Preferred Citation: Haydu, Jeffrey. Between Craft and Class: Skilled Workers and Factory Politics in the United States and Britain, 1890-1922. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9t1nb603/


 
Notes

Chapter Two The Employers' Challenge to Craft Standards

1. For surveys of craft control in Britain, see, e.g., Raphael Samuel, "The Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand Technology in Mid-Victorian Britain," History Workshop 3 (Spring 1977): 6-72; and Craig Littler, "Deskilling and Changing Structures of Control," in The Degradation of Work? Skill, Deskilling, and the Labour Process , ed. Stephen Wood, pp. 122-145 (London: Hutchinson, 1982). For the United States, see Benson Soffer, "A Theory of Trade Union Development: The Role of the 'Autonomous' Workman," Labor History 1, no. 2 (1960): 141-163; and Montgomery, Workers' Control in America , ch. 1.

2. Thomas Wright, Some Habits and Customs of the Working Classes (New York: Augustus Kelly, 1967 [1867]), pp. 84, 100-105; Machinists' Monthly Journal (hereafter MMJ ), January 1890, p. 2; Monte Calvert, The

      Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830-1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), p. 8.

3. Samuel, "The Workshop of the World," p. 40; Charles More, "Skill and the Survival of Apprenticeship," in Wood, The Degradation of Work , pp. 116-118; Fred J. Miller, "The Machinist," Scribner's Magazine 14 (September 1893): 318-319.

4. The American Machinist survey is summarized in Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer , p. 72. See also More, "Skill and the Survival of Apprenticeship."

5. This was often the case even in the absence of formal subcontracting systems. See David F. Schloss, Methods of Industrial Remuneration , 3rd ed. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1898); Montgomery, Workers' Control in America , p. 11; John H. Ashworth, The Helper and American Trade Unions (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1915).

6. W. Burns, "New Shop Methods from the Machinist's Point of View," Engineering Magazine 31 (April 1906): 93.

7. Samuel, "The Workshop of the World," pp. 40-41; Dan Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process: The Transformation of U.S. Industry, 1860-1920 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980), pp. 142-143; Egbert P. Watson, "The Changes in One Lifetime in the Machine Shop," Engineering Magazine 30 (March 1906): 890.

8. Watson, "Changes in One Lifetime," p. 890.

9. R. O. Clarke, "The Dispute in the British Engineering Industry, 1897-98: An Evaluation," Economica , new series, 24 (May 1957): 131; B. C. M. Weekes, "The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 1880-1914. A Study of Trade Union Government, Politics, and Industrial Policy," Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 1970, pp. 82-89; Jonathan Hart Zeitlin, "Rationalization and Resistance: Skilled Workers and the Transformation of the Division of Labor in the British Engineering Industry, 1830-1930," B.A. thesis, Harvard University, 1977, p. 68; Mark Perlman, The Machinists: A New Study in American Trade Unionism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 247-250; Bruno Ramirez, When Workers Fight: The Politics of Industrial Relations in the Progressive Era, 1898-1916 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 91.

10. The Engineer , December 25, 1885, p. 449; Alfred Williams, Life in a Railway Factory (Newton Abbot, Devon: David and Charles Reprints, 1969 [1915]), p. 78; American Machinist , May 21, 1891, p. 8; Miller, "The Machinist," p. 322; John Craig, "The Premium System and Its Relation to Discipline in the Factory," The Open Shop 4 (March 1905): 137.

11. Engineering Employers' Federation (Broadway House, Tothill St., London SW1), General Letter No. 22, January 8, 1898; Arthur Bar-

      ker, The Management of Small Engineering Workshops (Manchester: Technical Publishing, 1903), p. 166; Eric Wigham, The Power to Manage: A History of the Engineering Employers' Federation (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 17-18; W. D. Forbes, "Foremen vs. New Appliances," Machinery 5 (January 1899): 143; Report by F. S. North on Superintendents' and Foremen's Clubs, Proceedings of the 7th Annual Convention of the National Metal Trades Association, in The Open Shop 4 (1905): 222-224.

12. Employers' abdication of control appears most clearly in the subcontract (or piecemaster) system. See Alan Fox, "Industrial Relations in Nineteenth-Century Birmingham," Oxford Economic Papers , new series, 7, no. 1 (1955): 57-62; G. C. Allen, The Industrial Development of Birmingham and the Black Country, 1860-1927 (London: Frank Cass, 1966), pp. 159-162; Littler, "Deskilling and Changing Structures of Control"; Henry Roland, "Six Examples of Successful Shop Management," Engineering Magazine 12 (1896-1897): 400-406, 994-1000; John Buttrick, "The Inside Contract System," Journal of Economic History 12, no. 3 (1952): 205-221; Alfred Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 271-275; Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process , pp. 72-80, 101-108, 110-123.

