The putting-out system: Transitional form or recurrent feature of capitalist production?

The Putting-Out System: Transitional Form or Recurrent Feature of Capitalist Production?

ALICE LITTLEFIELD* Central Michigan University LARRY T. REYNOLDS

Central Michigan University

The putting-out system has frequently been described in accounts of rural domestic industry during the European industrial revolution as a transitional form of production relations accompanying the development of full-fledged capitalism. In this article, the authors argue that the putting-out system is a relatively enduring feature of capitalist production, appearing in various times and places under conditons which can be specified through comparative analysis. To contribute to such specification, we systematically analyze the similarities and differences between the putting-out system in the contemporary hammock industry in Yucatan and in earlier European cases. It is now nearly two decades since Charles and Richard Tilly stressed the need "to specify the differences between E u r o p e a n industrial e x p e r i e n c e . . , and the situations faced by today's developing countries, in order to treat these differences as variables in a more general theory of industrialization.'" We hope to contribute to such a general theory by concentrating on one type of production relations, a type frequently described in accounts of rural domestic industry during the European industrial revolution: the putting-out system. The case to be described here, however, occurs in the context of c o n t e m p o r a r y Mexico. U n d e r the putting-out system, capitalist entrepreneurs assume significant control over production, providing raw materials to the workers and marketing the finished products; workers labor in their own homes for piece-rate wages. Such arrange*Direct all correspondence to: Alice Littlefield, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant. MI 48859. Telephone: (517) 774-3122 or 774-3160. The Social Science Journal, Volume 27, Number 4, pages 359-372. Copyright © 1990 by JA! Press Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0035-7634.

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ments, often referred to as domestic industry, cottage industry, or industrial homework, appeared in many European regions during the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries. These arrangements differ both from petty commodity production, in which the small producer retains independent access to the means of production and to the market, and from centralized factory production, in which wage workers labor on premises owned by the capitalist. The aim of this article is two-fold. First, we offer a description of a specific domestic industry from southeastern Mexico---the hammock industry of contemporary Yucatan--and compare it systematically with the European systems of an earlier day. Second, we challenge the view of rural putting-out systems as a transitional form of production relations, intermediate between independent petty commodity production on the one hand and fully-centralized capitalist industrial production on the other. The case of the Yucatecan hammock industry, as well as other forms of industrial homework encountered in the highly industrialized societies of North America and Europe, suggest that the putting-out system may be a relatively enduring feature of capitalist production, emerging and re-emerging under conditions which can be specified through comparative analysis.

HAMMOCK PRODUCTION IN CONTEMPORARY YUCATAN The hammock industry is one of the most widespread and economically important domestic industries in contemporary Yucatan, and has grown rapidly in recent decades. Traditionally, Yucatecan hammocks have been constructed of locally produced agave fiber (henequen or sisal), spun and woven by peasant families for their own use or by small independent producers for sale. Under the twin influences of tourism and a growing foreign market, two significant changes have taken place in the industry in recent decades: factory-spun cotton cord has become a popular and widely-used material for hammock weaving, and a handful of urban wholesalers have gained control of a widespread putting-out system involving small-town entrepreneurs and agents in the countryside. The putting-out system in hammock production began to develop about thirty years ago. It first encompassed several rural comnmunities in the heart of the henequen-producing zone of Northwest Yucatan. Export agriculture has characterized this region since the 1870s, and the rural Mayan-speaking population is largely pi'oletarianized. More recently, the putting-out system has spread to the maize zone of southern Yucatan, long a region of primarily subsistence agriculture. There, increased involvement in the market economy has created new opportunities for village entrepreneurs while contributing to increased class differentiation among the Mayan peasantry. The wholesalers who dominate the hammock industry are located in Merida, Yucatan's capital and largest city. From here they control the supply of materials (cotton cord) to small-town middlemen. The middlemen, whose scale of operations varies considerably, purchase these materials and distribute them to the weavers in both their own and outlying communities, frequently through agents who work on commission. Weavers own their looms but do not invest in materials. Rather, they

