During the nineteenth century, U.S. manufacturers shifted away from the “hand labor” mode of production, characteristic of artisan shops, to “machine labor,” which was increasingly concentrated in steam-powered factories. This transition fundamentally changed production tasks, jobs, and job requirements. This paper uses digitized data on these two production modes from an 1899 U.S. Commissioner of Labor report to estimate the frequency and impact of the use of inanimate power on production operation times. About half of production operations were mechanized; the use of inanimate power raised productivity, accounting for about one-quarter to one-third of the overall productivity advantage of machine labor. However, additional factors, such as the increased division of labor and adoption of high-volume production, also played quantitatively important roles in raising productivity in machine production versus by hand.

在 19 世纪，美国制造商从手工车间特有的“手工劳动”生产方式转向越来越集中在蒸汽动力工厂的“机器劳动”。这种转变从根本上改变了生产任务、工作和工作要求。本文使用 1899 年美国劳工专员报告中关于这两种生产模式的数字化数据来估计使用无生命能量对生产运行时间的频率和影响。大约一半的生产作业实现了机械化；使用无生命的力量提高了生产力，约占机器劳动力整体生产力优势的四分之一到三分之一。然而，其他因素，例如分工的增加和大批量生产的采用，