Finding Lessons Of Outsourcing In 4 Historical Tales
What could be a more modern dilemma? High-speed data links allow employers to ship white-collar jobs from rich countries to India, China and other nations where workers earn far less.
Yet losing skilled jobs to low-wage foreign competition is as old as the Industrial Revolution. In the 1830s, the British textile industry became so efficient that Indian cloth makers couldn't compete. The work was outsourced to England, with disastrous consequences for Indian workers. "The misery hardly finds parallel in the history of commerce," India's governor general, William Bentinck, wrote to his superiors in London in 1834.
As Americans grapple with the fallout of shipping hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas, history echoes with many similar episodes -- and lessons. Trade and technology can boost living standards for many people, by creating lower-priced goods. But those same forces can destroy skilled jobs that workers thought never would be threatened.
Competition from foreign labor hurt huge classes of American workers in the 19th century but eventually helped ease wage disparities between nations. And during these upheavals, history shows that politics can arrest what seems like unstoppable technological progress.
Here are four lessons from history that help illuminate today's debate:
Even high-skilled, good-paying jobs are vulnerable.
In the early 1800s, skilled weavers in Britain who worked on hand looms considered themselves a protected class. For a while, the government banned the use of textile machinery that could do weaving more efficiently and even barred emigration by mechanics as a way to keep technology bottled up in Britain.
A rioting mob of Luddites, the 19th-century British workers opposed to the mechanization of factory jobs, depicted in an 1813 illustration by Hablot Knight Browne
Disgusted by factories, with their 14-hour days and six-day weeks, artisans prized their independence. They sometimes worked four-day weeks. When offered higher prices for their cloth, they often chose to work less rather than produce more, writes Harvard University historian David Landes.
But eventually, factories prevailed. Steam-powered weaving machines were five times as efficient as hand-powered ones.
In 1811 and 1812, bands of skilled weavers -- who took the name "Luddites," after a mythical protestor Ned Ludd -- raided factories and smashed hundreds of weaving machines. The Luddites, who saw themselves as heirs to Robin Hood, captivated the poet Lord Byron, who wrote, "Down with all kings but King Ludd." It took 14,000 British soldiers to quell the rebellion, says Kirkpatrick Sale, a historian of the Luddite movement.
The Luddites, often seen as a symbol of futility, were the first of a series of resistors to technology. The Homestead strike of 1892 -- in which seven Pennsylvania steel workers and three Pinkerton detectives were killed -- was sparked by Andrew Carnegie's efforts to automate steel production. In the 1960s, U.S. union protests over "de-skilling" -- replacing machinists with automated tools -- ended peacefully with unions accepting no-layoff pledges in exchange for new technology.
Today, computer technology is moving such skilled jobs as software design and architectural engineering overseas. "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore," Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s chief executive, said at a recent press conference in Washington. "We have to compete, over time, for jobs as a nation."
Trade liberalization often works with technology to undermine powerful interests.
After the Luddite rebellion was crushed, British industrialists lobbied to repeal agricultural tariffs, known as the Corn Laws, to open the country to imported wheat. (In Britain, "corn" was a synonym for grain.)
Those tariffs benefited farmers and the landed gentry in England, by propping up property values. But they hurt manufacturers who had to pay more for land and workers who had to pay more for bread.
In an echo of warnings made today about the dislocations caused by trade, economist Thomas Malthus wrote in 1815 that if the Corn Laws were repealed "the transfer of wealth and population [away from agriculture] will be slow, painful and unfavorable to happiness."
Trying to show a common bond with nascent unions, industrialists dubbed the tariffs a "bread tax." Laborers were suspicious, especially since bosses in the 1830s opposed proposals to limit workdays to 10 hours.
The landed gentry lost in the end. The Irish potato famine of 1845 persuaded British lawmakers to repeal the agricultural tariffs, allowing grain to be imported. Bread prices fell, and the British economy, especially manufacturers and financiers, prospered during an era of free trade.
Labor advocates accused factory owners of using lower import prices as justification for wage cuts, foreshadowing decades of similar fights. Marxist theoretician Friedrich Engels wrote in 1881: "There were plenty (of industrialists) ... who did not even try to disguise their opinion that cheap bread was wanted simply to bring down the money rate of wages."
Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California at Davis said British factory wages were flat for the first decade after the Corn Law repeal. But workers' living standards improved, he says, because their food bills declined.
Today, the same forces are at work. Lower tariffs make it easy for China to export clothing and electronics to the U.S., battering workers in those industries. But overall, many Americans benefit because the imported goods drive down prices.