13. Amalgamated Engineers' Monthly Journal (hereafter AEMJ ), July 1901, p. 3; "Economical Workshop Production," Mechanical World , October 29, 1909, pp. 206-207, and February 18, 1910, pp. 74-75; A. L. Levine, "Industrial Change and Its Effects upon Labour, 1900-1914," Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1954, p. 413; Burns, "New Shop Methods," pp. 93-94; "The Present State of the Art of Industrial Management," American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Transactions 34 (1912): 1139; Fred Rogers et al., ''Developments in Machine Shop Practice During the Last Decade," American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Transactions 34 (1912): 852; L. P. Alford, "Ten Years' Progress in Management," Mechanical Engineering 44 (November 1922): 701; Stephen Meyer III, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), pp. 22, 58.

14. Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London (New York: AMS Press, 1970 [1902-1904]), second series: Industry, vol. 1, p. 295; Morris Yates, Wages and Labour Conditions in British Engineering (London: Macdonald and Evans, 1937), pp. 17-19; James Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, 1800-1945 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1945), p. 122; MMJ , May 1913, p. 475; Victor S. Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States (New York: Peter Smith, 1949), Vol. 2, p.

      144; Harless Wagoner, The U.S. Machine Tool Industry from 1900 to 1950 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968), p. 20. At Armstrong Whitworth in 1906, "hundreds" of milling machine specialists earned 25-28s a week, and management claimed little need for time-served turners, at 36-38s a week, on these machines (Keith Burgess, The Challenge of Labour: Shaping British Society, 1850-1930 (London: Croom Helm, 1980), p. 115). Smith Premier Typewriter in 1909 placed women on drilling machines at $4-10 a week, as against the $14-18 previously earned by men ( MMJ, September 1909, p. 845).

15. Engineering Magazine 16 (1899): 826; AEMJ, February 1909, p. 5; Yates, Wages and Labour Conditions, pp. 20-23; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, p. 123; Henry Roland, "The Revolution in Machine Shop Practice," Engineering Magazine 18 (1899): 180-188; Clark, History of Manufactures, vol. 1, p. 420; Meyer, The Five Dollar Day, p. 51.

16. Engineering Magazine 20 (1900): 106; Tariff Commission, Report of the Tariff Commission, vol. 4: The Engineering Industries (London: P. S. King and Son, 1009), paragraph 449; "Economical Workshop Production," Mechanical World, October 29, 1909, p. 207; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, pp. 125-126; E. H. Phelps Brown, The Growth of British Industrial Relations: A Study from the Standpoint of 1906-14 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1959), pp. 91-98; U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Report of the Committee of the Senate upon the Relations Between Capital and Labor (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1885), vol. 1, p. 755; Roland, "The Revolution in Machine Shop Practice," pp. 42-48; Burns, "New Shop Methods,'' pp. 93-95; "Developments in Machine Shop Practice," pp. 850-858; Sterling H. Bunnell, "Jigs and Fixtures as Substitutes for Skill," Iron Age 93 (March 5, 1914): 610-611.

17. Joyce Shaw Peterson, "Auto Workers and Their Work, 1900-1933," Labor History 22, no. 2 (1981): 220.

18. Meyer, The Five Dollar Day, pp. 46, 51.

19. Yates, Wages and Labour Conditions, p. 32.

20. Ibid.

19. Yates, Wages and Labour Conditions, p. 32.

20. Ibid.

21. Meyer, The Five Dollar Day, pp. 46, 51.

22. Calculated from figures in Montgomery, Workers' Control in America, p. 118.

23. Unskilled workers constituted 20 percent of the engineering work force in Britain in 1914, 13 percent in 1928 (Yates, Wages and Labour Conditions, p. 32). Meyer ( The Five Dollar Day, pp. 46, 50-51) found Ford employees to include 34 percent laborers in 1910, 21 percent in 1913, and 14.6 percent "unskilled workers" in 1917.

24. The decline of apprenticeship programs occurred more slowly in

      Britain, but by 1925 only 32 percent of those under twenty-one were working under such programs—and far less than this in engineering and automobile production. Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, p. 205; More, "Skill and the Survival of Apprenticeship"; U.S. Industrial Commission, Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1901-1902), vol. 7, pp. 18, 266, 620-621, vol. 8, p. 489; Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880-1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), pp. 96-97; Wagoner, The U.S. Machine Tool Industry, pp. 346-347.

