history of the organization of work

history of the organization of work, history of the methods by which society structures the activities and labour necessary to its survival. Work is essential in providing the basic physical needs of food, clothing, and shelter. But work involves more than the use of tools and techniques. Advances in technology, which will always occur, help to extend the reach of the hand, expand muscle power, enlarge the senses, and multiply the capacities of the mind. The story of work is still unfolding, with great changes taking place throughout the world and in a more accelerated fashion than ever before.

The form and nature of the work process help determine the character of a civilization; in turn, a society’s economic, political, and cultural characteristics shape the form and nature of the work process as well as the role and status of the worker within the society. Even unforeseen developments such as disease can dramatically affect the character of work. In early 2020, the global coronavirus pandemic resulted in the widespread closure of schools and businesses, meaning students and employees around the world were forced to work from home. Videoconferencing software such as Zoom gained greatly from this development. Zoom became one of the most popular services of its kind, one of the most downloaded applications worldwide, and a household word. Work, and the employee-employer relationship, was fundamentally changed.

The world of work—comprising all interactions between workers and employers, organizations, and the work environment—is marked by the constant adaptation to changes in the technological, cultural, political, and economic environments. The study of historical changes in the organization of work can perhaps lead to a better understanding of the present problems—now on a worldwide scale—that accompany ongoing technical, political, and economic changes. (See organizational analysis.) Hence, this article employs both historical and current perspectives in order to provide a basis for understanding work in today’s world and to consider possible changes in the future.

Organization of work may have begun before the evolution of Homo sapiens. Along with tools, a more complex brain structure, and linguistic communication, the division of labour (job specialization) may have been responsible for starting the human conquest of nature and differentiating human beings from other animal species.

In the earliest stages of human civilization, work was confined to simple tasks involving the most basic of human needs: food, child care, and shelter. A division of labour likely resulted when some individuals showed proficiency in particular tasks, such as hunting animals or gathering plants for food. As a means of increasing the food supply, prehistoric peoples could organize the work of foraging and hunting and, later, agriculture. There could be no widespread geographic division of labour, however, because populations were sparse and isolated. The uncertain availability of food allowed little surplus for exchange, and there were few contacts with groups in different places that might have specialized in obtaining different foods.

The most obvious division of labour arose from differences in age and sex. The oldest people in the tribe lacked strength and agility to hunt or forage far afield and so performed more-sedentary tasks. The very youngest members of the tribe were similarly employed and were taught simple food gathering. The sexual division of labour was based largely upon physical differences, with men taking on tasks such as hunting while women specialized in food gathering, child rearing, and cooking.

The earliest human groupings offer no evidence of a division of labour based upon class. The challenges of providing food made it necessary for the whole group to contribute, so there could be no leisure class or even a class of full-time specialists producing articles not directly related to the food supply. There were, however, part-time specialists; a person who excelled at fashioning flint tools and weapons could produce enough to trade any surplus for food.

Throughout human history, work has often required organization. Capture of game and fish required varying degrees of cooperation among members of the group. Communal activity of this type had important social implications. Food had to be equitably distributed, and a leader was needed to organize and direct the group. Because the basic social group was the family tribe, kin relationships—from the tribal chief down—formed the basis for the “managerial hierarchy.” Bones of large animals killed by hunters have been found in sites of the Upper Paleolithic Period (about 40,000 bce to about 10,000 bce), indicating a high degree of organization in hunting at this early stage of the human race. Shortly thereafter men began using dogs to assist with hunting.

A more complex organization of work came with the development of pottery. While some sort of clay adequate for making passable pottery can be found nearly everywhere, the best potter’s clay is not universally distributed. Thus, people in some locations were able to make pottery products that could be traded elsewhere. Skilled workmanship and specialized tools aided production, perhaps further encouraging specialization. There is no conclusive evidence that the earliest potters spent their full time at that task or that pottery making was carried on by women in its earliest stages (before introduction of the potter’s wheel). There is reason to believe, however, that in prehistoric times some organization of the work existed. In some societies, for instance, the gathering of the clay and firing materials may have been the work of the men, while the women may have fashioned and decorated the pots.

The same type of specialization might also have been involved in the making of textiles. Early protective garments were derived from animal skins. The development of agriculture reduced the supply of available skins and required a substitute material for clothing. To make textiles, yarn had to be spun; the earliest apparatus for this work consisted of a spindle and a distaff (a forked stick holding the unspun fibres).

