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Collective Choice of Working Conditions: Hours in British and U.S. Iron and Steel, 1890–1923

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Martha Ellen Shiells
Martha Ellen Shiells
Affiliation:
The author is a member of the Research Staff, Center for Naval Analyses, 4401 Ford Avenue, Alexandria, VA 22302.
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Abstract

Twelve-hour days persisted in British and U.S. iron and steel after most industrial workers worked eight-hour days. When shorter hours finally came, sooner in Britain, they came abruptly. This article presents a model of working hours as public goods; when job attributes are shared there is a collective choice problem. In Britain, a collective bargaining mechanism reconciled the preferences of workers and capital owners and facilitated the move to shorter hours. In the United States immigrants had been willing to work long hours. When immigration was cut off, the government intervened.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 379 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1990

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References

I am grateful to Joan Underhill Hannon and the editors of this JOURNAL for their valuable comments. Frank Stafford provided the initial idea that motivated the article, and most of the theoretical structure is borrowed from him and his coauthors. Gavin Wright did his best to ensure that the historical record was not sacrificed on theoretical altars. There remains little to take credit for except, of course, any remaining errors.Google Scholar

1 For example, “the iron and steel manufacturer … did not see how he could [reduce hours] without going in one step from twelve hours to eight hours …” American Engineering Council, The Twelve Hour Shift in Industry (New York, 1922), pp. 221–22.Google ScholarThis and other sources discuss the work schedules of individual firms or workers, but make no mention of unorthodox shift arrangements. For the United States, see Fitch, John A., The Steel Workers (1st edn., 1911; reprint edn., New York, 1969)Google Scholar; U.S. Congress, Senate, Report on Conditions of Employment in the United States Iron and Steel Industry, vols. 1–4, S.Doc. 110, 62nd Cong., 1st sess., 1911–1913Google Scholar; Interchurch World Movement, Report on the Steel Strike of 1919 (1st edn., 1920; reprint edn., New York, 1971).Google ScholarFor Great Britain, see [Pugh, Arthur], Men of Steel by One of Them (London, 1951)Google Scholar; Bowley, Arthur L., Prices and Wages in the United Kingdom, 1914–1920 (Oxford, 1921)Google Scholar; Carr, James Cecil and Taplin, W., History of the British Steel Industry (Cambridge, 1962).Google Scholar

2 Fitch, Steel Workers, p. 232.Google Scholar

3 The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, which was strong in the iron industry until the 1890s, lost ground after Homestead and did not survive the changes in technology and industrial organization that accompanied the transition to steel. For discussions of comparative union development, see Holt, James, “Trade Unionism in the British and U.S. Steel Industries, 1880–1914: A Comparativé Study,” Labor History, 18 (Winter 1977), pp. 5–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wilkinson, Frank, “Collective Bargaining in the Steel Industry in the 1920s,” in Briggs, Asa and Saville, John, eds., Essays in Labor History, 1918–1939 (London, 1977), pp. 102–32.Google Scholar

4 Discussions of hours before 1890 are found in Brody, David, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era (1st edn., 1960; paperback edn., Cambridge, 1969), pp. 35–37Google Scholar; and Elbaum, Bernard and Wilkinson, Frank, “Industrial Relations and Uneven Development: A Comparative Study of the American and British Steel Industries,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 3 (Sept. 1979), pp. 277–84.Google Scholar

5 Douglas, Paul A., Real Wages in the United States, 1890–1926 (1st edn., 1930; reprint edn., New York, 1966), pp. 92–93, 112, 114.Google ScholarFor further discussion of data and data sources, see Shiells, Martha, “Hours of Work and Shiftwork in the Early Industrial Labor Markets of Great Britain, the United States, and Japan” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1985), chap. 4.Google Scholar

6 Board of Trade enquiries into wages and hours in iron and steel in 1886 and 1906 are in Parliamentary Papers (Commons), 1890, vol. 68, p. 591, C. 375; and 1893/4, vol. 83, pt. II, p. i, C. 6889.Google ScholarThe poor sample size in these enquiries is discussed in McCloskey, Donald N., Economic Maturity and Entrepreneurial Decline: British Iron and Steel, 1870–1913 (Cambridge, 1973), p. 75n.Google ScholarAnother source on hours is Ministry of Labour, “Changes in Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour in the UK,” Labour Gazette, annually from 1893.Google Scholar

7 Deardorff, Alan V. and Stafford, Frank P., “Compensation of Cooperating Factors” Econometrica, 44 (July 1976), pp. 671–84, develop the model of cooperating factors used here and also suggest the application to eight-hour days in steel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Carr and Taplin, British Steel, p. 137.Google Scholar

9 Pugh, Men of Steel, p. 171.Google Scholar

10 Pittsburgh Post, 4 July 1892,Google Scholaras quoted in Brody, Steelworkers, p. 52.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., p. 100.