25. U.S. Industrial Commission, Report, vol. 19, pp. 812-813; The Open Shop 5 (January 1906); MMJ, March 1908, pp. 257, 261, July 1909, p. 627; National Metal Trades Association, Synopsis of Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Convention, April 11, 1912, pp. 94-95; Wagoner, The U.S. Machine Tool Industry, pp. 88-92. See also the debate in American Machinist, July-December 1916, on "Where are the Good Mechanics?" In Britain these tendencies appear later, especially after the war. See, e.g., Great Britain Board of Trade, Report of the Departmental Committee Appointed by the Board of Trade to Consider the Position of the Engineering Trades After the War (London: HMSO, 1918), pp. 15-16.

26. Clegg, The System of Industrial Relations, p. 170; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, p. 129; Great Britain, Committee on Industry and Trade, Survey of Industrial Relations (London: HMSO, 1926), p. 105; Great Britain, Ministry of Munitions, History of the Ministry of Munitions (London: HMSO, 1922), vol. 5, pt. 1, p. 6.

27. MMJ, October 1909 p. 928; Arthur Shadwell, Industrial Efficiency: A Comparative Study of Industrial Life in England, Germany and America (New York: Longmans, Green, 1906), p. 141.

28. Alford, "Ten Years' Progress in Management," p. 701.

29. A lucid introduction to the varieties and complexities of incentive pay is G. D. H. Cole, The Payment of Wages (London: Labour Research Department, 1918).

30. The Engineer, April 4, 1902, p. 328; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, pp. 63, 129; Littler, "Deskilling and Changing Structures of Control"; Craig, "The Premium System," p. 139; William H. Buckler, "The Minimum Wage in the Machinists' Union," in Studies in American Trade Unionism, ed. Jacob Hollander and George Barnett (New York: Henry Holt, 1907), pp. 139-140; The Open Shop 7 (1908): 103-104; Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process, p. 169.

31. Great Britain, Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence (London: HMSO, 1893), vol. 3, paragraphs 25,296; 25,515; 25,662; 25,772-775; J. Slater Lewis, "Works Management for the Maximum of Production," Engineering Magazine 18 (1899): 202; "Economical Work-

      shop Production," Mechanical World, October 29, 1909, p. 206, September 9, 1910, p. 122; U.S. Industrial Commission, Final Report, vol. 19, pp. 735-736; U.S. Bureau of Labor, 11th Special Report, Regulation and Restriction of Output (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904), pp. 114, 118; The Open Shop 8 (1908): 99.

32. Coventry District Committee, Amalgamated Society of Engineers, Minutes (hereafter CDC Minutes), September 17, 1907; "Economical Workshop Production," Mechanical World, October 29, 1909, p. 206, February 18, 1910, p. 74; M. W. Bourdon, "Production Methods in the British Automobile Plants," Automotive Industries, June 24, 1920, p. 1462; American Machinist, September 7, 1916, p. 435; L. P. Alford, "Introduction of Shop Management in Typewriter Plants," American Machinist, October 5, 1916, pp. 537-540; Montgomery, Workers' Control in America, p. 119.

33. Williams, Life in a Railway Factory, pp. 304-305; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, pp. 132, 135; U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee of the House of Representatives to Investigate the Taylor and Other Systems of Shop Management (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1912), Vol. 1, p. 458; Records of the Manufacturers' Research Association, Report of the Time Study Code Committee (undated, c. 1928), Harvard Business School, Baker Library, MSS 883.

34. Quoted in Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, p. 132.

35. Meyer, The Five Dollar Day, p. 56.

36. "Economical Workshop Production," Mechanical World, September 9, 1910, p. 122; J. T. Towlson, "A British View of Shop Efficiency," American Machinist, August 24, 1911, p. 362; Robert Stelling, "The Foreman in Relation to Workshop Organization," Engineering and Industrial Management, September 4, 1919, p. 294; Littler, "Deskilling and Changing Structures of Control"; W R. Garside and H. F. Gospel, "Employers and Managers: Their Organizational Structure and Industrial Strategies,'' in A History of British Industrial Relations, 1875-1914, ed. Chris Wrigley (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982), pp. 102-103; The Open Shop 5 (1906): 219; American Machinist, March 16, 1911, p. 503, June 8, 1911, p. 1069; G. G. Weaver, "The Foreman—Past and Future," American Machinist, October 26, 1922, p. 652; Nelson, Managers and Workers, p. 57.