The assignment of tasks in primitive agricultural societies may have involved a division of work along sexual lines, with the fields entrusted to the women while the men hunted (although men would have helped with the more physically demanding tasks such as clearing land). Because crop cultivation began as a part-time means of supplementing the food source, there was little likelihood of full-time specialization in primitive agriculture. Yet even in its earliest stages agriculture was significant to the organization of work, for it provided a slight surplus that could be used to support human society’s first real specialists: makers of metal tools and weapons.

Although the origins of metallurgy are as yet unclear, the development and use of copper tools and weapons created a new organization of work in which some persons devoted their full time to mining, smelting, and forging (see Bronze Age). Although deposits of flint for stone tools and weapons were fairly widely and evenly distributed, copper ores were not. Some of the earlier copper artifacts and remains of early copper mines have been found in areas where climate and topography most likely prevented agricultural development. Geography thus made it difficult for the earliest miners and metalworkers to cultivate crops. Besides, the techniques of prospecting, mining, smelting, casting, and forging were probably so demanding of physical strength and mental concentration as to preclude the metallurgist from farming or hunting activities.

Because copper ores are generally located in mountainous regions, the metal had to be transported to its lowland users. The specializations of mining and metalworking could evolve only after cultivation efforts created yields that could exceed subsistence levels. Thus, metalworkers and their families were supported by the surplus foodstuffs of farmers. Not surprisingly, metallurgy developed first near the farming valleys of the great river systems of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus, all of which provided a high yield of foodstuffs per acre. If metalworkers pursued their occupations full-time, then it is likely that other craft specialties developed in a similar manner. The combination of agricultural surpluses with copper and bronze tools provided the basis for development of the great irrigation civilizations of the Middle East. There the organization of work developed along lines that remained unchanged for the next 5,000 years, until the beginnings of mechanization and industrialization in the 18th century.

In his seminal book Oriental Despotism(1957), historian and political scientist Karl Wittfogel presented a general theory of the development of ancient civilizations. He found examples of large-scale systematic organization of work, the emergence of social classes, and widespread specialization. Wittfogel believed that the development of irrigation projects in such areas as Mesopotamia and Egypt led to the use of mass labour, to an organizational hierarchy for coordinating and directing these activities, and to government control for ensuring proper distribution of the water. (See hydraulic civilization.) Though tribal societies had some form of government, this was usually personal in nature, exercised by a patriarch over a tribal group related by various degrees of kinship. Now, for the first time, an impersonal government as a distinct and permanent institution was established.

Irrigation increased the food supply, allowing larger numbers of people to agglomerate into towns and cities. Because farmers were vulnerable to attack, armies were needed; this created the development of an officer class. Town specialization of labour brought the emergence of potters, weavers, metalworkers, scribes, lawyers, and physicians, while the new surpluses also created the basis for commerce. The more complex economy created a need for record keeping, so writing—of which the first examples come from the bookkeeping records of the storehouses in ancient Mesopotamia—was born.

Wittfogel’s theory has been modified by scholars who point to urban civilizations that lacked large-scale irrigation works. In their view, several factors, including geographic features, natural-resource distribution, climate, kinds of crops and animals raised, and relations with neighbouring peoples, entered into the response to the environment. (The work of these scholars represents a “systems” approach to defining the origins of organized societies.)

In any case, by the time written history began, distinct economic and social classes were in existence, with members of each class occupying a certain place in the organization of work. At the apex of the social pyramid stood the ruler (often worshiped as a divinity in Mesopotamia and Egypt) and the nobles (probably grown out of a warrior group that had subjugated its neighbours). Closely aligned with them were the priests; possessing knowledge of writing and mathematics, the priests served as government officials, organizing and directing the economy and overseeing clerks and scribes. The traders and merchants, who distributed and exchanged goods produced by others, were below the noble-priest class in the social pyramid. A sizable group of artisans and craftsmen, producing specialized goods, belonged to the lower economic classes. Even lower in the social hierarchy were the peasants, and at the bottom of the social scale were the slaves, most likely originating as war captives or ruined debtors. The social structure in Classical Greece and Rome followed these lines. For relatively short periods of time, some democracies did away with the ruling group, substituting a class of free landholders and providing a citizen army of warriors, but the basic economic organization remained unchanged.

Certain characteristics of the ancient organization of work emerged from the social stratification described above. Chief among these was the hereditary nature of occupations and status. At certain times and places—in the later Roman Empire, for example—heredity of occupation was enforced by law, but tradition was usually sufficient to maintain the system. The social structure remained remarkably stable and was reinforced by the organizations of workers engaged in the same occupation. These groups—some voluntary and some required by law—can be viewed as prototypes of the medieval guilds.

