Industrial Labor Force Research Articles

Unlimited Labor Supply and the Problems of Shaping an Industrial Labor Force in IndiaThe Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854-1947. Morris David Morris

Unlimited Labor Supply and the Problems of Shaping an Industrial Labor Force in India<i>The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854-1947</i>. Morris David Morris

Some New Looks at the Problem of Relations between Traditional Societies and ModernizationSocial Change in Modern India. M. N. SrinivasCaste, Class and Power--Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village. A. BeteilleMan in the Universe: Some Cultural Continuities in India. W. Norman BrownThe Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854-1947. Morris David

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticlesSome New Looks at the Problem of Relations between Traditional Societies and Modernization . M. N. Srinivas . A. Beteille . W. Norman Brown . Morris David Morris . George Rosen . F. G. Bailey . F. W. Riggs . W. J. Siffin Social Change in Modern India. M. N. Srinivas Caste, Class and Power--Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village. A. Beteille Man in the Universe: Some Cultural Continuities in India. W. Norman Brown The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854-1947. Morris David Morris Democracy and Economic Change in India. George Rosen Politics and Social Change in Orissa in 1959. F. G. Bailey Thailand--The Modernization of a Bureaucratic Polity. F. W. Riggs The Thai Bureaucracy--Institutional Change and Development. W. J. Siffin Viet-Nam--Politics and Public Administration. N. Dang S. N. EisenstadtS. N. Eisenstadt Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Economic Development and Cultural Change Volume 16, Number 3Apr., 1968 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/450304 Views: 5Total views on this site Copyright 1968 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854-1947

The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854-1947

The Malthusian Squeeze

Since its entry into the international economic arena more than a century ago, Thailand has relied heavily on its rice surplus to pay for its imports, to maintain its financial system in sound order, and more recently to subsidize the growth of its non-agricultural economy and urban population. Due to its good fortune in having consistently had abundant harvests, the country has managed to pursue these three aims with substantially less difficulty than most of her Asian neighbors. It would be difficult to conceive of Thailand's foreign trade position (and, consequently, of her ability to continue to import needed capital goods, attract foreign investment, and implement a sound economic and social development effort) in the absence of the rice-surplus component. And yet, this situation, disastrous as it seems, is the one toward which the country is irresistibly drifting. To come to an appreciation of the significance of this ominous tendency it is necessary to realize that the economics of Thailand's rice sector are unusually complex because of the industry's critical position. Either directly or indirectly, the industry reaches into every household in the nation to play a central role in determining economic well-being. Rice is, first, the industry employing a plurality of the nation's labor force; rice cultivators, alone, account for an estimated 85% of the agricultural population or some 18.5 million individuals. Second, although labor productivity in the rice sector is substantially below Thailand's average (largely because a preponderance of the industry's labor force are peasant households using traditional techniques and containing seasonally under-employed working members) it contributes a considerable share of the gross domestic product. In 1964, for instance, domestic rice consumption, rice exports, and rice taxes' accounted for some 22% of the national income. Third, rice forms the basic consumption item of the people's diet, accounting for roughly a third of all food expenditures and two-thirds of food weight, so that its marketing structure forms a complex nationwide network of millers, truckers, wholesalers, and retailers.2 Fourth, the importance of rice as a consumption item makes its

The Affluent Worker and the Thesis of Embourgeoisement: Some Preliminary Research Findings

Historically, interest in the affluent worker has centred on the presumed political consequences of rising living standards among the industrial labour force. In Britain in course of the 1950s, it was frequently argued that growing working-class prosperity was a major factor in Conservative election victories; affluence was held to be associated with a process of embourgeoisement, of which increased Conservative voting among manual workers was an important part. However, a study of what might be regarded as a critical sample of affluent workers reveals little evidence of changes in the direction of `middle-classness'. In order to achieve a high level of income, many of these men must experience greater deprivation in their working lives than do most white-collar employees; they also differ from the latter in having little chance of occupational advancement. In their home lives, they are largely `privatized'. They no longer share in traditional patterns of working-class sociability, yet few have adopted middle class life-styles and fewer still have become assimilated into middle-class society. Finally, these workers are found to be at least as strong in their support of the Labour Party as manual workers in the country generally.

Book Review: Labor Economics: The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills 1854–1947

Book Review: Labor Economics: The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills 1854–1947

The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills 1854-1947.

The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills 1854-1947.