37. Treatments of scientific management, serving varied polemical purposes, include Milton Nadworny, Scientific Management and the Unions, 1900-1932 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955); Rein-hard Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University

      of California Press, 1974); Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974); Bryan Palmer, "Class, Conception, and Conflict: The Thrust for Efficiency, Managerial Views of Labor, and the Working Class Rebellion, 1903-1922," Review of Radical Political Economy 7, no. 2 (1975): 31-49; Craig Littler, "Understanding Taylorism," British Journal of Sociology 25, no. 2 (1978): 185-202; Montgomery, Workers' Control in America, ch. 2; Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process; Daniel Nelson, Frederick Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980); and Tony Elger and Bill Schwarz, "Monopoly Capitalism and the Impact of Taylorism: Notes on Lenin, Gramsci, Braverman, and Sohn-Rethel," in Capital and Labour: Studies in the Capitalist Labour Process, ed. Theo Nichols, pp. 358-369 (London: Athlone Press, 1980).

38. Handling Men (Chicago: A. W. Shaw, 1917), p. 23; Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital , p. 85.

39. U. S. Bureau of Labor, Regulation and Restriction of Output, p. 128; U.S. Congress, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 1, p. 83; Littler, "Understanding Taylorism," pp. 188-189; Montgomery, Workers' Control in America, p. 114.

40. Joseph A. Litterer, "Systematic Management: Design for Organizational Recoupling in American Manufacturing Firms," Business History Review 37, no. 4 (1963): 369-391; Nelson, Managers and Workers, pp. 55-57, 75-76.

41. On scientific management and incentive pay, see P. J. Darlington, "Methods of Remunerating Labor," Engineering Magazine 17 (June 1899): 444-454 and 17 (September 1899): 925-936; U.S. Bureau of Labor, Regulation and Restriction of Output, pp. 114, 118; U.S. Congress, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 1, p. 55; MMJ, June 1912, p. 541; Alford, "Introduction of Shop Management"; Montgomery, Workers' Control in America, p. 114, and Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process, pp. 235-239.

42. This point is developed most clearly by Littler, "Understanding Taylorism," pp. 189-195. See also Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process, p. 31 and ch. 6, passim.

43. W. F. Watson, Machines and Men: An Autobiography of an Itinerant Mechanic (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1935), pp. 186-195; Wagoner, The U.S. Machine Tool Industry, pp. 21, 83; Meyer, The Five Dollar Day, pp. 54-55, 58.

44. Rogers et al., "Developments in Machine Shop Practice," p. 852; Dexter Kimball, "Basic Principles of Industrial Organization," NMTA, Proceedings of the Annual Convention, 1914, p. 162; Alford, "Introduc-

      tion of Shop Management," pp. 537-540; Littler, "Understanding Taylorism," pp. 189-193; Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process, pp. 217-223; Meyer, The Five Dollar Day, pp. 54-56.

45. For discussions of British scientific management in the fifteen years before the war, see Engineering, March 1, 1912, p. 290; the series of articles on scientific management in the Workers' Union Record, February-July 1914; James F. Whiteford, "Development of Management in the United Kingdom," Mechanical Engineering, November 1922, pp. 703-704; Watson, Machines and Men, pp. 60, 89-98; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, pp. 124-125, 132; L. Urwick and E. F. L. Brech, The Making of Scientific Management, vol. 2: Management in British Industry (London: Management Publications Trust, 1949); Asa Briggs, "Social Background, in The System of Industrial Relations in Great Britain: Its History, Law, and Institutions, ed. Allan Flanders and H. A. Clegg (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), pp. 35-36; Phelps Brown, The Growth of British Industrial Relations, pp. xv-xvi; Littler, "Deskilling and Changing Structures of Control"; Garside and Gospel, "Employers and Managers, pp. 102-103.

46. Theoretical statements of how product markets shape the labor process include Cambridge Journal of Economics 3, no 3 (1979), special issue, "The Labour Process, Market Structure, and Marxist Theory"; and Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

47. Engineering Magazine 16 (1899): 826; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, p. 120; S. B. Saul, "The Motor Industry in Britain to 1914," Business History 5, 1 (1962): 38, and "The Engineering Industry," in The Development of British Industry and Foreign Competition, 1875-1914, ed. Derek H. Aldcroft (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968), pp. 190, 215; Allen, The Industrial Development of Birmingham, pp. 292-297, 302-303; F. W. Carr, "Engineering Workers and the Rise of Labour in Coventry, 1914-1939," Ph. D. thesis, University of Warwick, 1978, pp. 5-7; Roland, "The Revolution in Machine Shop Practice,'' pp. 42-48, 369-370; Clark, History of Manufactures, vol. 3, pp. 154-156; Fred H. Colvin, 60 Years with Men and Machines: An Autobiography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947), pp. 84-87; L. T. C. Rolt, A Short History of Machine Tools (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965), p. 215; Wagoner, The U.S. Machine Tool Industry, p. 1.

