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Machines, Markets, and Labor: The Carriage and Wagon Industry in Late-Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Edward P. Duggan
Edward P. Duggan
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Dickinson College
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Abstract

Students of the innovative process in American manufacturing have emphasized the scarcity of labor and the consequent need for labor-saving machines. In the late nineteenth century one of the country's largest manufacturing industries was the production of carriages, which, in its most important center, Cincinnati, was organized on a mass production basis. But Professor Duggan finds that problems of the quantity and quality of labor were secondary in carriage factories, compared to other factors such as fuel costs, factory space, and the need to stabilize the quality and price of vehicles marketed by the industry as a whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1977 , pp. 308 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1977

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References

1 Hughes, J. R. T., Industrialization and Economic History (New York, 1970), 135–136Google Scholar.

2 In his seminal work, Habakkuk argued his point particularly for the early nineteenth century. Although noting that the labor supply situation in both Britain and the United States changed somewhat later in the century, he nonetheless felt that basic differences continued to exist. Habakkuk, H. J., American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1962), Chs. 4-6.Google Scholar

3 Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1898. Vol. I, 5, 14, and 160.Google Scholar

4 Special Report, U.S. Census Office, Manufactures, 1905, pt. IV, 310; U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1880, xvii; see lists of advertisers, such as those in The Hub, September 1891, xiii.

5 Ernest I. Miller, “The Death of an Industry,” Bulletin of Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio (January 1954), 18-19. The coming of the automobile quashed this growth in the early twentieth century. Thirteenth Report, 1898, Vol. II, 714-721.

6 Thirteenth Report, 1898, Vol. I, 159.

7 Perloff, H., et al., Regions, Resources, and Economic Growth, (Lincoln, Neb., 1960), 118Google Scholar; U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1860, 1900.

8 J. D. B. De Bow, Statistical View of the United States, 399; for greater detail, see Edward P. Duggan “Labor Supply and Technological Change in the Nineteenth Century: A Comparison of Cincinnati and Birmingham, England,” Bulletin of the Cincinnati Historical Society (Winter 1973), 263-284; U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1880, xxvi.

9 The Hub, November 1891, 387; U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1880, xxvii; The Hub, July 1, 1883, 234, and The Hub, November 1891, 387; Miller, “Industry,” 19; Thirteenth Report, 1898, Vol. I, 36-37.

10 Thirteenth Report, 1898, Vol. I, 5-7.

11 Thirteenth Report, 1898. Vol. I, 163-164.

12 Thirteenth Report, 1898, Vol. I, 169, 175.

13 The Hub, November 1891, 396; calculated from The Hub, November 1891, 387.

14 Calculated from U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1900, Vol. VIII.

15 U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1900, Vol. VIII.

16 The Hub, May 1, 1886, 112, 113.

17 The Hub, July 1, 1883, 233-234.

18 The Hub, November 1907, 270; September 1891, 284.

19 The Hub, June 1, 1883, 164; July 1894, 266; June 1, 1883, 164.

20 Harmel, Dana B., “A History of the Ohio Mechanics Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1962), 45Google Scholar; John J. Rowe, “Cincinnati's Early Cultural and Educational Enterprise,” Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio (July, 1950), 211-216, October 1950, 304-310; Common Schools of Cincinnati, Fortieth Annual Report: Handbook for School Year Ending June 30, 1870 138; Carriage World, May 1890, 7. Miller reports an extensive strike in 1901-1902, “Industry,” 23-24. The Hub, June 1887, 170.

21 For a discussion of political transformations, see Miller, Zane, The Urbanization of Modern America (New York, 1973), 108–121Google Scholar; Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Annual Reports, 1860-1900; Report, 1900, 107-108; Chamber, Report, 1882-3, 122; Wing, George A., “The History of the Cincinnati Machine-Tool Industry” (D.B.A. dissertation, Indiana University, 1964), 254, 251, 178, 179, 185.Google Scholar

22 Morris, James, “The Road to Trade Unionism: Organized Labor in Cincinnati to 1893” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1969), 191Google Scholar; Downard, William L., “The Cincinnati Brewing Industry, 1911-1933” (Doctoral dissertation, Miami University, Ohio, 1969), 51, 54, 57, 58, 60Google Scholar. During the Civil War in the Cincinnati area, not labor shortage but consumer demand prompted stove production. Paper shortages led to innovations in printing; Carl M. Becker, “Entrepreneurial Invention and Innovation in the Miami Valley, during the Civil War,” Bulletin of the Cincinnati Historical Society (January, 1964), 7. Patent evidence further suggests the strength of non-labor influences about this time; Report of the Commissioner of Patents, 1849, Vol. I, 45-73; Patents, 1860, 22-147. See also Edward P. Duggan, “Comparison,” 271, 273; The Hub, June 1, 1886, 180; The Hub, November 1, 1886, 516, 517.

23 Ozanne, Robert, A Century of Labor-Management Relations at McCormick and International Harvester (Madison, Wis., 1967), 20, 21Google Scholar; Sixteenth Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1901, 31; Third Report, 1887, 766-767; compiled from Tenth Report, 1894, Table I; Sixteenth Report, 1901, 242-243.

24 The Hub, November 1891, 383 and May 1891, 130. See, for example, Carriage World, May 1890, December 1891 and January 1892; also February 1892, 27 and 28.

25 Carriage World, December 1891; The Hub, November 1907, 280-281.

26 D. L. Brito and Jeffrey C. Williamson, “Skilled Labor and Nineteenth Century Anglo-American Managerial Behavior,” Explorations in Economic History (Spring, 1973), 244, 250; Asher, Ephraim, “Industrial Efficiency and Biased Technical Change in American and British Manufacturing: The Case of Textiles in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History (June, 1972), 441Google Scholar; R. C. Floud, “The Adolescence of American Engineering Competition, 1860-1900,” Economic History Review (February, 1974), 65-70; Uselding, Paul J., “An Early Chapter in the Evolution of American Industrial Management,” Cain, Louis P., Uselding, Paul J., eds., Business Enterprise and Economic Change (Kent, Ohio, 1973), 77.Google Scholar

27 “American Competition in the World's Engineering Trades,” Cassier's Magazine, March 1901, 380. A most helpful source for this discussion is Gene Ferguson, Subject Index: Cassier's Magazine Engineering Monthly, 1891-1913, Iowa State University Bulletin, Vol. LXIII, No. 10, October 21, 1964; “American Competition,” 380-382.

28 Alfred Mosely, “British Views of American Workshops,” Cassier's Magazine, January 1903, 475-479.

29 George N. Barnes, “America's Shortcomings,” Cassier's Magazine, April 1903, 710; Alfred Mosely, “The Recent British Trades Union Visit to the United States,” Cassier's Magazine, February 1903, 575, 576; Barnes, “America's Shortcomings,” 710, 711.

30 C. K. Harley, “Skilled Labour and the Choice of Technique in Edwardian Industry,” Explorations in Economic History (Summer, 1974), 391-414; Floud, Roderick, “Changes in the Productivity of Labour in the British Machine Tool Industry, 1856-1900,” McCloskey, Donald, ed., Essays on a Mature Economy (Princeton, 1971), 330, 332Google Scholar. In America, ninetetenth-century observer Charles Fitch remarked that experienced, “unskilled” men often received skilled wages as machine tenders because they could provide careful, talented supervision, although lacking a traditionally defined skill. “Report on the Manufactures of Interchangeable Mechanism,” U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1880, Vol. II, 6.