Labour History in the Semi-periphery: Southern Europe, 19th-20th centuries 9783110620528, 9783110614282

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Labour History in the Semi-periphery

Labour History in the Semi-periphery Southern Europe, 19th–20th centuries Edited by Leda Papastefanaki and Nikos Potamianos

ISBN 978-3-11-061428-2 e-ISBN [PDF] 978-3-11-062052-8 e-ISBN [EPUB] 978-3-11-061781-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020943184 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: The launch of the ship “Acradina” in Palermo shipyard, 20 June 1959. Source: Archivio storico Fondazione Fincantieri. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents List of Illustrations

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Acknowledgements

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Leda Papastefanaki and Nikos Potamianos Labour History in the Semi-periphery. Southern Europe, 19th – 20th 1 centuries

Part I Small Business, Small Property and Labour Stavroula Verrarou Chapter 1 Ownership and Labour in Rural Greece during the Nineteenth Century

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Daniel Alves Chapter 2 “Half-freedom”: Retail Trade Labour Relations in Lisbon and the Introduction 61 of the Weekly Rest, 1870 – 1910 Anna Pina Paladini Chapter 3 Policies for Artisans in Italy: the Transition from Fascist Corporatism to Post-war Welfare State, 1925 – 1960 83 Vincent Gouzi Chapter 4 Industrial Employment, Enterprise Structures and their Anthropological Foundations. The Case of Greece 107

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Table of Contents

Part II Formal and Informal Labour, Family Patterns Svetla Ianeva Chapter 5 Guild and Non-guild Labour in the Central Balkans during the Nineteenth 131 Century Nikos Potamianos Chapter 6 Between Workers and the Retailing Community: the Street Vendors of Athens in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century 153 Maria Papathanassiou Chapter 7 Aspects of Industrial Child Labour in Late Imperial and Interwar Austria 175

Part III Industrial Labour Relations in Southern Europe Milan Balaban Chapter 8 Everyday Life in the Bata Company Town Borovo before the Second World 201 War Kostas Paloukis Chapter 9 Marking the Political, Cultural and Spatial Boundary Lines of the Working-class in Interwar Period: the Neighbourhood of Peristeri, Athens 227 Anna Pellegrino Chapter 10 Labour Conflicts: The Case of Labour Arbitration in Italy during the Early Twentieth Century 253 Paolo Raspadori Chapter 11 Corporate Welfare Facilities in Italy: An Historical Perspective and Quantitative Approach 277

Table of Contents

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Andrea Umberto Gritti Chapter 12 In Search of Unanimity: Human Relations at the Falck Steelworks, 1948 – 1962 297

Part IV Shipyards and Maritime Labour in the Mediterranean Enric Garcia-Domingo Chapter 13 The Long Road to Recognition: the Profession of Ship Engineer in the 321 Spanish Merchant Marine, 1877 – 1980 Aurora Iannello Chapter 14 Cantieristi. A History of Labour in Palermo Shipyard from 1945 to 1970 345 List of contributors Index

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List of Illustrations Tables Table .:

Table .:

Table .: Table .: Table .: Table .:

Table .: Table .: Table .: Table .: Table .: Table .: Table .:

Table .:

Table Table Table Table Table

.: .: .: .: .:

Table .:

Number of enterprises per hundred inhabitants, per hundred workers and number of industrial enterprises (including construction) per hundred workers and per hundred industrial workers in . 109 Respective shares in Europe of independent employment in the national economy, Transformation, Construction and Industry (including construction) in  (in %). 110 Unpaid family employment in the working population of some European countries, in  and  (in %). 111 Distribution of female and male professional status in the EU in  (in %). 113 Female employment in industry (excluding construction) and distribution of female and male employment by professional status (in %). 114 Distribution of industrial companies (excluding construction) by size in Europe in  in %, based on number of enterprises, number of employees, turnover and added value. 115 Distribution by legal form of industrial enterprise (excluding construction) in Europe in  (in %). 116 Distribution of Greek industrial companies (excluding construction) by size and by legal form, in  (in %). 117 Number of employees and footwear production in the period  –  for the Bata Company in Yugoslavia. 206 Factory and auxiliary buildings in . 212 Residential and public buildings in Borovo and their surface in . 213 Main welfare facilities in Italy in , as provided by eight hundred and 282 seventy-five industries with over one hundred employees. Main welfare facilities in Italy in  – , as provided by four hundred and sixty-seven companies of every size, in the industrial and tertiary sectors. 285 Main welfare facilities in Italy in  – , as provided by one hundred and seventy-four small, medium and large industrial companies, differentiated by production sector (in %). 288 Proposed degrees for ship engineers. 331 Ingenieros Navales plan of studies. 332 334 Collective bargaining for Naviera Vizcaína S. A. Bilbao, . Collective bargaining for CAMPSA, . 334 Number of permanent employees at Palermo shipyard (sub-contract and fixed-term workers not included),  – . 357 The composition of the shipyard Internal Commissions from  to . 361

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List of Illustrations

Figures Figure .: Figure .: Figure .: Figure .: Figure .: Figure .: Figure .: Figure .: Figure .: Figure .: Figure .:

Plan of Borovo. 208 Standard double flat house in Borovo. 210 Entrance to the Factory area, . 215 Workers in Borovo, . 216 Factory restaurant in Borovo, . 217 Company town in Borovo, . 218 The colleges of “probiviri” in Italy, . 256 Engine room officers and cadets posing for a picture. Compañia Trastlántica, c. . 329 First Engineer at work, . 329 Aerial view of Palermo shipyard, . 351 Ship repair work at Palermo shipyard, . 356

Acknowledgements The chapters published in this volume are revised versions of the papers presented at the 3rd International Conference in Economic and Social History, “Labour History: production, markets, relations, policies (from the late Middle Ages to the early 21st century)”, which took place at the University of Ioannina from May 24 to 27, 2017, and was co-organized by the Greek Economic History Association and the Department of History-Archaeology of the University of Ioannina. The chapters that were submitted for this volume were each reviewed by two anonymous reviewers, after which the authors made any necessary changes. We would like to thank the Greek Economic History Association for its wideranging contribution and the decisive support it gave us from the beginning and through all the stages of the preparation of this volume. More specifically, we thank the Board of Directors and the members of the Greek Economic History Association: Christina Agriantoni, Maria Christina Chatziioannou, Evanghelos Chekimoglou, Apostolos Delis, Katerina Galani, Gelina Harlaftis, Elias Kolovos, Dimitris Kontogeorgis, Sophia Laiou, Andreas Lyberatos, Anna Mahera, Socrates Petmezas and Nicholas Theocarakis. We also wish to warmly thank the anonymous reviewers for reading and commenting on the papers. For useful comments, discussions and the provision of material thanks are due to the following colleagues: Augusta Dimou, Paulo Guimarães, Manuela Martini, Goran Musiç, Nikos Papadogiannis, Evgenia Palieraki and Xavier Vigna. We wish also to thank Yannis Gonatidis, doctoral candidate in history at the University of Crete, and Yannis Dimitriadis, postgraduate student in History at the University of Ioannina, who helped us with the bibliography. Finally, we wish to thank the contributors of this volume for their collaboration and patience.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-002

Leda Papastefanaki and Nikos Potamianos

Labour History in the Semi-periphery. Southern Europe, 19th – 20th centuries

Introduction This book contains 14 studies on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century labour history of Southern Europe (expanded to include Austria, the subject of one of the chapters where we also find migrants from Southern Europe). The volume is divided into four parts. Part one contains chapters that examine small enterprises and small ownership in relation to labour. The chapters in part two discuss aspects of formal and informal labour, as well as family patterns. The third part focuses on industrial labour relations in Southern Europe, while in the fourth and final part labour on the sea and in the shipyards of the Mediterranean is investigated. In this introduction we first explain how we understand the concepts of Southern Europe and the semi-periphery that appear in the title of the book. We then discuss the existing literature and studies of labour history that transcend national borders. We end with a brief presentation of the studies in the volume and their main arguments, which cover four pillars: the tendency towards independent work and the role of culture; forms of labour management (from paternalistic policies to the provision of welfare capitalism); the importance of the institutional framework and the wider political context; and women’s labour and gender relations.