48. H. F. L. Orcutt, "Machine Shop Management in Europe and America," Engineering Magazine 16 (1899): 551.

49. Ibid., pp. 551-554; Tariff Commission, Report of the Tariff Commission, paragraphs 1041-1042; Great Britain, Board of Trade, Report of the Departmental Committee, p. 12; Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer,

      pp. 5-6; Wagoner, The U.S. Machine Tool Industry, pp. 19, 272-273. Although similar trends existed in Britain, they clearly came later and moved more slowly. The issue is discussed in Tariff Commission, Report of the Tariff Commission ; Saul, "The Engineering Industry," pp. 186-187, and "The Machine Tool Industry in Britain to 1914," Business History 10, no. 1 (1968): 26, 36-40; and Roderick Floud, The Machine Tool Industry, 1850-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 11-17.

48. H. F. L. Orcutt, "Machine Shop Management in Europe and America," Engineering Magazine 16 (1899): 551.

49. Ibid., pp. 551-554; Tariff Commission, Report of the Tariff Commission, paragraphs 1041-1042; Great Britain, Board of Trade, Report of the Departmental Committee, p. 12; Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer,

      pp. 5-6; Wagoner, The U.S. Machine Tool Industry, pp. 19, 272-273. Although similar trends existed in Britain, they clearly came later and moved more slowly. The issue is discussed in Tariff Commission, Report of the Tariff Commission ; Saul, "The Engineering Industry," pp. 186-187, and "The Machine Tool Industry in Britain to 1914," Business History 10, no. 1 (1968): 26, 36-40; and Roderick Floud, The Machine Tool Industry, 1850-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 11-17.

50. The influence of labor supply on technical innovation is analyzed in detail by H. J. Habakkuk, American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century: The Search for Labor Saving Inventions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). See also Orcutt, "Machine Shop Management," Engineering Magazine 16 (1899): 703-707, and 17 (1899): 386-389.

51. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men, pp. 348-358; Hinton, The First Shop Stewards' Movement, pp. 58-59; Jonathan Zeitlin, "Craft Control and the Division of Labour: Engineers and Compositors in Britain, 1890-1930," Cambridge Journal of Economics 3, no. 3 (1979): 267; Tariff Commission, Report of the Tariff Commission, p. 845.

52. Engineering Magazine 16 (1899): 826; "Economical Workshop Production," Mechanical World, February 18, 1910, p. 74; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, pp. 122-123, 202-203; Allen, The Industrial Development of Birmingham, pp. 315-316; Floud, The Machine Tool Industry, pp. 23-26; Bunnell, "Jigs and Fixtures," pp. 610-611; Clark, History of Manufactures, vol. 2, pp. 22, 96; vol. 3, p. 155; Rolt, A Short History of Machine Tools, pp. 200-201; Wagoner, The U.S. Machine Tool Industry, pp. 17-18.

53. Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, pp. 124-125.

54. More ("Skill and the Survival of Apprenticeship," p. 112) estimates that nearly 50 percent of skilled engineering workers were unionized as early as 1861. By 1911, some 29.2 percent of all metal and engineering workers, skilled and less skilled alike, were unionized, and most union members were skilled workers (George Sayers Bain and Robert Price, Profiles of Union Growth: A Comparative Statistical Portrait of Eight Countries [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980], p. 50). The figure for machinists is offered by Montgomery, Workers' Control in America, p. 63.

55. Phelps Brown, The Growth of British Industrial Relations, p. 24; Andrew Dawson, "The Paradox of Dynamic Technological Change and the Labor Aristocracy in the United States, 1880-1914," Labor History 20, no. 3 (1979): 331.

56. Tariff Commission, Report of the Tariff Commission, paragraphs 568, 580, 618, 630, 664, 715.

57. John Upp, "The Woman Worker," American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Transactions 39 (December 1917): 1134. See also National

      Industrial Conference Board, Wartime Employment of Women in the Metal Trades (Boston: NICB, 1918), pp. 48-50.

58. Quoted by P. W. Kingsford, Engineers Inventors and Workers (London: Edward Arnold, 1964), p. 138. For similar views and other examples, see Habakkuk, American and British Technology, p. 153; and U.S. Industrial Commission, Report, vol. 8, p. 40.

59. This is a point Clawson ( Bureaucracy and the Labor Process, pp. 122-123) makes with respect to subcontractors, but it is more broadly applicable.

