Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-05T18:57:47.844Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

American Management and British Labor: Lancashire Immigrant Spinners in Industrial New England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Isaac Cohen
Isaac Cohen
Affiliation:
San Jose State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives sent in 1881 a letter to the state Bureau of Statistics of Labor asking: “Why is it that the working people in Fall River are in constant turmoil when at Lowell and Lawrence they are quiet?” Subsequently the bureau conducted a massive inquiry (Massachusetts 1882: 195–415). It concluded that the main cause of the labor troubles in Fall River during the 1870s was the recent influx of British immigrant cotton workers who brought with them their Old Country tradition of labor militancy.

Type
The Management in the Industrial Workplace
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 608 - 650
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1985

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

Allen, Zachariah. 1829. The Science of Mechanics. Providence: Hutchens and Cory.Google Scholar
Arnold, Arthur. 1864. The History of the Cotton Famine. London: Saunders Otley and Co.Google Scholar
A, Aspinall., ed. 1949. The Early English Trade Unions. London: The Batchworth Press.Google Scholar
Baines, Edward. 1966 “1835”. History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Baird, Robert H. 1851. The American Cotton Spinner, and Managers“and Carders” Guide. Philadelphia: A. Hart.Google Scholar
Berthoff, Rowland T. 1953. British Immigrants in Industrial America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bromwell, William. 1969 “1855”. History of Immigration to the United States. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Brooks, Robert R. 1935 “ The United Textile Workers of America.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University.Google Scholar
Catling, Harold. 1970. The Spinning Mule, Newton Abbot, Devon: David and Charles.Google Scholar
Chapman, S. D. 1971. “Fixed Capital Formation in the British Cotton Manufacturing Industry,” in Aspects of Capital Investment in Britain 1750–1850, Higgins, J. P. P. and Pollard, Sidney, eds., 57–107. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Chapman, S. D. 1972. The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, S. J. 1900. “Some Policies of the Cotton Spinners' Trade Unions.” Economic Journal, 10:40 (12), 467–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, S. J. 1904. The Lancashire Cotton Industry. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Victor. 1949 [1929]. History of Manufacturers in the United States. Vols. I, II. New York: P. Smith.Google Scholar
Clements, R. V. 1955. “Trade Unions and Emigration, 1840–1980.” Population Studies, 9:2 (11), 167–80.Google Scholar
Cohen, Isaac. 1985a. “Workers’ Control in the Cotton Industry: A Comparative Study of British and American Mule Spinning.” Labor History, 26:1 (Winter).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Issac. 1985b. “Industral Capitalism, Technology, and Labor Relations: The Early Cotton Industry in Lancashire (1770–1840) and New England (1790–1870),” in Political Power and Social Theory, 5, 89–139 JAI Press, Inc.Google Scholar
Coleman, Peter. 1963. The Transformation of Rhode Island, 1790–1860. Providence: Brown University Press.Google Scholar
Commons, John. et al 1946 [1918]. History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. I. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
John, Commons. ed 1958 [1910]. Documentary History of American Industrial Society. Vol. IV. New York: Russel and Russel.Google Scholar
Copeland, Melvin T. 1966 [1917]. The Cotton Manufacturing Industry of the United States. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Coxe, Tench. 1972 [1814]. “Digest of Manufactures,” in The New American State Papers. Manufactures, Cochran, Thomas, ed., I, 160–410Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc.Google Scholar
Creamer, Daniel. 1941. “Recruiting Contract Laborers for the Amoskeag Mills.” Journal of Economic History, 1:1(05), 42–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cumbler, John T. 1979. Working-Class Community in Industrial America. Westport, Conneticut: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Daniels, George. 1920. The Early English Cotton Industry. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Dodd, George. 1851. Textiles Manufactures of Great Britain. London: C. Cox.Google Scholar
Earl, Henry. 1877. A Centennial History of Fall River, Mass.: Comprising a Record of Its Corporate Progress from 1656 to 1876. New York: Atlantic.Google Scholar
Earle, C, and Hoffman, R. 1980. “The Foundation of the Modern Economy: Agriculture and the Costs of Labor in the United States and England, 1800–1860,” American Historical Review, 85:5, 1055–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Economist (London) 1861–1864.Google Scholar
Ellison, Thomas. 1968 [1886]. The Cotton Trade of Great Britain. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Erickson, Charlotte. 1949. “The Encouragement of Emigration by British Trade Unions, 1850–1890.” Population Studies, 3:3(12, 248–73.Google Scholar
Erickson, Charlotte. 1957. American Industry and the European Immigrants, 1860–1885. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erickson, Charlotte. 1972. “Who Were the English and Scots Emigrants to the United States in the Late Nineteenth Century?” in Population and Social Change, Glass, D. and Ravelle, R., eds, 347–81. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Fairbairn, William. 1865. Treatise on Mills and Millwork, Part 11. London: Long-mans, Green, and C.Google Scholar
Fall River Daily Evening News 1870, 1875, 1879.Google Scholar
Fall River Daily Herald 1879.Google Scholar
