]: 1–31; G. E. Johnson, 1975, “Economic Analysis of Trade Unionism,” The American Economic Review 65 [2]: 23–28).
36. W. K. Stevens, 1968, “Automation Keeps Struck Phone System,” New York Times, April 20.
37. As James Bessen notes, “Indeed, textile workers saw their wages rise during the latter part of the nineteenth century even though textile unions were small and ineffective. Bessemer steelworkers earned much higher wages than craft ironworkers, and they worked an eight-hour day despite consistent defeats for the unions over the first decades of Bessemer production” (2015, Learning by Doing: The Real Connection between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press], 86).
38. Gordon, 2016, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 282.
39. M. Alexopoulos and J. Cohen, 2016, “The Medium Is the Measure: Technical Change and Employment, 1909–1949,” Review of Economics and Statistics 98(4): 793.
40. On electrical industries, see T. C. Martin, 1905, “Electrical Machinery, Apparatus, and Supplies,” in Census of Manufactures, 1905 (Washington, DC: United States Bureau of the Census), 157–225.
41. On peak industry employment, see J. Bessen, 2018, “Automation and Jobs: When Technology Boosts Employment” (Law and Economics Paper 17-09, Boston University School of Law).
42. At a major manufacturer of radio and television sets, the adoption of new machines in the production of TV receivers led to higher wages. For the new jobs, pay was “set at 5 to 15 percent above the straight-time rates for unskilled assemblers because of some differences in working conditions and increased responsibility.” And at one manufacturer of electrical equipment, the adoption of labor-saving technology similarly created new jobs with higher pay. See Rothberg, 1960, “Adjustment to Automation in Two Firms,” 80.
43. R. H. Day, 1967, “The Economics of Technological Change and the Demise of the Sharecropper,” American Economic Review 57 (3): 427–49.
44. Quoted in W. D. Rasmussen, 1982, “The Mechanization of Agriculture,” Scientific American 247 (3): 87.
45. On rising wages in cities and rural outmigration, see W. Peterson and Y. Kislev, 1986, “The Cotton Harvester in Retrospect: Labor Displacement or Replacement?,” Journal of Economic History 46 (1): 199–216.
46. R. Hornbeck and S. Naidu, 2014, “When the Levee Breaks: Black Migration and Economic Development in the American South,” American Economic Review 104 (3): 963–90.
47. Rasmussen, 1982, “The Mechanization of Agriculture,” 83.
48. Ibid, 84.
49. On the Mississippi flood, see Hornbeck and Naidu, 2014, “When the Levee Breaks.”
50. On the Great Migration, see W. J. Collins and M. H. Wanamaker, 2015, “The Great Migration in Black and White: New Evidence on the Selection and Sorting of Southern Migrants,” Journal of Economic History 75 (4): 947–92.
51. “Motors on the Farms Replace Hired Labor,” 1919, New York Times, October 26.
52. N. Kaldor, 1957, “A Model of Economic Growth,” Economic Journal 67 (268): 591–624.
53. P. H. Lindert and J. G. Williamson, 2016, Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality Since 1700 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 194.
54. R. M. Solow, 1956,
“A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 70 (1): 65–94; S. Kuznets, 1955, “Economic Growth and Income Inequality,” American Economic Review 45 (1): 1–28; Kaldor, 1957, “A Model of Economic Growth.”
55. Kuznets, 1955, “Economic Growth and Income Inequality.”
56. Lindert and Williamson, 2016, Unequal Gains.
57. A. de Tocqueville, 1840, Democracy in America, trans. H. Reeve (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), 2:646.
58. Quoted in Lindert and Williamson, 2016, Unequal Gains, 117.
59. M. Twain and C. D. Warner, [1873] 2001, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (New York: Penguin).
60. H. J. Raymond, 1859, “Your Money or Your Line,” New York Times, February 9.
61. M. Klein, 2007, The Genesis of Industrial America, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 133–34.
62. Lindert and Williamson, 2016, Unequal Gains, tables 5-8 and 5-9.
63. 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).
64. Lindert and Williamson, 2016, Unequal Gains, table 7-2.
65. I. Fisher, 1919, “Economists in Public Service: Annual Address of the President,” American Economic Review 9 (1): 10 and 16.
66. T. Piketty, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
67. W. Scheidel, 2018, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
68. On financial occupations, see Lindert and Williamson, 2016, Unequal Gains, figure 8-3.
69. Piketty, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 506–7.
70. C. Goldin and R. A. Margo, 1992, “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (1): 1–34.
71. H. S. Farber, D. Herbst, I. Kuziemko, and S. Naidu, 2018, “Unions and Inequality over the Twentieth Century: New Evidence from Survey Data” (Working Paper 24587, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
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