Southern Europe The chapters of this book focus on regions of the broader geographical area of Southern Europe. It has been noted that, as happens with all regions, “Southern Europe” is a geographical category whose conception and use do not depend solely on geographical, economic and social structures but on the contexts and junctures of political and intellectual history as well as, of course, on historical experience. Even so, the realisation that the concept of Southern Europe is also produced by “polarizing discourses reflecting internal European power hi-

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Leda Papastefanaki and Nikos Potamianos

erarchies” does not mean that this concept should not be used.¹ Southern Europe, then, has historically been defined with reference to its ancient cultural tradition (as the cradle of the classical civilisations), to its cultural refinement in contrast to the “barbarian” North, but also in reference to its economic and social “backwardness” in contrast to the advanced and pioneering North in more recent eras. It has been defined with the Mediterranean Sea as a reference point, as well as by Catholicism and the Romance languages and literatures – in this way including also France, which is a Mediterranean power but at the same time is also one of the powerful countries of the Western European core. The Balkan peninsula is sometimes included and other times not, in an entanglement with the (stronger) distinction between Western and Eastern Europe – as well as with the even stronger distinction between Christendom and Islam.² Recent historical developments have especially helped to intensify the use of the concept of Southern Europe: understanding its conceptualisation as an area that includes Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, Guido Franzinetti observes that Southern Europe emerged, quite literally, with the Cold War, when Greece was detached from the Balkans. This was followed by the so-called Southern European Transitions to Democracy in Spain, Portugal and Greece in 1974– 75 – which are reminiscent of the common experience of long-lived dictatorships during the twentieth century, to which we should add Italian fascism as well as the Balkan dictatorial regimes. After the accession of Greece, Spain and Portugal to the European Economic Community in the 1980s, a distinction emerged between southern and northern countries and political coalitions were formed on this basis. More recently, the “PIGS” have been characterized by some common patterns of vulnerability during the financial and economic crisis that started in 2008. Yet Southern Europe has also been defined by other experience and structures, which in several instances expand its geographical breadth to include

 Martin Baumeister and Roberto Sala, “Introduction”, in Southern Europe? Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece from the 1950s until the present day, ed. Martin Baumeister and Roberto Sala (Frankfurt: Campus, 2015), 7– 18.  Guido Franzinetti, “Southern Europe”, in European regions and boundaries. A conceptual history, ed. Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2017), 100 – 121. On the problematization of the spatial categories of the European South (Monde meditérraneen, Südosteuropa, Balkans), see also Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Vaso Seirinidou, “The Mediterranean” and Diana Mishkova, “Balkans/ Southeastern Europe”, ed. Mishkova and Trencsényi, European regions and boundaries, 79 – 99 and 143 – 165; Sabine Rutar, “Introduction: Beyond the Balkans”, in idem (ed.), Beyond the Balkans: Towards an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe (Münster: LIT – Studies in South East Europe, 2013), esp. 12– 15.

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the Balkans or to highlight common characteristics and similarities with the nonEuropean Mediterranean. The studies by social anthropologists in the 1960s and 1970s shaped an image of the Mediterranean (and its sub-region of Southern Europe) as a distinct cultural area, in which the values and practices of honour and shame, amoral familism, patronage and clientelism were particularly strong.³ Historical demographers identified a “Mediterranean model” in the demographic behaviours of the Europeans, particularly as regards marriage practices before the “demographic transition”, as can be seen in the ages of marriage.⁴ The correlation of marriage practices with the paid or unpaid work of women and their contribution to economic growth have been used to interpret the “little divergence” within Europe and in particular between its North and South in the early modern period.⁵ Low numeracy and literacy rates in the early modern and modern period in comparison to Western Europe have been taken as indicators of lower levels of investment in human capital in Southern Europe.⁶ Around the Mediterranean and its ecosystem, an economic system was created that was based on intensive labour and the early commercialisation of agriculture (the

 These studies were strongly criticized for exoticizing. For two recent literature reviews that insist on a sense of Mediterranean cultural distinctiveness, see Dionigi Albera, “Anthropology of the Mediterranean: between crisis and renewal”, History and Anthropology 17, no. 2 (2006): 109 – 133; Christian Giordano, “The anthropology of Mediterranean societies”, in A companion to the anthropology of Europe, ed. Ullrich Kockel, Mairead Nic Graith and Jonas Frykman (Malden and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 13 – 31.  Family forms in historic Europe, ed. Richard Wall, Jean Rodin and Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Marzio Barbagli, “Three household formation systems in 18th- and 19th-century Italy”, in The family in Italy from antiquity to the present, ed. David Kertzer and Richard Saller (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 250 – 270; Violetta Hionidou, “Nuptiality patterns and household structure on the Greek island of Mykonos, 1849 – 1959”, Journal of family history 20, no. 1 (1995): 67– 102.  Jan Luiten van Zanden, The long road to the industrial revolution. The European economy in a global perspective, 1000 – 1800 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 95 – 141. However, the “excessively rigid opposition between the legal systems of Northern and Southern Europe” as regards the economic rights of married women has been challenged by Anna Bellavitis and Beatrice Zucca Micheletto in their “Introduction” to Gender, law and economic well-being in Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. North versus South?, ed. Anna Bellavitis and Beatrice Zucca Micheletto (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 1– 27. See also Filipa Ribeiro da Silva and Helder Carvalhal, “Reconsidering the Southern European model: marital status, women’s work and labour relations in mid-eighteenth century Portugal”, Revista de Historia Econớmica 38, no. 1 (2020): 45 – 77.  Gabriel Tortella, “Patterns of economic retardation and recovery in south-western Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”, Economic History Review XLVII, no. 1 (1994): 1– 21; Joerg Baten, “Southern, eastern and central Europe”, in A history of the global economy from 1500 to the present, ed. Joerg Baten (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 42– 73.