60. The Engineer, April 4, 1902, p. 328; "Economical Workshop Production," Mechanical World, September 9, 1910, p. 122; Cole, The Payment of Wages, p. 73; Forbes, "Foremen vs. New Appliances," p. 143; The Open Shop 5 (1906): 219; U.S. Senate, Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), vol. 1, p. 838; Montgomery, Workers' Control in America, p. 42.

61. Engineering Employers' Federation, General letters, no. 22 (January 8, 1898) and no. 25 (February 7, 1898), offices of the EEF, London.

62. Synopsis of Proceedings of the 7th Annual Convention of the NMTA, March 23-24, 1905, in The Open Shop 4 (1905): 222.

63. The Engineer, November 5, 1897, p. 455; AEMJ, January 1898, pp. 54-55, March 1907, p. 12, April 1907, p. 14; MMJ, July 1904, p. 637; The Open Shop 4 (1905): 223-224.

64. Judith A. Merkle, Management and Ideology: The Legacy of the International Scientific Management Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), p. 75.

65. Meyer Bloomfield, "The Aim and Work of Employment Managers' Associations," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 65 (May 1916): 83. Similar arguments were advanced in Britain by the Welfare Workers' Institute (forerunner of the Institute of Personnel Management). M. M. Niven, Personnel Management, 1913-1963: The Growth of Personnel Management and the Development of the Institute (London: Institute of Personnel Management, 1967), pp. 44, 48.

66. Bloomfield, "The Aim and Work," p. 76.

67. Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, pp. 65, 281.

68. Merkle, Management and Ideology, pp. 71-75, 86-92. See also David Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York: Knopf, 1977).

69. James Arthur, "American and British Workmen and Machinery," American Machinist, November 24, 1892, p. 4; The Engineer, September 24, 1897, p. 303, January 21, 1898, p. 66; Orcutt, "Machine Shop Management," Engineering Magazine 16 (1899): 552-553, 703-707, and 17

      (1899): 386-389; Alfred Mosley, "British Views of American Workshops," Cassier's Magazine 23, no. 3 (1903): 477-478; Shadwell, Industrial Efficiency, pp. 141-143; National Metal Trades Association, Synopsis of Proceedings, 1911, p. 200; Joseph Wickham Roe, English and American Tool Builders (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916), pp. 105-106; Urwick and Brech, The Making of Scientific Management; Saul, "The Engineering Industry," pp. 231, 235.

70. A. L. Levine, Industrial Retardation in Britain, 1880-1914 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), p. 16.

71. "Men and Output," The Times Engineering Supplement, September 29, 1916, p. 146.

72. Saul, "The Motor Industry," pp. 43-44. See also Colvin, 60 Years, pp. 130-131.

73. S. B. Saul, "The Market and the Development of the Mechanical Engineering Industries in Britain, 1860-1914," Economic History Review, second series, 20, no. 1 (1967): 116-117, 124; Habakkuk, American and British Technology, p. 218.

74. Orcutt, "Machine Shop Management," Engineering Magazine 16 (1899): 551-554; Great Britain, Board of Trade, Report of the Departmental Committee, p. 7; Habakkuk, American and British Technology, p. 219.

75. Habakkuk, American and British Technology; Samuel, "The Workshop of the World," pp. 47-48.

76. Orcutt, "Machine Shop Management," Engineering Magazine 17 (1899): 268; "American and British Workmen," p. 243; Levine, Industrial Retardation, pp. 79-94; Habakkuk, American and British Technology, p.143.

77. Great Britain, Board of Trade, Report of the Departmental Committee, p. 1 1; Saul, "The Engineering Industry," p. 231.

78. Habakkuk, American and British Technology, pp. 105-106, 218.

79. Saul, "The Market and the Development," p. 124.

80. These statistics are calculated from Great Britain, Business Statistics Office, Historical Record of the Census of Production, 1907-1970 (London: Government Statistical Service, n.d.), Tables 1 and 6; Great Britain, Census of Production, 1907, Parliamentary Papers, Cmd. 6320, 1912-1913, cix, p. 204; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States, vol. 8, Manufactures, 1909 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), Table 19.

81. Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, p. 198. Gross output of textile machinery was 13 million pounds, of railway locomotives (including repair) 12.4 million. The next largest category was steam engines (excluding locomotive and agricultural) at 6.9 million, followed by cycles and motor cars (including parts) at 5.6 million, and motor vehicles and parts at 5.2 million. Saul, "The Market and the Development," p. 113.