The basic agricultural work unit in the ancient world was the family. Even in certain regions where the state owned the land, farms were allocated by family. Furthermore, when large farming estates were formed during the Roman Empire, the structure of rural society was little affected, because the owners commonly left cultivation of their land to peasants who became their tenants.

Work within the family farm unit often was divided along sexual lines: the men commonly bore chief responsibility for such seasonal tasks as plowing, sowing, tilling, and harvesting, while the women cared for children, prepared food, and made clothing. If slaves were available, their work was similarly divided. During planting and harvesting seasons, the entire family performed fieldwork, with sons and daughters entering into an apprenticeship under their parents. Technology also influenced work organization. The usual draft team in antiquity—a pair of oxen—required two operators: a driver for the team and a guide for the plow.

In the large estates, or latifundia, of the Roman Empire, the complex organization of work resulted in the creation of a hierarchy of supervisors. The Greek historian Xenophon (5th–4th century bce) and the Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato (3rd–2nd century bce) wrote handbooks for the management of such estates. Cato also outlined the work organization for a medium-sized farm. For an estate of 150 acres (60 hectares) with olive trees, he recommended one overseer, a housekeeper, five farmhands, three carders, a donkey driver, a swineherd, and a shepherd. To these 13 permanent labourers, Cato recommended the hiring of extra hands for the harvest period.

On the larger latifundia that developed from about the 2nd century bce, the owner was usually nonresident, often because he had many scattered estates. Direction of the affairs of each was left in the hands of a bailiff under whose command slaves, numbering in the hundreds or even in the thousands, were divided into gangs charged with specific duties.

Ancient agricultural work was also characterized by specialization in crops: vineyards and olive groves were concentrated in Greece and Italy, while cereals were cultivated in the richer soils of Sicily, North Africa, and Asia. Wine and oil required craftsmen to produce amphorae for storage and conveyance, as well as tradesmen and small sailing vessels for transport.

Economic growth, sophistication of taste, and enlarged markets ultimately brought mass production of a sort, with large workshops dedicated to the production of a single item. These workshops, however, never achieved the size of even a small modern factory; a building in which a dozen persons worked was considered a large factory, though a few workshops were larger.

The earliest specialized craftsmen were probably itinerant, gravitating to wherever their services were in demand. As market centres developed, however, craftsmen had less of a need to travel, because their products could be traded in these centres. Eventually, market development and economic growth increased the number of specialized crafts, fostered the organization of guildlike groups, and contributed to a geographic division of labour, with members of one craft located in a special quarter of a city or in one area of a country. In the pottery industry, specialization was carried even further, with shaping, firing, and decoration sometimes done in separate establishments and with workshops specializing in cooking pots, jars, goblets, and funerary urns.

Slaves were put to work in a variety of areas, including the crafts workshops. The chief examples of large-scale production by slaves were in mining and metallurgy, in which the conditions of labour were harsh and the organization of work was highly structured. In the silver mines at Laurium, in ancient Greece, the master miner commanded three gangs of labourers. The strongest workers handled picks at the ore face, weaker men or boys carried ore from the mine, and women and old men sifted the ore-bearing rock. The miners worked 10-hour shifts (followed by 10 hours of rest) in dark and narrow passages with smoky lamps that made the air almost unbreathable. Aboveground, the master smelter supervised the workshops, in which the strongest men worked the mortar and the weakest the hand mill. Metallurgical working of the ore was carried out by small units, because the small leather bellows limited the size of the furnace. Metallurgy thus remained essentially a handicraft.

After weapons and tools, the chief use of metal was for ornamentation. The metalworker was more artisan, or even artist, than industrial worker, and in the trade there were patternmakers, smelters, turners, metal chasers, gilders, and specialized goldsmiths and silversmiths.

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The Great Sphinx of Giza and pyramids in Egypt. 

© Pius Lee/stock.adobe.com

The monumental public-works projects of the ancient world demonstrate a remarkable degree of human organization in the absence of power and machinery. The Great Pyramid at Giza, built about 2500 bce, before the Egyptians knew the pulley or had wheeled vehicles, covers 13 acres (5.3 hectares) and contains the staggering total of 2,300,000 colossal blocks of granite and limestone weighing an average of 5,000 pounds (2,300 kilograms) each. There exists no complete historical or archaeological record of the exact methods of quarrying, transportation, and construction of the pyramids, and what evidence remains is often contradictory. Obviously, the need to organize the work on a systematic and rational basis was superbly met. It is estimated that some 100,000 workers were involved over 20 years in building the Great Pyramid, and the logistic problem alone, housing and feeding this large army of workers, required a high degree of administrative skill.