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cultivation of vineyards, mulberries and olives as a complement to wheat). It has been argued that this model contributed to keeping the workforce in rural areas, to the relative weakness of the proto-industrial complexes in the region and also to the late industrialization.⁷ Furthermore, rural communities responded in the same way to the pressures from integration into the world economy in the modern period and the crises in the global markets: there was a common experience of mass migration of Southern European peasants to the Americas in the last decades of the nineteenth century and to North-western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s.⁸ To return to a more classic subject of labour history, the structures of the labour movement differed markedly from those in North-western Europe during the period 1880 – 1914: national trade union federations (as well as social democratic parties) were weak in Southern Europe, where, by contrast, an important organizational and political role was played by the local chambers of labour, following the model of the French bourses de travail. ⁹

 Christine Agriantoni, “Μεσογειακά αγροτικά προϊόντα: η ελιά, η μουριά και το αμπέλι την ώρα της βιομηχανίας”, Τα Ιστορικά 8 (1988): 69 – 84. See also, idem, “L’industrie grecque au XIXe siècle. Problèmes d’intégration”, Actes du IIe Colloque Internationale d’Histoire: Économies Méditerranéennes, Équilibres et Intercommunications, v. II (Athens: Centre de Recherches Néohelléniques-FNRS, 1986), 333 – 342. On the other hand, it has been argued that a main feature of labour in Southeast (as in Eastern) Europe was instability and geographical mobility, both in the form of itinerant labour and of migration. Ulf Brunnbauer, Globalizing Southeastern Europe. Emigrants, America and the state since the late nineteenth century (Lanham: Lexington books, 2016); Susan Zimmermann, “Eastern Europe”, in Handbook Global History of Work, ed. Karin Hofmeester and Marcel van der Linden (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018), 131– 155.  Alexander Kitroeff, “Emigration transatlantique et stratégie familiale: La Grèce”, in Espaces et familles dans l’Europe du Sud à l’âge moderne, ed. Stuart Woolf (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1993), 241– 270; Socrates D. Petmezas, “Responses to Agricultural Income Crisis in a Southeastern European Economy: Transatlantic Emigration from Greece (1894– 1924)”, in Fra Spazio e Tempo. Studi in Onore di Luigi de Rosa III, ed. Ilaria Zilli (Napoli: Società degli Storici Italiani-Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici-Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1995), 427– 487; Edmund Burke III, “Toward a comparative history of the modern Mediterranean, 1750 – 1919”, Journal of world history 23, no. 4 (2012): 907– 939; Paul Caruana Galizia, Mediterranean labor markets in the first age of globalization (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Brunnbauer, Globalizing Southeastern Europe; Michele Colucci and Stefano Gallo, “Migration in Southern Europe since 1945: the entanglement of many mobilities”, Revue Européenne des migrations internationales 34, no. 1 (2018): 53 – 77.  Antonis Liakos, Εργασία και πολιτική στην Ελλάδα του μεσοπολέμου (Athens: Ίδρυμα Έρευνας και Παιδείας της Εμπορικής Τράπεζας της Ελλάδος, 1993); Stefano Musso, Storia del lavoro in Italia dall’ Unità a oggi (Venice: Marsilio, 2002), 112– 128; Geoff Eley, Forging democracy. The history of the left in Europe, 1850 – 2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 62– 74.

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Of course, alongside the common features and historical paths, there are equally significant differences and divergences in Southern Europe, both within larger areas as well as within each country. The most profound difference is between the Balkans and “South-western Europe”, as history divided them from early on, through the survival of the Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, the dogmatic split into Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, the establishment of the Ottoman Empire and the more recent experience of state socialism.¹⁰ As such the Balkans, aside from Greece, are not included in the Southern European welfare regime, which is characterized by “the central role of the family as a source of protection against risks and vulnerability”,¹¹ while the same is perhaps true of the discussion about varieties of capitalism in contemporary Europe and the existence of a (particularly Southern European) “mixed market political economy”.¹² There is, however, another element that gives a unified appearance to Southern Europe from the perspective of this book: its quality as a semi-periphery.

Semi-periphery In the modern era, major phenomena that shaped labour globally, such as the industrial revolution, the widespread subsumption of labour under capital and the rise of the labour movement in its “classic” forms, as well as of social democratic parties, were centred in North-western Europe. Against this “core”, one can instinctively understand the other regions of Europe in terms of “periphery”. In comparative economic history, the concepts of core and periphery are used to research the huge regional differences in economic development, with the periphery signifying the “less developed” regions, with different levels of “relative backwardness” in comparison with the “core” of North-western Europe and

 Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe. Idea, identity, reality (Houndmills and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995), 49 – 52.  Claude Martin, “Southern welfare states: configuration of the welfare balance between state and the family”, in Southern Europe? Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece from the 1950s until the present day, ed. Martin Baumeister and Roberto Sala (Frankfurt: Campus, 2015), 77– 100.  Oscar Molina and Martin Rhodes, “The political economy of adjustment in mixed market economies: a study of Spain and Italy”, in Beyond varieties of capitalism, ed. Bob Hancké, Martin Rhodes and Mark Thatcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 223 – 252.

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which in any case “fell behind the industrial core in North-western Europe and North America during the Great Divergence” in living standards.¹³ Of course, theories of core and periphery and the unequal exchange between them developed primarily in relation to the so-called “Third World”. Αlthough their origins can be found in the Marxist thought of the early twentieth century, the first systematic elaboration of unequal exchange theory and dependency theory was done immediately after the Second World War by the Argentine economist Rául Prebisch. It was developed into a coherent argument in the mid-1960s by Latin American economists and other social scientists (Celso Furtado, André Gunder Frank, etc.) to become an expression of the economics of growth in the Third World.¹⁴ The region of Southern Europe was incorporated into the analyses of the most historicized and even today influential versions of the centre-periphery theory: the analyses of the capitalist world-economy by the school of Immanuel Wallerstein. According to Wallerstein, the core and periphery of capitalist world systems are formed on the basis of the position of each region in the commodity chains that developed historically and the specific mix of economic activities that typify the core and periphery. The transfer of surplus from periphery to core takes place particularly through the concentration in the centre of the branches and phases of the production process with high productivity and the use of wage labour, while in the periphery the forms of production are more extensive and labour is unfree as well as independent – and primarily cheaper: one special characteristic of the periphery is the mass existence of semi-proletarian households that collect an income from many sources, something that makes it possible to keep wages very low. The powerful states of the core ensure the concentration of capital, unequal exchange and the reproduction of the system at the expense of the

 Ivan T. Berend, An economic history of nineteenth century Europe. Diversity and Industrialization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 6 – 9; Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke and Jeffrey Gale Williamson, “Introduction”, in The Spread of Modern Industry to the Periphery since 1871, ed. Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke and Jeffrey Gale Williamson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1– 12, esp. 1– 3. These interpretive approaches of the new economic history, despite the fact that they have supplanted the old dominant historiographical model that was based on the sole and absolute comparison of continental Europe with the “successful” model of the industrial revolution in Britain, were clearly Western Eurocentric and teleological.  For a detailed analysis of the various currents of thought and policy measures in the formation of dependency theory, see Joseph L. Love, Crafting the Third World. Theorizing Underdevelopment in Rumania and Brazil (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), esp. 119 – 139, 189 – 201; Wil Hout, Capital and the Third World. Development, Dependence and the World System (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1993); see also Daniel Chirot and Thomas D. Hall, “World-System Theory”, Annual Review of Sociology 8 (1982): 81– 106, esp. 87– 93.

