Abstract
This paper presents a historical explanation of the evolution of labor market structure and wage differentials in the California canning industry. Beginning in the late 1800s, the power of craft labor within the canneries combined with the growth of a canned goods market to stimulate mechanization, which in turn raised the cost of a casual labor force and led to nascent labor market structure. Unionization in the 1930s, itself a partial product of previous mechanization, reshaped and institutionalized informal internal labor markets. Wages both within the canneries and between canning and agriculture responded to the evolving institutions and structural characteristics of the cannery labor market.
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