Mark Aldrich
Biographic Data
| ID | 3768434 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Aldrich |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Aldrich |
| SIGNATURE | ALDRICH M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Smith College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon by Paul David Blanc
Reviewed by: Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon by Paul David Blanc Mark Aldrich (bio) Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon By Paul David Blanc. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016. Pp. 309. This is an important, deeply researched contribution to the history of the occupational diseases stemming from the manufacture of rayon and cellophane. Relying on archives and an impressive knowledge of primary resources in severa…
Energy transitions and the workplace cost of carbon fuels,1917–1940
While much recent literature has focused on the environmental cost of carbon fuels, these sources of energy generated large human costs in the work environment as well. Work in coal mines was famously dangerous. And while petroleum, gas extraction and refining were also risky, this paper demonstrates that they were far less dangerous than was coal, while energy productivity per worker was also higher in oil than coal. Relying in part on previousl…
A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present
Its title to the contrary, this book presents five case studies of occupational health and safety episodes, all loosely related to the Las Vegas area. The author makes good use of secondary literature and extensive use of primary and archival resources—including oral history collections. The case studies include the coming of the railroads to southern Nevada, around 1905; the building of Boulder Dam in the 1930s; the construction and operation of…
Response to Mark
Response to Mark Mark Aldrich Mark’s criticisms are either irrelevant or incorrect. The main thrust of this critique seems to be that I had the temerity to suggest that All Good Things did not flow entirely from the Coal Mine Safety Act (CMSA) of 1969. The act probably did improve safety—although perhaps not in the way Mark believes, for one article I cite suggests its main effect may have been to drive out small mines rather than to enhance safe…
Engineers Attack the “No. One Killer” in Coal Mining: The Bureau of Mines and the Promotion of Roof Bolting, 1947–1969
In 1948 roof falls were the number one killer of coal miners in America. While the Bureau of Mines had been formed in 1910 to improve coalmine safety, it had largely focused on explosions, for which technological solutions appeared to exist. Roof falls, by contrast, were not amenable to a technical fix. Beginning in 1948, however, the Bureau discovered roof bolting, which it promoted as a safer technology that might yield dramatic benefits. The n…
Another Wreck on the New Haven: Accidents, Risk Perception, and the Stigmatization of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, 1911–1914
Modern research demonstrates that there may be wide differences between scientific and popular risk assessments. Popular risk perception is multidimensional; some risks that seem uncontrollable or dreadful are especially abhorrent. Risks are also socially constructed and they may be augmented or attenuated by opinion leaders, advocacy groups, and media treatments. In extreme cases “information cascades” can lead to a self -reinforcing process tha…
The Pennsylvania Railroad
Journal Article The Pennsylvania Railroad Get access The Pennsylvania Railroad, vol. 1: Building an Empire, 1846–1917. By Albert J. Churella. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. xviii, 945 pp. $75.00.) Mark Aldrich Mark Aldrich Smith CollegeNorthampton, Massachusetts [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 100, Issue 3, December 2013, …
Tariffs and Trusts, Profiteers and Middlemen: Popular Explanations for the High Cost of Living, 1897-1920
After decades of decline, US prices rose about 2.5 percent a year from 1897 to World War I and then more than doubled between 1914 and 1920. Popular explanations for these events can be studied via editorials and editorial cartoons, which reflected and contributed to an outpouring of public concern. While economists then and now adduced monetary causes for the price increases, popular theories blamed the tariff, monopolies, middlemen, profiteers,…
A Most Magnificent Machine: America Adopts the Railroad, 1825-1862
In A Most Magnificent Machine, Craig Miner tells us what Americans thought about the railroad in the antebellum decades. Although Miner says the book is an economic as well as a social history, his goal is to “document the details of what might be called ‘industrial mythology’” (p. xi). The book is based on the vast primary printed literature of that period, especially newspapers and broadsides, which databases have made more easily available. Th…
On the Track of Efficiency: Scientific Management Comes to Railroad Shops, 1900–1930