12 Whaples, Robert, “Winning the Eight-Hour Day, 1909–1919,” this issue of the JOURNAL, pp. 393–406, presents estimates indicating that wage increases accounted for about 30 percent of the reduction in hours.Google Scholar

13 Duncan, Greg J. and Stafford, Frank P., “Do Union Members Receive Compensating Wage Differentials?” American Economic Review, 70 (June 1980), pp. 355–71, develop this model of workplace public goods, the cost of assembling homogeneous workers, and unions as mechanisms for collective choice.Google Scholar

14 Wilkinson, “Collective Bargaining,” p. 106.Google Scholar

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16 Pugh, Men of Steel, p. 137.Google Scholar

17 The move to eight hours is discussed in Carr and Taplin, British Steel, pp. 451–56,Google Scholarand Pugh, Men of Steel, pp. 280–86.Google Scholar

18 This was true for blast furnaces in South Wales, iron and steel mills in the North of England, open hearth mills in England and Scotland, and steel mills in the West of Scotland (see Bowley, Prices and Wages, pp. 145–47). Reductions in weekly base earnings were graduated, from no reduction for men earning under 50s ranging up to a one-third reduction for men earning 120s per week.Google ScholarPugh, Men of Steel, pp. 611–14, reproduces the agreement that covered most workers.Google Scholar

19 Pugh, Men of Steel, p. 286.Google Scholar

20 U.S. steelmakers adopted a number of innovations that replaced skilled craftsmen and manual labor with machines and unskilled labor. These innovations and differences International occupational structures between Great Britain and the United States are discussed in Allen, Robert C., “The Peculiar Productivity History of American Blast Furnaces, 1840–1913,” this JOURNAL, 37 (09. 1977), pp. 605–33Google Scholar; Allen, , “International Competition in Iron and Steel, 1850–1913,” this JOURNAL, 39 (12. 1979), pp. 911–37Google Scholar; Allen, , “Accounting for Price Changes: American Steel Rails, 1879–1920,” Journal of Political Eonomy, 89 (06 1981), pp. 512–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elbaum, Bernard, “The Making and Shaping of Job and Pay Structures in the Iron and Steel Industry,” in Osterman, Paul, ed., Internal Labor Markets (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 71–107Google Scholar; Elbaum and Wilkinson, “Industrial Relations;” and Holt, “Trade Unionism.”Google Scholar

21 U.S. Congress, Senate, Abstract of Reports of the Immigration Commission (vol. 1, S.Doc. 747, 61st Cong., 3rd sess., 1911), p. 24,Google Scholaras quoted in Piore, Michael J., Birds of Passage: Migrant Labor and Industrial Societies (Cambridge, 1979), p. 149.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPiore, pp. 149–54, contains a general discussion of the new immigrants.Google Scholar

22 Nelson, Daniel, Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880–1920 (Madison, 1975), p. 80.Google Scholar

23 Brody, Steelworkers, p. 96.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., pp. 96–106. Also, Bodnar, John, Immigration and Industrialization: Ethnicity in an American Mill Town, 1870–1940 (Pittsburgh, 1977), pp. 15–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bodnar, John, Simon, Roger, and Weber, Michael, Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900–1960 (Chicago, 1982).Google Scholar

25 Piore, Birds of Passage, p. 152.Google ScholarBodnar, Immigration and Industrialization, describes the flow of Eastern European and black labor into Steelton.Google ScholarBodnar, et al., Lives of Their Own, describe the recruitment of immigrant labor into Pittsburgh. Immigrants are portrayed as being aware of working conditions before their arrival.Google Scholar

26 Fitch, Steel Workers, p. 11.Google Scholar

27 Migrant black steelworkers are discussed in Brody, Steelworkers, pp. 184–87Google Scholar; Bodnar, Immigration and Industrialization, pp. 14–15Google Scholar; and Bodnar, et al., Lives of Their Own, pp. 31–36, 190–92.Google ScholarBrody, p. 187, discusses a proposal to recruit oriental workers.Google Scholar

28 See Brody, Steelworkers, chap. 12Google Scholar; and Eggert, Gerald G., Steelmasters and Labor Reform, 1886–1923 (Pittsburgh, 1981).Google Scholar

29 Interchurch World Movement, Steel Strike, p. 84.Google Scholar

30 American Engineering Council, Twelve Hour Shift, p. ix.Google Scholar

31 Eggert, Steelmasters, p. 155.Google Scholar

32 Quoted in Brody, Steelworkers, p. 274.Google Scholar