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weak states of the periphery. This theory also introduces the idea of the semi-periphery, which is characterized by both the relative power of its states as well as the balance of the flow of the surplus and the coexistence of core-like and periphery-like economic activities. Sharecropping is cited as a form of labour that typifies the semi-periphery.¹⁵ Southern Europe has been placed by scholars of the school of world-systems theory into the zones of the semi-periphery. Spain, Portugal and Northern Italy are former core countries that passed into the semi-periphery from the seventeenth century onwards; in the nineteenth century they are left behind and experience a new process of peripheralization, to withstand, with some success, their peripheralization in the twentieth century.¹⁶ The semi-periphery is also formed of areas that had previously been world-empires and were integrated into the world system as a semi-periphery thanks in particular to their powerful state mechanisms. This, according to Kasaba, was the case with the Ottoman Empire (and Southeast Europe, from the perspective of this volume) in the initial phase of its integration into the world-economy, with the tendency for peripheralization rapidly dominating until the end of the nineteenth century.¹⁷

 The theory is elucidated primarily in the first two volumes of Immanuel Wallerstein, The modern world-system (I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974), and II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600 – 1750 (New York: Academic Press, 1980), in which Wallerstein presents an analysis of the semi-periphery. The thread is taken up especially by Giovanni Arrighi, who sees the semi-periphery as a “zone of political turbulence”: Giovanni Arrighi and Jessica Drangel, “The Stratification of the World-Economy: an Exploration of the Semiperipheral Zone”, Review 10, no. 1 (1986): 9 – 74; Giovanni Arrighi, “The Developmentalist Illusion: a Reconceptualization of the Semiperiphery”, in Semiperipheral states in the world-economy, ed. William G. Martin (New York, Westport and London: Greenwood press, 1990), 11– 42.  Wallerstein, The modern world-system II, 178 ff; Immanuel Wallerstein, “The relevance of the concept of semiperiphery to South Europe”, in Giovani Arrighi (ed.), Semiperipheral development. The politics of Southern Europe in the Twentieth Century (Beverly Hills, London and New Delhi: Sage, 1985), 31– 39. According to Arrighi and Drangel, “The Stratification of the WorldEconomy”, Italy moved to the core in the period between 1938 and 1985; see also Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz, “Commodity chains and footwear exports in the semiperiphery”, in Semiperipheral states in the world-economy, ed. William G. Martin (New York, Westport and London: Greenwood press, 1990), 45 – 68.  Resat Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy. The nineteenth century (New York: State University of New York, 1988). Other studies influenced by the Wallerstein school, such as Caglar Keyder, State and class in Turkey: a study in capitalist development (London and New York: Verso, 1987) simply discuss the process of the peripheralization of the Ottoman Empire – as Wallerstein himself did in Immanuel Wallerstein, Hale Decdeli and Resat Kasaba, “The incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into the world-economy”, in The Ottoman Empire and

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This discussion did not progress after the 1980s.¹⁸ It is perhaps indicative that Nicos Mouzelis did not attempt to clarify how he understood the concept of semi-periphery, beyond delinking it from Wallerstein’s theory, of which he was critical.¹⁹ This was perhaps because the term “semi-periphery” was still identified with a theory that was rather worked (or elaborated) in its details and “closed”, with the historian forced either to adopt it entirely or to reject it. Moreover, the theories of centre-periphery and world-systems approach were criticised for Eurocentrism,²⁰ the overcoming of which has been a major concern of global labour history in the past 20 years.²¹ Marcel van der Linden, a leading

the World-Economy, ed. Huri Islamoglu-Inan (Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1987), 88 – 97.  For instance, there are no references to the semi-periphery in the special issue of Review 16, no. 4 (1993) on “Port-cities of the Eastern Mediterranean 1800 – 1914”. In this journal, published by the Fernand Braudel Center, few articles worked with the concept of the semi-periphery in the following years. See Kosmas Tsokhas, “War, industrialization and state intervention in the semiperiphery: the Australian case”, Review 19, no. 2 (1996): 197– 223, and for a late example see Klemens Kaps, “Internal differentiation in a rising European semi-periphery: cameralist division of labor and mercantile polycentrism”, Review 36, no. 3 – 4 (2013): 315 – 360.  Nicos Mouzelis, Politics in the semi-periphery: Early parliamentarism and late industrialisation in the Balkans and South America (London: Macmillan, 1986). In the same way, Seferiadis did not develop the line of thought hinted at in his earlier work, the study of a potential “distinctive semi-peripheral formation of the classes”, shaped by, among other things, the expansion of the informal sector and the widespread existence of small owners in the city and the countryside: Serapheim Seferiadis, “Η κρυφή γοητεία της ιδεολογίας: αντιθεωρητισμός και εκλεκτισμός στη μελέτη του εργατικού κινήματος”, Ελληνική Επιθεώρηση Πολιτικής Επιστήμης 8 (1996): 191– 217.  Sebastian Conrad, What is global history? (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016), 50. Chirot and Hall (“World-System Theory”, 90) believe that the world-system theory “is in most ways merely a North American adaptation of dependency theory”. Certainly the criticism of the centre-periphery theories for adopting a “profoundly Eurocentric epistemelogical and conceptual framework” is often done without it being acknowledged that its pioneers coined the term Eurocentrism and participated in the anti-colonial struggle and more generally in the cause for changing the balance between Greater Europe and the rest of the world, part of which was also the development of dependency theories: Alessandro Stanziani, Eurocentrism and the politics of global history (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 133 – 134 and 147 does justice to this. Wallerstein himself offered a complex critique of Eurocentrism: Immanuel Wallerstein, “Eurocentrism and its avatars: the dilemmas of social science”, Sociological Bulletin 46, no. 1 (1997): 21– 39. Of interest is the attempt by Klemens Kaps and Andrea Komlosy in “Centers and peripheries revisited. Polycentric connections or entangled hierarchies?”, Review 36, no. 3 – 4 (2013): 237– 264 to reconcile the postcolonial critique of Eurocentrism with world-systems theory.  Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and Jan Lucassen, “Introduction: informalization in history”, in Workers in the informal sector: studies in labour history, 1800 – 2000, ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and Jan Lucassen (Delhi: Macmillan India, 2005), 1– 19; Marcel van der Linden, “Labour his-

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figure of global labour history, acknowledges the great contribution of the worldsystems approach but at the same time describes it as “implicitly Eurocentric, because it suggests that the requirements of the core capitalist regions will completely determine what happens in the periphery”.²² Van der Linden’s in any case few references to the “semi-periphery” have gradually been reduced in his work,²³ since in the global labour history approach the problematization of the dichotomies of free and unfree, paid and unpaid, and formal and informal work and the arguments for the reconceptualization of the core concepts of labour history so as to incorporate the experiences of the non-Western world are based on highlighting the contrast between the North Atlantic region and the Global South. In this case, the identification of an intermediary semi-periphery does not appear to have anything to offer. The studies in this volume do not belong to either the world-systems theory school or the current of global labour history. They may communicate with the latter over certain common concerns (such as informality, workers who combine wage work and small ownership, resistance to proletarianization and so on), yet they do not focus on connections between Southern Europe and places located in other continents, they are not engaged in a systematic dialogue with the emblematic themes of the global labour history approach, such as free and unfree labour, nor do they foreground the need to transform the categories of labour history in order to fit non-Western labour regimes within them. For our part as editors, we have chosen to use the term semi-periphery without necessarily giving it the characteristics that it has in world-systems theory and without attempting to define it with a corresponding theoretical precision. We do, however, need a term that eloquently conveys the sense of an intermediate category (from an economic, social and cultural perspective), different from both the core of the capitalist world-economy as well as from a periphery that is not only characterized by high levels of differentiation from the core but has also been dominated by it and has been directly exploited by the core. The term tory: the old, the new and the global”, African studies 66, no. 2– 3 (2007): 169 – 178; Andreas Eckert, “Why all the fuss about global labour history?”, in Global histories of work, ed. Andreas Eckert (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Oldenburg, 2016), 3 – 22.  Marcel van der Linden, “Global labor history and the “modern world-system”: thoughts at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Fernand Braudel Center”, International Review of Social History 46 (2001): 423 – 459.  Compare Marcel van der Linden, “The “globalization” of labour and working-class history and its consequences”, in Global labor history. A state of the art, ed. Jan Lucassen (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), 13 – 36; idem, Workers of the World. Essays toward a Global Labour History (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008); idem, “The promise and challenges of global labor history”, International Labor and Working-Class History 82 (2012): 57– 76.