Fall River Weekly News 1850–1951.Google Scholar
Farnie, D. A 1979. The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815–1896. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Foner, Philip. 1947. History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. I. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Foster, John. 1974. Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution. New York: St. Martin.Google Scholar
Foster, John. 1976. “Some Comments on Class Struggle and Labor Aristocracy, 1830–1860.” Social History, 1:3, 357–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gatrell, V. A. C. 1977. “Labour, Power, and Size of Firms in Lancashire Cotton in the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2d. ser. 30:1 (02), 95–139Google Scholar
Gibb, George S. 1950. The Saco-Lowell Shops. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Constance, 1968 [1939]. Holyoke, Massachusetts: A Case History of the Industrial Revolution in America. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon.Google Scholar
Griffin, John. 1939. Strikes: A Study of Quantitative Economics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hayes, John. 1879. American Textile Machinery. Cambridge: University Press, John Wilson and Son.Google Scholar
Henderson, W. O. 1969 [1934]. The Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861–1865. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
History of the Fall River Strike. By a Workingman, 1875. Revised and corrected by Smith, John. Fall River: Clark and Co.Google Scholar
Howard, Robert. 1888. “Progress in the Textile Trades,” in The Labor Movement: The Problem of To-Day, McNeill, George E., ed., 214–40. New York: The M. W. Hazen Co.Google Scholar
Jeremy, David. 1981. Transatlantic Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jevons, William. 1860. “An Account of the Spinners’ Strike at Ashton-Under-Lyne in 1830,” in Trades’ Societies and Strikes, National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, ed., 473–78. London: John Parker.Google Scholar
Joyce, Patrick. 1980. Work, Society, and Politics. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Kennedy, John. 1831. “A Brief Memoir of Samuel Crompton.” Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 5, 318–53.Google Scholar
Kirby, R. G, and Musson, A. E 1975. The Voice of the People: John Doherty, 1798-1854. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Knowles, K. G. J. C 1952. Strikes. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kulik, Gary. 1978. “Pawtucket Village and the Strike of 1824: The Origins of Class Conflict in Rhode Island.” Radical History Review, no. 17, 5–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kulik, Gary. 1980. “The Beginning of the Industral Revolution in America: Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 1672–1829.” Ph.D. diss., Brown University.Google Scholar
Labor Standard (Fall River) 1879–1880.Google Scholar
Lazonick, William. 1979. “Industrial Relations and Technical Change: The Case of the Self-acting Mule.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 3:3 (09), 231–62.Google Scholar
Lozonick, William. 1981a. “Production Relations, Labor Productivity, and Choice of Technique: British and U.S. Cotton Spinning.” The Journal of Economic History, 41:3 (09), 231–62Google Scholar
Lazonick, William. 1981b. “Factor Costs and the Diffusion of Ring Spinning in Britain Prior to World War I” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 96:1 (02), 491–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazonick, William. 1984. “Rings and Mules in Britain: Reply.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 99:2 (05), 393–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, C. H 1972. A Cotton Enterprise,1795–1840: A History of M' Connel “A Social History of Fall River, 1859–1879.” Ph.D. diss., Radcliffe College.Google Scholar
Leigh, Evan. 1948. “Mill Architecture in Fall River, 1865–1880.” The New England Quarterly, 21:2 (06), 185–203.Google Scholar
Lowe, J. 1860. “An Account of the Strike in the Cotton Trade at Preston in 1853,” in Trades' Societies and Strikes, National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, ed., 207–63. London: John Parker.Google Scholar
Lushington, Godfrey. 1860. “Abstract of the Evidence on Combinations of Workmen, Taken before a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1838,” in Trades' Societies and Strikes, National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, ed., 386–431London: John Parker.Google Scholar
Marsden, Richard 1909 [1884]. Cotton Spinning. London: George Bell.Google Scholar
Massachusetts, . Bureau of Statistics of Labor. Boston.Google Scholar
McLane, Louis 1972 [1833]. “Documents Relative to the Manufacture of the United States,” in The New American State Papers. Manufactures, Cochran, Thomas, ed., vols. 3–7. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc.Google Scholar
Montgomery, David. 1967. Beyond Equality: Labor and Radical Republicans 1862–1872. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Montgomery, James. 1979. Workers' Control in America. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Montgomery, James 1836. The Theory and Practice of Cotton Spinning. Glasgow: John Niven.Google Scholar
Montgomery, James. 1969 [1840]. A Practical Detail of the Cotton Manufacture of the United States. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Moorhouse, H. F 1978. “The Marxist Theory of Labour Aristocracy.” Social History, 3:1 (01), 61–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mosely Industrial Commission to the United States, October-December 1902. 1903. Reports of the Delegates. London: Cassell and Co.Google Scholar
Musson, A. E. 1976. “Class Struggle and Labour Aristocracy, 1830–1860,” Social History, 1:3, 335–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
