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succeeded in lowering its death rate, both by spending to improve health on the job and by discovering, devel-
oping, and adopting ways to save lives.
Data for injuries are scarcer and less reliable, but they probably declined as well. Agriculture has one of the
highest injury rates of any industry; the frequent cuts and bruises can become infected by the bacteria in barn-
yards and on animals. Moreover, work animals and machinery frequently injure farm workers. Since the pro-
portion of farm workers in the total labor force fell from about 40 per cent to 2 per cent between 1900 and
1990, the U.S. worker injury rate would have fallen even if nothing else changed. The limited data on injuries
in manufacturing also indicate a decline.
Another basic aspect of working conditions is exposure to the weather. In 1900 more than 80 per cent of all
workers farmed in open fields, maintained railroad rights of way, constructed or repaired buildings, or produced
steel and chemicals. Their bosses may have been comfortably warm in the winter and cool in the summer, but
the workers were not. A columnist of that era ironically described the good fortune of workers in Chicago
steelworks, who could count on being warmed by the blast from the steel melt in freezing weather. Boys who
pulled glass bottles from furnaces were similarly protected – when they didn't get burned. By 1990, in contrast,
more than 80 per cent of the labor force worked in places warmed in the winter and cooled in the summer.
Hours of work for both men and women were shorter in the United States than in most other nations in
1900. Women in Africa and Asia still spent two hours a day pounding husks off wheat or rice for the family
food. American women bought their flour and cornmeal, or the men hauled it home from the mill. Women,
however, still typically worked from dawn to dusk, or even longer by the light of oil or kerosene lamps. Caring
for sick children lengthened those hours further. Charlotte Gilman, an early feminist leader, declared that cook-
ing and care of the kitchen alone took forty-two hours a week. Early budget studies are consistent with that es-
timate. Men, too, worked dawn to dusk on the farm, and in most non-farm jobs (about 60 per cent of the total),
men worked ten hours a day, six days a week.
By 1981 (the latest date available), women's kitchen work had been cut about twenty hours a week, accord-
ing to national time-budget studies from Michigan's Institute of Survey Research. That reduction came about
because families bought more restaurant meals, more canned, frozen, and prepared foods, and acquired an arse-
nal of electric appliances. Women also spent fewer hours washing and ironing clothes and cleaning house.
Fewer hours of work in the home had little impact on women's labor force participation rate until the great in-
crease after 1950.
Men's work hours were cut in half during the twentieth century. That decline reflected a cut of more than
twenty hours in the scheduled work week. It also reflected the fact that paid vacations – almost non-existent in
1900 – had spread, and paid holidays multiplied.
In addition, the percentage of the labor force in the worst jobs has declined dramatically. Common laborers
in most societies face the most arduous, dangerous, and distasteful working conditions. Their share of the U.S.
labor force fell from about 30 per cent to 5 per cent between 1900 and 1990. Thousands of men in 1900 spent
their lives shoveling coal into furnaces to power steam engines. Less than 5 per cent of factory power came
from electric motors. By 1990 nearly all these furnaces, and men, had been replaced – first by mechanical stok-
ers and then by oil burners and electric motors. Tens of thousands of other men in 1900 laid railroad track and
ties, shifting them by brute force, or shoveled tons of coal and grain into gondola cars and ships' holds. They
too have given way to machines or now use heavy machinery to ease their toil.
The largest group of common laborers in 1900 was the men, women, and children who cultivated and har-
vested crops by hand (e.g. cotton, corn, beets, potatoes). Most blacks and many Asian and Mexican-American
workers did so. These millions were eventually replaced by a much smaller group, generally using motorized
equipment. New machinery also eased the lot of those who once spent their lives shoveling fertilizer, mixing
cement, working in glue-works, carrying bundles of rags, waste paper, or finished clothing, and tanning hides.
Such tasks remain a miserable fact of life in many societies. But the expanding U.S. economy forced im-
provement as workers got the choice of better jobs on factory assembly lines, in warehouses, and in service es-
tablishments. Producers increasingly had to replace departing common labor with machinery. They substituted
machinery for labor across the board. (Computer software even replaced some bank vice presidents). But many
more men who labored at difficult and boring jobs were replaced by machines tended by semi-skilled workers.
Between 1900 and 1990 the amount of capital equipment used by the typical American worked rose about 150
per cent, taking all industries together.
Rock singers, movie stars, athletes, and CEOs stand at one end of the income distribution. At the other end
are part-time workers and many of the unemployed. The differences in annual earnings only partly reflect
hourly wages. They also reflect differences in how many hours a year workers spend on the job.
