Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T06:43:51.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

National Leadership and Competing Technological Paradigms: The Globalization of Cotton Spinning, 1878–1933

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2010

Gary R. Saxonhouse  and
Gavin Wright
Gavin Wright*
Affiliation:
William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History, Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. E-mail: write@stanford.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Using the records of British firms that supplied nearly 90 percent of world trade in cotton spinning machinery, we track the evolution and diffusion of spinning technology over more than 50 years. In contrast to scenarios in which modern technologies supplant older methods, we observe two paradigms in competitive coexistence, each one supporting ongoing productivity growth through complementary improvements in machinery, organization, and workforce skills. International productivity differences were magnified under the skill-based mule, British spinners being the world's best. Global diffusion of ring spinning was driven by advances in fiber control, a “directed” technological response to the expansion of world trade.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 70 , Issue 3 , September 2010 , pp. 535 - 566
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Acemoglu, Daron. “Directed Technical Change.” Review of Economic Studies 69 (2002): 781–809.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acemoglu, Daron, and Zilibotti, Fabrizio. “Productivity Differences.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 116 (2001): 563–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
A’Hearn, Brian. “Institutions, Externalities, and Economic Growth in Southern Italy: Evidence from the Cotton Textile Industry, 1861–1914.” Economic History Review 51, no. 4 (1998): 734–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Robert C.“The Industrial Revolution in Miniature: The Spinning Jenny in Britain, France, and India.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 4 (2009): 901–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atack, Jeremy. “Fact in Fiction? The Relative Costs of Steam and Water Power: A Simulation Approach.” Explorations in Economic History 16 (1979): 409–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atack, Jeremy, Bateman, Fred, and Margo, Robert A.. “Skill Intensity and Rising Wage Dispersion in Nineteenth-Century American Manufacturing.” The Journal of Economic History 64, no. 1 (2004): 172–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnshaw, Charles. High Drafting in Spinning. London: E. Binn, 1930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bessen, James. “Technology and Learning by Factory Workers: The Stretch-Out at Lowell, 1842.” The Journal of Economic History 63, no. 1 (2003): 33–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bessen, James. “More Machines, Better Machines, …or Better Workers?” Research on Innovation, Boston University School of Law Working Paper, June 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bessen, James. “Was Mechanization Deskilling? The Origins of Task-Biased Technical Change.” Research on Innovation, Boston University School of Law Working Paper, December 2009.Google Scholar
Booth, William H.“The Modern Cotton Spinning Factory.” Cassier's Magazine, 1909.Google Scholar
Bruland, Kristine. “Skills, Learning, and the International Diffusion of Technology.” In Technological Revolutions in Europe, edited by Berg, M. and Bruland, K., 161–87. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catling, Harold. The Spinning Mule. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1970.Google Scholar
Chapman, Sidney J.The Cotton Industry and Trade. London: Methuen, 1905.Google Scholar
Ciliberto, Federico. “Were British Cotton Entrepreneurs Technologically Backward? Firm-Level Evidence on the Adoption of Ring-Spinning.” Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Gregory. “Why Isn't the Whole World Developed? Lessons from the Cotton Mills.” The Journal of Economic History 47, no. 1 (1987): 141–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, W. A. Graham. Foreign Markets for the Sale of American Cotton Products. U.S. Bureau of Manufactures, Special Agent Series No. 1. Washington, DC: USGPO, 1907.Google Scholar
Comin, D., and Hobijn, B.. “Cross-Country Technology Adoption: Making the Theories Face the Facts.” Journal of Monetary Economics 51 (2004): 39–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copeland, M. T.“Technical Development in Cotton Manufacturing Since 1860.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 24 (1909): 109–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copeland, M. T.The Cotton Manufacturing Industry of the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917.Google Scholar
Eaton, Jonathan, and Kortum, Samuel. “International Technology Diffusion: Theory and Measurement.” International Economic Review 40 (1999): 537–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farnie, Douglas. “The Textile Machine-Making Industry and the World Market, 1870–1960.” In International Competition and Strategic Response in the Textile Industries Since 1870, edited by Rose, Mary B., 150–70. London: Frank Cass, 1991.Google Scholar
Forrester, Robert B.The Cotton Industry of France. Manchester: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1921.Google Scholar
Freifeld, Mary. “Technological Change and the ’Self-Acting’ Mule.” Social History 11 (1986): 319–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibb, George Sweet. The Saco-Lowell Shops. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia, and Sokoloff, Kenneth. “Women, Children, and Industrialization in the Early Republic: Evidence from the Manufacturing Censuses.” The Journal of Economic History 42, no. 4 (1982): 741–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gomez-Galvariatto, Aurora. “Measuring the Impact of Institutional Change in Capital-Labor Relations in the Mexican Textile Industry, 1900–1930.” In The Mexican Economy, 1870–1930, edited by Bortz, Jeffrey L. and Haber, Stephen, 289–323. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Gomez-Galvariatto, Aurora. “The Political Economy of Protectionism: The Mexican Textile Industry, 1900–1950.” Paper presented to Inter-American Seminar in Economics, December 2004.Google Scholar
Great, Britain. Patent Office. Fifty Years Subject Index, 1861–1910. London: The Patent Office, 1915.Google Scholar
Great, Britain. Patents for Inventions: Abridgements of Specification. London: The Patent Office, 1922–1934.Google Scholar
Habakkuk, H. J.American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Harley, C. K. “The Shift from Sailing Ships to Steamships, 1850–1890: A Study in Technological Change and Its Diffusion.” In Essays in a Mature Economy: Britain After 1840, edited by McCloskey, D. N., 215–34. London: Methuen, 1971.Google Scholar