The master builder, who planned and directed the erection of the pyramids and other great structures, occupied a high position in society. Ancestor of the modern architect and engineer, he was a trusted court noble and adviser to the ruler. He directed a host of subordinates, superintendents, and foremen, each with his scribes and recorders.

Although some slaves were employed in building the pyramids, most of the builders were peasants, drafted as a form of service tax (corvée) owed the state and employed when the Nile was flooding their fields. Workers were not regarded as expendable; overseers and foremen took pride in reporting on their safety and welfare. In a record of a quarrying expedition to the desert, the leader boasted that he had not lost a man or a mule. The labourers were organized into gangs: skilled workers cut granite for the columns, architraves, doorjambs, lintels, and casing blocks; masons and other craftsmen dressed, polished, and laid the blocks and probably erected ramps to drag the stones into place.

The Greeks and Romans used advanced organizational techniques in the building of monuments. The Roman road network, aqueducts, public buildings, public baths, harbours, docks, and lighthouses demanded exceptional skill in organizing materials and workmen, implying in turn a rational division of labour among craftsmen.

The organization of work and division of labour, which might be said to have reached a peak during the Roman Empire, declined as the empire disintegrated. The social and political fragmentation and economic decay of the late empire reduced most of western Europe to small-scale, self-sufficient economic units. As this happened, the market for specialized production disappeared until trade and town life revived in the form of the new feudal society. The growth of interregional commerce stimulated demand for specialized crafts that would serve growing markets.

Important technological innovations in agriculture, power, transportation, metallurgy, and machines created new forms of specialization. The emergence of the new burgher (middle) class, with rapidly growing wealth and breadth of enterprise, provided the basis for a more rational management of production. These social forces hastened the rise of industrialization.

Social divisions, or class structure, in the medieval world reflected a division of labour. The noble class essentially contributed to the organization of work. Because they controlled the land, basic to production in this agrarian society, the nobles alone possessed the wealth to purchase the products of artisans, to buy goods brought from a distance, to acquire the weapons and armour made by metallurgists, and to construct castles and fortresses. The lords also decided, in accordance with prevailing custom, how the farmwork should be organized.

The clergy were both consumers and producers whose primary responsibility was the spiritual care of their parishioners. The monasteries were self-sufficient agrarian units that often produced a surplus for trade; indeed, the monks experimented in improving farming techniques and in producing special cheeses and wines that were sold outside the monastery. Finally, the great churches required specialists in stained glass, bell founding, stonemasonry, wood carving, and other trades.

The bulk of the population comprised farmers of varying legal and social status. Most were serfs bound to the plots of ground their ancestors had tilled and provided services or goods to the lord of the manor, who extended protection in return. A few inhabitants of the manor were tenant farmers, or sharecroppers, who rented land in return for payments of a share of the produce. Fewer still were free farm labourers who worked for wages. Slavery had all but disappeared. Because the manor was practically self-sufficient, peasants of whatever status performed a variety of tasks connected with their agricultural occupation.

Four interrelated factors determined the work organization of medieval agriculture: the economic self-sufficiency of the manor, the development of mixed agriculture based on crops and livestock, such technological improvements as the heavy wheeled plow and rigid horse collar, and the system of land tenure and division of holdings. Each peasant household produced nearly everything it needed. Exceptions included the use of a feudal mill or winepress for which the peasants paid not in money but with a percentage of the crop being processed.

While stock raising and crop production had been separate enterprises in antiquity, the two were combined during the Middle Ages in northwestern Europe. Livestock was raised for use as draft animals and for food, and, because the yield of the grainfields did not greatly exceed human requirements, stock was pastured on poor land or harvested fields. Thus, a certain amount of land was reserved for pasturage, and some villager, usually an older member of the community, became a herdsman.

Communal organization was favoured by the land-tenure arrangements and by the way in which arable land was divided among villagers. In order to assure an equitable apportionment, the land was divided into large fields. Each peasant held strips in each field, meaning that the work of plowing, planting, and harvesting had to be done in common and at the same time.

The wheeled plow, gradually introduced over several centuries, further reinforced communal work organization. Earlier plows had merely scratched the surface of the soil. The new plow was equipped with a heavy knife (colter) to dig under the surface, thereby making strip fields possible. Yet because the new plow required a team of eight oxen—more than any single peasant owned—plowing (and indeed all heavy work on the manor) was pooled. Such a system allowed little room for individual initiative; everyone followed established routines, with the pace of the work set by the ox team.

