This also happened in the first half of the nineteenth century in
the states. Prior to the huge waves of Irish immigration starting in 1843,
there were a series of federal, state, and local reports which strongly
encouraged the use of women laborers in factories. It was said that
technology increased their (female) productivity while the use of women as
wage labor did not take men away from the more important sectors of the
economy: agriculture, seafaring, military (we were fighting the brits in the
war of 1812 and kicking the indians off the east coast and suppressing
regular riots in urban areas of new york, boston, and philly). In fact,
throughout most of the antebellum years women were the MAJORITY of
non-agricultural wage earners.
Which brings up my next point. At those times when there is no
reserve army, rather than increase wages to pull increased labor into
factories, capitalists use political persuasion (rosie the riveter) and legal
restrictions (controlled economy). While it may not be possible to measure
the reserve army, there does seem to be a critical level below which the
capitalists are forced to use some type of coercion to supply labor. This
has also been the tradition in this country since its inception. Prior to
1800 50 - 75% of white wage labor arrived under indenture contracts, all
non-white labor arrived under indenture contracts (Chinese) or enslaved
(African). Wages only start becoming prevalent when capitalists realize that
the wage system reduces the responsibility of the powerful towards labor --
under systems of legal coercion, the powerful must care for labor from birth
to death (maybe no well, but they do provide care). With wage labor, the
survival of the working class depends on the ability of that class to demand
a larger portion of the economic pie.
The fact that the ruling class now sees the natural rate of
unemployment as a reducing factor is likely, in part, because the power of
the working class in the states has reduced dramatically in the last 20
years. The threat of unemployment is not important when the people employed
have no power.
maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In a message dated 97-02-06 15:41:11 EST, you write:
>There was
>also a concerted (planned) effort to move women into traditional
>"men's" jobs to replace the soldiers who'd gone off to war and to
>avoid labor-market tightness. The US, like most other war
>economies, was moving toward being almost a planned economy.
>(This happened during WW I and our Civil War, also.)
