The new industrial revolution and wages

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1804651486

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-193069

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Lauck, William Jett http://d-nb.info/gnd/173237126

Title:: The new industrial revolution and wages

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Funk & Wagnalls

Year of publication:: 1929

Scope:: ix, 308 S.; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter II. Pre-war principles and methods

Collection:: Economics Books

14 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES standards as inclusive as possible, while, on the other hand, the employers resisted any effort to have a semi-skilled machine operator receive the same rates of pay as a skilled craftsman. As a consequence, there has been constant controversy during the past twenty years as to the defini- tion of skilled crafts and the scope of application of their wage standards. The significance and wide extent of the changes thus taking place, or the effects of mechanical methods in eliminating skilled craftsmen, were forcibly expressed by Mr. John Frey, of the Molders’ Union, writing in The American Federationist as early as May, 1916, as follows : Of late, this separation of craft knowledge and craft skill has actually taken place in an ever widening area and with an ever increasing acceleration. Its process is shown in the two main forms which it has been taking. The first of these is the introduction of machinery and the standardization of tools, materials, products and processes, which makes produc- tion possible on a large scale and the specialization of the workmen. Each workman under such circumstances needs and can exercise only a little craft knowledge and a little craft skill. But he is still a craftsman, tho only a narrow one and subject to much competition from below. The sec- ond form, more insidious and more dangerous than the first, but to the significance of which most of us have not yet become aroused, is the gathering up of all this scattered craft knowledge, systematizing it and concentrating it in the hands of the employer and then doling it out again only in the form of minute instructions, giving to each worker only the knowledge needed for the mechanical performance of a particular relatively minute task. This process it is evident separates skill and knowledge even in their narrow relationship. When it is completed the worker is no longer 1 “Modern Industry and Craft Skill,” by John P. Frey in American Federationist, May 1916, pp. 365-6, as contained in ‘Readings in Trade Union- ism,” by David J. Saposs, pp. 283-4.

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