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“semi-periphery” for Southern Europe can offer the prospect for better integrating the area into the historical analysis and the global division of labour, without having to resort to current terms such as “Global South”, which is rather vague and without historical depth and only with difficulty could be applied to parts of Europe in any case.²⁴ We conclude this section with a further comment on this difference between Southern and North-western Europe, the semi-periphery and the core, and on how it is thematized in research. In their daily lives, human beings constantly make comparisons through which they understand the world, while in the sciences comparisons are one of the main methods used to produce knowledge.²⁵ Even so, comparisons take place within a framework of inequality, hierarchy and power relations, which they tend to reproduce. The histories of those countries that do not belong to the centre and are compared with it are histories of absences and, even more, as Dipesh Chakrabarty puts it, of “not yet”.²⁶ In the case of Southern Europe, the acceptance of the European Canon and the internalization of the hierarchical view of the world that it imposes has often led to complexes towards the stigma of underdevelopment and backwardness that divergence from the Canon entails. The anxiety of comparison with the “West”, with the capitalist core, is particularly apparent in discussions of backwardness and modernization, the failure of the bourgeois revolutions to guide their countries to “normal” and full modernity, the weakness of industrialization, and so on. Each national case and specific area, such as the Balkans or Southern Europe, has been perceived as a special case, as an exception and deviation from a dominant model, which is homogenized and idealized in the framework of what Kocka and Haupt have described as an “asymmetrical comparison”.²⁷ In the case of labour history, it is primarily the limited proletarianization that is understood as “backwardness” for the formation of a “normal” working class and a

 Samantha Christiansen and Zachary A. Scarlett, “Introduction”, in The Third World in the Global 1960s, ed. Samantha Christiansen and Zachary A. Scarlett (New York: Berghahn, 2013), 3.  Jürgen Kocka and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (eds.), Comparative and transnational history (New York: Berghahn, 2009).  Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).  For the Greek debate from this perspective, see Antonis Liakos, “Modern Greek historiography (1974– 2000). The era of transition from dictatorship to democracy”, in (Re)Writing history. Historiography in Southeast Europe after socialism, ed. Ulf Brunnbauer (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004), 351– 378; idem, “Canonical and anticanonical histories”, in Ethnographica moralia. Experiments in interpretative anthropology, ed. Neni Panourgia and George Marcus (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 138 – 156; Dimitris Kousouris, “Εισαγωγή. Νέες προσεγγίσεις στην ελληνική κοινωνία του μεσοπολέμου (1922– 1940)”, in Η Ελλάδα στο μεσοπόλεμο, ed. E. Avdela, R. Alvanos, D. Kousouris and M. Charalabidis (Athens: Αλεξάνδρεια, 2017), 9 – 32.

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capitalist labour market. We have seen, however, that the small degree of proletarianization is interpreted by the world-system school not as a stage in economic development but as a result of the position of a region in the global division of labour, while global labour history underscores that there is no linear model of proletarianization.²⁸ The issue of a comparison with countries in North-western Europe arises often in the chapters of this volume, in relation, for example, to the different definitions of “independent artisan” and “small industry” (Anna Pina Paladini), although without such a comparison being attempted systematically by the authors (with the exception of Vincent Gouzi). Our comment here is that the achievements of global labour history, as well, of course, of the broader post-colonial theory, enable us to escape the anxiety of divergence from the Western Canon, as this could be found in previous studies. This creates a far healthier basis for (entirely legitimate) questions to be answered in the future, such as whether we can talk about forms of labour that are peculiar to this specific area and which give it a particular character. An attempt can also be made to interpret these forms, to periodize them and to highlight the variations within Southern Europe itself. The discussion of the European Canon also enables us to problematize the terms of the production of scholarly knowledge and of how the different historiographical trends are influenced or characterized by “asymmetric circuits of knowledge”, as Susan Zimmermann has put it.²⁹ Despite the intentions of their pioneers, both world-systems theory and the field of global labour history could be seen as North Atlantic projects, given the institutions that support them and the funding they receive. Academic communities often take paths that had earlier been opened by commercial exchanges, investment, or conquest. As Andrea Komlosy argues, the historiographical trends associated with global history follow “the tracks beaten by colonialism, area studies often concentrating on the ‘golden eras’ of the respective states and empires”, while the research interest in certain geographical areas is also linked to cultural and linguistic skills.³⁰ In the international division of labour within academia, the research that is being done in countries of the periphery and semi-periphery lacks easy access to

 Andreas Eckert and Marcel van der Linden, “New perspectives on workers and the history of work: global labor history”, in Global history, globally, ed. Sven Beckert and Dominic Sachsenmaier (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), 145 – 161; Andrea Komlosy, Work. The last 1.000 years (London and New York: Verso, 2018).  Susan Zimmermann, “Eastern Europe”, 131.  Andrea Komlosy, “Western Europe”, in Hofmeester and van der Linden (eds.), Handbook, 160 – 166, quotation p. 163.

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the institutions and publishers of the European centre, if it does not adopt hegemonic narratives. In the countries of the European periphery, which since 1989 – 1991 have included the former socialist countries, inadequate research funding, unemployment, precarious labour conditions and the brain drain, among other factors, exacerbate these social and regional inequalities and polarization.

Labour History in Southern Europe Each national historiography has its own separate route, according to the cultural, social and academic idiosyncrasies of each country. We do not aim here to give a presentation of the different historical approaches to labour nor to discuss extensively the achievements of labour history in Southern Europe. It will suffice for us to state that important historiographical discussions of economic and social history have taken place in the countries of Southern Europe, particularly since the 1970s,³¹ and that Southern European historians are in a dialogue with their colleagues in other countries. The collaboration between historians of Southern Europe, particularly Mediterranean Europe (France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey) has intensified in recent years. Today a much closer communication between economic, social and cultural historians from different parts of Southern Europe can be observed. Conferences, research programmes and publications demonstrate the multifaceted growth of academic interest. With France especially as the starting point, which has the privilege of being simultaneously part of the North-western European centre and the European South, the research interest grew in the 1980s and sought to highlight the historical specificities of Mediterranean Europe in relation to rural structures and land relations, family structure and survival strategies.³² In the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean, the economic structures, social and political reactions, transition to modernity, state formation, institutional changes, the rise of nationalisms and politicization and the formation of trans-

 Until the 1970s, the dictatorships of Spain, Portugal and Greece prevented the development of independent social and economic histories.  Indicatively: Stuart Woolf (ed.), Domestic strategies: work and family in France and Italy, 1600 – 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1991); Stuart Woolf (ed.), Espaces et familles dans l’Europe du Sud à l’âge moderne (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1993); Roland Caty (ed.), Enfants au travail. Attitudes des élites en Europe occidentale et méditerranéenne aux XIXe et XXe siècles (Aix-enProvence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2002).

