He wishes to thank Stephen Marglin, who offered considerable advice that helped to improve the analysis presented here. The author also benefited from discussions with Thomas Brush, Robert McCauley, and William Mass as well as from a number of suggestions made by participants at the Cliometrics Conference, University of Chicago, May 1980. The comments of an anonymous referee were extremely useful in compelling the author to clarify his arguments. Thomas Brush provided research assistance. This paper is based upon research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SES 78–25671 and by a grant-in-aid from the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum. A related paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, September 1980 in Boston and was published in this JOURNAL in March 1981.Google Scholar

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³² CFT, 1 May 1885, 12 Feb. 1886, 26 Feb. 1886, 3 March 1894, 21 Dec. 1894, 19 Nov. 1897;Google ScholarLomax, J. W., Fine Cotton Spinning (Manchester, 1913), p. 116.Google Scholar

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⁶⁰ See footnote 39 above for evidence on this restrictive behavior drawn from a number of industries. No detailed study of this phenomenon exists for Fall River mule spinning rooms. Thomas Brush has found ample evidence, however, of piece-rate cuts accompanying increases in productivity in an antebellum Lowell weave room along with the development of restrictive psychology on the part of the workers. See Brush, Thomas, “Lawrence Mill, #2, Upper Weave Room, 1834–1855: The Nature of the Labor Force and its Relation to Productivity,” photocopy (Harvard University, 04 1981).Google Scholar

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⁶⁵ See Lazonick, “Factor Costs”; idem., “Competition.” A detailed and, in some ways pioneering, neoclassical analysis of the rings versus mules question can be found in Sandberg, Lars, Lancashire in Decline (Columbus, 1974), chs. 2–3.Google Scholar

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⁶⁹ While ignoring the relative magnitudes of unit cotton-cost differentials in the two countries, Sandberg and, following him, Harley have argued that it was the higher unit labor-cost differentials of mule yarn over ring yarn in the United States as compared to Britain that accounts for the relatively rapid diffusion of ring spinning in New England. Sandberg, Lancashire, ch. 2;Google ScholarHarley, C. K., “Skilled Labour and the Choice of Technique in Edwardian Industry,” Explorations in Economic History, 11 (Summer 1974), p. 399. Sandberg, however, overestimates the unit labor costs on mules in both countries as well as output per spindle on ring-frames in the United States, and as a result overstates the relative unit labor-cost advantage of rings in the U.S. When correct data are used, we find that, while the labor-cost saving of rings over mules favored the introduction of rings in both the United States and Britain, it was an insignificant factor in accounting for the differences in the rate of diffusion of the newer technology.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSee Lazonick, , “Factor Costs,” and productivity data in Whittam, William, Report on England's Cotton Industry (Washington, 1907), p. 19;Google ScholarMason Machine Works, Cotton Machinery (Taunton, MA, 1898), pp. 122–26;Google ScholarMosely, Reports, pp. 129–30.Google Scholar