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work with those provided by a middleman or his agent, and receive piece-rate wages upon delivery of the finished hammocks. The industry employs several thousand weavers, mostly Mayan-speaking women and children in rural communities. The men in their families also participate when other work is scarce. Wages in hammock-weaving are low, comparing unfavorably to earnings in agricultural labor or domestic service. Alternative sources of income are scarce, however, resulting in a ready supply of labor for the hammock industry. Although some small-town middlemen market hammocks independently, most of them deliver finished hammocks to the Merida wholesalers from whom they purchase supplies of cord, receiving payment partly in cash and partly in new supplies. In terms of the relations of production and exchange, the hammock industry in Yucatan constitutes a system of domestic manufacture organized by capitalists who not only control supplies of materials and markets for finished products, but exercise significant control over the production process itself. A chain of intermediaries, each pocketing a share of the returns, intervenes between producer and consumer. Similar developments have taken place in other Mexican crafts in recent years, especially in the production of indigenous-style textiles and embroidered garments. The widespread development of the putting-out system in these industries has been stimulated by the growth of the tourist and export markets, the ongoing proletarianization of the peasantry, and the relatively low level of capitalization and mechanization in these industries.: The putting-out systems that have emerged in these industries bear many specific resemblances to those that developed in various parts of Europe two hundred or more years ago. How are the appearance and persistence of these seemingly archaic production relations in late Twentieth Century Mexico to be explained? An exploration of the similarities and differences between the Yucatecan and European cases may shed some light on this question.

CAPITALIST CONTROL OF MATERIALS AND MARKETS The putting-out system became well-established in the European textile trades, especially in England, during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Supplying the raw or semi-finished materials and marketing finished products, the putter-out often organized various stages of production carried out by distinct specialtists, such as spinning, weaving, fulling, and dyeing. Typically, the merchant-capitalist retained ownership of the materials through all stages of production, although credit arrangements sometimes maintained the facade of exchange relationships with dependent artisans2 The early spread of the putting-out system occurred before significant technical improvements in production methods had been made. Paradoxically, however, the advent of steam power and factory production in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, far from causing the system's decline, stimulated the spread of outwork. Improvements in industrial tehcnology provided an abundance of

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cheap materials with which to employ homeworkers, such as machine-spun yarn for weavers and nail-rod for nailmakers. By the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, the putting-out system had become a prevalent form of industrial organization in England, embracing the production of cloth, knitted goods, gloves, lace, nails and chain, ceramics, and other goods. Similar developments took place on the Continent and in late Nineteenth Century Russia? The hammock industry of contemporary Yucatan is similar to the European industries described by these observers in several respects. The spread of puttingout relations of production coincided with a shift to reliance on supplies of finished materials which can be controlled by the merchant-manufacturer. In two cases, the larger hammock wholesalers are also manufacturers of hammock thread. Other leading wholesalers have favorable purchasing arrangements with manufacturers based in Puebla and Mexico City. The significance of control over supplies can be seen by contrasting the production of cotton and henequen hammocks. Henequen cord may be made by the weaver from locally grown henequen, or acquired at low cost from local producers. The result is a dual system of production: weavers of henequen hammocks usually work as simple commodity producers, while weavers of cotton hammocks usually work for a middleman. The greater ability of the entrepreneur to control the supply of materials when those materials are factory-made may explain the tendency for putting-out systems to develop in the textile and garment industries, especially in providing finished yarn or cloth for further operations. The hammock industry is one of many Mexican domestic industries which fit this pattern. The lack of local supplies of raw materials (in this case cotton fiber) may also be a factor of more general significance in giving rise to putting-out systems. In England, merchant control was quickly established in the cotton trades, depending on foreign sources of fiber. On the Continent, by contrast, linen weaving persisted as a system of petty commodity production in some areas until the mid-Nineteenth Century, perhaps because flax was widely grown in these same regions. The growth of merchant control over rural industries in Europe was clearly linked to the expansion of both foreign and domestic markets. In the case of England, the American fur trade and the African slave trade played a well-known part in stimulating manufactures, especially of textiles and metal goods. During the Eighteenth Century, English exports to Africa and the Americas increased tenfold2 The industries of other European countries, especially those of France and the Netherlands, were also stimulated by the colonial trade. Kriedte argues that domestic demand alone would not have launched proto-industrialization; it had to be assisted by the expansion of foreign demand2 As in the European cases, the putting-out system in the Yucatecan hammock industry expanded in response to growing domestic and foreign markets. Perhaps half of the cotton hammocks produced in recent years are sold to tourists or to foreign dealers. Access to the tourist and foreign markets is controlled to a large extent by the Merida wholesalers, each of whom maintains a large retail shop.