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national networks of entrepreneurs, experts and activists are the themes around which systematic historical research that goes beyond national boundaries has been oriented since the 2000s, to produce transnational/entangled approaches.³³ The comparisons that have been used as a result of this interest in global and transnational comparative approaches have incorporated the critique of Eurocentrism. At the same time, the comparative approach, which has emerged as a historiographical trend in Southern Europe too, has as one of its central issues the highlighting of the specific features of Southern European cases in relation to the hegemonic North-western European historiographical narrative. Labour history in Southern Europe has been shaped into a distinct historiographical field, especially in the 2000s. Nevertheless, from as early as the period 1970 – 2000, an increasing number of scholars was contributing with studies on the economic and social history of these countries, while research into the history of the labour movement, its associations, various branches or individual enterprises had already, from even earlier, been providing rich empirical material.³⁴

 Indicatively for the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean: Augusta Dimou, Entangled paths towards modernity. Contextualizing socialism and nationalism in the Balkans (Budapest and New York: CEU Press, 2009); Lorans Tanatar Baruh and Vangelis Kechriotis (eds.), Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean (Athens: Alpha Bank Historical Archives, 2010); Edhem Eldem and Socrates Petmezas (eds.), The Economic Development of Southeast Europe in the 19th century (Athens: Historical Archive of Alpha Bank, 2011); Tassos Anastassiadis and Nathalie Clayer (eds.), Society, Politics and State Formation in Southeastern Europe during the 19th Century (Athens: Alpha Bank Historical Archives, 2011); Anastassios Anastassiadis (ed.), Voisinages fragiles. Les relations interconfessionnelles dans le Sud-Est européen et la Méditerranée orientale 1854 – 1923: contraintes locales et enjeux internationaux (Athens: École française d’Athènes, 2013); Andreas Lyberatos (ed.), Social Transformation and Mass Mobilization in the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean Cities, 1900 – 1923 (Heraklion: Crete University Press and Institute for Mediterranean Studies, 2013); Evguenia Davidova (ed.), Wealth in the Ottoman and Post Ottoman Balkans. A Socio-Economic History (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2016); Roumen Daskalov et al. (eds.), Entangled histories of the Balkans, 4 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2013 – 2017); Dimitris Stamatopoulos (ed.), European Revolutions and the Ottoman Balkans: nationalism, violence and empire in the Long Nineteenth Century (London: I.B. Tauris 2019). See also Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou (eds.), Mediterranean diasporas. Politics and ideas in the long 19th century (London: Bloomsbery, 2016). The ongoing research project “History of the Black Sea, 18th-20th century” which is run, under the guidance of Gelina Harlaftis, by the Centre of Maritime History of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH (Rethymno, Greece) offers a good example of the global and transnational approach to the economic and social history of port cities in a region linked to Southeast Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean: https://blacksea.gr/ (accessed May 15, 2020).  For historiographical accounts of social and labour history in Southern Europe, see José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén, “Traditional history and the new social history of labour in Spain”, in A social history of Spanish labour. New perspectives on class, politics and gender, ed.

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Some of the themes of the history of labour that inspired research and gave birth to discussions in Southern European historiography concern migration and migratory movements,³⁵ the (engendered) experiences of labour on the shop floor (organization of labour, remuneration, hierarchies, technological innovations),³⁶ agricultural labour relations and conflicts in the rural world,³⁷ labour re-

José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén (New York: Berghahn, 2007), 1– 18; Yannis Yannitsiotis, “Social history in Greece: new perspectives”, East Central Europe 34– 35 (2007– 2008): 101– 130; Touraj Atabaki and Gavin Brockett (eds.), “Ottoman and Republican Turkish Labour History,” supplement, International Review of Social History 54 (S17) (2009); Leda Papastefanaki and M. Erdem Kabadayı, “Introduction and Historiographical Essay: Greek and Turkish Economic and Social History, and Labour History”, in Working in Greece and Turkey: A Comparative Labour History from Empires to Nation States, 1840 – 1940, ed. Leda Papastefanaki and M. Erdem Kabadayı (New York: Berghahn, 2020), 1– 57. On the “syndicalist debate” in Portuguese historiography, see Paulo E. Guimarães, “A Questão Operária na Primeira Republican: historiogarfia e memória”, A Ideia, Revista Libertária, II Série 13, no. 68 (2010): 3 – 15; For Italian historiography see “The foundation of the SISLav: an interview with Luca Baldissara (November 2012)” at https://www.storialavoro.it/eng/the-foundation-of-the-sislav-an-interview-with-luca-baldissaranov-2012/ (accessed May 15, 2020).  Indicatively: Angiolina Arru, Daniela Luigia Caglioti, Franco Ramella (eds.), Donne e uomini migranti. Storie e geografie tra breve e lunga distanza (Rome: Donzelli 2008); Michele Colucci and Michele Nani (eds.), Lavoro mobile. Migranti, organizzazioni, conflitti (XVIII – XX secolo) (Palermo: Società italiana di storia del lavoro – NDF, 2015).  Examples include: Lina Gálvez Muñoz, “Engendering the experience of wages: the evolution of the piecework system at the Spanish Tobacco Monopoly, 1800 – 1930s”, in Peter Scholliers and Leonard Schwarz (eds.), Experiencing Wages. Social and Cultural Aspects of Wage Forms in Europe since 1500 (New York: Berghahn, 2003), 201– 227; Carmen Sarasúa, “Technical innovations at the service of cheaper labour in pre-industrial Europe. The Enlightened agenda to transform the gender division of labour in silk manufacturing”, History and Technology 24, no. 1 (2008): 23 – 39; Leda Papastefanaki, Εργασία, τεχνολογία και φύλο στην ελληνική βιομηχανία. Η κλωστοϋφαντουργία του Πειραιά, 1870 – 1940 (Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2009); idem, Η φλέβα της γης. Τα μεταλλεία της Ελλάδας, 19ος-20ος αιώνας (Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2017); idem, “Family, Gender, and Labour in the Greek Mines, 1860 – 1940”, International Review of Social History 65/2 (2020): 267 – 288; Miguel Pérez de Perceval Verde, Ángel Pascual MartínezSoto, and Jose Joaquin García-Gómez, “Female workers in the Spanish mines, 1860 – 1936”, International Review of Social History 65/2 (2020): 233 – 265.  Examples include, for the Balkan regions of the Ottoman Empire, Alp Yücel Kaya, “On the Çiftlik Regulation in Tırhala in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Economists, Pashas, Governors, Çiftlik-Holders, Subaşıs, and Sharecroppers,” in Ottoman Rural Societies and Economies: Halcyon Days in Crete VIII; A Symposium held in Rethymno, 13 – 15 January 2012, ed. Elias Kolovos (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2015), 333 – 380; idem, “Were Peasants Bound to the Soil in the Nineteenth-Century Balkans? A Reappraisal of the Question of the New/Second Serfdom in Ottoman Historiography”, in Papastefanaki and Kabadayı (eds.), Working in Greece and Turkey, 61– 112. For Greece, see Christos Hadziiossif, “The ‘Invisible’ Army of Greek Labourers”, in Papastefanaki and Kabadayı (eds.), Working in Greece and Turkey, 133 – 147; see also, idem,