Domestic workers are always vulnerable to competition from foreigners willing to work for less.
Today, technology lets employers tap low-cost labor by shipping jobs overseas. In the past, the low-cost labor came to America in waves of immigration.
The effect on wages is similar: Millions of domestic workers compete with foreigners for jobs, and pay disparities start to narrow.
The scale of competition was more intense in the late 19th century. Between 1870 and 1910, 60 million Europeans, mostly young males with few job skills, emigrated to the U.S., Canada, Australia and Argentina. This boosted the labor force in the U.S. by 24%, and in Argentina by a staggering 86%. It reduced the ranks of the European labor force, by 45% in Ireland and 39% in Italy, according to Harvard economist Jeffrey Williamson and University of Essex economist Timothy Hatton.
The massive increase of workers sent industrial wages tumbling in the U.S. In New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities, wages declined between 1% and 1.5% for every 1% increase in immigration during the 1890s and early 1900s, says Harvard economist Claudia Goldin. Wages dropped even more steeply in fields dominated by immigrants, such as sewing-machine operators.
ECONOMIC ECHOES
Fights over trade, technology and immigration foreshadowed today's debate over outsourcing jobs overseas.
o 1811: Luddite rebellion against mechanization of the wool industry.
o 1846: Britain's "Corn Laws" repealed, spurring grain imports, which reduced bread prices.
o 1869: U.S. transcontinental railroad completed, boosting exports.
o 1870-1913: Mass migration from Europe to America; some U.S. factory wages decline.
o 1879: Germany raises tariffs to limit agricultural and steel imports.
o 1897: American Federation of Labor backs literacy requirements for immigrants.
o 1914: World War I starts, tearing apart world trade system.
o 1921: Emergency Quota Act ends mass immigration.
o 1930: Smoot-Hawley tariff passes, deepening barriers to trade.
U.S. labor unions turned against immigration in the 1890s. The American Federation of Labor supported literacy requirements for immigrants in 1897. The measure failed to pass Congress by only two votes. (Immigrants would have been required to read part of the U.S. Constitution in their native language.) In New York City, an independent Labor Party urged a tax of $100 per new entrant. On the West Coast, AFL organizers led anti-Asian immigrant movements.
With fewer workers competing for jobs, the historically low wages in Europe rose. Europe's vast wage disparities with other countries began to diminish. In 1870, wages were 136% higher in the U.S. and other New World countries than in Europe, according to Professors Williamson and Hatton. By 1913, the gap had closed by half. By the time the U.S. firmly barred the door to immigration in 1921, the flood of new arrivals was easing anyway because European wages had risen so much.
Wages in India and China, even if rising, are still far from U.S. levels. For instance, Intel Corp., the Silicon Valley semiconductor giant, estimates that its labor rates in India are one-third U.S. levels. This cost advantage will likely last for decades. The history of immigrations suggests that if outsourcing spreads, the wages of U.S. workers who compete with Indians and Chinese will suffer.
Salaries of U.S. computer programmers, whose work has been outsourced abroad for more than a decade, were flat between 2000 and 2002, after inflation, according to Jacob Kirkegaard, a researcher at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank. The number of U.S. programming jobs declined about 14%, he says. However, he adds that it's hard to distinguish between the effect of outsourcing and the burst of the high-tech bubble of the late 1990s.
But the size of a workers' paycheck isn't the only measure of economic well-being. The prices he or she pays is another. Just as the import of goods reduces the prices Americans pay for computers and cars, so will the import of services, many contend. If U.S. hospitals send more X-rays to India for radiologists there to read, or pharmaceutical companies use more Indians to conduct clinical trials, American workers and employers could benefit if health-care costs decline.
Politics can slow down the transforming effects of new technology.
The transportation revolution of the late 19th century was every bit as life-changing as the advent of the Internet and high-speed data communications today. Railroads carried goods across the U.S., Canada and Australia to ports, where they were loaded on fast steam ships for transit across the ocean. The cost of shipping wheat between New York and Liverpool fell by half between 1830 and 1880, and by half again from 1880 to 1914, according to New York University historian Niall Ferguson.
Technology created new markets and new industries. Refrigerated rail cars created a national meat-packing industry in the U.S. and made Chicago a magnet for slaughterhouses. Department stores and mail-order catalogs grew in the late 1880s, dependent on railroads for deliveries.
The pace of life quickened. "The train is leaving the station" became part of the vernacular. A writer for Scribner's in 1888 said life had changed more in the past 75 years than at any time since Julius Caesar "and the change has chiefly been made by railways."
