How to Screen Miners’ Skills: Recruiting in the Coal Mining in Early Twentieth Century Japan
Abstract: In the early 20th century, coal mining firms took an intermediary organization of labor called “dormitory system.” High manual skills were dominant and the firms did not enter the inside of their coal mines. Under these conditions, the firms did not have any choice but to leave to dormitory heads almost everything about managing miners. In this study, we observe the experience of Aso Fujidana Second Coal Mine in the 1900s. It used the mining method which required traditional skills and the coal mining machines were not introduced. The miners were managed by the dormitory heads but the coal mine began the transition to adopting a direct employment system. We study the historical documents, “The applications of miners” for the coal mine. When entering the firm, the applicants had to be referred by someone who was confidential. We analyze a database from the applications and found that new entrants tended to be directly employed by the firm or the dormitory heads tended to become their referrers. Workers who had new skills for operating conveyance elevator which was newly introduced in the 1890s tended to be directly employed. Coal miners who were accumulated the needed manual skills were referred by skilled miner referrers. And we also found some coal miners qualified as a referrer after they applied. We infer that coal miners referred each other. They got their jobs across miners’ job information networks.
