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Shaping Knowledge about American Labor: External Advising at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

Thomas A. Stapleford
Thomas A. Stapleford*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Argument

Created in 1884, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been the major federal source for data in the United States on labor-related topics such as prices, unemployment, compensation, productivity, and family expenditures. This essay traces the development and transformation of formal and informal consulting relationships between the BLS and external groups (including academic social scientists, unions, businesses, and other government entities) over the twentieth century. Though such a history cannot, of course, provide a comprehensive analysis of how political values have shaped the construction of labor statistics during this period, I argue that it can nevertheless provide important insights into the political context for the construction of knowledge about American workers and their living and working conditions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 187 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Unpublished References

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Gabarino, Joseph W. 1962. Wage Policy and Long-Term Contracts. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
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Goldberg, Joseph P. and Moye, William T.. 1982. “The AFL and a National BLS: Labor's Role Is Crystallized.”Monthly Labor Review 105 (3):21–29.Google Scholar
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Greenlees, John S. 2006. “The BLS Response to the Boskin Commission Report.” International Productivity Monitor (12):23–41.Google Scholar
Grossman, David Michael. 1974. “Professors and Public Service, 1885–1925: A Chapter in the Professionalization of the Social Sciences.” Ph.D. diss., Washington University.Google Scholar
Haskell, Thomas L. 1977. The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth Century Crisis of Authority. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
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Hurlin, Ralph G. and Berridge, William A.. 1926. Employment Statistics for the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Jacoby, Sanford M. 1985. Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions, and the Transformation of Work in American Industry. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Jasanoff, Sheila. 1990. The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policymakers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kaplan, A. D. H. 1938. “Distribution of Family Income and Expenditures.”Journal of Marketing 3 (2):156–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karl, Barry D. 1974. Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
[Kleeck, Mary van]. 1923. “Report of the Committee on the Measurement of Employment.”Journal of the American Statistical Association 18 (141):654–657.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleeck, Mary van. 1929. “Report of the Committee on Governmental Labor Statistics [1928].”Journal of the American Statistical Association 24 (165, supplement):265–270.Google Scholar
Koistinen, Paul A. C. 2004. Arsenal of World War II: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1940–1945. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Lansky, Lewis. 1976. “Isador Lubin: The Ideas and Career of a New Deal Labor Economist.” Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University.Google Scholar
Leach, William. 1993. Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Leiby, James. 1960. Carroll Wright and Labor Reform: The Origin of Labor Statistics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Levenstein, Harvey A. 1981. Communism, Anticommunism, and the CIO. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Lichtenstein, Nelson. 1989. “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era.” In The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930–1980, edited by Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary, 122–152. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Linder, Marc. 1994. Labor Statistics and Class Struggle. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Longino, Helen E. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorwin, Lewis L. and Hinrichs, Albert Ford. 1935. National Economic and Social Planning: Theory and Practice with Special Reference to the United States. Washington, DC: National Resources Board.Google Scholar
Lubin, Isador. 1934. “Who Should Collect Economic Statistics for Recovery and Planning?”Journal of the American Statistical Association 29 (185):180–183.Google Scholar
Lubin, Isador. 1937. “Government Employment as a Professional Career in Economics.” American Economic Review 27 (1):216–224.Google Scholar
Meany, George and Thomas, R. J.. 1944. Cost of Living: Recommended Report for the Presidential Committee on the Cost of Living. Washington, DC: Congress of Industrial Organizations.Google Scholar
Meeker, Royal. 1915. “Some Features of the Statistical Work of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”Publications of the American Statistical Association 14 (109):431–441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Frederick C., Bakke, E. Wright, et al. 1943. “An Appraisal of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Cost-of-Living Index.”Journal the American Statistical Association 38 (224):387–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1915. The Making and Using of Index Numbers. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Wesley C. 1919. “Statistics and Government.”Publications of the American Statistical Association 16 (125):223–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, David. 1987. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activisim, 1865–1925. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murray, Philip and Thomas, Roland Jay. 1944. Living Costs in World War II, 1941–1944. Washington, D.C.: Congress of Industrial Organizations.Google Scholar
National Industrial Conference Board. 1921. Family Budgets of American Wage-Earners: A Critical Analysis. New York: Century.Google Scholar
North, Simon Newton Dexter. 1909. “The Life and Work of Carroll Davidson Wright: Fifth President of the American Statistical Association.”Publications of the American Statistical Association 11 (86):447–466.Google Scholar
Pidgin, Charles Felton. 1888. Practical Statistics: A Handbook for the Use of the Statistician at Work, Students in Colleges and Academies, Agents, Census Enumerators, Etc. Boston: William E. Smythe.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. 1995. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Reed, Louis Schultz. [1930] 1966. The Labor Philosophy of Samuel Gompers. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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