82. Tariff Commission, Report of the Tariff Commission , Tables 41 and 49.

83. Barbara Drake, Women in the Engineering Trades (London: Labour Research Department, 1918), pp. 8-9; Hinton, The First Shop Stewards' Movement , p. 218; Keith Burgess, The Origins of British Industrial Relations: The Nineteenth Century Experience (London: Croom Helm, 1975), p. 50; Andrew L. Friedman, Industry and Labour: Class Struggle at Work and Monopoly Capitalism (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 192; Carr, "Engineering Workers and the Rise of Labour," pp. 10, 107; Keith McClelland and Alastair Reid, "Wood, Iron and Steel: Technology, Labour and Trade Union Organisation in the Shipbuilding Industry, 1890-1914," in Divisions of Labour: Skilled Workers and Technological Change in Nineteenth Century England , ed. Royden Harrison and Jonathan Zeitlin, pp. 151-184 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985).

84. American Machinist , November 2, 1922, p. 704; Colvin, 60 Years , p. 95.

85. E.g., in 1901, Bridgeport machinists demanded one worker to a machine, even though they realized that manufacturers could go out "and hire any ordinary man with common sense to come in the shop and after a week's tutoring that man can run half a dozen automatic machines as well as a machinist can.... At the present time in any of the factories in Connecticut men will be found running from two to as high as ten and twelve machines" ( Bridgeport Herald, April 14, 1901). Having a worker run half a dozen automatic machines was not beyond the technical competence of many British manufacturers. The difference is rather between a weak union demanding an end to established practices and a strong one defending the status quo against managerial encroachments.

86. On specialists, see Levine, Industrial Retardation, pp. 46-49. In 1914, females accounted for 15.7 percent of electrical engineering employees and 14.3 percent of small arms manufacturing employees in Britain. In the United States women (not including girls under the age of sixteen) constituted 19.9 and 19.7 percent, respectively, in these branches. Great Britain, Ministry of Munitions, History of the Ministry, vol. 4, pt. 4, p. 139; National Industrial Conference Board, Research Report No. 8, Wartime Employment of Women in the Metal Trades (Boston: NICB, 1918), p. 2. On the persistence of apprenticeship in Britain, see More, "Skill and the Survival of Apprenticeship," pp. 112-118. The underdevelopment of British tool room practice is reviewed by The Foreman, September 1921, p. 16.

87. Hinton, The First Shop Stewards' Movement, pp. 61-62; Roger Penn, Skilled Workers in the Class Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

88. Tariff Commission, Report of the Tariff Commission, paragraphs

      1017, 1026; CDC Minutes, July 21, 1909; Cole, The Payment of Wages, p. 92; Watson, Machines and Men, p. 92.

89. AEMJ, January 1902, p. 10; National Metal Trades Association, Synopsis of Proceedings, April 12-13, 1911, p. 200; P. J. O'Neill, "British and American Industrial Methods Compared and Contrasted," Machine Tool Review, June-July 1917, pp. 25-26; Great Britain, Board of Trade, Report of the Departmental Committee, p. 11; Saul, "The Engineering Industry," p. 231.

90. The term "noninstrumental aspects of the craft tradition" is from Hinton ( The First Shop Stewards' Movement ), who clearly emphasizes the importance of craft traditions in the development of British factory politics.

91. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Report of the Committee, vol. 1, p. 743.

92. Watson, "Changes in One Lifetime," p. 890.

93. U. S. Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Report of the Committee, vol. 1, p. 755.

94. Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), vol. 3, p. 2840.

95. AEMJ, February 1909, p. 5.

96. Ibid., March 1897, pp. 19-20.

95. AEMJ, February 1909, p. 5.

96. Ibid., March 1897, pp. 19-20.

97. MMJ, March 1914, p. 274.

98. Great Britain, Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence, vol. 3, paragraph 22,658; CDC Minutes, October 8, 1907, March 9, 1908, July 8, 1909, August 25, 1909; Williams, Life in a Railway Factory, pp. 6, 37, 184; Goodrich, The Frontier of Control, p. 163; MMJ, March 1896, pp. 70-71, July 1907, p. 667; U.S. Bureau of Labor, Regulation and Restriction of Output, p. 142; Colvin, 60 Years, p. 275.

99. MMJ, April 1914, p. 367.

100. CDC Minutes, January 20, June 10, 1909, and passim; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, pp. 154-155; Wigham, The Power to Manage, p. 74; MMJ, February 1900, pp. 104-105; U.S. Bureau of Labor, Regulation and Restriction of Output, p. 141.

101. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 1, p. 279. See also Great Britain, Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence, vol. 3, paragraph 22,658; Trades Union Congress, The Premium Bonus System: Report of an Inquiry (London: TUC, 1910); and MMJ, January 1893, p. 356.

