Textiles in Transition: Technology, Wages, and Industry Relocation in the U.S. Textile Industry, 1880–1930 by Nancy Frances Kane

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY .AND CULTURE Book Reviews 157 Since Acheson’s main purpose is to explain the present state of the lobster industry in Maine, he provides only a brief history of the industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet historians of technology, labor, and economics will find his book useful because of what he can tell them about the recent history of the lobster industry and because he illustrates how they might effectively use social anthropology. The Lobster Gangs ofMaine is a condensation of a much longer study based on fifteen years of research. Acheson effectively demonstrates the value of an interdisciplinary approach to under­ standing social problems such as the conservation of resources. He writes clearly and makes his subject interesting to the nonprofes­ sional; his bibliography directs scholars who desire further informa­ tion to other articles and reports. Richard D. Lunt Dr. Lunt is professor of history, Rochester Institute of Technology, and author of Law and Order vs. the Miners: West Virginia, 1907—1933 (Shoe String Press, 1979). Textiles in Transition: Technology, 'Wages, and Industry Relocation in the U.S. Textile Industry, 1880—1930. By Nancy Frances Kane. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988. Pp. xi+ 190; tables, notes, appen­ dixes, bibliography, index. $37.95. In this volume, based on her UCLA dissertation, Nancy Kane assesses the effect of the adoption of ring spinning (vs. the classic “mule” format) on cotton mills’ survival chances during the halfcentury after 1880. Aggregating firm-level data derived from annual textile directory entries for Massachusetts and North Carolina, Kane wishes to test the hypothesis that technical change, more or rather than other factors, “facilitated the shift of the industry to the South” (p. 158). Operating within the framework of neoclassical economics, Kane uses regression analysis and modeling to relate spindle choice and factor costs, finding technical adoptions conforming to rational expectations in an environment of higher wages and falling interest rates. Incurring debt to install new ring frames economized on skilled labor, creating net savings in total production costs, and as this adoption moved far more rapidly in the South than the North, regional advantages materialized, with familiar consequences for the industry’s Yankee divisions. Kane stresses that the North’s eclipse was gradual, accelerating only after World War I, and she grapples with but does not resolve the knotty problem of interregional wage differentials, though she makes a diligent attempt to detail interregional relations that conform to the dictates of “factor price equalization” theory. This approach, drawn from international trade studies, suggests that wages in different states might converge, in the absence of population and capital 158 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE mobility, through price mechanics involved in exchanges of commod­ ities. Although others might well disagree, I found this effort uncon­ vincing, in that insufficient data were offered to illustrate the scope and scale of of interregional commodity flows that would lead to the convergence effect. Kane allows that this theory may be “criticized for its limited applicability to real-world conditions” (p. 126). Exactly. In the context of recent work, Kane’s research intersects a budding dispute between Kenneth Sokoloff (her mentor) and Gavin Wright concerning the dynamics of southern industrialization, Kane backing a technology-centered motif against Wright’s emphasis on a learningby -doing accumulation of skills among regional laborers. Unfortu­ nately, this volume is innocent of contact with William Mass’s study of the Northrop automatic loom (Boston College, 1984), which might have been of value. More troubling for students of technical change, Kane does not specify why ring spindles are crucial to successful accumulation, that is, even if having them covaries with survival, what is the mechanism that links the two? The total absence of research in the trade and technicaljournals of the era is distressing here, as is the fact that in 1900 nearly half the trade directory entries fail to specify whether ring or mule spindles are in use. Although archival sources are few, none was probed to generate case analyses of the ring’s effect, nor were federal bankruptcy court records probed for insights into the causes of failures. In sum, Textiles in Transition is a carefully drawn exercise in social scientific hypothesis...