Industrial Labour in Karachi

The purpose of this paper is to examine some characteristics of the urban industrial labour-force. The study of industrial labour-force in Karachi, a newly developed industrial centre1, may reveal how industrial labour-force is built up during the process of industrialization and economic growth. Information was collected on the occupational and industrial structure of employment, wage differentials by size of firm and skill mix, characteristics of the labour market, the mobility of workers, permanence of the worker's job, labour turnover, and absenteeism of Karachi's industrial labour-force. The source of the data for this study is an industrial survey in Karachi conducted by the Institute of Development Economics in 19592. The sample for this survey consisted of 530 establishments in four industries (textiles, light engineering, plastics, and leather and leather goods); 534 workers were also interviewed separately for collecting information on various aspects of labour. The sample covered about 50 per cent of the establishments employing more than 20 workers (all the firms employing more than 100 workers were included in the sample) and 4 per cent of the establishments employing less than 20 workers3. The sample thus achieved better coverage of large-scale firms. The sample of 534 workers with which we are working is 1.3 per cent of the labour force of the sampled firms and less than one per cent of the total labour force in these industries.

The Wages Structure and Some Implications for Incomes Policy

During the last decade the relative earnings of different groups of manual workers have not changed to any marked extent. Such changes as have occurred have for the most part been unsystematic, except that there has been a tendency for unskilled rates to rise rather more than skilled rates. In highly-paid industries there has been no tendency for earnings to increase more or less than the average; women's earnings have not changed very markedly compared with men's; nor, as other studies have shown, is there any clear relationship between the relative rise in earnings and changes in the size of the labour force in different industries, or different rates of increase of productivity.

Functional Divisions of Company Management: A Reflection of National `Styles'

ONE of the most striking features of change in the twentieth century has been the declining proportion of the industrial labor force engaged directly in production. The rise in the numbers of supervisory staff, technicians, accountants, clerks, production-control and development men, salesmen and managerial staff has been phenomenal. This development has been best studied by Professor Seymour Melman. In his examination of American trends, he pointed out that the proportion of white-collar and supervisory employees engaged in manufacturing was some io per cent of all manual workers in these industries in I899, I6 per cent after the First World War, and 22 per cent by the end of the Second World War.2 Between I947 and I954, the pace quickened sharply and a figure of 30 per cent was reached by the later year.3 In analyzing this development, Melman has tried to show that the existence of a high or low ratio of white-collar to manual workers in individual firms is not related to the relative level of labor productivity, mechanization, or profitability of these firms. Indeed, the only relationship which does stand up is the existence of lower-thanaverage ratios both in the larger firms and in those companies which are growing most rapidly. Aside from this, one finds nothing but a fairly continuous increase in the proportion of white-collar employees. How is this increase of white-collar personnel in American manufacturing to be explained? Melman's answer is that it is due to the development of new functions, centering around the efforts by administrators to control in ever-greater detail the various uncertainties which they face. He points to the growth of accounting and budgeting as a means of general control; to market research

The Recruitment of an Industrial Labor Force in India, with British and American Comparisons

There has been an overriding if not always explicit tendency to see Britain as the prototype of industrial revolutions wherever they have appeared. In one sense this tradition is not incorrect. An industrial revolution does require, generally speaking, a common set of basic preconditions and, as it proceeds, does generate a rather common set of general consequences. Nevertheless, the variety of possibilities are, within limits, substantial. As Professor Gerschenkron has reminded us, the very timing of the process of industrialization in one country as related to others is in itself very likely to produce different paths by which industrialization is achieved. This is partly the result of exposure to previous industrializations, the consequence of a “demonstration effect”, and partly the consequence of the changed international economic environment that succeeding economies face as a result of the industrialization that has gone before. Moreover, preexisting social institutions will to some extent modify the path and character of each nation's industrial development.

Population pressure, industrialization and social mobility

Abstract This paper discusses the problems of industrial development in Asian countries which show high densities of rural population and contrasts their probable pattern of industrialization with that of economically more highly advanced European countries. When an approximately equal proportion of the population of western European countries was dependent upon primary production, as is the case now in agriculture in most Asian countries, agricultural densities were only roughly a fourth as great as in Asia to-day. Yet in western Europe despite emigration of “surplus” labour and relatively large capital supplies, industrialization proceeded only fast enough to skim off the net addition to population in primary production. In Asia population pressure is higher than in Europe in the past and capital scarcer. Hence it is not probable that industrialization will proceed to the same degree and in the same form as in Europe. In place of generally large-scale production, many small and cottage industries are likely to develop. These have lower productivity and hence lower wages than large industry, and the persistence of small-scale industry will impose the need to maintain separate labour markets for large and small industry. The maintenance of existing barriers or the introduction of new impediments to social mobility can be expected to provide a mechanism for an imperfectly “universalist” labour market in Asian countries and the continued existence of non-competing groups in the industrial labour force.

