At the peak of the American whaling industry, what share of the workforce were involved in it?
score:2
I've done some research into this, but I can offer only a partial answer at present.
The graph in the article you linked shows that the national output from whaling peaked in the 1850s. The population of the United States in that year (based on the 1850 US Census) was 23,191,876.
At its peak, the United States whaling fleet consisted of a total of 735 ships (out of 900 in the world). The Whaleman’s Shipping List has listings for 20 ports in 1855, the largest of which was New Bedford, Massachusetts (also where the newspaper was published). The New Bedford whaling fleet peaked at 329 vessels (valued at more than $12 million), and more than 10,000 men were employed on those vessels.
By 1860, vessels sailing from Bristol County Massacheussets (New Bedford is the largest town in Bristol County) produced 80% of the output of the United States whaling industry. 10,458 hands were employed on these vessels, out of a total of 12,301 employed on board the entire US whaling fleet. By contrast, the number employed in "refining sperm oil and whale oil" in Bristol County in 1860 was just 117 (out of a total of 337 employed in those industries in the whole United States).
[source - Lance E. Davis, Robert E. Gallman, Karin Gleiter: In Pursuit of Leviathan: Technology, Institutions, Productivity, and Profits in American Whaling, 1816-1906, University of Chicago Press, 2007]
Clearly the numbers employed in refining the oil were tiny compared to the numbers actually employed on board the whaling fleet. Based on these numbers, a total of 12,638 people were directly employed in producing the whale oil in 1860. This number is presumably slightly down from the peak that occurred a few years earlier, but probably not by much.
The total workforce in the United States has been estimated to be only about 11,110,000 people. I have to say that I am not entirely convinced by this number, given that we know the total United States population in 1860 was 31,443,321 (based on the 1860 US Census), however it does give us a starting point to work from.
Based on the figure of 11,110,000, we can say that just 0.11% of the workforce was directly employed at the sharp end of whale oil production in 1860.
Just for comparison, the estimated workforce in 1850 was 8,250,000. If a similar number were employed in whaling in 1850 (which, based on the graph in your article, this seems a reasonable estimate), then the percentage of the workforce rises to 0.15%.
Now, obviously these figures don't include all the "downstream activities" that you mentioned in the question. Clearly there were a large number of jobs that supported the whaling fleet, from boat-builders and sail-makers, to those that sold the victuals and fitted out the vessels before they sailed. In addition, a large number of people would have been required to market and distribute the finished product. Unfortunately, I haven't yet been able to locate any sources to quantify the exact numbers of people employed in those industries (which I why I said this is just a partial answer).
More post
- 📝 Were there interstate tariffs before the US Constitution (1789)?
- 📝 Did courtiers of antiquity hold in their pee or did they have common commodes available in the king/queen's court?
- 📝 Would Plutarch be considered a historian by modern standards?
- 📝 Were life imprisonment and mental insanity the only reasons a divorce couldn't be granted in early 20th century England?
- 📝 Has there ever been a practise of duelling with bows?
- 📝 What was lost when the British burned the White House in 1814?
- 📝 Does the T-34 tank engine use different strokes in the banks of the pistons?
- 📝 Were U.S. ships attacked in Tokyo Bay?
- 📝 In which estate were the soldiers prior to the French revolution?
- 📝 Significance of division of Caledonia by Northumbrian Advance
- 📝 What happened to Soviet POWs taken by non-German armies on WW2 Eastern front?
- 📝 How many warriors (troops) did feudal vassals have to provide to the king?
- 📝 How old is the practice of a woman accompanying another woman to the ladies restroom?
- 📝 In Viking combat, how much damage was done using the shield?
- 📝 Did the House of Representatives during Meiji Era exercise their powers?
- 📝 How did the Roman army go from constantly losing battles in the middle of the 3rd century to winning almost everything?
- 📝 Why was Lakhdar Boumediene, in the Boumediene v Bush case, acquitted of his charges? And, why was the habeas corpus not suspended?
- 📝 What regions worldwide have not been conquered or colonized by nations recursively located in land once ruled by someone born in Belgium?
- 📝 What is this Victorian era British uniform?
- 📝 "Destructive force" carried by a B-52?
- 📝 What is the reason for Burma/Myanmar's recent reforms?
- 📝 What was the error in 1790, if any, of the lat. and long. of Greenwich Observatory of 1783?
- 📝 Was the Nazi ideology invented by Hitler?
- 📝 Was there any politization of "hard" science (math, physics, chemistry, biology) in the Asian communist countries?
- 📝 In Civil War Reenactments why do people walk across the battlefield
- 📝 What is the evidence that Galerius raised Severus II to the rank of Augustus?
- 📝 When did the Roman consular year begin during the Republic and Empire?
- 📝 Did Edward the Confessor choose Harold Godwinson as his successor?
- 📝 The first head/chief/leader/etc of the Federal Housing Administration?
- 📝 How detailed were American Civil War medical records of the types of diseases that various soldiers had?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 At the peak of the American whaling industry, what share of the workforce were involved in it?
- 📝 What were the logistics of whaling in the 1800s?
- 📝 What were the indigenous populations of California before American settlement began to peak?
- 📝 What major Native American tribes were around Santa Fe during the late 1850s?
- 📝 What were the dominant Native American cultures in Eastern Canada and New England in the late 900s?
- 📝 What were the native North American concepts of property rights and market exchange?
- 📝 What were the crime rates In the American Old West?
- 📝 What were the influences of Freemasonry in the wars of liberation of Latino American countries from Spanish Colonialism?
- 📝 What were an American soldier's chances of being wounded on the front lines of Vietnam?
- 📝 What drugs were used in England during the High Middle Ages?
- 📝 What were the reasons for the Renaissance / scientific revolution in Europe?
- 📝 Was murdering a slave illegal in American slavery, and if so, what punishments were given for it?
- 📝 What were the acceptance criteria in universities of medieval Europe?
- 📝 What language(s) were spoken within the Holy Roman Empire?
- 📝 What led to the first fight in the American Civil War?
- 📝 What were the reasons for making Prohibition a constitutional amendment?
- 📝 What were the main causes of successful take over of India by Britain?
- 📝 What disruptions were brought about by Islam that the Arabians saw so many victories?
- 📝 Were there any Germans in Japan after the surrender of Germany in May, 1945 and if so, what happened to them?
- 📝 What describes the average pre-colonial NA Native American lifestyle (across several tribes)?
- 📝 Are there any documented examples of wooden ships which were in active service for 100 years or more? If not, what is the longest?
- 📝 What were the reasons that the British colonies in North America rebelled but not others?
- 📝 In WWII, what were the major differences in tank combat on the eastern and western fronts?
- 📝 How heavily were the British taxing their American colonies?
- 📝 Why were there so few American deaths in the Bataan Death March?
- 📝 Third Reich? What were the other two?
- 📝 What were the Allies' plans if they caught Hitler alive?
- 📝 What were the EMP effects, if any, of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
- 📝 What made the Russian Navy suspect Japanese torpedo boats were in North Sea in 1904?
- 📝 What were the post World War 2 effects on Germany?