The Making of ...
I don't need to write anything here, because it's (almost) all in my Acknowledgements -- pp. xi- of the book itself. I may add to that "official version" at some point, but it's not a priority.
Google Scholar Citations -- this stonking great book hasn't done anything like as well as some of my slighter stuff, which only goes to show that if you write a huge great case-study monograph, you have to accept that you are doing it for yourself and a few discerning others. But I think this one will have a long (though quiet) life, partly because I can't see anybody bothering to re-do the research that underpins the work, much of which I managed to get into the final version even after throwing away at least a third of the text.
Reviews -- a JSTOR search will produce eight, mostly pretty good (i.e. I don't recall much detail after a decade or so), but not the best of them, Joe McCartin's in Transatlantica 1 (2003). This was the sort of review any author can only dream of -- by a good scholar who knows what he's talking about, and understands what you are writing about. The only things wrong with it were that (a) it was a bit slow appearing, and (b) it came out somewhere effectively invisible. It deserves a better fate. One of its great strengths is that it is long enough to serve as a very good introduction to the book itself -- almost a substitute for reading it... About the only thing Joe wrote that I found a bit surprising was that he thought the final section of the book, on the 1930s, was "likely to be seen as the most significant contribution of Harris’s book in years to come" (par. 10). If that turns out to be the case, then it will reconfirm the wisdom of Dave Brody's advice that I couldn't stop the book on the brink of the Great Depression, which was my original plan. But I thought that those chapters basically told me that the national-level story I had already written about (in The Right to Manage) held up pretty well to detailed scrutiny of how the same processes of reconstructing labor relations worked out in one metropolis and one industry. To my mind, most of the rest of the book is much more original. But if you ever read this, Joe, I am not complaining. (There were also a couple of online reviews, the first to appear, to which I wrote responses; but I'm not sure whether I did so online. Anyway, here they are: Andrew Dawson's Review on H-LABOR, September 2000; Dan Jacoby's Review on EH-NET, October 2000.)
Extras -- this is where I'm going to make my effort. Peter Wardley, a British economic historian, took me to task in his review in Enterprise & Society (not on JSTOR) for not sharing with any interested scholars the masses of quantitative and collective-biographical material, organized in databases and spreadsheets, that underpinned the book. The only reasons I didn't do this a dozen years ago were that (i) I didn't have to (I had not received any research grants that made it a condition), and (ii) it wasn't easy, back then. But it is now, thanks to Google Sites and Google Drive, so I will deposit things here -- first of all, something that is simply useful for anybody interested in the broad range of topics the book covers, but that C.U.P.'s budget could not stretch to -- a Bibliography. (There are also, unfortunately, some Errata, September 2000 -- I never did anything with my "afterthoughts" at the time, may do so now.)
Spreadsheets and Databases:
- 1869-1940 Output of Capital Goods Industries -- compiled from the Bicentennial Edition of U.S. Historical Statistics. Used for Figures 3.3, p. 87. and 6.2, p. 200. Provided a broad-brush picture of the national context -- the economic performance of industries and sectors into which the Philadelphia metal trades fitted.
- 1870-1970 National Employment Statistics -- same source as above; series on immigration, unemployment, inflation, union membership, strikes, and man-days lost, i.e. basic labor market and labor relations data. Used for Figures 10.1 and 10.2, p. 353. Needs sorting out, with each category of data on a separate sheet.
- 1875-1914 Baldwin Locomotive Output and Employment -- sources given in spreadsheet itself; used for Figures 2.2, p. 52 and 2.3, p. 70. Baldwin was the largest firm among the city's secondary metal products industries until the 1920s.
- 1890-1940 Molders and Machinists -- sources indicated in spreadsheet itself; used for Figures 3.1, p. 83, and 6.1, p. 199. Charts need editing in Google Sheets versions.
- 1892-1922 Quaker Population by States & Sections -- not directly referred to in the book, but informed my understanding of the size and significance of Philadelphia's Orthodox and Hicksite communites; includes a 1919 occupational census of Philadelphia Quakers by the Social Order Committee, and also a list of the Committee's businessman members, and sources about them from the Dictionary of Quaker Biography (then in manuscript only, and kept at Haverford College); used in "War and the Social Order."