New England Cotton Manufacturers Association (Boston). Baker Library, Harvard Business School, Boston.Google Scholar
Outlook. 4 02 1899. “The Old Factory Towns in New England.” 61:5, 285–94.Google Scholar
Providence Journal 1850–1851.Google Scholar
Prude, Jonathan. 1983. The Coming of Industrial Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sandberg, Lars. 1970. “American Rings and English Mules: The Role of Economic Rationality,” in Technological Change: The United States and Britain in the 19th Century, Saul, S. B., ed., 120–40. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Sandberg, Lars. 1984. “The Remembrance of Things Past: Rings and Mules Revisited.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 99:2 (05), 387–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepperson, Wilbur. 1953. “Industrial Emigration in Early Victorian Britain.” The Journal of Economic History, 13:2 (Spring), 179–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shorter, Edward, AND Tilly, Charles. 1974. Strikes in France, 1830–1968. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Silvia, Philip. 1973. “The Spindle City: Labor, Politics, and Religion in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1870–1905.” Ph.D. diss., Fordham University.Google Scholar
Smelser, Neil. 1959. Social Change in the Industrial Revolution. Chicago: The University Press.Google Scholar
Statistical Information Relating to Certain Branches of Industry in Massachusetts for the Year Ending May 1, 1865. 1866. Prepared from official returns by Oliver Warner, Secretary of the Commonwealth. Boston: Wright and Porter, State Printers.Google Scholar
Sutcliffe, John 1816. A Treatise on Canals and Reservoirs. Rochdale, England: J. Hartley.Google Scholar
Thornley, Thomas. 1894. Practical Treatise upon Self-Acting Mules. Manchester: John Heywood.Google Scholar
Tribune (New York) 1851, 1879.Google Scholar
Tucker, Barbara. 1974. “Samuel Slater and Sons: The Emergence of an American Factory System, 1790–1860.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis.Google Scholar
Tucker, Barbara. 1980. “The Force of Tradition in the Southern New England Textile Indus try, 1790–1860.” Unpublished.Google Scholar
Tufnell, E. C. 1972 [1834]. Character, Object, and Effects of Trades' Unions with Some Remarks on the Law Concerning Them. New York: Arno Press.Google Scholar
Turner, H. A 1962. Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy: A Comparative Study of Cotton Unions in England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Kingdom, United. Parliament. Parliamentary Papers.Google Scholar
United States, Bureau 1907. Twenty-first Annual Report, 1906, Strikes and Lockouts.Google Scholar
United States, Third Census 1810. A Series of Tables of the Several Branches of American Manufactures.Google Scholar
United States, Seventh Census 1850. Manuscript Census of Fall River. Microcopy 432, roll 308.Google Scholar
United States, Eighth Census 1860. Manuscript Census of Fall River. Microcopy 653, roll 491.Google Scholar
United States, Ninth Census 1870. Manuscript Census of Massachusetts. Manufacturing. Barnstable-Hampden Counties. Microcopy T1204, roll 21.Google Scholar
United States, Ninth Census 1870. Manuscript Census of Massachusetts. Manufacturing. Middlesex County. Massachusetts State House, Boston.Google Scholar
United States Congress. House 1836. Cultivation, Manufacture, and Foreign Trade of Cotton. 24th Cong., 1st sess. H. Doc. 146.Google Scholar
United States Congress. Senate 1885. Committee on the Relations between Labor and Capital. Report on Education and Labor. Vols. I, III. 47th Cong., 2d sess.Google Scholar
United States Congress. 1916. U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations. Final Report and Testimony. Vol. I. 64th Cong., 1st sess. S. Doc. 415.Google Scholar
United States. Industrial Commission. 1901. Report, VII, 14. Washington, D.C.: Government Printer's Press.Google Scholar
Unwin, George; Hulme, A; and Taylor, G 1968 [1924]. Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Ure, Andrew. 1836. The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain. Vol. II. London: Charles Knight.Google Scholar
Ure, Andrew. 1839. A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines. Vol I. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans.Google Scholar
Ure, Andrew. 1967 [1835]. The Philosophy of Manufactures. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Walkowitz, Daniel 1981 [1978]. Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855–1884. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1980 [1972]. Rockdale: The Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution. New York: Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Wallis, George 1969 [1854]. “New York Indust?al Exhibition: Special Report to the House of Commons,” in The American System of Manufacture, Rosenberg, Nathan, ed., 201–325Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Ware, Caroline. 1931. The Early New England Cotton Manufacture. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.Google Scholar
Watts, John 1969 [1866]. The Facts of the Cotton Famine. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Webb, Sidney, AND Webb, Beatrice. 1894. The History of Trade Unionism. London: Longmans, Green and Co.Google Scholar
Webber, Samuel. 1879. Manual of Power for Machines, Shafts, and Belts, with the History of Cotton Manufacture in the United States. New York: D. Appleton.Google Scholar
Wood George, Henr 1910. The History of Wages in the Cotton Trade during the Past Hundred Years. London: Shen-att and Hughes.Google Scholar
Wyman, Lillie, 1888. “Studies of Factory Life: Black Listing at Fall River.” Atlantic Monthly, 62:378 (11), 605–12.Google Scholar
Yearley, Clifton. 1957. Britons in American Labor: A History of the Influence of the United Kingdom Immigrants on American Labor, 1820–1914. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar