Wage Rates on the Erie Canal, 1828–1881*

Walter B. Smith

The Journal of Economic History, 1963, vol. 23, issue 3, 298-311

Abstract: Wage rate statistics are available for common labor, carpenters, masons, and “teamworkers” for a span of sixty years or more in the nineteenth century in the Erie Canal Papers now on deposit in the New York State Library in Albany. The data are abundant, the documents in which wage reports were made are well preserved, the wage record is for a well defined area and by 1828 the data are un ambiguous.Within three years of the completion of the canal theforeman of repairs had learned to write reports specifying clearly the kind of work each man in his gang performed, to distinguish between wage payments and wage rates, and to record the dates and continuity of employment. Over the fifty-four years covered by our series the operation of the canal did not greatly change, the kinds of work done were not altered from year to year, and this conservatism of the management of the canal had at least one merit from our point of view, it rendered our series homogeneous. Nor did the social environmentin which the wage bargains were determined show much modification; the nascent trade union movement was without perceptible influenceon wages on the canal and, though employment on the canal was a matter of interest to legislators in Albany, public regulation did little to influence the wage determination process.

Date: 1963
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:23:y:1963:i:03:p:298-311_10

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().