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Tourists also buy hammocks from street vendors and small market stalls, but most of these vendors are the agents of the larger dealers, selling on commission. It is probably safe to say that without the growth of the tourist market, the hammock industry today would not have assumed the putting-out form. A part of local demand for both henequen and cotton hammocks is still met through petty commodity production or through production to order for local consumers. In the latter case, the customer provides the materials.

Agrarian Regimes and Demographic Patterns Much attention has been given to the local conditions which may have encouraged the spread of rural industry in Europe during the protoindustrial period. The particular characteristics of agricultural systems have been seen as especially significant in explaining how domestic industries became important in some areas and not in others. There appears to be general agreement that rural domestic industries developed in regions characterized by a land-poor peasantry. In Eighteenth-Century Flanders, the linen industry was concentrated in regions of poor soil, small landholdings and high rates of population growth. Similar findings are reported for parts of the Netherlands, Bohemia, and Ireland. 7 The association of domestic industry with population growth depicted in these studies presents a problem as to the direction of causality. People in "overpopulated" areas may have sought ways to supplement inadequate incomes from agriculture. On the other hand, domestic industry may have reinforced population increase. Early marriage was possible because young couples did not have to be provided with land, and children often began to contribute to family income at an early age. ~ Medick's review of this question suggests that population growth was a consequence of the social relations of production under the domestic system. Early marriage and high birth rates contributed to growth, and these patterns persisted even when economic crisis and deindustrialization produced extremely high rates of infant and child mortality?' Kriedte has emphasized the importance of seasonal underemployment, poor soils, landlessness, and the processes of differentiation among the peasantry in explaining the spread of rural industy. He points out, however, that the supply of labor for domestic industry depended not only on demographic developments and the social differentiation within the village population, but on the "local constellation of seigneurial and communal power.""' In Western Europe, money rents or independent proprietorship combined with growing population and partible inheritance to force many into domestic industry. ~' In England, the spread of the putting-out system was intimately linked with the early decline of feudalism and the commercialization of agriculture. Enclosures caused the separation of the rural agricultural workers from direct access to land and contributed to their proletarianization, placing rural labor at the disposal of industry.

