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Title: Technological Unemployment in Agriculture: Cotton Harvest Mechanization in the US

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2001

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Abstract: Following World War II a mass movement of the cotton belt labor force occurred at the same time that farmers mechanized the cotton harvest. Newly reconstructed data allow us to determine whether cheaper mechanical cotton harvesters displaced workers or whether workers left due to better opportunities elsewhere. We show that mechanization, falling cotton prices and government farm programs (which decreased the demand for labor) were quantitatively more important than the lure of nonagricultural wages (which decreased the supply of labor) for the decline in hand harvest employment. Improved data and modeling allow a more complete understanding of the impact of technology and government policies on labor markets and the course of economic development. With the demand for labor falling faster than supply, there was no longer an incentive for southern elites to preserve, with the political power at their disposal, the system of social control. This "softening" of the southern agricultural labor market paradoxically may have paved the way for an episode of African-American economic progress.

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Authors: Grove, Wayne; Heinicke, Craig

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Institution: Baldwin-Wallace College

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Publisher Location: Berea, OH

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Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Race and Ethnicity

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