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To write an entire article using historical textile production as an example and not mention the impacts of contemporary globalization on the same industry is c

To write an entire article using historical textile production as an example and not mention the impacts of contemporary globalization on the same industry is confusing at best and hopelessly optimistic at worst.

dredmorbius 13y ago
The point of the article isn't what is happening presently in terms of textiles and globalization, but how technological innovation affected the industry in 18th and 19th century Massachusetts. That said, there are some omissions. The American Colonies / Early United States were labor-constrained. The economy was growing rapidly, and there simply weren't enough warm bodies to meet demand (discussed in Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter VII). Wages were high, supplies of finished goods were limited, and the benefits of industrialization were high. This contrasted with England in which factories drew masses of labor from the countryside, city populations exploded (Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham grew from small towns of 4,000 - 6,000 in 1685 to major cities of 393,000 - 552,000 by 1881, see Arnold Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution), and working conditions in general were abysmal. Which suggests other reasons why picking the Lowell factories as the analysis point is somewhat misguided. Toynbee's Lectures paint a markedly different picture of how industrialization proceeded in the UK. The challenge now is that virtually all basic needs of survival ... and then some ... are satisfied. Does this mean that there's no additional demand or demand growth possible? No. But ... the situation's markedly different from the late 18th century. Too: the dawn of the Industrial Revolution was a period in which there were vast untapped natural resources -- virgin land (or, if you prefer, newly cleared land by way of the aboriginal genocide and pandemics) in the Americas, forests, untilled prairies, and of course, untold gigatons of coal, oil, and gas in the ground. William Stanley Jevons noted that increased efficiencies tended to increase consumption of resources by increasing their marginal utility (the so-called Jevons Paradox) We're looking at a constrained resource environment going out, which may well invert the logic of Jevons Paradox and see fewer resources consumed with increasing efficiency. Which would mean that automation would idle, not employ, hands.

dredmorbius 13y ago

The point of the article isn't what is happening presently in terms of textiles and globalization, but how technological innovation affected the industry in 18th and 19th century Massachusetts. That said, there are some omissions. The American Colonies / Early United States were labor-constrained. The economy was growing rapidly, and there simply weren't enough warm bodies to meet demand (discussed in Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter VII). Wages were high, supplies of finished goods were limited, and the benefits of industrialization were high. This contrasted with England in which factories drew masses of labor from the countryside, city populations exploded (Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham grew from small towns of 4,000 - 6,000 in 1685 to major cities of 393,000 - 552,000 by 1881, see Arnold Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution), and working conditions in general were abysmal. Which suggests other reasons why picking the Lowell factories as the analysis point is somewhat misguided. Toynbee's Lectures paint a markedly different picture of how industrialization proceeded in the UK. The challenge now is that virtually all basic needs of survival ... and then some ... are satisfied. Does this mean that there's no additional demand or demand growth possible? No. But ... the situation's markedly different from the late 18th century. Too: the dawn of the Industrial Revolution was a period in which there were vast untapped natural resources -- virgin land (or, if you prefer, newly cleared land by way of the aboriginal genocide and pandemics) in the Americas, forests, untilled prairies, and of course, untold gigatons of coal, oil, and gas in the ground. William Stanley Jevons noted that increased efficiencies tended to increase consumption of resources by increasing their marginal utility (the so-called Jevons Paradox) We're looking at a constrained resource environment going out, which may well invert the logic of Jevons Paradox and see fewer resources consumed with increasing efficiency. Which would mean that automation would idle, not employ, hands.