“Mechanization Takes Command?”: Powered Machinery and Production Times in Late Nineteenth-Century American Manufacturing
利用1899年美国劳工部的数据，研究了机械化对生产操作时间的影响，发现动力机械的使用贡献了机器劳动相对于手工劳动生产力优势的四分之一到三分之一。
During the nineteenth century, U.S. manufacturers shifted away from the “hand labor” mode of production, characteristic of artisan shops, to “machine labor,” which was increasingly concentrated in steam-powered factories. This transition fundamentally changed production tasks, jobs, and job requirements. This paper uses digitized data on these two production modes from an 1899 U.S. Commissioner of Labor report to estimate the frequency and impact of the use of inanimate power on production operation times. About half of production operations were mechanized; the use of inanimate power raised productivity, accounting for about one-quarter to one-third of the overall productivity advantage of machine labor. However, additional factors, such as the increased division of labor and adoption of high-volume production, also played quantitatively important roles in raising productivity in machine production versus by hand.