In contrast to the land-bound serfs, townspeople of the Middle Ages were free. Some engaged in commerce and formed groups known as merchant guilds. The majority, however, were small merchant-craftsmen, organized in craft guilds as masters (of highest accomplishment and status), journeymen (at a middle level), and apprentices (beginners). The medieval master was typically many things at once: a skilled workman himself; a foreman, supervising journeymen and apprentices; an employer; a buyer of raw or semifinished materials; and a seller of finished products. Because medieval craftsmen employed simple hand tools, a workman’s own skill determined the quantity and quality of his output. Apprentices and journeymen underwent long periods of learning under the guidance of a more experienced workman. When he could produce a “masterpiece” that met the approval of the guild masters, the craftsman would gain full admission into the guild.

Craft guilds were organized through regulations. By controlling conditions of entrance into a craft, guilds limited the labour supply. By defining wages, hours, tools, and techniques, they regulated both working conditions and the production process. Quality standards and prices were also set. Monopolistic in nature, the guilds, either singly or in combination, sought complete control over their own local markets. In order to attain and protect their monopoly, the guilds acquired a political voice and in some locations achieved the right to elect a number of their own members to the town council. In some towns, such as Liège, Utrecht, and Cologne, guilds achieved complete political control. The 32 craft guilds in Liège, for example, so dominated the town after 1384 that they named the town council and governors and required all important civic decisions to be approved by a majority vote of their membership.

Craft guilds reached their peak prosperity in the 14th century. Specialties had become so differentiated that larger towns typically had more than 100 guilds. In northern Europe, for example, at the beginning of the period, carpenters built houses and made furniture. In time, furniture making became a new craft, that of joinery, and the joiners broke from the carpenters to establish their own guilds. The wood-carvers and turners (who specialized in furniture turned on a lathe) founded guilds also. Those who painted and gilded furniture and wood carvings were also represented by a separate guild.

This era of intense specialization was marked by a countermovement toward amalgamation of different crafts—a tendency that reflected the growth of the market and the desire of enterprising masters to expand their trading abilities. This came at the expense of the handicraft function. As craft differentiation proliferated, numerous crafts wound up producing the same or similar articles. This stimulated competitive forces among craftsmen who needed to assure themselves of raw materials and a market. Because of this, masters were tempted to employ members of other crafts, and conflicts inevitably arose.

The same widening of the market led to differentiation of classes within a craft. As the trading function grew more important, those who remained craftsmen fell into a condition of dependence upon the traders. Eventually, merchant guilds—originally representatives of traders only—absorbed the craft guilds.

The craft guilds also suffered a breakdown in structure. Because the masters sought to retain the profits of the growing market for themselves, they made it increasingly difficult for journeymen to enter their class, preferring instead to employ them as wage workers. Apprentices similarly had little hope of rising to mastership. Thus, the master-journeyman-apprentice relationship gave way to an employer-employee arrangement, with the master performing the functions of merchant while his employees did craftwork. Conditions for development of the early industrial system rose out of the disintegration of this craft-guild system. The excluded journeymen eventually became a class of free labourers who practiced their craft for wages outside the town walls—and outside the limitations of the guild regulations.

Certain industries that were small at the outset of the Middle Ages grew to be quite large in scale, and this growth influenced changes in the organization of work. The most important of these was the wool-cloth industry.

For reasons of cost and availability, wool was the basic clothing material in western Europe until the beginning of modern times. Linen and silk were too costly for any large-scale use, and cotton was grown only in small volumes. The production of cloth from wool involved several time-consuming steps: cleaning and carding (straightening curled and knotted fibres sheared from the sheep), spinning the fibres into thread, weaving the thread into cloth, shearing off knots and roughness, and dyeing. All these processes could be carried on within a single peasant household, for they required only simple apparatus and rudimentary skills. Typically, children carded the wool, women operated the spinning wheel, and men worked the loom shuttles.

The cloth produced by such crude tools and relatively unskilled workers was rough but serviceable. Those above the peasant class, however, desired the more comfortable and attractive clothing that was produced by skilled craftsmen. The resulting demand for better textiles caused the industry to outgrow the peasant household means of production. A new organization of work, called the putting-out system, was instituted in which a merchant clothier bought raw wool, “put it out” to be carded, spun, and woven into cloth, and then carried the cloth through the finishing processes with the help of skilled craftsmen. Because the spinners and weavers remained peasants, they also earned part of their living from the plots on which their cottages stood, meaning that agriculture and industry were pursued as something of an integrated enterprise. The man could work in the field while his wife spun, and in winter the man helped with textile production. At harvest time every hand was out in the fields, leaving the spinning wheels and looms temporarily idle.