102. AEMJ, September 1921, pp. 59-60; Urwick and Brech, The Making of Scientific Management, p. 106; MMJ, January 1893, p. 357, March 1902, p. 186.

103. Goodrich, The Frontier of Control, p. 172; AEMJ, September

      1921, pp. 59-60; Jefferys, The Story of the Engineers, p. 100; Wigham, The Power to Manage, p. 73; Bridgeport Herald, April 10, 1898; MMJ, June 1911, p. 557; Colvin, 60 Years, p. 275.

104. MMJ, May 1897, p. 139. See also MMJ, October 1907, p. 967, September 1908, p. 789, June 1911, p. 557; U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 2, pp. 924, 929, 1005, 1032, vol. 3, pp. 1660, 1760-1761, 1812. For Britain, see Great Britain, Royal Commission on Labour, Minutes of Evidence, vol. 3, paragraph 22,658; CDC Minutes, July 8, 1909; AEMJ, September 1921, p. 60.

105. Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony, vol. 1, p. 874. See also U.S. Bureau of Labor, Regulation and Restriction of Output, p. 141; CDC Minutes, March 9, 1908, July 26, August 25, 1909; W. F. Watson, The Worker and Wage Incentives (London: Hogarth Press, 1934), pp. 23-24; Urwick and Brech, The Making of Scientific Management, p. 106; Wigham, The Power to Manage, p. 73.

106. The Engineer, December 25, 1885, p. 499.

107. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 1, pp. 22-23.

108. J. D. Lawrence, "Prussianism in the Workshop," Amalgamated Engineers' Monthly Journal, September 1919, p. 53.

109. Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony, vol. 1, p. 903.

110. Bridgeport Herald, May 12, 1901.

111. For example, CDC Minutes, September 17, 1913 (at Rover), November 18, 1913 (at Daimler), February 4, 1914 (at Swift Motor Company), and May 9, 1914 (at the Coventry Ordnance Works).

112. Fred J. Miller, "Scientific Management: Its Installation and Operation," Efficiency Society Journal 5 (March 1916): 121-125. Such views were particularly popular during the war and the early 1920s.

113. MMJ, September 1893, p. 346. ASE officials and members sometimes made similar arguments. See, e.g., CDC Minutes, October 6, 1910, and May 21, 1914; AEMJ, September 1919, p. 53.

114. Frank Hudson, "The Machinist's Side of Taylorism," American Machinist, April 27, 1911, p. 773; U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, passim; Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony, vol. 1, pp. 132-141, 838, 903, 945; U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings on a Bill to Regulate the Method of Directing Work of Government Employees (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916); Montgomery, Workers' Control in America, pp. 114-123; Clawson, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process, pp. 235-239.

115. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 1, p. 20.

116. MMJ, November 1911, p. 1108.

117. Montgomery, Workers' Control in America, p. 117. Although less afflicted with scientific management, British engineers voiced many of the same criticisms. See, e.g., AEMJ, January 1903, p. 3; Towlson, "A British View of Shop Efficiency," p. 362; Cole, The Payment of Wages, p. 73; Watson, Machines and Men, p. 188; Littler, "Deskilling and Changing Structures of Control"; and Garside and Gospel, "Employers and Managers,'' pp. 102-103.

118. MMJ, March 1890, p. 30.

119. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 3, p. 1870.

120. MMJ, July 1918, p. 640.

121. For example, Hiram Maxim, "The Effects of Trade Unionism upon Skilled Mechanics," Engineering Magazine 14 (November 1897): 193; "English and American Methods in the Engineering and Iron Trades," Engineer, January 21, 1898, p. 66; George Barnes [General Secretary of the ASE], letter to the Engineer, May 19, 1899, p. 489; "American and British Workmen," Engineering 76 (1903): 205-207, 242-244.

122. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 3, p. 1668, vol. 1, p. 691.

123. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 1812.

122. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 3, p. 1668, vol. 1, p. 691.

123. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 1812.

124. "The Present State of the Art of Industrial Relations," American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Transactions 34 (1912): 1160.

125. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 2, p. 1008; Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony, vol. 1, p. 900.

126. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 527.

125. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Labor, Hearings Before a Special Committee, vol. 2, p. 1008; Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony, vol. 1, p. 900.

126. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 527.

127. The relative importance of class identities among English and American workers is analyzed by Ira Katznelson, "Working-Class Formation and the State: Nineteenth-Century England in American Perspective," in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, pp. 257-284 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).


Notes
 

Preferred Citation: Haydu, Jeffrey. Between Craft and Class: Skilled Workers and Factory Politics in the United States and Britain, 1890-1922. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9t1nb603/