The forces of technology and trade seemed unstoppable. But they weren't. Politics trumped technology in ways that are instructive for today.
The new economy of that day destroyed jobs, industries and whole towns. Local meatpacking plants closed, as did ice houses and small general stores. Steamboat towns such as Burlington, Iowa, and St. Louis faded, and farmers regretted their dependence on railroad barons, says historian Richard John of the University of Illinois at Chicago. "There is a screw loose," complained a farm journal editor in the 1890s. "The railroads have never been so prosperous, and yet agriculture languishes."
Trade opened new markets for American grains. But it battered cotton farmers, whose goods were undercut by Egyptian and Indian cotton. Exports of cotton yarn and cloth from Japan took markets from U.S. exporters. The Southern Manufacturers Club, in Charlotte, N.C., debated the "Oriental question" -- cheap imports from China and Japan -- in 1901.
Industries and workers hurt by imports assembled coalitions that persuaded politicians to erect high tariffs. In the U.S., the Republican Party became the home of protectionism. In 1892, William McKinley -- then governor of Ohio and later president -- attacked free trade for destroying "the domestic product representing our higher and better-paid labor." Skilled workers were attracted to the cause, and the U.S. remained a high-tariff country for much of the early 20th century.
In Germany the political reaction was more radical. Prussian Junkers, the land-owning elite who dominated the military, made common cause with industrialists to push trade barriers higher -- and keep them there. In what became known as the "marriage of rye and iron," Junkers pressed for high agricultural tariffs to keep out American wheat, while industrialists lobbied for industrials tariffs to block British steel imports. The result: German militarism and economic isolationism mounted.
Today, political reaction against outsourcing abroad is in the early stages. State legislatures are discussing barring companies that shift work abroad from receiving government contracts. Congress is discussing regulation and tax policy to hinder the practice. History shows that in a battle between politics and technology-driven change, betting on technology isn't a sure thing.