- 1898-1907 Southern Foundry Pig Iron Prices -- sources indicated in spreadsheet itself; used for Figure 3.2, p. 86. One of the best ways of "taking the temperature" of the foundry industry is looking at spot-market prices for its key raw material.
- 1898-1936 National Founders Association and National Metal Trades Association data -- a great big, baggy, multi-sheet workbook, that should probably be unstuffed, i.e. separated into three or more related sections. It is full of data on the NFA and NMTA collated from their own material (principally officers' reports to annual conventions) and, for the 1930s, the La Follette Committee's report on the NMTA. Individual sheets are: (a) state totals of NFA member firms, 1898-1905; (b) grand totals of NFA and NMTA member firms and their employment, 1898-1914, including, for the NMTA, detailed reports for its city and district branches; (c) a summary version of (b) showing the numbers of member firms (and, for the NFA, their foundries) and their employment totals, 1899-1914; (d) for the NMTA only, a compilation of the various discrepant reports given for its members' employment, 1900-1914, enabling one to produce low, mid-range, and high estimates; (e) distribution of NMTA membership among the states at all dates for which information was available between 1903-1912 and again in 1922, so that one could see change through the war period and the second Open Shop mobilization; (f) 1912-1914 reports on NMTA city branches and, for 1914, the operations of their labor bureaux (with Philadelphia's for comparison); (g) Philadelphia MMA members of the NMTA, 1932-36; and (h) miscellaneous summary totals of NMTA membership, also from the La Follette Report. Some of this data was used in the book, but most of it remained "contextual" or, even less than that, mere background. Much of it was, however, used in my H-BUSINESS Research Note in "Membership of Open Shop Employers' Associations (National Founders, National Metal Trades), c.1898-1936" (December 1996).
- 1900 Federal Census reports on Philadelphia's secondary metal trades. I worked systematically through Census reports, thinking originally that I would be able not simply to describe some of the structural characteristics of the local industrial divisions where the MMA recruited, but also to explain employer behavior as a logical or even necessary product of economic conditions. However, neither the data nor my analytical abilities were up to the task, so I did end up just using all of this material for merely descriptive purposes, or not at all. Still, it strengthened my understanding that, in Philadelphia at least, the "open shop" was the preferred strategy of mid-sized, fairly low-profitability, skill-dependent, high-wage firms. I think I was more explicit about this in the first draft of the book (see below) than in the published version, for which I depended much more on the state industrial directory data in PID-1640 and the frequent, very granular surveys in PHIL1439.
- 1902 Pennsylvania Factory Inspector's Report -- referred to in the book as 1902FACT. One of the building-blocks of the collective portrait of the Philadelphia secondary metal products industry (or industries), underpinning Figure 2.1, p. 35, and Tables 2.1, p. 33 and 2.2, p. 34. Can be linked via the common fields NAME to PID-1640, and via INDUSTRY to any of the files (e.g. PHIL1439) also using the Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs 3-digit industry codes; and the industries the codes referred to can be looked up in the reference sheets in 1902FACT and PID-1640, as well as in PHIL1439, of course. Firms joining the MMA in its first five years are shown in a Google Map, http://goo.gl/maps/s1kPQ.
- 1902-1911 Molders' Strikes -- data from National Founders Association, Summary of Union Molders' Strikes: 1904-1909 Inclusive and 1910-1911 (Detroit: The Association, Mar. 1910, Mar. 1911), pamphlets in U.S. Department of Labor Library. (Not sure where 1903 data came from, now.)
- 1902-1917 Monthly Estimates of Unemployment -- Bureau of Labor Statistics (national) and Hornell N. Hart (major cities). Used for Figure 4.1, p. 119. Hart's figures average four times larger than the BLS's, range 3.3-5.3, but track them closely. [Fluctuations in Unemployment in Cities of the United States, 1902 to 1917 (Cincinnati, OH: Studies from the Helen S. Trounstine Foundation, 1:2 May 15, 1918)].
- 1902-1940 Size-Distribution of MMA & Other Philadelphia Secondary Metal Trades Firms -- a workbook with six separate sheets, for 1902, 1916, 1922, and 1930 (from 1902FACT and PID-1640 databases), plus another using internal MMA data for 1902, 1905, 1914, and 1925, and one summarizing the major industries' shares of total metal trades employment in the 1930s. Used in Figures 5.2, p. 165 and 9.3, p. 344, and Tables ##, p. ##??
