Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines by Larry Lankton

1993; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tech.1993.0154

1097-3729

Thomas Dublin,

American Environmental and Regional History

160 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE small-scale, entrepreneurial industrial culture, Scranton’s introduc­ tion lends greater meaning to the several-score site descriptions that constitute the bulk of the inventory. In sum, this is not a perfect publication, and criticisms can be made concerning both site selection and the volume’s format. But as an initial attempt to delineate the industrial archeology of one of the world’s premier early-20th-century manufacturing centers, it de­ serves recognition. And given the relative lack of knowledge concern­ ing Philadelphia as a cauldron of industrial development, Workshop Of the World warrants praise in helping to further our understanding of American technology. Donald C. Jackson Dr. Jackson is assistant professor of history at Lafayette College and book review editor of IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology. Cradle to Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines. By Larry Lankton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. xi + 319; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95. In Cradle to Grave, Larry Lankton has written a history of copper mining on the Keweenaw Peninsula of northern Michigan. He exam­ ines the origins and growth of copper mining between roughly 1840 and 1920 and to a lesser extent the decline of the industry in the years since 1920. He aims at a ‘“social history of technology’—one that works that particular space where machine and man meet, and where industry and society connect” (p. viii). For the most part, Lankton has succeeded admirably in his exploration of the social consequences of technological change. Lankton concentrates chiefly on the years between 1890 and 1920. He offers rich and thoughtful accounts of technological change as it transformed copper mining at the turn of the century. His treatments of the adoption of the first power drills, nitroglycerine, mechanized transport of rock, and the substitution of one-man drills provide the reader with a succession of case studies of management efforts to increase labor productivity. He is sensitive to conflicts within this larger process—between mine owners and managers on the one hand, and between management and workers on the other. He offers nuanced explanations of the course of technological change within a context that is strongly influenced by social relations at the workplace. Notable also in Lankton’s account is his treatment of corporate paternalism in the mining region. As the book’s title suggests, mining firms shaped the lives of workers beyond the mines, rockhouses, and smelters where they labored. Lankton is interested in power relations TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 161 between workers and managers and in the ways paternalist practices shaped these relations. He shows, for instance, how economic necessity required the first mine owners to provide worker housing, but he also explores how housing policies changed over time. As firms moved from renting homes to leasing building lots to workers, they found a more cost-effective way to provide workers’ housing. Still, by leasing lots to workers and encouraging them to build their own homes, mining firms offered incentives that reduced turnover and effectively tied workers to the company. Similar treatments of company policies concerning compensation to victims of industrial accidents and early pension practices demonstrate how firms adopted paternalistic policies that reinforced their unilateral power and largesse. The discussions of technological change and corporate paternalism will be of interest to business and labor historians familiar with similar developments in industrial America in the years between the Civil War and World War I. As useful as Lankton’s treatment of the transformation of technol­ ogy and labor relations in copper mining between 1890 and 1920 is, I would have liked to see him carry the analysis more fully into the period of industrial decline. He offers a final chapter on the years since 1920, but, in summarizing a fifty-year period in only twentyfour pages, he is necessarily brief in his treatment of deindustrializa­ tion. This problem is common to much of the literature in economic history; we know far more about economic and social change in periods of industrialization than we know about the periods of decline that have followed. So many questions remain unanswered in the book...