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In Eastern Europe, the heavy labor dues exacted from the peasantry under the "second serfdom" may have left little room for the development of rural industry. The widespread development of cottage industries in rural Russia in the early Nineteenth Century indicates that serfdom posed no absolute barrier to putting-out systems, but the abolition of serfdom in 1860 hastened the proletarianization of rural labor. The landless and near-landless peasants became rural proletarians employed as outworkers; the prosperous peasants and kulaks became employers of wage labor, not only in agriculture but in artisan production as well.'-" Although domestic industry in Europe was more often found in areas of herding or subsistence crops than in those devoted to cash crops, the opposite is true in Yucatan. There, specialization in hammock producton and the putting-out system developed earliest in areas where commercial cultivation of henequen for export has prevailed for over a century. Indeed, it is precisely the history and contemporary organization of henequen production which have established the conditons for the flourishing of domestic industry organized under the putting-out system. The commercial cultivation of henequen grew rapidly in the semiarid regions of Northwestern Yucatan during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. The local landed oligarchy expanded their holdings at the expense of the communal lands of the Mayan peasants, forcing many of them into debt servitude on the haciendas. Although slavery was barred by Mexican law, the debt peons were bought and sold by the hacendados. Labor shortages were also met by importing Asian workers and using captive Yaquis turned over by the Mexican Army. With their fiber-processing plants at the center of their holdings, linked to the fields by mule-drawn rail carts, the henequen haciendas were truly factories in the field. '3 The system of production based on de facto slavery persisted until 1915, when the revolutionary government abolished debt servitude in Yucatan. The former debt slaves were transformed into a rural proletariat, largely dependent on wage labor on the haciendas. Their situation was again radically altered in 1937, when massive land redistribution was carried out. Henequen holdings in excess of 300 hectares were expropriated and turned over to indigenous communities as ejidos. In the period since land reform, the henequen-growing ejidos have usually operated as collective farms heavily supervised by the state. A government-owned bank extends credit to the ejidos for the payment of weekly cash advances to the members. These advances are in proportion to the quantity and type of work each member performs, and are viewed by everyone involved as equivalent to wages. Several factors have operated to limit diversification and restrict the initiative of ejido members: the importance of the henequen industry to the Mexican government as a source of revenue and foreign exchange; the state's monopoly over agricultural credit and the legal market in henequen fiber: and the industry's importance as a mechanism of capital accumulation for bureaucrats and the regional bourgeoisie.'4 For fifty years, the henequen zone has been characterized by a dual system of production organization: the state-controlled ejidos on the one hand, and the remaining privately-owned haciendas on the other. The latter continued to prosper through much of the period by retaining the fiber-processing plants and charging the ejidos for their use. As the population of ejido members has grown, neither system has been able to provide sufficient employment." The resulting

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widespread under-employment in the henequen zone has created ideal conditions for the spread of rural industry. Throughout the latter part of the Nineteenth and into the Twentieth Centuries, southeastern Yucatan remained a region of subsistence agriculture, defended from outside intrusion by rebellious Maya who kept alive memories of the Caste War of the 1840s. ~' The greater rainfall of this region also made it less suitable for henequen cultivation. Since the 1920s, however, the gradual penetration of state and commercial interests has served to tie the area more closely to the rest of Yucatan, stimulating the production of maize and livestock for the market. Within the area, differential access to communal land has contributed to the class differentiation of the peasantry.'7 In recent years, road-building has facilitated greater involvement in the cash economy, furthering the process of differentiation. As in the henequen zone, population growth has contributed to underemployment. The prevailing system of shifting cultivation requires a constant supply of new land. In recent years, peasants have increasingly migrated into the rapidly vanishing rain forests of nearby Quintana Roo to plant maize or find wage work. The combination of domestic industry with subsistence agriculture in the maize zone has allowed the putters-out to pay lower wages in this area: about ten percent less than in the henequen zone.

Rural Industry and Rural Impoverishment In the European domestic industries, rural artisans usually did not constitute a fully proletarian class, but often combined agricultural and industrial occupations, independent production and wage-earning. Nonetheless, the association of domestic industry with poverty is clear. In general, the peasants who became outworkers were at the bottom of the social scale and remained there. '~ The role of the putting-out system in the impoverishment and exploitation of the workers has been detailed by Marx and numerous subsequent writers." The work force, frequently made up of women and children, suffered from long hours, low wages, and poor health. As workers were increasingly separated from agriculture, their situation became more precarious. Thompson argues that the years 1790-1840 were characterized by chronic underemployment and declining living standards for English workers. Throughout this period, outwork remained the predominant form in the unskilled and semiskilled branches of industry, and was usually poorly paid compared with the more centralized skilled tasks.-" Labor was in almost constant oversupply, and Blythell concludes that "contemporary accounts leave no doubt as to the utter misery and demoralisation which affected entire communities."-" Although abundant evidence exists regarding the impoverishment of English outworkers, the spread and later decline of cottage industry on the Continent apparently created poverty worse than that seen in England. The oversupply of labor and intense competition among outworkers, combined with the continued dependence of many workers on agricultural employment or the growing of subsistence crops, meant that the price of labor tended to remain below the cost of its reproduction. The impoverishment of rural industrial workers was especially intensified in those regions which ultimately lost out in the global competition for

