Labor Economics – Page 52 – artdiamondblog.com

Artisan’s Skills Were Still Required for Kay’s Flying Shuttle

(p. 223) Kay’s flying shuttle made it possible for weavers to produce a wider product, which they called “broadloom,” but doing so was demanding. Weaving requires that the weft threads be under constant tension in order to make certain that each one is precisely the same length as its predecessor; slack is the enemy of a properly woven cloth. Using a flying shuttle to carry weft threads through the warp made it possible to weave a far wider bolt of cloth, but the required momentum introduced the possibility of a rebound, and thereby a slack thread. Kay’s invention still needed a skilled artisan to catch the shuttle and so avoid even the slightest bit of bounce when it was thrown across the loom.

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.

Mutual Benefits from Ending Labor Market Mismatch

(p.6) This is the Mark Twain people love to quote (“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.” “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way”), and whenever he hits his stride in the “Autobiography,” you feel happy for him — e.g., writing about Virginia City, Nev., in 1863:

“I secured a place in a nearby quartz (p. 7) mill to screen sand with a long-handled shovel. I hate a long-handled shovel. I never could learn to swing it properly. As often as any other way the sand didn’t reach the screen at all, but went over my head and down my back, inside of my clothes. It was the most detestable work I have ever engaged in, but it paid ten dollars a week and board — and the board was worthwhile, because it consisted not only of bacon, beans, coffee, bread and molasses, but we had stewed dried apples every day in the week just the same as if it were Sunday. But this palatial life, this gross and luxurious life, had to come to an end, and there were two sufficient reasons for it. On my side, I could not endure the heavy labor; and on the Company’s side, they did not feel justified in paying me to shovel sand down my back; so I was discharged just at the moment that I was going to resign.”

For the full review, see:
GARRISON KEILLOR. “Riverboat Rambler.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., December 19, 2010): 1, 6-7.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 16, 2010, and had the title “Mark Twain’s Riverboat Ramblings.” )

The book under review, is:
Smith, Harriet Elinor, ed. Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

London’s Albion Mills Was “Likely” Destroyed By Millers’ Arson

(p. 187) The Albion Mills, as it would be called, was built on a scale hitherto unimagined. The largest flour mill in London in 1783 used The Albion Mills, as it would be called, was built on a scale hitherto unimagined. The largest flour mill in London in 1783 used four pairs of grinding stones; Albion was to have thirty, driven by three steam engines, each with a 34-inch cylinder. Within months after its completion, in 1786, those engines were driving mills that produced six thousand bushels of flour every week–which both fed a lot of Londoners and angered a lot of millers.

The Albion Mills was London’s first factory, and its first great symbol of industrialization; its construction inaugurated not only great age of steam-driven factories, but also the doomed though poignant resistance to them. That resistance took the shape of direct action–no one knows how the fire that destroyed the Albion Mills in 1791 began, but arson by millers threatened by its success seems likely– . . .

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

U.S. Sets Capital Requirement Too High for Entrepreneurs’ Visas

“Brian Wong, above at his company’s office in San Francisco, is a Canadian citizen hoping for a rule change that would ease U.S. visa restrictions.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B7) San Francisco entrepreneur Brian Wong has already hired two employees and secured $300,000 in funding for his start-up, and hopes to have a staff of 40 or more full-time workers by this time next year.

But there’s at least one red flag in his business plan: Mr. Wong isn’t American; he’s Canadian.
. . .
. . . foreign entrepreneurs have long played an outsized role in the U.S. start-up sector, especially in the tech industry. Immigrants are nearly 30% more likely to start a business than nonimmigrants, the Small Business Administration says. University of California researchers estimate about a third of Silicon Valley technology firms were started by Indian or Chinese entrepreneurs, while a joint study with Duke University found at least one immigrant founder in over a quarter of all engineering and technology firms launched in the U.S. since the mid 1990s, together generating nearly 450,000 jobs by 2005. Google Inc., Intel Corp., Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc. all had at least one immigrant founder.
Yet many of these companies were also started on a shoestring, leading some tech industry insiders to say the bill’s capital requirements are far too high.
. . .
. . . , the start-up visa’s high capital requirement is certain to filter out sole-proprietorships, while ensuring it attracts innovative, mostly tech-savvy entrepreneurs, says Bob Litan, a researcher at the Kauffman Foundation. The downside, he says, is that only a handful of immigrant entrepreneurs will qualify.
“Hardly any businesses get venture capital in a given year,” Mr. Litan says. “This isn’t going to have much of an impact on the U.S. economy and I suspect that’s why so few people are opposed to it.”
. . .
Without a visa, Mr. Wong says he’ll be forced to launch his start-up back in Canada, taking the new jobs with him.