- 1902-1940 Philadelphia Cost of Living Index -- compiled to see if there was much difference in recorded consumer price inflation in Philadelphia from the national figures, so that I should use those rather than the standard BLS data. Conclusion: not enough to be worth the effort.
- 1903-1936 Philadelphia MMA Participants -- this is the database referred to in the Appendix, pp. 444-5, as PHILCHAP. It connected relationally with others through the common field CODE, and information about the companies with which individual executives were connected was "sucked in" from there. The difference between this and the MMAYEARS and MMA-EXEC databases is that the aim here was to assemble some collective biographical information about all of the company representatives who participated in the MMA, even if they never held office and only showed up at a single meeting. The 1903, 1913, 1925, and 1936 city directories were quite good for this purpose, because they gave men's position in companies where they were officers or partners. The MMA was overwhelmingly a body made up of business principals and senior executives in small- to middling-sized, locally owned and managed proprietary firms. Their careers demonstrated considerable stability over time; so too, probably, would their club affiliations, but I only have a snapshot of 1913 data. About equal numbers were members of the Manufacturers Club (conservative Republican, protectionist) and of the more progressive Engineers and Civic (??) Clubs.
- 1904-1940 Metal Manufacturers Association membership -- referred to in the book and here as MMAYEARS, and the original foundation on which this research project grew. There were few and scattered membership lists for individual years, so I had to make one from all references in the association's records. Once I had, I could reach out towards the 1902 Factory Inspector's Report, the 1916 through 1940 State Industrial Directories, and any other data source where the company was the unit of information; and from there I could extend into data (like the federal and state censuses and surveys) organized by industry; and I could also track individuals, whether the rank-and-file participants whose careers are summarized in PHILCHAP, or the Association's officers and leaders grouped in
- 1904-1940 MMA Activists, basically a blending of PHILCHAP and MMAYEARS including the collective-biographical information from the former and, from the latter, a field (column) for every year, enabling one to track an individual's career of active service with the Association.
- 1904-1940 Metal Manufacturers Association Operating Statistics -- compiled from internal MMA reports. (a) Labor Bureau operations, 1904-1932, mostly from the Secretaries' annual reports; (b) MMA membership and financial data, 1904-1940, some directly from Presidents', Secretaries', and Treasurers' Reports, some (most of the membership data) from the MMAYEARS database. (There are also, at the moment, a bunch of charts, which have as usual translated badly from Excel to Google Sheets, and which I haven't edited into shape yet.)
- 1905 Federal Census -- see comments for 1900 above.
- 1914 Federal Census -- ditto.
- 1914-1939 Pennsylvania Industrial Census -- detailed information (almost annual, except for the war years) about all metal trades industries, from Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Reports on Productive Industries, 1915-1940. Referred to in the book as the PHIL1439 database. Used for Figures 1.1, p. 17, 7.1, p. 260, and 7.2, p. 273.
- 1915-1930 Philadelphia Metal Trades Total Employment (Cohorts) -- a bit of a doodle, not used much as far as I can recall. What it does is to summarize the data in PID-1640, so that e.g. Column B shows the recorded employment at each subsequent survey date of those firms reporting (with a total of 55,951 employees) in the first (1916, for 1915) survey. This just provides another way of gauging the increase (or decrease) of employment between surveys, because it removes the effect of the rise of new firms. [Check -- is this the correct way to read it, or L to R? And maybe extend to 1940?]
- 1916-1940 Pennsylvania Industrial Directory -- regular surveys of metal-trades firms firms, classified into industrial subdivisions in terms of their principal product(s), and of their employment (including, for 1916-1922, its components by gender and type (blue- or white-collar), with added data about their MMA membership in the survey years. Referred to in the book as the PID-1640 database. Used for Figures 5.2, p. 165, and 9.3, p. 344, and Table 5.3, p. 169.
- 1916-1940 Philadelphia Secondary Metal Employment (Industry Totals) -- this sheet is sorted in descending order of industries' average employment, so it starts with the return for Baldwin Locomotive, losing 52 percent of its enormous war-boom employment between 1919 and 1922, another 19 percent by 1924, and all of the rest by 1927. Not sure how I used this -- probably for background and the occasional in-text reference. It's interesting for the way it shows changes in the city's industrial structure.
