Submitted to the Daily Reflector October 2007
Labor Statistics Offer Glimpse Into the Lives of Workers
Special to the Daily Reflector by Susan Butler
In the early 1800s, North Carolina experienced a growth in industries such as cotton mills, paper mills, manufacturing, carriage factories, and lumber mills. Entrepreneurs operated general and naval stores. Gold and copper mines were organized. Agriculture was the leading business pursuit, and is still the number one industry in North Carolina today, with gold mining coming in second place and remaining there through the 1850s.
In 1887, North Carolina established the Bureau of Labor statistics and placed it under the Commissioner of Labor Statistics. The Bureau was charged with collecting "information upon the subject of labor, the earning of laboring men and women, their educational, moral and financial condition, and the best means of promoting their mental, material, social, and moral prosperity."
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' findings were published later that year in publication entitled "First Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of North Carolina" and included chapters on cotton manufacturers, tobacco manufacturers and railroads as well as revealing glimpses into the lives of workingmen as they gave short accounts of working conditions, wages, and cost-of-living factors.
An early example of a call for industry regulations can be found in the testimony of a Pitt County carriage worker who reported that "there should be some law enacted by which competent mechanics and the public should be protected against incompetent jacklegs." He went on to state that a board of examiners in each county should issue certificates of proficiency to mechanics that pass an examination.
Employers are also given an equal opportunity to present their views on various subjects in industry and a Carteret County employer in a menhaden oil and fish scrap company admitted that, "Our time for work is very irregular. Sometimes very busy and the idle, it depends on the catch of the fish." He went on to state that several workers spent a large portion of their time building vessels and boats for the company and that the ship carpenters received from $1.25 to $1.75 in wages a day.
The content of later reports published on North Carolina Labor Statistics changed as the face of industry evolved in the state. The carriage industry, once a thriving business, has long disappeared and all of the menhaden fisheries, which at one time could be found all along the eastern coast of the United States, only two remain -- one in Reedville, Va. and one in Beaufort, N.C.
As the furniture, textiles, and agricultural industries grew and changed, their progress was reflected in the annual reports, which provide a revealing look at development in North Carolina as well.
Area residents and visitors as well as members of the university community are welcome to use the North Carolina Collection located on the third floor of Joyner Library. Call 328-6601 or visit www.ecu.edu/cs-lib/ncc/index.cfm.
Susan Butler is a staff member of the North Carolina Collection