In 1910, Louis Brandeis claimed that scientific management could save the railroads a million dollars a day and avoid a rate increase. While Brandeis's claims are well known, historians have neglected the influence of scientific management on the railroads. In 1904, Harrington Emerson introduced repair scheduling techniques in the locomotive shops of the Santa Fe. Scheduling revolutionized repair, and–esponding in part to the regulatory pressures…
Communications
Communications To the editor: Edward Constant's excellent article in the April 2006 issue of Technology and Culture, "A Tale of Two Bonanzas: How Knowledgeable Communities Think about Technology" (pp. 253–85), was a joy to read. However, because his elegant theory of the Belief-O-Meter is calibrated by sales figures alone, there are some messy questions that his work leaves unaddressed. Recognizing this, Constant notes that we would need a detail…
Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828-1965
For most of the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, railroads dominated American transportation. They transformed life and captured the imagination. Yet by 1907 railroads had also become the largest cause of violent death in the country, that year claiming the lives of nearly twelve thousand passengers, workers, and others. In Death Rode the Rails Mark Aldrich explores the evolution of railroad safety in the United States by examining a variety …
Running Out of Steam: Federal Inspection and Locomotive Safety, 1912–1940
Locomotive inspection was among the most important Progressive Era federal workplace regulations. Inspection rules were enforced by a new Bureau of Locomotive Inspection, which claimed credit for subsequent safety improvements. Relying on published and unpublished data this article assesses these claims. Literary sources suggest that the bureau achieved compliance by emphasizing regulatory benefits and that its activities sharply reduced locomoti…
From Forest Conservation to Market Preservation: Invention and Diffusion of Wood-Preserving Technology, 1880-1939
That the drain on the forests of the country would be materially reduced by a proper preservative treatment of all structural timbers can not be doubted. —National Conservation Commission, 1909 In many instances the present question is whether to use treated wood or dispense with wood altogether. —National Committee on Wood Utilization, 1930 Few technological artifacts are as prosaic as the railroad tie. Tie technology evolved in the course of th…
A mighty rough road: The deterioration of work safety on American railroads, 1955–75
While nineteenth-century American railroads were fabled for their dangerous working conditions, after 1900 a new safety regime grew up. Threatened by union and public pressures that resulted in numerous safety regulations and rising accident costs, the carriers innovated safety programs intended to stave off further regulation. The carriers’ formula for successful safety work involved worker participation, management commitment, and technological…
The Contribution of the Diesel Locomotive to Trainmen's Safety on US Railroads, 1927–1954
The widespread diffusion of diesel locomotives in the United States after the Second World War reshaped nearly every aspect of American railroading. This article explores the contribution of the diesel locomotive to trainmen's safety on U.S. railroads between 1927 and 1954. The author begins by outlining the various dangers associated with steam engines, including locomotive boiler or cylinder explosions and broken rods. Bad maintenance often cau…
Regulating Transportation of Hazardous Substances: Railroads and Reform, 1883–1930
The increase in volume of explosives and other hazardous materials transported by rail during the nineteenth century resulted in a growing number of accidents. In response, the Pennsylvania Railroad developed some of the first regulations governing the transport of such materials. In the twentieth century, a combination of enforcement difficulties and competitive pressures led the company, working through the American Railway Association, to pres…
Train Wrecks to Typhoid Fever: The Development of Railroad Medicine Organizations, 1850 to World War I
From their beginning American railroads developed medical arrangements to care for the large number of workers and passengers they killed or injured. After the Civil War, both labor unrest and liability concerns led them to expand and formalize these arrangements, and three forms of organization arose. Western roads, facing an almost complete lack of medical facilities, developed employee-funded hospital organizations. In the east, companies crea…
Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science
Journal Article Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science. By Christopher C. Sellers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870–1939. By Mark Aldrich. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press Get access Alan M. Kraut Alan M. Kraut American University, Washington, D.C. Search for other works by this author on: Ox…
The Peril of the Broken Rail: The Carriers, the Steel Companies, and Rail Technology, 1900-1945
De nouvelles technologies en metallurgie ont permis, au debut du XX e siecle, de remedier aux defauts et aux fissures des rails
Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870-1939
Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870-1939
"Preventing "The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine: The Bureau of Mines and the Campaign against Coal Mine Explosions, 1910-1940
Mark Aldrich, Preventing "The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine": The Bureau of Mines and the Campaign against Coal Mine Explosions, 1910-1940, Technology and Culture, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Jul., 1995), pp. 483-518
Combating the Collision Horror: The Interstate Commerce Commission and Automatic Train Control, 1900-1939
On the morning of January 12, 1919, New York Central train no. 17, the Wolverine, left Rochester for Buffalo at 2:54 A.M., an hour and thirty-one minutes late. It was traveling west on track 1 of four main tracks, all of which were protected with automatic block signals. At 3:35 it arrived at signal station 37, an interlocking plant that controlled crossovers between the tracks. There the train stopped; engineman Gibbons informed the tower man th…
The Economics of Comparable Worth
Determinants of working women's wages during the progressive era
Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870-1939
"Preventing "The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine: The Bureau of Mines and the Campaign against Coal Mine Explosions, 1910-1940
Mark Aldrich, Preventing "The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine": The Bureau of Mines and the Campaign against Coal Mine Explosions, 1910-1940, Technology and Culture, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Jul., 1995), pp. 483-518
The Gender Gap in Earnings during World War II: New Evidence
Contrary to the widely held belief that women's earnings rose relative to men's during World War II because of women's unprecedented movement into heavy manufacturing industries, the author of this study finds that the national all-industry earnings of women during the war fell compared to those of men. In Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New York, the relative weekly and annual earnings of female manufacturing workers rose, but at a rate below that o…
Determinants of Mortality Among New England Cotton Mill Workers During the Progressive Era
Multiple regression analysis reveals that work in New England cotton textile mills during 1905–1912 raised age-adjusted mortality rates over those of non-mill- workers, and that worker mortality increased with years of mill experience. Mortality varied among groups because of differential self selection. Central age group native males with broad occupational choices had lower mortality rates than control groups. Young males, women, and the foreig…
Tariffs and Trusts, Profiteers and Middlemen: Popular Explanations for the High Cost of Living, 1897-1920
After decades of decline, US prices rose about 2.5 percent a year from 1897 to World War I and then more than doubled between 1914 and 1920. Popular explanations for these events can be studied via editorials and editorial cartoons, which reflected and contributed to an outpouring of public concern. While economists then and now adduced monetary causes for the price increases, popular theories blamed the tariff, monopolies, middlemen, profiteers,…
Regulating Transportation of Hazardous Substances: Railroads and Reform, 1883–1930
The increase in volume of explosives and other hazardous materials transported by rail during the nineteenth century resulted in a growing number of accidents. In response, the Pennsylvania Railroad developed some of the first regulations governing the transport of such materials. In the twentieth century, a combination of enforcement difficulties and competitive pressures led the company, working through the American Railway Association, to pres…
The Peril of the Broken Rail: The Carriers, the Steel Companies, and Rail Technology, 1900-1945
De nouvelles technologies en metallurgie ont permis, au debut du XX e siecle, de remedier aux defauts et aux fissures des rails
Engineers Attack the “No. One Killer” in Coal Mining: The Bureau of Mines and the Promotion of Roof Bolting, 1947–1969
In 1948 roof falls were the number one killer of coal miners in America. While the Bureau of Mines had been formed in 1910 to improve coalmine safety, it had largely focused on explosions, for which technological solutions appeared to exist. Roof falls, by contrast, were not amenable to a technical fix. Beginning in 1948, however, the Bureau discovered roof bolting, which it promoted as a safer technology that might yield dramatic benefits. The n…
The Pennsylvania Railroad
Journal Article The Pennsylvania Railroad Get access The Pennsylvania Railroad, vol. 1: Building an Empire, 1846–1917. By Albert J. Churella. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. xviii, 945 pp. $75.00.) Mark Aldrich Mark Aldrich Smith CollegeNorthampton, Massachusetts [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 100, Issue 3, December 2013, …
On the Track of Efficiency: Scientific Management Comes to Railroad Shops, 1900–1930