- 1918 Metal Manufacturers Earnings Survey -- this is simply a transcription of one of the most interesting individual documents in the MMA records, a detailed survey of the industry's c. 16,000 employees in August 1918, at the peak of the wartime boom. What it shows is a new sophistication in employment management and record-keeping, as well as the substantial differences in pay among and within groups of workers with different occupations and skill levels.
- 1919 Federal Census -- see comments for 1900 above.
- 1919-1939 Philadelphia Totals -- not the most imaginative or revealing title, so I may change it. What it does is simply to summarize the data in PHIL1439, above, reporting the all-Philadelphia totals and averages, those for the secondary metal trades, and those for all other industries. 1925's data are interpolated. The most obvious message of the data is how much whiter and more male the metal trades' labor force was, so I suppose this informed pp. 13-24, my apology for not writing about women and race.
- 1923-1937 Metal Trades Employment by Skill Level -- interesting data, compiled with the MMA's assistance by Irving Lewis Horowitz (not the famous sociologist, middle name spelt "Louis") for his 1939 Penn Ph.D., showing the slowly changing composition of the MMA/metal trades labor force. There is not much evidence of "deskilling," certainly not in terms of any significant decline in demand for skilled (male) workers; most of the change results from an increase in the numbers and proportions of unskilled women workers, with the rise of the radio and other electrical products assembly industries.
- 1923-1938 Wharton-MMA Employment Survey -- this summarizes the results of the collaborative work between the MMA and the Wharton School's Industrial Research Department, an ambitious joint study of the city's metal trades labor market. Sheet 1 contains the ten surviving years of detailed monthly reports from a slowly changing panel of (frustratingly anonymized) cooperating firms; Sheet 2 is extended with a monthly total for a further five years, taken from the National Metal Trades Association's publication the Monthly Labor Barometer (Chicago: The Association, 1928-1938), copies of which were in the U.S. Department of Labor Library. It's a terrific and, as far as I know, unused, resource, providing detailed monthly reports on the metal trades of all major US cities and of most of the important industrial subdivisions within the metal trades, compiled from local reports like the MMA's. This and the earlier Wharton data enable one to feel the pulse of the labor market at monthly intervals through the prosperity of the 1920s and much of the Depression. [To see subsequent pages of the Barometer online, just increment the imgID number with which the URL ends by 1 -- 520 thru 523 for the May 1932 issue, including charts of regional and industry employment series since Jan. 1925.]
- 1928 Metal Manufacturers Earning Survey -- cf. 1918's. This one comes near the employment peak of the 1920s, and its interest lies partly in the changes in labor force composition revealed, but also in the way in which the changeover from a partly unionized and government-regulated labor market to one subject to essentially unilateral employer control maintained the same kinds of skill and gender differentials.
- 1929 Federal Census.
- 1939 Federal Census.
- 1998 U.S. Local Employers' Associations -- two versions (I'm not sure why) of summary data on local employers' associations' membership, employment, and finances in 1998, compiled from data supplied to me by their officers or employees, and used in Tables 12.1 and 12.2, p. 438.
The Ones That Got Away -- draft chapters lost in the process of editing and revision, probably wisely; but not without some value and interest. Converting them to allow them to be viewed in Google Drive has screwed up the layout somewhat, but nothing too serious.
Section One: The Workshop of the World
Section Two: War and Peace in the Metal Trades, c. 1855-1904
Never Even Stood a Chance of Making the Cut -- when the Internet was still pretty new, I wrote several little "Research Notes" while Solidarity Forever/Bloodless Victories was in progress. A surprising amount of this ended up being reflected in the book to some extent.
- Samizdat (April 1999) -- the explanatory index page to this stuff, when I drew it together on my old university webpage.
Pictures: these were either not available in 1999, or not known to me. But I think they add a certain something. It's nice and interesting to see where history tok place. (I think). The principal sources are: King's Views of Philadelphia (New York, 1900) -- http://www.brynmawr.edu/iconog/king/main2.html for captions; and the searchable collection of Hexamer insurance maps (generally not past the 1890s), http://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/HGS/search.cfm.