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markets and, rather than making the transition to the factory system, succumbed to deindustrialization.-'2 As was the case for European outworkers, the hammock weavers of Yucatan are poorly paid for their labor. In 1972, interviews were conducted with members of 105 hammock-weaving households in a village in the heart of the henequen zone, forty kilometers east of Merida. -'~ Ninety-seven of these households derived some income from work in the collective ejido lands: 21 from work in the privatelyowned haciendas. Only 18% had subsistence maize plots in cultivation. Of the 781 persons residing in these households, 303 reported hammock-weaving as one of their occupations. Of these, 68 percent were female and 55 percent were juveniles between the ages of seven and nineteen. For the vast majority, weaving was a part-time occupation, performed in conjunction with domestic tasks, agricultural labor, or school attendance. None of the households was totally dependent on weaving for income. Estimated monthly earnings from weaving averaged 110 pesos per household and 38 pesos per weaver, or less than two pesos per day. During the same period, agricultural workers earned ten to fifteen pesos daily when work was available, and factory workers in Merida earned 30 to 60 pesos daily. The rapid devaluation of the peso since 1972 has increased the peso amounts the weavers are paid, but not their purchasing power nor their relative position vis-a-vis workers in other occupations. Clearly, child labor was an important element in the economic strategies pursued by these families. Of the children between seven and fourteen, 51 percent were not attending school. Among children 13-14 years old, the mean number of school years completed was 2.8. By age fifteen, virtually every child in these households was gainfully employed in one capacity or another. In order to assess the importance of weaving to family income, detailed records of income, expenditures, and meals consumed were kept for five weaving households over a two-month period. 24These families were neither the poorest nor the most affluent among the larger sample of 105 households. All derived some income from work in ejido lands. The average weekly income for the five families was 127 pesos (with a range of 82 to 146), of which only 69 pesos on the average came from ejido wages. Yet expenditures for food averaged 95 pesos weekly. Clearly, supplementary activities such as weaving were necessary for their survival. Weaving could not, however, provide the sole support of a family, because labor in hammock production was paid less than the cost of its reproduction. Two full-time weavers could not earn enough to cover average family food costs, let alone other expenses. Many families had no choice but to put their children to work. The data reported here indicate that the use of the term "underempioyment'" to characterize depressed rural areas such as the henequen zone of Yucatan may be somewhat misleading. It implies that the rural population is burdened with large amounts of unused labor time for which few employment opportunities exist. In the households studied, that was not the case. Most adults and a large proportion of children were gainfully employed in one way or another. Nearly all of the available forms of employment, however, were poorly paid. Weaving paid the least of those occupations studied.

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The Putting-out System and Capitalist Development The comparison of the contemporary hammock industry in Yucatan with the European putting-out systems of an earlier era has established a number of specific parallels: the control of merchant-manufacturers over supplies of materials and markets for finished products, the role of distant markets in stimulating the spread of putting-out relations of production, the importance of rural proletarianization and poverty in supplying cheap labor to the putters-out, and the tendency for such industries to pay labor less than its cost of reproduction. Perhaps the most significant differences between the European and Yucatecan cases, however, have to do with the larger historical context. English exports of textiles and metal goods constituted a large part of 13ritain's foreign trade during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. The putting-out systems controlled by the merchant-manufacturers were important engines of capital accumulation, and captive markets throughout the Empire provided the incentive for continued investment. To argue that domestic industries play a similar role in the Mexican economy today would be absurd. They play a minor role in the economy as a whole compared with agricultural, mineral and factory-made exports. Their major value, from the point of view of the national economy, has been to alleviate rural underemployment somewhat and thereby slow the tide of urban migration. :~ The nature of the tourist market itself discourages mechanization and centralization of production. Faddish changes in the popularity of products and styles discourages entrepreneurs from tying up capital in production facilities. Further, it is precisely the hand-made quality of the product, its quaint and exotic character, that attract the tourist buyer. Although the hammock industry has been a significant source of capital accumulation for a few entrepreneurs, the economic history and class structure of Yucatan have created a situation in which private accumulation and investment by the regional bourgeoisie have been channelled and constrained both by the state and by the power of multinational corporations. Furthermore, the growth of the putting-out system in hammock production occurred long after the transition to industrial capitalism was well under way in Yucatan. The owners of the henequen haciendas in the pre-Revolutionary period were a capitalist class in the sense that they were investors in large-scale commercial agriculture, oriented toward the world market. In Yucatan, the persistence of slavery in the form of debt servitude existed alongside capitalist development and was in fact necessary to securing an adequate labor supply during the expansion of henequen cultivation. Thus, a "pre-capitalist" mode of production, far from being an obstacle to the spread of capitalism, was essential to it in this period. Between 1870 and 1910, other ventures involving local capital were launched: cordage mills; soap, chocolate, tobacco and textile factories: distilleries and breweries; electric utilities; banks; and railroads. -~' By 1910, industrial workers accounted for 17.6 percent of Yucatan's labor force, with Yucatan ranking ninth among Mexico's states in this regard.-': The local development of industrial and financial capital, however, was inhibited