In 1910, Louis Brandeis claimed that scientific management could save the railroads a million dollars a day and avoid a rate increase. While Brandeis's claims are well known, historians have neglected the influence of scientific management on the railroads. In 1904, Harrington Emerson introduced repair scheduling techniques in the locomotive shops of the Santa Fe. Scheduling revolutionized repair, and–esponding in part to the regulatory pressures…
Running Out of Steam: Federal Inspection and Locomotive Safety, 1912–1940
Locomotive inspection was among the most important Progressive Era federal workplace regulations. Inspection rules were enforced by a new Bureau of Locomotive Inspection, which claimed credit for subsequent safety improvements. Relying on published and unpublished data this article assesses these claims. Literary sources suggest that the bureau achieved compliance by emphasizing regulatory benefits and that its activities sharply reduced locomoti…
From Forest Conservation to Market Preservation: Invention and Diffusion of Wood-Preserving Technology, 1880-1939
That the drain on the forests of the country would be materially reduced by a proper preservative treatment of all structural timbers can not be doubted. —National Conservation Commission, 1909 In many instances the present question is whether to use treated wood or dispense with wood altogether. —National Committee on Wood Utilization, 1930 Few technological artifacts are as prosaic as the railroad tie. Tie technology evolved in the course of th…
A mighty rough road: The deterioration of work safety on American railroads, 1955–75
While nineteenth-century American railroads were fabled for their dangerous working conditions, after 1900 a new safety regime grew up. Threatened by union and public pressures that resulted in numerous safety regulations and rising accident costs, the carriers innovated safety programs intended to stave off further regulation. The carriers’ formula for successful safety work involved worker participation, management commitment, and technological…
The Contribution of the Diesel Locomotive to Trainmen's Safety on US Railroads, 1927–1954
The widespread diffusion of diesel locomotives in the United States after the Second World War reshaped nearly every aspect of American railroading. This article explores the contribution of the diesel locomotive to trainmen's safety on U.S. railroads between 1927 and 1954. The author begins by outlining the various dangers associated with steam engines, including locomotive boiler or cylinder explosions and broken rods. Bad maintenance often cau…
Combating the Collision Horror: The Interstate Commerce Commission and Automatic Train Control, 1900-1939
On the morning of January 12, 1919, New York Central train no. 17, the Wolverine, left Rochester for Buffalo at 2:54 A.M., an hour and thirty-one minutes late. It was traveling west on track 1 of four main tracks, all of which were protected with automatic block signals. At 3:35 it arrived at signal station 37, an interlocking plant that controlled crossovers between the tracks. There the train stopped; engineman Gibbons informed the tower man th…
Flexible Exchange Rates, Northern Expansion, and the Market for Southern Cotton: 1866–1879
Anumber of economic historians, including Charles Beard, C. Vann Woodward, and others have argued that southern economic development during the nineteenth century may have been significantly hindered by the South's political and economic relations with the North. Certainly the best known of such arguments is that of Charles Beard. Beard thought that the “normal” workings of the pre-Civil War political economy would have resulted in the relative e…
Earnings of American Civil Engineers 1820–1859
Skilled engineers who had sufficient technical know-how to construct the antebellum canals and railroads were viewed by their contemporaries as a key input in the transportation revolution, and a number of modern scholars have concurred in this judgment. Yet very little is known about the economics of the antebellum engineering profession. This article is a modest attempt to help remedy that deficiency. We shall present and describe three origina…
Earnings of American Civil Engineers 1820–1859
Skilled engineers who had sufficient technical know-how to construct the antebellum canals and railroads were viewed by their contemporaries as a key input in the transportation revolution, and a number of modern scholars have concurred in this judgment. Yet very little is known about the economics of the antebellum engineering profession. This article is a modest attempt to help remedy that deficiency. We shall present and describe three origina…
Flexible Exchange Rates, Northern Expansion, and the Market for Southern Cotton: 1866–1879
Anumber of economic historians, including Charles Beard, C. Vann Woodward, and others have argued that southern economic development during the nineteenth century may have been significantly hindered by the South's political and economic relations with the North. Certainly the best known of such arguments is that of Charles Beard. Beard thought that the “normal” workings of the pre-Civil War political economy would have resulted in the relative e…
Capital Theory and Racism: From Laissez-Faire to the Eugenics Movement in the Career of Irving Fisher