业务外包的前车之鉴
高速数据联接使得雇主能够把白领工作从富有国家输出到中国、印度和其他劳动力价格比本国低廉得多的国家。还有什么比这种现代难题更尴尬的呢？
然而，技术熟练工作被外国低收入竞争者抢走的现象早在工业革命时代就已经有了。19世纪三十年代，英国纺织工业的高效率远非印度织布者能企及。于是这项生产外包给了英国人，印度工人的灾难也就随之而来。印度总督威廉?本廷克(William Bentinck)1834年在写给伦敦上司的信中说"这种惨状在商业史上几乎是空前的"。
美国人如今正面临同样的境遇，成千上万的工作流向海外，历史在奇妙地重复著过去许多相似的片段──或者说是教训。贸易和技术通过创造低价格的产品而提高了许多人的生活水平，但这些力量同样强行摧毁了工人以为是铁饭碗的技术熟练工作。
在19世纪，海外劳动力竞争伤害了美国许多阶层的工人，但最终却有助于缩小国家之间的工资差距。在这些社会巨变中，历史表明政治能抑制看似不可阻挡的技术进步。
这里有四个历史教训能阐明我们今天的争议：
高技能、高报酬的工作并未固若金汤。
在19世纪初，英国的熟练手工纺织者以为他们是受保护的一群。政府一度禁止使用效率更高的纺织机器，甚至禁止机械师移民进英国，想以此抑制先进技术的传播。
尽管受到工厂的敌视，纺织工人每天工作14小时，每周工作六天，十分重视自己的独立性。他们有时一周只工作四天。哈佛大学历史学家大卫?兰德(David Landes)在文章中写道：即使有人出更高价钱买布，这些工人宁愿少工作也不愿多生产。
但工厂最终还是繁荣起来，蒸汽织布机的效率是手工织布机的五倍。
在1811年和1812年，成队的熟练工人──他们自称"勒德分子(Luddites)"，得名于神话保护者Ned Ludd──冲击工厂，砸坏数百台织布机。这些自视为罗宾汉继承人的勒德分子令诗人拜伦(Byron)神往不已。诗人写道："打倒一切国王──除了勒德王"。研究勒德运动的历史学家柯克帕特里克?塞尔(Kirkpatrick Sale)称，当时英国政府出动了1万4千士兵才镇压住暴动。
常常被视为无用之象征的勒德分子是第一批技术反对者。1892年，安德鲁?卡内基(Andrew Carnegie)试图让钢铁生产自动化，导致了田园罢工。在这场罢工中，七名宾州钢铁工人和三名平克顿侦探死亡。在20世纪60年代，美国工会抗议"非技术"──用自动化工具替代机械师。最后冲突和平解决，工会接受新技术，但条件是雇主要保证不解雇工人。
如今，计算机技术正在把软件设计和建筑工程等技术熟练工作移到国外。"再也没有什么工作是上帝赋予美国人的权利，"惠普公司(Hewlett-Packard Co., HPQ)董事长兼首席执行长费奥瑞娜(Carly Fiorina)在最近一次华盛顿新闻发布会上说。"随著时间的过去，我们不得不以一个国家的身份参与竞争。"
贸易自由化往往与技术一起破坏强大的利益。
勒德运动被镇压后，英国工业家游说政府撤销农业税──《谷物法》(Corn Laws)，向进口小麦打开国门（在英国，"corn"是"grain"同义词）。
这些税收能增加财产价值，对农场主和英国贵族地主有利，但却伤害了生产者的利益，因为他们要支付更多的土地税，也伤害了工人的利益，因为他们要花更多的钱买面包。 如今许多人对贸易带来的混乱提出多种警告。与此呼应的是1815年经济学家托马斯?马尔萨斯(Thomas Malthus)在文章中说，如果《谷物法》被废除，"财富和人口的转移（转移出农业）会减慢，会给幸福生活带来痛苦和不利"。
为了显示与新生的工会有共同的利益，工业家们把此税收戏称为"面包税"。但工人们心存怀疑，尤其是雇主在19世纪30年代拒绝工人要求把工作时间缩为10小时的提议之后。
不过，贵族地主最终还是失败了。1845年的马铃薯危机最终说服英国立法者废除了农业税，允许谷物进口。面包价格下降了，随之英国经济──尤其是制造业者和金融家们──得以在自由贸易时代中繁荣起来。 劳工拥护者谴责工厂主以较低的进口价格为由降低工人工资，预示了往后几十年劳资之间的类似斗争。马克思主义理论家弗里德里希?恩格斯(Friedrich Engels)在1881年写道："有相当多的工业家甚至都不掩饰自己的想法，即他们需要便宜的面包不过是为了把工资水平拉下来"。
位于戴维斯的加州大学经济历史学家格雷戈里?克拉克(Gregory Clark)说，《谷物法》废除后的第一个十年中，英国工厂的工资水平较低，但工人的生活水平改善了，因为用于支付食物的开支减少了。
今天，同样的力量在起作用。低关税使得中国很容易向美国出口服装和电子产品，损害了这些行业的美国工人的利益。但整体来说，许多美国工人还是从中获益的，因为进口货使价格下降了。
国内工人总是容易受到国外低薪竞争者的威胁。
如今，先进技术使雇主能把工作输出到海外，利用那里低廉的劳动力。过去，廉价劳动力是由移民潮带来的。
两种方式对工资的影响是类似的：数百万的国内工人与国外工人竞争岗位，收入差距开始缩小。
19世纪晚期的竞争更为激烈。在1870和1910年间，6千万欧洲人移民到美国、加拿大、澳大利亚和阿根廷，大多数是没什么技能的男青年。这使美国劳动力猛增了24%，在阿根廷更是惊人地增加了86%。哈佛经济学家杰里弗?威廉森(Jeffrey Williamson)和艾塞克斯大学经济学家蒂莫西?哈顿(Timothy Hatton)的研究表明，移民潮降低了欧洲劳动力的比例，在爱尔兰下降了45%，意大利下降了39%。