The putting-out system differed from peasant household production in that the merchant clothier, or entrepreneur, bought the raw wool and owned the product through all stages of its preparation (the cottage workers still owned their own spinning wheels, looms, and other tools). Thus, the peasant farmer came to work on materials that did not belong to him. On the other hand, the work was performed at home (known as the cottage system or domestic system) rather than in a factory, and work proceeded at the worker’s pace. The merchant simply organized the work by arranging the order and sequence of the various technical processes—he did not supervise the workers’ actual performance. Nevertheless, the merchant clothier who began putting out cloth came to control the entire production process. This represented a step toward the industrial capitalism that emerged in the 19th century.

Growth in the scale of commerce during the Middle Ages was coupled with advances in technology. Both these phenomena helped transform the nature of work. Of central importance were the applications of wind power and waterpower; these marked the beginning of the replacement of human labour by machine power. Starting in the late 10th century, waterwheels, long used for grinding grain, were applied to many industrial processes that included tanning, olive pressing, sawing wood, polishing armour, pulverizing stone, and operating blast-furnace bellows. The first horizontal-axle windmill appeared in western Europe in 1185, and within a short time windmills could be found from northern England to the Middle East.

The mechanization of the process of fulling (i.e., shrinking and thickening) of cloth illustrates ways that technology changed the nature of work. Up to the 13th century, fulling had been accomplished by trampling the cloth or beating it with a fuller’s bat. The fulling mill invented during the Middle Ages was a twofold innovation: first, two wooden hammers replaced human feet; and second, the hammers were raised and dropped by the power of a water mill. Only one man needed to keep the cloth moving properly in the trough, which was filled with water and fuller’s earth. The mechanization of fulling also caused the cloth industry to relocate along streams, often away from the established urban textile centres.

Perhaps the best example of specialization of labour in the Middle Ages is to be found in the large-scale metal-mining industry in central Europe, as described by the German scientist Georgius Agricola in De re metallica (1556), the leading textbook for miners and metallurgists for nearly two centuries. In addition to the Bergmeister (“master miner”), the chief mine administrator, there was a hierarchy of clerical and technical personnel and a series of craftsmen and mechanics specializing in different phases of the mining operation: miners, shovelers, windlass operators, carriers, sorters, washers, and smelters. The mines operated five days a week on a 24-hour basis, with the workday divided into three seven-hour shifts and the remaining three hours used for changing shifts. Animal power was used wherever possible, with teams of eight horses hitched in pairs to turn windlasses and raise buckets of ore or drain water from the mine. Agricola’s illustrations show many types of pumps for mine drainage: crank-operated, treadmill-operated, and waterpower-operated. There were also suction pumps of varying degrees of complexity. All were operated by specialized mechanics.

The bellows for mine ventilation were operated either by human and animal power or by waterpower. Other mining processes were less mechanized and were carried on much as they had been in antiquity. Ores brought to the surface were taken to a sorting table on which women, boys, and old men separated the pieces by hand, putting the good ores into wooden tubs to be carried to the furnaces for smelting.

The mechanization that was changing the organization of work throughout the medieval period was little apparent in the construction of castles, cathedrals, and town walls. Technologies that involved in the lifting of weights, for instance, had made little progress during the Middle Ages, and, because the freemasons declined to handle large blocks of stone, the Romanesque and Gothic structures were built with smaller stone blocks, nevertheless achieving grandeur in scale. The organization of labour differed greatly from that employed in antiquity. These great monuments were built by free labourers such as carpenters, glaziers, roofers, bell founders, and many other craftsmen in addition to the stonemasons.

Much can be learned about the nature of medieval construction by studying the records of these projects as well as the monuments that were built. For a long time it was believed that medieval craftsmen, especially those engaged in the building of cathedrals, were humble, self-effacing artisans who laboured piously and anonymously for the glory of God and for their own salvation. Scholars have dispelled this myth. Medieval builders often left their names or signatures upon their work, and surviving records show names, wages, and occasionally protests over wages. There was a high degree of individualism. The artisans were by no means anonymous: historians have uncovered more than 25,000 names of those who worked on medieval churches. It has since been concluded that the medieval craftsmen were relatively free and unfettered when compared to their counterparts in antiquity.

Directing the guild craftsmen was the master mason, who functioned as architect, administrative official, building contractor, and technical supervisor. He designed the molds, or patterns, used to cut the stones for the intricate designs of doors, windows, arches, and vaults. He also designed the building itself, usually copying its elements from earlier structures upon which he had worked, either as a master or during his apprenticeship. He sketched his plans out on parchment. As administrator, he kept the accounts, hired and fired the workers, and was responsible for procurement of materials. As technical supervisor, he was constantly present to make spot decisions and plans. In the largest projects he was assisted by undermasters.