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by the small size of the domestic market and the indebtedness of the hacendados to U.S. financiers. It required social revolution to free rural labor from the constraints of debt servitude and redistribute the land, thereby channeling capital investment into commerce and industry. Even after the massive land redistribution of 1937, henequen production continued to be an important source of accumulation for the planters-turned-bourgeoisie. As owners of the rural fiber-processing plants, they received half of all the fiber processed for the collective ejidos, which lacked processing plants of their own, but they had little incentive to invest this capital in agriculture. Rather, investment was channeled into the cordage industry, the most important form of mechanized industry to develop in Yucatan. By 1944, local cordage mills were consuming a third of the fiber; by the early sixties, this proportion had risen to 80 percent. -~The finished product was exported overwhelmingly to the United States. Over-production and foreign competition brought a number of these mills to the brink of bankruptcy by 1961, resulting in their nationalization and reorganization under Cordemex, a government-controlled monopoly, in 1965. -~' Together, agrarian reform and nationalization of the cordage industry have led to a very high degree of direct government control over the state's leading industry, in both its agricultural and manufacturing aspects. Although government control has facilitated private accumulation of capital, it has also inhibited private reinvestment in the henequen industry itself. The regional bourgeoisie has shifted its investments into tourism, cattle ranching, and commerce. Investment in new manufacturing has remained low, reflecting the penetration of national and international capital into the consumer goods market. In Mexico, widespread industrialization has occurred, but often with the advanced technology acquired from the developed countries. The high productivity of labor under these conditions is such that only a small proportion of the available labor force need be employed. The complex of developments described above creates propitious conditons for the emergence of industries such as hammockweaving and others organized under the putting-out system. The entrepreneur need only seek out the more disadvantaged groups among the rural population to find the cheap labor needed. In summary, developments in the hammock industry and other Mexican domestic industries catering to the tourist market evidence a number of parallels with earlier phases of economic development in Europe, but with some very significant differences. They bear only a weak relationship to the development either of the forces of production or of the internal market. At the present historical moment, they present few possibilities of participation in a dynamic process of development that would benefit the Mexican population as a whole.

CONCLUSIONS Studies of European domestic industry, proto-industrialization, and the putting-out system are in accord in advancing the notion that a major expansion of rural industry formed a phase preceding fully capitalist industrialization in many European regions. Attempts to theorize the widespread occurrence of the putting-out