工人数量的激增使美国工资水平连连下降。哈佛经济学家克劳迪亚?戈尔丁(Claudia Goldin)研究表明，19世纪90年代到20世纪初，在纽约、芝加哥、洛杉矶和其他城市，移民数量每增加1%工资就下降1%至1.5%。工资下降在某些移民工人占主导的行业更为严重，如缝纫机操作行业。
美国工会在19世纪90年代开始反对移民潮。美国劳工联合会(the American Federation of Labor)支持1897年政府关于移民要符合一定教育要求的提案。但这项措施差两票没能在国会通过。（移民要求在本国语中读过美国宪法的一部份。）在纽约，一个独立的劳工党敦促政府对每个新移民征收100美元的税。在西海岸，劳工联合会的组织者领导了多次反亚裔移民运动。
由于很少国外工人与其挣饭碗，欧洲处于历史最低线的工资水平开始上升，欧洲与其他国家之间的巨大工资差距也开始消失。威廉森和哈顿的研究表明，1870年，美国和其他新大陆国家的工资是欧洲的136%。到1913，差距已经缩小了一半。到1921年美国坚决阻止移民时，移民潮有所缓和，因为欧洲的工资明显上升了。
印度和中国的工资虽然在上升，但仍然远远落后于美国。例如，硅谷半导体巨头英特尔公司估计他们在印度的劳动力成本只是美国的三分之一，而这个成本优势可能还要持续几十年。移民的历史暗示我们，如果外包做法继续扩大，与印度和中国竞争的美国工人的工资还会受到影响。
华盛顿智囊机构国际经济学院(the Institute for International Economics)研究员雅各布?柯克格尔德(Jacob Kirkegaard)称，外包电脑程序工作已经发展了十多年，由此影响，2000年和2002年期间，美国电脑程序员的工资在排除通货膨胀因素后基本没有升幅。他说美国编程工作的数量下降了约14%，但他又说，现在很难分辨出这种结果是由外包业务发展导致，还是90年代末的高科技泡沫破灭造成的。
但工资水平不是衡量经济状况的唯一指标。人们支付的价格是另一个问题。不少人认为，正如进口货降低了美国支付的电脑和汽车价格一样，服务的进口也会使价格降低。如果美国医院把更多的X光片交给印度医生察看，或者制药公司更多地用印度人来做临床试验，美国工人和雇员就能享受医疗费用下降所带来的好处。
政治能够减缓新技术带来的转变。
十九世纪晚期的运输工具革命就像今天的互联网和高速数据通信一样给人们的生活带来了翻天覆地的变化。在美国、加拿大和澳大利亚，铁路能把全国各地的货物运送到港口，装载上快速的蒸汽船，运到大洋彼岸。纽约大学历史学家尼尔?弗格森(Niall Ferguson)研究发现，1830年到1880年间，在纽约和利物浦之间运送小麦的费用下降了一半，1880年到1914年间，又下降了一半。
新技术创造了新市场和新行业。冷冻车厢在美国创造了一个全国性的肉类加工业，屠宰场在芝加哥像雨后春笋一样冒出来。依赖铁路运输的百货商店和邮购业也在19世纪80年代末增长起来。
生活节奏也加快了。"火车要离开车站"成为一句俗语。Scribner's的一名作家在1888年说在过去75年中生活的变化超过了凯撒大帝以后的任何时代，而"这种变化主要是由铁路带来的"。
技术和贸易的力量似乎不可阻挡，但事实并非如此。政治以多种方式战胜技术，这些对我们今天仍有借鉴意义。
当时的新经济伤害了许多工作岗位、行业以至整个城镇。当地的肉类加工厂纷纷倒闭，制冰厂和小综合商店也如此。位于芝加哥的伊利诺斯大学历史学家理查德?约翰(Richard John)称，伯灵顿、爱荷华和圣路易斯等经营蒸汽船业务的城镇慢慢衰落。一个农场报的编辑在19世纪90年代时曾经抱怨说"螺丝钉已经松动，事态一触即发"。"铁路空前繁荣，而农业却走下坡路。"
贸易为美国谷物打开了新市场，但伤害了棉花农的利益，他们的产品受到埃及和印度棉花的冲击。日本出口的棉线和棉布抢走了美国出口商的市场。位于北卡罗来纳州夏洛特的南部生产者俱乐部(the Southern Manufacturers Club)为此曾在1901年辩论过"东方问题"──关于从中国和日本来的便宜商品。
受到进口商品冲击的行业和工人结成联盟并说服政客抬高关税。在美国，共和党成为保护主义的代表。在1892年，威廉?麦金利(William McKinley)──当时俄亥俄州州长，后来当上美国总统──攻击自由贸易摧毁了"代表我们更高技术和更高报酬的劳动的国内产品"。这个主张吸引了技术工人，美国在20世纪初的大部份时间里一直是高关税国家。
在德国，政治反作用力更为彻底。普鲁士容克(Junker)──控制军队的贵族地主──与工业家们联合起来，把关税抬得更高，并一直保持著。在这场被称为"黑麦与钢铁的联姻"中，容克们迫切要求提高农业关税以排挤美国的小麦，而工业家们则游说政客抬高工业关税以抑制从英国进口的钢铁。结果，这场运动促进了德国军国主义和经济孤立主义势力的蔓延。
今天，政治对海外外包业务的作用力还处于初级阶段。国家立法机构正在讨论如何阻止把工作移到国外的企业跟政府签订合同。国会正在讨论用管制和税收政策来抑制这种做法的发展。历史表明，在政治和技术之间的斗争中，把赌注押在技术的一方不见得保险。
