Notes

Outline

Organizational transformation. Crafts production. The putting-out system. The factory system.

A paradox? The enclosure movement. Move way from collective “team” working of village land. Unbundling of joint-ownership rights.

The factory system. What is a factory? Expensive or indivisible technology. The concentration of workers in a single location. Close monitoring or supervision of work. “Factory discipline.”

Monitoring and supervision. The putting-out system. Contractor relationship. Product monitoring. Pecuniary incentives.

Technology and organization. Need for a “nonmarginal” institutional change. Compare enclosure. Automatic machinery allows high throughput. But why process monitoring? Constant levels of effort necessary to amortize high fixed costs. Enforcing a “nonmarginal” wage-effort bargain. Creating “industrial” human capital. New norms of effort.

The factory system in cotton.

The factory system in cotton. By 1784, key position in spinning goes to adult males. The multicellular mill. Recreating the cottage contracting system within factories. Master spinner responsible for supervision, hiring. But doesn’t own tools (machines). Majority of child labor employed by masters, not capitalists.