Wharton School. Industrial Research Unit Records

ArchivalResource

Wharton School. Industrial Research Unit Records

Wharton School. Industrial Research Unit Records

1900-1996

https://archives.upenn.edu/collections/finding-aid/upb5_9ir/

The collection documents the research work the Wharton Industrial Research Unit undertook from the 1920s to 1970s. The Administration series contains an "Industrial research history file," which includes records of all major activities the department carried on each year from 1922 to 1985. The material in this file consists of department meeting minutes, important correspondence and internal memos, planning documents, research project progress reports and summaries, fund proposals, and the department's statements on its mission and history for various purposes. The bulk of the collection is made up of research files, which fall into three major groups: studies in the 1930s and 1940s of labor, wages, employment and unemployment; the mobility study in the 1940s and 1950s; and the study of black employment in the 1960s and 1970s. The Employment and unemployment studies cover a wide range of interest. The series includes such sub-series as the study of domestic employment, the study of employment patterns at the household level, the hosiery industry study, the study of individual income and family expenditure, the Philadelphia study, the self-employment study, the study of skilled workers at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and the study of women in labor force. The Philadelphia Navy Yard "Tool-maker" study represents the only file in this collection that originated from the work of Anne Bezanson, one of the founders of the research institution. The Labor and Wages studies were closely related to the employment and unemployment studies. The two series provide valuable information in such areas as the five-day week in the railway industry, child labor law, labor market study, labor union policies, and statistics of earnings in different locations or by occupations. The Mobility studies consist of the six-city mobility study and three minor projects--the Columbus (Ohio) study, the Illinois study, and the Norristown (Pennsylvania) study. The six-city project files include original investigation schedules or transcription cards that record various aspects of the work history of thousands of male and female workers interviewed in Chicago, Los Angeles, New Haven, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and St. Paul. The files also include material that analyzes factors that affected work attachment and contributed to labor mobility, geographical, vertical, or occupational. The files of the three local mobility studies are similar in nature. The black employment studies from the 1960s to the 1970s concern a large variety of industries. The "Black employment--construction" series deals with the nation-wide enforcement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act exclusively in the industry of construction. Major locations examined include Boston, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, New York City, Omaha (Nebraska), Peoria (Illinois), Philadelphia, Rochester (New York), St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. The "Black employment--various industries" series documents the results of affirmative action in such industries as aerospace, iron and steel, petrol refining, pulp and paper, rubber, and textile. The collection contains in a separate series correspondence and clippings regarding the promotion of equal opportunity in a dozen or so selected industries, among them farm implement, food, meat, oil, supermarket, and utilities. The products of numerous research projects sponsored by the Industrial Research Unit from 1923 to 1975 can be found in the Miscellaneous research files series and the Research publications series. The former contains mainly unpublished papers on individual research topics while the latter comprises both published monographs and research serial publications. This collection also holds a wealth of reference and informational material. The Census file contains data, national or local, gathered by the institution from the thirties on in connection with its current research interest in labor, employment, and personal or family earnings. Discussions of methodology problems that appeared in industrial relations studies are well documented. The Reference material series consists of publications, unpublished papers, and notes, divided by subject into three categories--black employment, labor and employment, and wage and earnings. Finally, the Regional economy file concentrates on the development of regional economy in various localities both inside and outside the country.

85.0 Cubic feet

eng, Latn

University of Pennsylvania, Archives & Records Center