Labor Problems of Pakistan

The industrialization of Pakistan, which has proceeded at a fairly rapid pace in the decade since partition, has engendered new and growing problems for industrial labor. These problems have until recently received scant attention from either the Government of Pakistan or from scholars. Domestic and international political matters and concern for rapid industrialization have hitherto occupied government officials more than a rigorous analysis of the economic problems of the population. Even scholars concerned with economic problems may make only peripheral references to industrial labor, as does Dr. S. M. Akhtar in his fine new edition of Economics of Pakistan. Recently, with the growth of the industrial labor force and of trade unions, greater official and scholarly concern has been shown for industrial workers. Accurate information on Pakistan's labor problems and some suggestions for their solution may be found in three recent works dealing with different aspects of labor in Pakistan. Several other sources for a study of Pakistan labor now exist, and it is possible from these to assess the position of the industrial worker and the prospects for its improvement.

Industrial Training in the Soviet Union

Abstract : The State Labor Reserves schools reached their peak in 1948, when they graduated one million workers. During the same year, 2.3 million new workers were trained on the job. The output of the Labor Reserves schools fell gradually to a low of 320,000 in 1953, but rose in 1954 owing to their use in training agricultural machinery operators on a large scale. The present Soviet policy appears to favor the continuance of these schools and the improvement in the quality of the training they offer through increasing the length of instruction. However, until the growth of the industrial labor force is slowed considerably, the majority of new workers will probably continue to be trained directly on the job. A great effort has been made since the war to improve the quality of the labor force through an elaborate system of courses, schools, and lectures. A common feature of these program is that they are conducted after working hours to prevent any interference with production. While the Soviet data are difficult to evaluate, one gains the impression that since 1945 a substantial majority of Russian industrial workers have been given technical training in the form of short lecture courses. (Author)

ENCLOSURE AND LABOUR SUPPLY IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

U T NTIL the advance, a generation ago, in the study of the demographic aspect of the Industrial Revolution, the function of enclosure in regard to labour supply was regarded as crucial. Its special importance in recruiting the industrial labour force was developed in a series of important studies as the result of which it came to be generally regarded as a basic postulate of the new large-scale economy.2 More recent examination of the growth and movement of population has done something to modify this view, but the conventional picture of catastrophic change effected by enclosure continues to find adherents. Any alternative to it, says Mr Maurice Dobb, implies the assumption that 'the appearance of a reserve army of labour was a simple product of growing population which created more hands than could be fed from the then cultivated soil. If this were the true story, one might have reason to speak of a proletariat as a natural rather than an institutional creation and to treat accumulation of capital and the growth of a proletariat as autonomous and independent processes. But this idyllic picture fails to accord with the facts.'3 This formulation of the problem invites discussion on several counts, but from the angle of the regional historian (from which it is viewed here) it generalizes a process which he sees in terms of its separate parts, i.e. as actual movements of population in particular places; and he is impelled by the force of his methodology to test the abstract formula of 'institutional creation' by fitting it to the local facts as he knows them. Such is the purpose of this article; but some clarification of the formula is necessary at the outset.

The resettlement of displaced persons in the United Kingdom

Summary In the immediate post-war period, the government of the United Kingdom took steps to augment the labour force in certain undermanned industries by sponsoring the immigration of a number of displaced persons from the Continent of Europe. In this paper the author describes the background and working of some of these schemes, and indicates the reaction of British workers, and of the displaced persons themselves to this planned migration.

Labour in the Building Industry

A RECENT broadsheet (No. 212) issued by Political and Economic Planning contains a close analysis of the organization of the labour force in the building industry in Great Britain, nationally, on the site and in the trade unions, which represents part of a wider study of industrial relations which was undertaken before, but was interrupted by, the War. The analysis covers all sizes and types of unit, from the very large firms down to the small firms and their groups. It gives a clear picture of the organization of labour on the site including the organizing personnel, the recruitment of foremen and the part played by the trade unions, as well as of the organization of labour in the unions, including the federation branch, the executive committee, the National Joint Council, the rates of wages and payment by results. In the postwar period the latter question will be linked with the questions of prefabrication and of new and more flexible types of training, and the essential changes of practice are unlikely to be secured without a sense of urgency and without Government intervention which can be visualized only as part of a great plan of guaranteed employment for the building industry. With guaranteed employment all sorts of technically desirable changes may well become more acceptable, but the goodwill of the trade unions is indispensable, and this can only be obtained by full and frank consultation, and by democratic discussion both at the national level, in the localities and on the site.