Progressive Economists and Scientific Racism: Walter Willcox and Black Americans, 1895-1910
Post-Bellum Southern Income: A Response to Ransom and Sutch
State reports on women and child wage earners, 1870–1906
Determinants of working women's wages during the progressive era
Determinants of Mortality Among New England Cotton Mill Workers During the Progressive Era
Multiple regression analysis reveals that work in New England cotton textile mills during 1905–1912 raised age-adjusted mortality rates over those of non-mill- workers, and that worker mortality increased with years of mill experience. Mortality varied among groups because of differential self selection. Central age group native males with broad occupational choices had lower mortality rates than control groups. Young males, women, and the foreig…
Economics
Economics
Comparable Worth
The Economics of Comparable Worth
Osha Fines and the Value of Saving a Life
Economics
The Economics of Comparable Worth
The Gender Gap in Earnings during World War II: New Evidence
Contrary to the widely held belief that women's earnings rose relative to men's during World War II because of women's unprecedented movement into heavy manufacturing industries, the author of this study finds that the national all-industry earnings of women during the war fell compared to those of men. In Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New York, the relative weekly and annual earnings of female manufacturing workers rose, but at a rate below that o…
Combating the Collision Horror: The Interstate Commerce Commission and Automatic Train Control, 1900-1939
On the morning of January 12, 1919, New York Central train no. 17, the Wolverine, left Rochester for Buffalo at 2:54 A.M., an hour and thirty-one minutes late. It was traveling west on track 1 of four main tracks, all of which were protected with automatic block signals. At 3:35 it arrived at signal station 37, an interlocking plant that controlled crossovers between the tracks. There the train stopped; engineman Gibbons informed the tower man th…
"Preventing "The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine: The Bureau of Mines and the Campaign against Coal Mine Explosions, 1910-1940
Mark Aldrich, Preventing "The Needless Peril of the Coal Mine": The Bureau of Mines and the Campaign against Coal Mine Explosions, 1910-1940, Technology and Culture, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Jul., 1995), pp. 483-518
Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870-1939
Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870-1939
Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science
Journal Article Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science. By Christopher C. Sellers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870–1939. By Mark Aldrich. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press Get access Alan M. Kraut Alan M. Kraut American University, Washington, D.C. Search for other works by this author on: Ox…
The Peril of the Broken Rail: The Carriers, the Steel Companies, and Rail Technology, 1900-1945
De nouvelles technologies en metallurgie ont permis, au debut du XX e siecle, de remedier aux defauts et aux fissures des rails
Train Wrecks to Typhoid Fever: The Development of Railroad Medicine Organizations, 1850 to World War I
From their beginning American railroads developed medical arrangements to care for the large number of workers and passengers they killed or injured. After the Civil War, both labor unrest and liability concerns led them to expand and formalize these arrangements, and three forms of organization arose. Western roads, facing an almost complete lack of medical facilities, developed employee-funded hospital organizations. In the east, companies crea…
Regulating Transportation of Hazardous Substances: Railroads and Reform, 1883–1930
The increase in volume of explosives and other hazardous materials transported by rail during the nineteenth century resulted in a growing number of accidents. In response, the Pennsylvania Railroad developed some of the first regulations governing the transport of such materials. In the twentieth century, a combination of enforcement difficulties and competitive pressures led the company, working through the American Railway Association, to pres…
The Contribution of the Diesel Locomotive to Trainmen's Safety on US Railroads, 1927–1954
The widespread diffusion of diesel locomotives in the United States after the Second World War reshaped nearly every aspect of American railroading. This article explores the contribution of the diesel locomotive to trainmen's safety on U.S. railroads between 1927 and 1954. The author begins by outlining the various dangers associated with steam engines, including locomotive boiler or cylinder explosions and broken rods. Bad maintenance often cau…
Economics (20 works) · Political science (20 works) · Engineering (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Business (14 works) · History (11 works) · American History and Culture (10 works) · American Environmental and Regional History (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works)