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system within this process have viewed it alternatively as a stage in the evolution toward fully capitalist production: ~°as one of several ways in which capital asserted greater control over the sphere of production, and therefore as "a factor of strategic importance for the breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution";~' or as an integral part of the industrial revolution itself. 3z Both Kriedte and Tilly have noted, however, that proto-industrialization led to deindustrialization as well as industrialization." Rural industries in many parts of Europe succumbed to the competition of cheap factory goods during the Nineteenth Century. 34 In other cases, industrial homework persisted long after factory production had become well-established. ~ The case of the Yucatecan hammock industry, as well as recent studies of industrial homework in North America, Europe, and Mexico City, suggest that the putting-out system cannot be characterized as a stage of development, transitory between petty commodity production and full-fledged industrial capitalism. In Yucatan, the putting-out system developed after significant capitalist development had already taken place in the region in both agriculture and industry, a centurylong process involving both endogenous accumulation and the repeated penetration, in varying forms, of foreign capital. The Yucatecan case (and other cases as well) suggest that putting-out systems may be a recurrent feature of capitalist production, appearing in various times and places in accord with economic conditions and the requirements of particular industries. Beneria and Roldfin's study of subcontracting and industrial homework in Mexico City found a hierarchy of productive organizations, with multinational firms subcontracting to Mexican-owned firms, which subcontract to small sweatshops, which then put out part of the work to women working at home. They discovered many types of industrial homework: assembly of toys and plastic flowers, packing finished products, production of electronic coils, plastic polishing, and others. 3' Similar cases can be cited for contemporary North America and England where industrial homework is common in the garment industry, shoemaking, jewelry production, clerical work, and electronics assembly. ~7 Stories in the mass media have touted the "computer cottage" as the wave of the future, yet available information suggests that it is better characterized as the spectre of the past. Computer homeworkers suffer from many of the same problems which plague other homeworkers: low pay, few fringe benefits, no job security or pension. ~'~ These urban putting-out systems are concentrated among workers whose alternatives are limited: women, immigrants (often undocumented), or members of minority groups. Contemporary examples of putting-out systems from Mexico, the United States, and elsewhere are similar to those of an earlier day in that they involve industries or stages of production with a high ratio of labor to capital. As Marx pointed out over a century ago, the development of the productivity of labor proceeds very unevenly in the various lines of industry, and frequently in opposite directions. 3' As comparative studies begin to mount, it becomes clear that the putting-out system is no mere transitory phase, but rather a relatively enduring feature of capitalist industrial production. It persists and reemerges at various times and places, typically in branches of industry which are labor intensive, require relatively

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little capital investment, and use a technology which can be decentralized. Certain advanced technological developments accompanying the current restructuring of the global economy create new options in the organization of production and actually encourage the establishment or expansion of the putting-out system rather than its destruction. The reappearence or persistence of the putting-out system in contemporary industrialized societies also suggests a relationship with capitalist crisis. There are several ways in which capitalists can confront the falling rate of profit: expand markets, mechanize, or cut labor costs. With markets contracting rather than expanding, the search for cheaper labor intensifies. Moving factories to regions with lower wages is one alternative; moving production out of the factory and into the home is another. We have described the specific conditions under which the putting-out system came to characterize the hammock-weaving industry in Yucatan. There, it developed in response to tourist demand, long after the factory system was established with respect to other industries. This case, and others encountered in contemporary urban, industrialized societies, suggest that the phenomenon is little related to the "stages of capitalist development." If the putting-out system were simply an early stage of capitalist production, it would be difficult to explain the newest putting-out system, which places computers in workers' homes, jut as sewing machines and looms were, and indeed continue to be, placed in others.

NOTES * We wish to thank Hill Gates, R. Carlos Kirk, and James Schmiechen for their helpful comments on this essay. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Southern Sociological Society meetings in New Orleans in April 1986 and the 46th International Congress of Americanists, Amsterdam, July 1988. 1. Charles Tilly and Richard Tilly, "'Agenda for European Economic History," Journal of Economic History, vol. 31 (1971), pp. 184-98. 2. Alice Littlefield, "The Expansion of Capitalist Relations of Production in Mexican Crafts," Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 6 (1979), pp. 471-88. 3. Paul Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1961); J.L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, The Skilled Labourer: 17601832 (New York: Harper and Row, 1970); Arnost Klima, "'The Role of Rural Domestic Industry in Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century," Economic History Review, vol. 27 (1974), pp. 48-56; B.A. Holderness, Preindustrial England: Economy and Society 1500-1750 (London: Deut and Sons, 1976); A.E. Musson, The Growth of British Industry, (London: Batsford, 1978); Peter Kriedte, Hans Medick, and Jurgen Schlumbohm, Industrialization Before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis of Capitalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 4. David Landes, Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); Kriedte et al, op. cit. ; V.I. Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964). 5. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 199-200. 6. Kriedte et al, op. cit., p. 33.

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