scholarly journals One Market or Many? Labor Market Integration in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States

1990 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua L. Rosenbloom
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Market Integration ◽  
Labor Demand ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Market Integration ◽  
Demand Growth ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States

This article examines the geographic integration of U.S. labor markets from 1870 to 1898, using previously unexploited wage and price data for 23 occupations in 12 major cities. In contrast to the increasing nationalization found in other markets at that time, the labor market was characterized by large and persistent real wage differentials both within and between regions, leaving little doubt that late nineteenth-century labor markets remained far from completely integrated. The differentials, however, owed as much to substantial variations in labor demand growth as to the lack of labor market integration.

scholarly journals Globalization, Labor Markets and Policy Backlash in the Past

1998 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 51-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey G Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Market Integration ◽  
Labor Market Integration ◽  
Growth Convergence ◽  
Plant Seeds ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Intense Debate

The late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have many things in common. Both periods recorded fast growth, convergence, and labor-market integration between OECD members. Both periods witnessed intense debate about who gained and who lost from globalization. Furthermore, the earlier period saw a retreat from global liberalism long before the interwar deglobalization disaster. Did globalization of that time plant seeds of its own destruction? Are there lessons for the present?

Working Class Debt in the Late Nineteenth Century United States

1993 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elyce Rotella ◽  
George Alter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Distress ◽  
Economic Strategies ◽  
The Family ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Life Cycle Patterns ◽  
Near Future

Children's wages played a central role in family economic strategies in the late nineteenth century. The family budgets collected by the U.S. Commissioner of Labor in 1889-1890 show that life-cycle patterns of savings and debt varied by industry depending upon incomes from children. The consumption patterns of families whose expenditures exceeded their incomes do not show signs of economic distress, and most families whose annual budget was in deficit could expect larger contributions from children in the near future. These patterns suggest that families used borrowing and saving to smooth consumption over the life-cycle as the earning capacity of the family changed.

State, Market, and Popular Sovereignty in Agrarian North America

2020 ◽  
pp. 177-199
Author(s):  
Christopher Clark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
The Family ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
American Political Economy

This essay focuses on agriculture and particularly the “freehold ideal” of independent farmers in the nineteenth-century United States. An odd contradiction of American territorial settlement was the farmers’ simultaneous drive to exploit resources for the market and the aim of many of those actively engaged in settlement to shield themselves from the market’s dangers by acquiring land on the frontier. Clark shows how the ideal of freehold farming, which was so central to the American political economy, was actually threatened not so much from the dangers of the market overwhelming the small farm as from the family farm running out of labor to uphold its own productive capacity. Labor, not land, was the problem confronting the freehold vision, as he argues in a provocative re-reading of late nineteenth-century small farmers’ calls for state intervention.

Intergenerational Occupational Mobility across Three Continents

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santiago Pérez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
Occupational Mobility ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States

I compare rates of intergenerational occupational mobility across four countries in the late nineteenth century: 1869–1895 Argentina, 1850–1880 United States, 1851–1881 Britain, and 1865–1900 Norway. Argentina and the United States had similar levels of intergenerational mobility, and these levels were above those of Britain and Norway. These findings suggest that the higher mobility of nineteenth-century United States relative to Britain might not have been a reflection of “American exceptionalism,” but rather a manifestation of more widespread differences between settler economies of the New World and Europe.

Authority and Efficiency: The Labor Market and the Managerial Revolution of the Late Nineteenth Century

1984 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 1069-1083 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Clark
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Production Efficiency ◽  
Work Organization ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Increase Production Efficiency ◽  
Production Decisions ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The managerial revolution resulted in the concentration of production decisions in the hands of management. Radical economists and historians have disputed the conventional view that these changes in work organization were necessary to increase production efficiency. Yet curiously there seem to be few issues of fact in dispute between the radical and the conventional accounts. I offer here an interpretation of the radical position which explains why this is so, and why profitable and efficient organizations of work will differ in capitalist economies. The argument hinges on the conditions under which workers were able to act collectively.

Pre-1900 Industrial White Collar Employees at the Krupp Steel Casting Works: A New Occupational Category in Germany

1984 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toni Pierenkemper
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Work Environment ◽  
Steel Casting ◽  
Work Force ◽  
White Collar ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Occupational Category ◽  
White Collar Employee ◽  
Late Nineteenth

In this article, Dr. Pierenkemper investigates a new occupational category—the industrial white collar employee—in the late-nineteenth century Krupp Steel Casting Works in Essen, Germany. In contrast to previous historians, Pierenkemper demonstrates that white collar employees were far from homogeneous: differing among themselves, they were also largely isolated from the labor market as a whole. He concludes that widespread intrafirm occupational mobility underlay this distinctive work environment, and suggests that management may have consciously encouraged such moving about to segment its work force.

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