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gimes and forms of unfree labour,³⁸ child work,³⁹ underemployment, unemployment and attitudes towards state intervention and labour legislation,⁴⁰ and, of course, an examination of forms of organization of the production process in

“Class structure and class antagonism in late 19th century Greece”, in Philip Carabott (ed.), Greek society in the making, 1863 – 1913. Realities, symbols and visions (Aldershot: Ashgate-Variorum, 1997), 3 – 17. See also the special issue “Conflict in the contemporary rural world. New interpretations of an old problem”, edited by the Research Group on the Agrarian and Political History of the Rural World at University of Santiago de Compostela, of the review Workers of the World – International Journal on Strikes and Social Conflicts 1, no. 5 (2014).  Indicatively: Christos Hadziiossif, “Από τη δουλεία στη μισθωτή εργασία”, in Τα Βαλκάνια: Εκσυγχρονισμός, ταυτότητες, ιδέες. Συλλογή κειμένων προς τιμήν της καθηγήτριας Nadia Danova, ed. Andreas Lyberatos (Heraklion: Βουλγαρική Ακαδημία Επιστημών – Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης-Ινστιτούτο Μεσογειακών Σπουδών, 2014), 63 – 75; Ali Sipahi, “Convict Labor in Turkey, 1936 – 1953: A Capitalist Corporation in the State?,” International Labor and Working-Class History 90 (2016): 244– 265; Fernando Mendiola, “The Role of Unfree Labour in Capitalist Development: Spain and Its Empire, Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries”, International Review of Social History 61 (S24) (2016): 187– 211; Giulia Bonazza and Giulio Ongaro (eds.), Libertà e coercizione: il lavoro in una prospettiva di lungo periodo (Palermo: Società italiana di storia del lavoro – NDF, 2018).  Indicatively: Michalis Riginos, Μορφές παιδικής εργασίας στη βιομηχανία και τη βιοτεχνία, 1870 – 1940 (Athens: ΙΑΕΝ – Κέντρο Νεοελληνικών Ερευνών ΕΙΕ, 1995); idem, “Formes du travail des enfants dans l’industrie et l’artisanat en Grèce (XIXe – XXe siècles)”, in R. Caty (ed.), Enfants au travail, 59 – 70; Antonia Pasi, “Les enfants dans l’industrialisation lombarde (1876 – 1911)”, in R. Caty (ed.), Enfants au travail, 71– 105; Pedro Goulart and Arjun S. Bedi, “The Evolution of Child Labor in Portugal, 1850 – 2001”, Social Science History, 41, no. 2 (2017): 227– 254. For a comparison, see Maria Papathanassiou, “Child Work and its Meanings in Rural Europe: Comparisons between Central Europe and the Balkans during the late Nineteenth and the First Decades of the Twentieth Century”, in Kristoffel Lieten and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (eds.), Child Labour’s Global Past, 1650 – 2000 (Bern: Peter Lang Academic Publishers, 2011), 363 – 390.  Examples include historical research for legal measures and regulation of the labour market as regards child work, work hours, workplace safety, occupational health, insurance systems for health and pensions, professionalization of specific forms of work. See indicatively: Arón Cohen, “Le travail des enfants entre droit et pratiques sociales. Un observatoire médico-patronal en Andalousie minière (1902– 1920)”, in R. Caty (ed.), Enfants au travail, 253 – 265; Stefano Musso, Le regole e l’elusione: il governo del mercato del lavoro nell’industrializzazione italiana (1888 – 2003) (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 2004); Raquel Varela, “State Policies Towards Precarious Work: Employment and Unemployment in Contemporary Portugal”, International Review of Social History 61 (S24) (2016): 263 – 284; Nikos Potamianos, “Regulation and the retailing community: the struggle over the establishment of the holiday of Sunday in Greece, 1872– 1925”, History of Retailing and Consumption 3, no. 3 (2017): 168 – 183. Many of the chapters of a collective volume on labour in theatre and cinema in Greece refer to issues of professionalisation, licensing, control and regulation of the labour market: Eliza Anna Delveroudi and Nikos Potamianos (eds.), Δουλεύοντας στον χώρο του θεάματος (Rethymno: Εκδόσεις Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής Πανεπιστημίου Κρήτης, forthcoming).

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conjunction with labour mobilization and the issues at stake with these mobilizations.⁴¹ The organization of production in small enterprises, collective action and the culture of master artisans and small shopkeepers had also come to be understood through a prism that was compatible with that of labour history: since for a large number of independent artisans and small traders, work prevails (over property and entrepreneurship) as a point of reference for their identity and the material conditions of their existence, we should perhaps understand them as belonging to the group of subaltern workers, the category introduced by van der Linden, rather than the petite-bourgeoisie – at least if we were to give some weight to the second part of this term (“bourgeoisie”).⁴² The history of women and gender has given a significant renewal to the history of labour in all countries.⁴³ The perspective of gender has enabled us to deal with the under-registration of women’s labour in the sources, and to explore con-

 Rolandos Katsiaounis, Labour, society and politics in Cyprus during the second half of the nineteenth century (Nicosia: Cyprus Research Centre, 1996); Kostas Fountanopoulos, Εργασία και εργατικό κίνημα στη Θεσσαλονίκη. Ηθική οικονομία και συλλογική δράση στο μεσοπόλεμο (Athens: Νεφέλη, 2005).  Andrea Colli, I volti di Proteo. Storia della piccola impresa in Italia nel Novecento (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002); Bruno Maida, Artigiani nella città dell’industria. La Can a Torino (1946 – 2006) (Turin: Edizioni SEB, 2007); idem, Proletari della borghesia. I piccoli commercianti dall’ Unità a oggi (Rome: Carocci, 2009); Anna Pellegrino, La città piu artigiana d’ Italia. Firenze 1861 – 1929 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012); idem, “Il lavoro artigiano”, in Storia del lavoro in Italia. Il Novecento, 1896 – 1945, ed. Stefano Musso (Rome: Lit, 2015), 84– 125; Nikos Potamianos, Οι νοικοκυραίοι. Μαγαζάτορες και βιοτέχνες στην Αθήνα, 1880 – 1925 (Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2015); idem, “From the People to a Class: The Petite Bourgeoisie of Athens, 1901– 1923”, in Social Transformation and Mass Mobilization, 133 – 145; Anna Pina Paladini, Confartigianato. Dalle origini al consolidamento democrativo (1946 – 1958) (Milan: Guerini e associate, 2016); idem, Confartigianato. Dal miracolo economico alla nascita delle regioni (1959 – 1970) (Milan: Guerini e associate, 2018). In a reversal, studies on labourers in sectors such as construction have shown that many of them shifted regularly between wage labour and self-employment: Dimitra Lambropoulou, Οι οικοδόμοι. Οι άνθρωποι που έχτισαν την Αθήνα 1950 – 1967 (Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2009).  Efi Avdela, Le genre entre classe et nation. Essai d’historiographie grecque (Paris: Syllepse, 2006), 17– 19, 27– 35; Dimitra Lambropoulou, A. Liakos and Y. Yiannitsiotis, “Work and Gender in Greek Historiography during the Last Three Decades”, in Berteke Waaldijk (ed.), Professions and social Identity. New European Historical Research on Work, Gender and Society (Pisa: Plus – Pisa University Press, 2006), 1– 14; Cristina Borderías and Manuela Martini, “Introduzione. Per una nuova storia del lavoro: genere, economie, soggetti”, Genesis XV, no. 2 (2016): 5 – 13; Leda Papastefanaki, “Labour in economic and social history: The viewpoint of Gender in Greek Historiography”, Genesis XV, no. 2 (2016): 59 – 83.