For the full story, see:
ANGUS LOTEN. “New Pitch for Start-Up Visas; Senate Bill Would Make for Smoother U.S. Entry for Foreign Entrepreneurs .” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., December 16, 2010): B7.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Supervising a Talented Inventor

(p. 180) Anyone who has ever supervised a talented subordinate with a tendency to set his own priorities will find Watt’s letters familiar: “I wish William could be brought to do as we do, to mind the business in hand, and let such as Symington [William Symington, the builder of the Charlotte Dundas, one of the world’s first steam-engine boats] and Sadler [James Sadler, balloonist and inventor of a table steam engine] throw away their time and money, hunting shadows.”

Source:
Rosen, William. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010.
(Note: italics and bracketed words in original.)

Bronson Alcott’s Environmentalist Utopia Failed from Too Much Verbal Manure and Too Little Real Manure

(p. 21) Like many educational theorists, Bronson Alcott found his own children hard to manage. And, again like many visionaries, he also found it hard to hold down a job. As a result, the family moved 29 times in as many years. In 1843 Bronson helped found Fruitlands, a utopian community 15 miles west of Boston. Members of the commune, which numbered 13 people at its height, advocated abolitionism, environmentalism, feminism and anarchism, forswearing meat, alcohol, neckcloths, haircuts, cotton (because it was grown by slaves) and leather (because it was harvested from animals). Their rejection of one more animal product, manure, helps explain why Fruitlands failed after only eight months: this new Eden remained barren in the absence of fertilizer.

In “Transcendental Wild Oats,” a satiric memoir Louisa based on the diary she kept at Fruitlands, one character asks “Are there any beasts of burden on the place?” and is answered, “Only one woman!” In real life, the expulsion of the lone female convert, probably for helping herself to some fish on the sly, left Louisa’s mother, Abigail, to do all the women’s work and much of the men’s — especially since Bronson and his sidekick, Charles Lane, made a habit of disappearing on recruiting trips at the very moment farm labor was required.

For the full review, see:
LEAH PRICE. “American Girl.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., December 12, 2010): 21.
(Note: the online version of the review is dated December 10, 2010.)

The books under review are:
Cheever, Susan. Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Francis, Richard. Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.

“Pumping Your Own Gas Is Illegal in New Jersey” and Oregon

“Will Corcoran pumps gas at Tim’s Westview in Ridgefield Park. Pumping your own gas has been illegal in New Jersey for 61 years.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J.–People in New Jersey pick their own strawberries. They chop down their own Christmas trees. They check themselves in at airports and check themselves out at supermarkets. Lately, a few New Jerseyans have been wondering whether it isn’t about time they were allowed to pump their own gas.

Pumping your own gas is illegal in New Jersey. It has been for 61 years. It’s also illegal in Oregon, and in the New York town of Huntington, on Long Island. Just about everywhere else, self-serving Americans do it themselves. As paying at the pump gets easier, the gas station attendant is fast going the way of the elevator operator.
Don’t tell Will Corcoran. When you pull into Tim’s Westview, a Gulf station across from the train tracks in this north Jersey town, you’ll sit in your car while he fills your tank.
Under a cold rain one weekday, he stood at the driver’s window of a Chevy, bent over, yakking. He wore blue. His cap had Gulf Oil’s orange disk on it. After his customer signed the credit slip (Tim’s pumps don’t process cards), Mr. Corcoran, 42 years old, shook hands and saluted like a gas jockey in an old commercial.

For the full story, see:

BARRY NEWMAN. “Self-Service Nation Ends at Garden State Gas Pumps; Changing Law May or May Not Lower Prices; ‘New Jersey Is Heaven!’.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., NOVEMBER 27, 2010): A1 & A14.