Harley, C. K.“Skilled Labor and the Choice of Techniques in Edwardian Industry.” Explorations in Economic History 11 (1974): 391–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, Rebecca. “Of Life Cycles Real and Imaginary: The Unexpectedly Long Old Age of Optical Lithography.” Research Policy 24 (1995): 631–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgins, D. M.“Rings, Mules, and Structural Constraints in the Lancashire Textile Industry, c. 1945–1965.” Economic History Review 46 (1993): 342–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huberman, Michael. Escape from the Market: Negotiating Work in Lancashire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Jeremy, David. Transatlantic Industrial Revolution. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Jewkes, John, and Gray, E. M.. Wages and Labour. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935.Google Scholar
Keller, Wolfgang. “Geographic Localization of International Technology Diffusion.” American Economic Review 92 (2002): 120–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keller, Wolfgang. “International Technology Diffusion.” Journal of Economic Literature 42 (2004): 752–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk, Robert. The Economic Development of the British Textile Machinery Industry ca. 1850–1939. Ph.D. diss., University of Salford, 1983.Google Scholar
Kirk, Robert, and Simmons, Colin. “Engineering and the First World War.” World Development 9 (1981): 773–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koh, Sung Jae. Stages of Industrial Development in Asia: A Comparative History of the Cotton Industry in Japan, India, China, and Korea. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazonick, William. “Industrial Relations and Technical Change: The Case of the Self-Acting Mule.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 3 (1979): 231–62.Google Scholar
Lazonick, William. “Factor Costs and the Diffusion of Ring Spinning in Britain Prior to World War I.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 96 (1981): 89–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leunig, Timothy. “New Answers to Old Questions: Explaining the Slow Adoption of Ring Spinning in Lancashire, 1880–1913.” The Journal of Economic History 61, no. 2 (2001): 439–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leunig, Timothy. “A British Industrial Success: Productivity in the Lancashire and New England Cotton-Spinning Industries a Century Ago.” Economic History Review 56, no. 1 (2003): 90–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Master Cotton Spinners Manufacturers’ Association. Official Reports of the International Congress, 1908.Google Scholar
McHugh, Cathy L.“Earnings in the Post-Bellum Southern Cotton Textile Industry: A Case Study.” Explorations in Economic History 21, no. 1 (1984): 28–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, L. J.Practical Cotton Spinning. Manchester: Emnott & Co., 1922.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Brian. International Historical Statistics: Americas and Australasia. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Brian. International Historical Statistics: Europe, 1750–1988. New York: Stockton Press, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Brian. International Historical Statistics: Asia and Africa. New York: Stockton Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
More, Charles. Skill and the English Working Class, 1870–1914. London: Croon Helm, 1980.Google Scholar
Musson, A. E.“The ’Manchester School’ and Exportation of Machinery.” Business History 14, no. 1 (1972): 17–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noguera, J. Modern Drafting in Cotton Spinning. Leeds: Chorley Pickersgill, 1937.Google Scholar
Odell, Ralph M.Cotton Goods in Italy. U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Manufactures. Special Agents Report No. 48, 1912.Google Scholar
Odell, Ralph M.Cotton Goods in Russia. U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Manufactures. Special Agents Report No. 51, 1913.Google Scholar
Parente, Stephen L.“Learning by Using and the Switch to Better Machines.” Review of Economic Dynamics 3 (2000): 675–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearse, Arno S.The Cotton Industry of Japan and China. Manchester: International Federation of Master Cotton Spinners, 1929.Google Scholar
Razo, Armando, and Haber, Stephen. “The Rate of Growth of Productivity in Mexico, 1850–1933.” Journal of Latin American Studies 30 (1998): 481–517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, Nathan. “Factors Affecting the Diffusion of Technology.” Explorations in Economic History 10 (1972): 2–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rostas, L. “Productivity of Labour in the Cotton Industry.” Economic Journal 55 (1945): 192–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, John. “Machinery Replacement in the Cotton Trade.” Economic Journal 40 (1930): 569–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sachs, Jeffrey D. “Tropical Underdevelopment.” NBER Working Paper No. 8119, Cambridge, MA, 2001.Google Scholar
Sandberg, Lars. “American Rings and British Mules.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 83 (1969): 25–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandberg, Lars. Lancashire in Decline. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Saxonhouse, Gary R.“A Tale of Technological Diffusion in the Meiji Period.” The Journal of Economic History 34, no. 1 (1974): 149–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saxonhouse, Gary R.“Productivity Change and Labor Absorption in Japanese Cotton Spinning, 1891–1935.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 91 (1977): 195–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saxonhouse, Gary R., and Wright, Gavin. “New Evidence on the Stubborn Mule and the Cotton Industry, 1878–1920.” Economic History Review 37 (1984): 507–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saxonhouse, Gary R., and Wright, Gavin. “Technological Evolution in Cotton Spinning, 1878–1933.” In The Fibre That Changed the World, edited by Farnie, Douglas A. and Jeremy, David J., 129–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Schulze-Gaeverinitz, G. The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, and Co., Ltd., 1895.Google Scholar
Singleton, John. Lancashire on the Scrapheap: The Cotton Industry, 1945–1970. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Thornley, Thomas. Advanced Cotton Spinning. London: Scott, Greenwood & Son, 1923.Google Scholar
Von Tunzelmann, G. N.Steam Power and British Industrialization to 1860. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Ward, Chris. Russia's Cotton Workers and the New Economic Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Wolcott, Susan. “The Perils of Lifetime Employment: Productivity Advance in the Indian and Japanese Textile Industries, 1920–1938.” The Journal of Economic History 54, no. 2 (1994): 307–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolcott, Susan. “Strikes in Colonial India.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61, no. 4 (2008): 460–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolcott, Susan, and Clark, Gregory. “Why Nations Fail.” The Journal of Economic History 59, no. 2 (1999): 397–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar