Craft Labor and Mechanization in Nineteenth-Century American Canning

Martin Brown and Peter Philips

The Journal of Economic History, 1986, vol. 46, issue 3, 743-756

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.

Date: 1986
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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:46:y:1986:i:03:p:743-756_04

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 ().