The proliferation of industry during the early modern period (immediately preceding the Industrial Revolution) arose from four factors: (1) the growth of wealth, derived partly from the influx of precious metals from the New World but also from developments in commerce, banking, and the very concept of money, (2) the growth of markets, (3) the introduction of new products, and (4) the development of new technologies. These helped increase the scale of manufacturing industries throughout Europe, which in turn prompted changes in the organization of work.

The growth in the size of the market was caused only partially by the geographic explorations of the preceding era and subsequent colonization. Most of the new demand for goods stemmed from the emergence of the new middle class (or bourgeoisie)—a phenomenon that raised the standard of living for an enormous population group and stimulated demand for quality goods. The markets also benefited from the demise of small medieval feudalities, which eventually gave way to larger political units—the royal kingdoms. When economic influence extended over a larger jurisdiction, it tended to eliminate many of the local restrictions on trade and commerce established by the previous smaller political units. Many new products—including spices from Asia and sugarcane from the New World—were also introduced into Europe, either directly, by the explorers, or indirectly, through expanded trade with distant points. Increased demand paralleled the growing affluence and new manners of European society. Handicraft production no longer sufficed as a means of rising to the pinnacle of society, and, as a result, the power and influence of the guilds declined.

Over time the nature of technological change shifted from the introduction of new mechanical contrivances to developments in the application of power (primarily water and wind) to old devices and—even more significantly—to the organization of work that would allow production on a larger scale. This represented the start of the factory system. The organization of commerce also changed rapidly. New instruments in the fields of banking, insurance, and export marketing offered an efficient means of making capital available for investment in industrial enterprises.

In Britain the development of commercial concentration—and hence of industrial scale—was mainly the work of large companies or corporate bodies such as woolen manufacturers, ironmasters, and hatmakers. Government encouragement was given by means of special legislation, especially grants of monopolistic charters. In France, however, the practice of mercantilism, a government-directed policy aimed at increasing national wealth and power, meant that the government itself took an active part in developing industries that were state owned and operated—among them the Gobelins tapestry works and other manufacturers of furniture, porcelain, or luxury items.

Although the state-run factories in France represented at least two of the essentials of factory production—the gathering of large groups of workers in one place and the imposition of disciplinary rules—they did not change the organization of work. Because they produced small quantities of luxury goods, they operated as large handicraft operations. Furthermore, despite their size, the French Royal Manufactories did not possess the third prime element of a true factory system: mechanization. The great historical change in the organization of work came in 18th-century Britain with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, largely as the result of the new technology of power-driven machinery.

The new machines introduced in the 18th century demanded a rational organization of job functions that differed greatly from that of the old handicraft tradition. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776) gave the classic description of the new production system as exemplified by a pin factory:

One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pin is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is in this manner divided into about 18 distinct operations.

According to Smith, a single worker “could scarce, perhaps with his utmost industry, make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make 20.” The new methods enabled a pin factory to turn out as many as 4,800 pins a day.

Increases in productivity depended far more upon the rational organization of processes than upon individual skill. In the textile industry, manual dexterity and alert response proved to be more valuable than experience; this led to the use of more-inexpensive woman and child labour in the early mills. Some vestiges of the medieval guild apprenticeship, however, still remained in the early textile factories, with children sometimes bound as apprentices for a period of at least seven years, usually up to the age of 21. In some areas the old cottage system of textile production was moved to the factory, with the entire family employed as a work team. In those cases the father would be employed for any heavy work while supervising his wife and children at the machines.

The high cost of machinery could be justified only if a heavy and continuous demand existed for its output. The value placed on machines created a division of labour between the owner of the machines and the employees who operated them. The owner supervised his workers, compelling them to work at the pace of the machine. Even in enterprises that were not yet fully mechanized, the advantages of factory discipline were apparent at an early stage of the Industrial Revolution. Josiah Wedgwood designed his pottery works at Etruria in England “with a view to the strictest economy of labour.” His plant was laid out so that the pots were first formed and then passed through the painting room, the kiln room, the account room (for inventory control), and to storage before shipping. In potteries before this time, the workers could roam from one task to another; in Wedgwood’s, the employees were assigned a particular post and worked at one task only. Out of 278 men, women, and children employed by Wedgwood in 1790, only 5 had no assigned post; the rest were specialists.

