1868–1916

Robert F. Hoxie

Robert Franklin Hoxie was an American economist and labour scholar associated with the University of Chicago. He earned his doctorate there in 1905 and taught at the university from 1906 until 1916. Hoxie studied trade unionism and the changing industrial economy through empirical investigation rather than treating labour as a single abstract type. As a special investigator for the United States Commission on Industrial Relations in 1914–15, he examined scientific management in practice and produced Scientific Management and Labor. The study evaluated the movement from labour’s standpoint, including its effects on skill, bargaining power, and unionism. Hoxie belongs in this library because he provides a contemporary, evidence-based critique that prevents scientific management from being read only through its advocates.