Book Description

Excerpt from The Movement of Wages in the Cotton Manufacturing Industry of New England Since 1860 There has been no attempt made here to study, with a thoroughness exceeding that already applied by students of economic and industrial history, the history of the labor supply in the New England cotton industry. Obviously the supply has two fundamental aspects, quantity and quality. As regards the former, the compilation and analysis of population and occupation statistics could add little of value for present pur poses, since, as we have seen in the recent war period, within limits of very general principles of social and industrial stratifi cation there is no such thing as ah arbitrary or permanent division of the industrial population into non-interchangeable classes, and munitions factories have drawn heavily on textile mills for a labor supply. Quantitative changes of population, from a positive point of view, have not been the Chief factor in indus trial adjustments, and to compile elaborate figures showing such changes would add little to the value of this study. In general, this quantitative change of labor supply has been a growth from about cotton mill employees in the United States in 1860, to in the United States in 1910, of whom were in New England. Within the New England group of states Massachusetts has always been in the lead, showing a growth of from in 1860 to in 1910. These are United States Census figures. More detailed figures for Massachusetts are presented in Chapter V. Following Massachusetts in the order of numerical importance, the other New England states are Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine and Connecticut. The development of the industry in Vermont is so small as to be almost negligible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.