While the argument is sometimes made that the division of labour destroyed skill, the fact is that it might also have improved the quality of the finished product, for Wedgwood’s pottery was superior to that of his competitors. It can be said that the division of labour does not so much destroy skill as limit it to a particular field of development; within a particular task, the division of labour increases skills by virtue of continued repetition. It is interesting to note that Wedgwood’s chief difficulty was not so much in training his workers as it was in introducing them to a novel form of discipline that ran contrary to centuries of independence. It was a constant test of Wedgwood’s ingenuity to enforce six hours of punctual and constant attendance upon his workers, to get them to avoid waste, and to keep them from drinking on the job and taking unauthorized “holidays.” Because he was involved in all the tasks of running an enterprise and could not continually supervise his workers, he developed a hierarchy of supervisors and managers.

There can be little doubt that the condition of the workers, especially the women and children, in the early textile factories was miserable: 14 to 16 hours every day spent performing repetitive tasks in noisy, foul-smelling, unsanitary surroundings. The workers’ homes were equally unhealthy. It was at this period that the “social question” arose: why should poverty continue to exist in a nation that had the capacity to produce enormous quantities of goods? Answers to that question were to produce new social philosophies, social movements and political movements that have had major effects on society and politics ever since.

The introduction of steam-driven machinery—much of it fueled by coal—brought new industries into being or transformed older ones. Coal was replacing wood as a fuel especially in England and northern France, where deforestation had made wood scarce. New demands stimulated growth in the coal-mining industry, yet the organization of labour remained much as it had when Agricola wrote his description of 16th-century mining. The pressure on fuel supplies came not only from domestic heating requirements and from the metallurgical trades but also from the brickmaking, brewing, dyeing, and glassmaking industries. Metalworking trades also underwent rapid development, as technological innovations fostered the replacement of wooden machinery with metal and the manufacture of such items as metal nails, glassware, and iron bearings.

Another factor contributing to the rise of new industries was the religious warfare of the 16th and 17th centuries. The forced movement of populations helped spread technical capabilities to new areas. For example, the Protestant Huguenots, expelled from France near the end of the 17th century, carried with them their special skills in metalworking and glassmaking when they migrated to England, Holland, Germany, and the American colonies.

One of the greatest stimuli toward a more rational organization of work was the growth in population across Europe from the 17th to the 19th century—especially in the urban centres. It is possible that only a few European cities—Paris and the great Italian commercial cities of Venice, Genoa, and Naples—had as many as 100,000 people at the beginning of the modern era. London may have had only about half that number. By the end of the 17th century, however, London probably had 500,000 inhabitants.

Although exploration and colonization had originally been carried out in order to secure exotic and expensive spices, these products had little direct influence upon the organization of work in Europe; even the enormous trade in semitropical items such as sugar and coffee had little effect. However, wheat, wool, and meat from the temperate areas ultimately brought about an international division of labour, with the New World colonies furnishing agricultural produce to the manufacturing countries of Europe. (See comparative advantage.) In the 20th and 21st centuries the underdeveloped countries of the tropics supplied agricultural and industrial raw materials to developed areas, yet the dominant agricultural exporters were some of the most-developed countries, such as the United States and Canada.

While slavery has been evident in cultures throughout human history, its use by Europeans in their colonization of the New World imposed radical changes on the organization of work. Colonial slavery was linked with sugar production in Brazil and the West Indies and later with cotton in southern North America.

Cultivation of sugarcane, especially its harvesting, required heavy manual labour. Harvested cane was sent to a mill for grinding within a few hours after cutting; this necessitated establishment of a plantation system in which the workers would be housed close to the fields and the sugar mill. The requirements of sugar planters brought about the introduction of agricultural slavery to the Western Hemisphere. It began as early as 1518, when the Spanish government granted a license to import some 4,000 African slaves into the Spanish colonies. The plantation system and the consequent demand for African slaves spread during the next two centuries throughout the sugar-growing areas, including the British West Indies. Indeed, the sugar industries of the British islands of the West Indies were so profitable that it made more economic sense to devote nearly all the land to the cultivation and exporting of sugarcane while importing other foods. Because of this dependence on imported foods, the islands were not self-sufficient.

In the temperate zone, where sugar production was not possible, slaves were little used except in tobacco-growing areas. The Puritan communities in New England engaged in small family farming, while the Southern colonies employed indentured servants (white labourers who agreed to work a number of years for some person who had paid their passage to the New World).

Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 made cotton cheap enough to use as a staple for textile production. As a result, slavery and the plantation system became fixtures in the American South. While slaves were employed chiefly as cotton-field labourers, they also worked as craftsmen, factory hands, and domestic servants, creating, in other words, a division of labour on the plantation. The regional specialization in production led to sectional economic and political differences and ultimately to the American Civil War and to the freeing of the slaves.