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Missing work: absenteeism at Pepperell Manufacturing Co. in 1883

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Abstract

While factories are usually thought to have disciplined workers, I find that absence rates at a US textile factory in 1883 were fairly high—9% if breaks up to 4 weeks are considered absences. Women’s absence rates were about 50% higher than those of men. While I find only weak support for economic motives, I find strong support for leisure-related motives for absences. Absences were high near weekends and holidays, and for special events, and absences were less likely when it rained. When studying how much people worked, we should not assume that days worked by employees matched days of operation for the employer.

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Fig. 1

Source: Pepperell Manufacturing Co., Baker Library Historical Collections, EE-1–EE-4

Fig. 2

Source: Pepperell Manufacturing Co., Baker Library Historical Collections, EE-1–EE-4

Fig. 3

Source: Pepperell Manufacturing Co., Baker Library Historical Collections, EE-1–EE-4

Fig. 4

Source: Pepperell Manufacturing Co., Baker Library Historical Collections, EE-1–EE-4

Fig. 5

Source: Pepperell Manufacturing Co., Baker Library Historical Collections, EE-1–EE-4

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Notes

  1. Recently, interest in absenteeism has increased in development economics, where experiments have helped to determine what incentives work best for encouraging work attendance (Chaudhury et al. 2006; Banerjee and Duflo 2006).

  2. Manufacturing employers complain about high rates of absenteeism. "The Workforce: The Human Resources Perspective", a workshop presented by the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County and the Montgomery County Community Foundation, April 9, 2019, in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Montgomery County Community Foundation, April 9, 2019, in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

  3. Pollard (1963, p. 256) notes factory workers missed Mondays and Tuesday "even as late as 1800" and that South Wales had high absence rates "as late as the 1840s.".

  4. The accounts used in this study are available at Harvard’s Baker Library. Pepperell accounts EE-1 through EE-4.

  5. In 1880 York county had only six cotton textile firms hiring employing 4210 workers, plus 14 other textile firms employing 993 workers. If Pepperell also employed 1957 workers in 1880, then it employed 46.5% of local workers in cotton textiles, and 37.6% of local textile workers. Census Office (1883, p. 252).

  6. Census Office (1883, p. 450).

  7. The total amount of overtime worked was only 0.3% of the total amount worked. Women never worked overtime, and male weavers rarely did.

  8. Census data was obtained from the North Atlantic Population Project, nappdata.org. Ruggles et. al. (2018).

  9. See Bailey et al. (2017).

  10. Similarly, Kirby (2012, p. 968) assumes that days when no work occurred at a colliery were the result of a "management decision.".

  11. In 1880, 60% of firms operated full-time year-round. (Atack et al. 2002, p. 793.).

  12. Yorke (1945, p. 17) reports that in 1845 there were “three regular holidays a year—Fast Day (in April), Fourth of July and Thanksgiving,” so the total number of holidays doubled between 1845 and 1883. Huberman and Minns (2007, p. 546) report that the average US worker had 4 holidays in 1870 and 5 holidays in 1900.

  13. Total sales in 1883 were 5% higher than in 1882 (Yorke 1945 p. 114). Sometimes wage accounts do show evidence of restricted hours. For example, at Lyman Mills in Holyoke, Mass., in July 1861 all workers except for two overseers work only three days the first week, and only 4 days in the second, third, and fourth weeks of the month. I interpret this as the mill running on short time (Baker Library, Lyman Mills collection, volume LC-30).

  14. It was not unusual for factory workers to have long absences. The Women's Bureau (1926, p. 170) reports that 60.8% of women reported at least one absence of three months or more during their work history. For 36.4% of women these absences totaled 2 years or more. Among women who had worked in mills over a period of 20–25 years, 44% had put in less than 15 years of actual work during that time (p. 146).

  15. While this paper examines only 1883, I know who worked during December 1882 and January 1884. Spells that start in December 1883 and continue into January of 1884 are included. Spells that start in December 1882 are not included (there are eight such spells).

  16. Bureau of Labor Statistics "absence rates" are not included because a worker has to miss a whole week to be counted as absent. Similarly, absences calculated by Murray (2005) and Castenbrandt (2018) are not included because they consider only absences compensated by sickness insurance, so they include only absences due to sickness and exclude spells too short to qualify for compensation.

  17. Baker Library Historical Collections, Lyman Mills LC-42.

  18. Fitton and Wadsworth (1958), The Strutts and the Arkwrights; quoted by Greenlees (2007, p. 126).

  19. W. Greg, Essays on Domestic Industry, Charleston: 1845, as quoted by Greenlees (2007, p. 64).

  20. I assume the wage does not vary from day to day. If workers were complementary it is possible that one worker's productivity might be affected by the absences of others.

  21. Based on the 1880 census, Elman and Myers (1999) estimate that the percentage of the population that was sick or disabled was 1.63% for men and 1.34% for women.

  22. Data were downloaded from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Environmental Information, www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/ in 2015.

  23. Biddeford Weekly Journal, May 11, 1883. Thanks to Renee DesRoberts of the McArthur Public Library for this reference.

  24. Kirby (2012) and Gutman (1973, p. 532, 560). In England the rise of the factory was associated with a decline in the observance of Saint Monday over the course of the nineteenth century (Reid 1996).

  25. Suppose workers fall ill randomly, and when they do they remain ill for 3 days. Under these circumstances, Monday is more likely than other days to be the first day of an absence spell. Workers who fall ill on Sundays are not recorded as absent on Sunday, and would first be observed absent on Monday. Thus, Monday would be the first day of the spell for those who fell ill on Sunday or Monday (two-sevenths of the workers), while every other day would be the first day of a spell for one-seventh of the workers.

  26. Some absences were taken to visit distant family. Gutman (1973, p. 545) reports that one employer preferred immigrants to natives because "not coming from country homes, but living as the Irish do, in the town, they take no vacations, and can be relied on at the mill all year round.".

  27. "the substantial increase of sickness which is associated with increase of underground temperature may be due to the men getting more overheated, and on that account being more liable to catch a chill on coming to the surface." Vernon et al. (1931, pp. 16–18).

  28. All the other independent variables from Table 5 are included in the regressions but not reported in Table 10.

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Burnette, J. Missing work: absenteeism at Pepperell Manufacturing Co. in 1883. Cliometrica 15, 755–786 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-020-00215-0

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