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Craft Labor and Mechanization in Nineteenth-Century American Canning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Martin Brown  and
Peter Philips
Martin Brown
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Howard University.
Peter Philips
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Utah.
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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.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 743 - 756
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1986

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References

1 While there are a number of industry sources giving brief histories of the emergence of American canning, the only scholarly source is Keuchel, Edward F., “The Development of the Canning Industry in New York State to 1960” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1970).Google Scholar The most widely available industry source is May, Earl Chapin, The Canning Clan (New York, 1937).Google Scholar The most useful industry source is Judge, Arthur I., ed., A History of the Canning Industry by its Most Prominent Men (Baltimore, 1913).Google Scholar

2 Ratios of value added to wages, raw materials, and capital describe the diffusion of an increasingly capital-intensive, labor-saving and materials-neutral technology after the 1880s. The ratio of value added to production-line wages, which fell from 1860 to 1880 (4.97 to 2.07), generally rose after 1880 (2.07 to 3.63 in 1919) indicating a relative easing of wage costs. In contrast, the ratio of value added to materials cost, largely raw produce, was roughly constant from 1890 to 1919, suggesting rising material flow-through per worker with mechanization. The ratio of the stock of capital to value added fell from 1870 to 1880 suggesting a rapid diffusion of pressure cookers. The ratio does not again fall, in the aggregate, until after 1900 indicating that the new technologies which were introduced in preparation and capping in the mid-1880s in Baltimore were only in national use some 15 years later. U.S. Census Bureau, Eighth Census, 1860, Manufactures of the U.S. (Washington, D.C., 1865), pp. 29, 230, 255, 351, 417, 542;Google ScholarU.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census, 1870, Vol. III, Wealth and Industry (Washington, D.C. 1872), p. 395;Google ScholarU.S. Census Bureau, Twelfth Census, 1900, Manufactures, Part I, “United States by Industry” (Washington, D.C., 1902), p. 8;Google ScholarU.S. Census Bureau, Thirteenth Census, 1910, Vol. 10, Manufactures, 1909, (Washington, D.C. 1913), p. 383;Google ScholarU.S. Census Bureau, Census of Manufactures, 1914, Vol. II, “Reports for Selected Industries” (Washington, D.C., 1919), p. 365.Google Scholar

3 Underwood, W. Lyman, “Incidents in the Canning Industry of New England,” in A. Judge, History of the Canning Trade, p. 13. Underwood was a professor at MIT in the 1890s and a relative of the first American canner, William Underwood. Lyman Underwood along with S. C. Prescott helped pioneer university study of the canning processing techniques. The mid-1890s saw the first American scientific study of why the canning process worked.Google Scholar

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5 Keuchel, Edward F., Canning Industry in New York, p. 34; U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census, p. 436.Google Scholar

6 The first published source of canning processing techniques in the United States was Schwaab, Ernest F., The Secrets of Canning (Baltimore, 1890). This book was published after processing techniques had become relatively well known.Google Scholar

7 Swank, Edith, The Story of Food Preservation (New York, 1943).Google Scholar

8 Cox, James D., “The Evolution of Tomato Canning Machinery,” in A. Judge History of the Canning Industry, p. 83. Cox's recollections are shared by A. H. F. Going who was a Baltimore cannery owner from 1864 to 1899. In 1899 he recalled that the Can Makers Mutual Protective Association was formed around 1870 for the purpose of raising wages. Journeymen can makers through organized demands pushed wages up over 100 percent. “But finally machinery commenced to assert itself in the manufacture of cans, on account of the frequency of these strikes and on account of the strength of this combination. Men became restive under these influences and the manufacturer of cans commenced figuring to get away from being dictated to by his employees.”Google ScholarU.S. Industrial Commission, Preliminary Report on Trusts and Combinations (Washington, D.C., 1900), vol. 1, p. 919.Google Scholar

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10 Judge, Edward S., “The Past, Present and Future of the Canning Industry,” p. 54.Google Scholar

11 ibid, p. 55.

12 California Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Conditions in the Canning Industry (Sacramento, 1913), p. 28.Google Scholar

13 Judge, Edward S., “The Past, Present and Future of the Canning Industry,” p. 56.Google Scholar

14 An indirect indication of the profits derived from cannery mechanization by cutting labor costs can be seen in census data. After 1880 both the ratios of value added to salaries and clerical wages, value added to materials and value added to capital stock hold constant or fall up to 1920. In contrast, the ratio of value added to production line wages steadily rises. This suggests that through the period when continuous flow, craft deskilling, mechanical line production was developed in the canneries, labor savings along the production line were the primary source of new revenues for profits. See fn. 2.Google Scholar

15 Judge, Edward S., “The Past, Present and Future of the Canning Industry,” p. 56. These data for one tomato cannery are consistent with the recollections of the Canning Trade editor, Edward Judge. When Judge stated that Cox's cappers could do no more work than the “ordinary man” but when “properly served and operated” cut capping costs by “about one-third,” Judge was confirming the findings in Tables 1 and 2. Capper productivity, if anything, remains constant after mechanization, but because wages fell from $3.00 to $1.44 per day, total unit costs (allowing for the cost and durability of Cox's capper) probably fell by Judge's assertion of “about one-third.” An 1885 Maryland report on the effects of can-making machinery on wages and productivity is also consistent with these data for one tomato cannery.Google Scholar Maryland Bureau of Industrial Statistics and Information, First Biennial Report, 1884–1885 (Baltimore, 1886), p. 74.Google Scholar

16 The beginnings of the Can Makers Mutual Protection Association in 1870 is suggested in Baltimore Federation of Labor, Illustrated History of the Baltimore Federation of Labor (Baltimore, 1900), p. 440Google Scholar and in the U.S. Industrial Commission, Trusts and Industrial Combinations (Washington, D.C. 1900), vol. I, p. 919.Google Scholar

17 Maryland Bureau of Statistics and Information, First Biennial Report, p. 207;Google ScholarMaryland, , Bureau of Statistics and Information, Second Biennial Report, (Annapolis, 1888), pp. 60–62, 75;Google Scholar Maryland Bureau of Statistics and Information, First Annual Report, 1892 (Baltimore, 1893), p. 200. The First Annual Report states: “The year 1892 will long be remembered in labor circles as being prolific of strikes and lockouts … ” yet no can maker and capper strikes were reported.Google Scholar Maryland Bureau of Statistics and Information, Third Annual Report, 1894 (Baltimore, 1895), p. 172;Google Scholar Maryland Bureau of Statistics and Information, Fourth Annual Report, 1895 (Baltimore, 1896), p. 169;Google Scholar Maryland Bureau of Statistics and Information, Eighth Annual Report, 1899 (Baltimore, 1900), p. 1;Google Scholar Maryland Bureau of Statistics and Information, Ninth Annual Report, 1900 (Baltimore, 1901), p. 16;Google Scholar Maryland Bureau of Statistics and Information, Tenth Annual Report, 1901 (Baltimore, 1902), pp. 12–13;Google Scholar Maryland Bureau of Statistics and Information, Eleventh Annual Report, 1902 (Baltimore, 1903), p. 52. The union and nonunion can makers wages were reported to be the same in 1902.Google Scholar

18 Baltimore Federation of Labor, Illustrated History, p. 440.Google Scholar

19 U.S. Industrial Commission, Capital and Labor (Washington, D.C., 1902), vol. 7, p. 431.Google Scholar

20 Reprinted in Food Production Management, 101 (July 1978), p. 70.Google Scholar