The collective effects of the many and varied sources of productivity advance just discussed dramatically raised labor productivity in manufactures in the American Northeast. Estimates of the annual rates of growth of labor productivity by type of manufacture are given in Table 10.3 on this page. These ranges of percentage rates of advance are divided between capital-intensive industries and typically smaller-size firms of noncapital-intensive industries.
The comparable rates of advance of labor productivity by both categories of industries strongly suggest that capital deepening was not a prerequisite to higher output per worker, nor were these rates high for only a few select industries. A wide range of manufacturing industries exhibited high rates of productivity changes, even shops, mills, and small firms with limited mechanization and primitive power sources. This reinforces the perspective of economic growth as the cumulative impact of many incremental advances throughout the economy, similar to the pattern observed in chapter 9 in the analysis of productivity advance in steamboating.
World History