Some Hispanics Support Arizona Immigration Law

“Shayne Sotelo opposes Arizona’s new immigration law, while her husband, Efrain, supports it.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 28) PHOENIX — Arizona’s immigration law, which politicians have debated in the Legislature, lawyers have sparred over in the courtroom and advocates have shouted about on the street, has found its way up a driveway in central Phoenix, through the front door and right onto the Sotelo family’s kitchen table.
. . .
That such a divisive social issue would divide some families is not surprising. But what makes the Sotelos stand out is that they are both Latinos, he a Mexican immigrant who was born in the northern state of Chihuahua and she a descendant of Spanish immigrants who grew up in Colorado.
While polls show that a vast majority of Latinos nationwide side with Mrs. Sotelo in opposing Arizona’s law, that opposition is not uniform. “All Latinos are not opposed to this law — that’s too simplistic,” said Cecilia Menjivar, an Arizona State University sociologist. There are other Mr. Sotelos out there, including an Arizona state legislator, Representative Steve B. Montenegro, a Republican who immigrated from El Salvador and became the only Latino lawmaker to vote in favor of the bill.
. . .
[Mr. Sotelo] thinks his adopted state has been unfairly maligned since the law passed. “I’m a Hispanic, and I don’t have any issues walking the streets,” he said. “They make it seem like the police or sheriff are out there checking everyone’s papers, and that’s not so.”

For the full story, see:
MARC LACEY. “One Family’s Debate Shows Arizona Law Divides Latinos, Too.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., October 31, 2010): 28.
(Note: ellipses added; bracketed name added to replace “He.”)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated October 30, 2010 and has the title “Arizona Immigration Law Divides Latinos, Too.”)

“The Roiling World of Opera More Appealingly Straightforward than the Roiling World of Academe”

At left, Richard Gill as Harvard economist. At right, Richard “Gill as Frère Laurent, one of his numerous singing roles he preformed at the Met.” Source of part of caption, and of photos: online version of the NYT obituary quoted and cited below.

(p. B19) Richard T. Gill, in all statistical probability the only Harvard economist to sing 86 performances with the Metropolitan Opera, died on Monday in Providence, R.I. He was 82.
. . .
Mr. Gill, a longtime Harvard faculty member who wrote many widely used economics textbooks, did not undertake serious vocal training (which he began as an anti-smoking regimen) until he was nearly 40. At the time, he had seen perhaps 10 operas and rarely listened to classical music.
. . .
In some respects, he later said, Mr. Gill found the roiling world of opera more appealingly straightforward than the roiling world of academe.
“Performing is a great reality test,” he told Newsweek in 1975. “There’s no tenure in it and the feedback is much less complicated than you get in academia. When you go out on that stage, you put your life on the line.”

For the full obituary, see:
MARGALIT FOX. “Richard T. Gill, Economist and Opera Singer, Dies at 82.” The New York Times (Thurs., October 28, 2010): B19.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Increase in Equality of Happiness Between Blacks and Whites

(p. B1) White Americans don’t report being any more satisfied with their lives than they did in the 1970s, various surveys show. Black Americans do, and significantly so.

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, the University of Pennsylvania economists who did the study, point out that self-reported measures of happiness usually shift at a glacial pace. The share of whites, for example, telling pollsters in recent years that they are ”not too happy” — as opposed to ”pretty happy” or ”very happy” — has been about 10 percent. It was also 10 percent in the 1970s.
Yet the share of blacks saying they are not too happy has dropped noticeably, to about 20 (p. B12) percent in surveys over the last decade, from 24 percent in the 1970s. All in all, Mr. Wolfers calls the changes to blacks’ answers, ”one of the most dramatic gains in the happiness data that you’ll see.”

For the full commentary, see:
DAVID LEONHARDT. “ECONOMIC SCENE; For Blacks, Progress In Happiness.” The New York Times (Weds., September 15, 2010): B1 & B12.

The working paper referred to in the commentary is:
Stevenson, Betsey, and Justin Wolfers. “Subjective and Objective Indicators of Racial Progress.” May 12, 2010.