With Our Hands: The Story of Carpenters in Massachusetts by Mark Erlich

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE 920 Book Reviews—Labor and Technology With Our Hands: The Story ofCarpenters in Massachusetts. By Mark Erlich. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986. Pp. xv + 239; illustra­ tions, notes, index. $29.95. Mark Erlich has used a variety of sources to assemble a history of an important branch of building trades workers with impressive result. While presenting the several threads of the story, he offers the reader the opportunity to trace the parallels in the developing relationships between carpenters and their employers, the organizations formed by each group to advance its interests, and the accompanying tech­ nological and propagandistic developments deployed by management for the same reason. Whenever possible, Erlich takes advantage of the carpenters’ tra­ ditional self-consciousness to express their positions in their own words, whether from historical documents or from oral histories. The early and central role of the building trades in many areas of conflict be­ tween capital and labor allows him to write with local focus of events and trends of national significance. The carpenters’ pursuit of the ten-hour day as early as 1825 typified this situation. The effort was immediately opposed, not only by their employers but also by Boston’s merchants and other capitalists, who feared a dangerous precedent. This conflict reflected the carpenters’ strength and self-respect as well as their visibility and significance to the employing class. Consistently strong organization, along with a craft-pride that fa­ cilitated efforts to convert potential scabs to union membership, en­ abled them to achieve far greater advances in hours, wages, and control over work procedures and entry into the profession than could most 19th-century workers. The peculiar nature of the industry, with little investment and short-term projects, removed much of the incentive for opposition by contractors. Early in the 20th century, and particularly after 1920, the employing class mounted a powerful national public relations and lobbying cam­ paign attacking labor, particularly unions, as un-American. Erlich ad­ mirably describes the effect of these efforts, complemented by the Depression, in advancing the employers’ cause. Paralleling the roller coaster effect of the national economy on carpenters’ employment and the influence of old and new employers’ organizations on their strength were new technologies diminishing the need for old skills. Factory-produced building materials, electric tools, and “scientific” work rules all adversely affected the nature of the trade and its ability to control its own work. Erlich brings the story to the present and carefully treats issues related to efforts to combat the longtime exclusion from the trade of various ethnic groups, blacks, and women. Perhaps his finest accom­ plishment is in presenting the different factors that have affected this type of work, indicating ways that they intermesh and enabling the technology and culture Book Reviews—Labor and Technology 921 reader to enlarge on and continue that effort through the connections to a broader history. I should also point out the remarkable role pictures play in the book. Rather than illustrating an occasional point, the 100 illustrations provide substantial additional information about the ways and places in which carpenters work, from historic houses to pile driving to concrete bridge building. Presented with little or no commentary, they strongly assist the reader’s ability to comprehend the carpenters’ history. • Laurence F. Gross Dr. Gross is a curator at the Museum of American Textile History in North Andover, Massachusetts. He is currently working on a history of the Boott Cotton Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. Bushworkers and Bosses: Logging in Northern Ontario, 1900—1980. By lan Radforth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. Pp. x + 336; illustrations, tables (appendixes), notes, index. $C42.50 (cloth); $C17.95 (paper). Ian Radforth has turned his prizewinning York University doctoral dissertation into an outstanding account ofthe effect of mechanization on work and workers in the northern Ontario pulpwood logging industry. He describes the creation of the modern work environ­ ment—highly mechanized, capital intensive—as the outcome of strug­ gle and conflict between managerial initiatives and workers’ responses in the context of a changing labor market. The work force was not deskilled but reskilled; it emerged having more in common with ma­ chine operators and mechanics in other industries than...