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cepts and categories concerning female labour in the censuses.⁴⁴ It has also permitted the systematic exploration of the dichotomy between productive and unproductive work,⁴⁵ the study of variety of forms of paid and unpaid female work in the home⁴⁶ and in family businesses,⁴⁷ as well as the historicization of concepts such as “labour precariousness” and “labour flexibility”.⁴⁸ The history of labour in the former state socialist countries has followed a different path, given that the history of the working class and the labour movement were at the centre of the research agenda promoted by the socialist states. In this sense, the history of labour, as the history of the labour movement, was a noteworthy branch of research in Eastern European historiography from the 1960s until the end of state socialism in 1989 – 1991. The crisis that befell this

 Cristina Borderías, “Revisiting Women’s Labor Force Participation in Catalonia (1920 – 1936)”, Feminist Economics 19, no. 4 (2013): 224– 242; idem, “The Statistical Construction of Women’s Work and the Male Breadwinner Economy in Spain (1856 – 1930)”, in Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis, and Manuela Martini (eds.), What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present (New York: Berghahn, 2018), 165 – 187; Carmen Sarasúa, “Women’s work and structural change: occupational structure in eighteenth-century Spain”, The Economic History Review 72, no. 2 (2019): 481– 509; Raffaella Sarti, “Toiling Women, Non-working Housewives, and Lesser Citizens: Statistical and Legal Constructions of Female Work and Citizenship in Italy”, in Sarti, Bellavitis, and Martini (eds.), What is Work?, 188 – 225; Papastefanaki, “Labour in economic and social history”, 62– 68.  Alessandra Pescarolo, “Productive and Reproductive Work: Uses and Abuses of an Old Dichotomy”, in Sarti, Bellavitis, and Martini (eds.), What is Work?, 114– 138.  Tania Toffanin, Fabbriche Invisibili. Storie di donne, lavoranti a domicilio (Verona: Ombre corte, 2016); Alessandra Gissi, “The Home as a Factory: Rethinking the Debate on Housewives’ Wages in Italy, 1929 – 1980”, in Sarti, Bellavitis, and Martini (eds.), What is Work?, 139 – 160. On domestic labour, see the collective volumes with chapters referring to case studies from South Europe: Suzy Pasleau and Isabelle Schopp (eds.), with Raffaella Sarti, Proceedings of the Servant Project, vol. I-V (Liège: Éditions de l’Université de Liège, 2006) and Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux (ed.), Domestic Service and the Formation of European Identity (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005). See also Raffaella Sarti, “Historians, social scientists, servants, and domestic workers: Fifty years of research on domestic and care work”, International Review of Social History 59, no. 2 (2014): 279 – 314; Pothiti Hantzaroula, Σμιλεύοντας την υποταγή: οι έμμισθες οικιακές εργάτριες στην Ελλάδα το πρώτο μισό του 20ού αιώνα (Athens: Παπαζήσης, 2012).  Daniela Cagliotti, “Petites bourgeoisies napolitaines du XIXe siècle. Mobilités géographiques et sociales”, Bulletin du Centre Pierre Léon d’ histoire économique et sociale 4 (1993): 5 – 14; Beatrice Zucca Micheletto, “Épouses, mères et propriétaires: artisanes à Turin à l’époque moderne”, Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire 38 (2013): 241– 252; idem, “Only unpaid labour force? Women’s and girls’ work and property in family business in early modern Italy”, The History of the Family 19, no.3 (2014): 323 – 340.  Eloisa Betti, “Gender and Precarious Labor in a Historical Perspective: Italian Women and Precarious Work between Fordism and Post-Fordism”, International Labor and Working-Class History 89 (2016): 64– 83.

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field after 1989 – 1991 is a result of the political changes and was expressed as both a disdain for the previous historical output and in a shift to other subjects. The research interest was revived in the 2000s by a few historians from the countries of Southeast Europe and by foreign scholars.⁴⁹ In the new labour history of Yugoslavia, Croatia, Serbia and Romania in the era of state socialism and in the post-socialist period, attention turned to women’s wage labour in factories,⁵⁰ workers’ everyday lives,⁵¹ the peculiarities of self-managed Yugoslavian factory and the diversity of its workforce,⁵² forced labour during the Nazi occupation,⁵³ and the ways in which the centrally-planned economy was transformed into economic, political and daily practices in the spaces of production.⁵⁴ Relatively neglected in the new period is the subject of labour mobilizations and organized labour, although there is an interest for Yugoslavia and its successor states.⁵⁵  On the broad differences among historiographies of the ex-socialist countries, see Peter Heumos, “Workers under Communist Rule: Research in the Former Socialist Countries of EasternCentral and South-Eastern Europe and in the Federal Republic of Germany”, International Review of Social History 55, no. 1 (2010): 83 – 115; Zimmermann, “Eastern Europe”; Adrian Grama and Susan Zimmermann, “The art of link-making in global labour history: subaltern, feminist and Eastern European contributions”, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 25, no. 1 (2018): 1– 20, mainly 8 – 14. On the historiographical trends for Yugoslavia, see also Sabine Rutar, “Towards a Southeast European History of Labour: Examples from Yugoslavia”, in idem (ed.), Beyond the Balkans: Towards an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe (Münster: LIT – Studies in South East Europe, 2013), 323 – 354.  Indicatively: Jill Massino, “Constructing the Socialist Worker: Gender, Identity and Work under State Socialism in Braşov, Romania”, Aspasia. The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History 3, no. 1 (2009): 131– 160; Chiara Bonfiglioli, “Gender, Labour and Precarity in the South East European Periphery: the Case of Textile Workers in Štip”, Contemporary Southeastern Europe 1, no. 2 (2014): 7– 23; idem, “Postsocialist deindustrialisation and its gendered structure of feeling: the devaluation of women’s work in the Croatian garment industry”, Labor History 61, no. 1 (2020): 36 – 47.  Indicatively: Rory Archer and Goran Musić, “‘Not all canteens are created equal’: Food provision for Yugoslav blue-collar workers in late socialism”, in Ruža Fotiadis, Vladimir Ivanović, Radina Vučetić (eds.), Brotherhood and Unity at the Kitchen Table. Food in Socialist Yugoslavia (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2019), 73 – 93.  Rory Archer and Goran Musić, “Approaching the socialist factory and its workforce: considerations from fieldwork in (former) Yugoslavia”, Labor History 58, no. 1 (2017): 44– 66.  Sanela Schmid and Milovan Pisarri (eds.), Forced Labour in Serbia. Producers, Consumers and Consequences of Forced Labour, 1941 – 1944 (Belgrade: Center for Holocaust Research and Education, 2018).  Alina-Sandra Cucu, Planning Labour. Time and the Foundations of Industrial Socialism in Romania (New York: Berghahn, 2019); idem, “For a New Global Labour History: A View from Eastern Europe”, Historein 19, no. 1 (2020).  Goran Musić, Serbia’s working class in transition, 1988 – 2013 (Belgrade: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeast Europe, 2013); idem, “‘They Came as Workers and Left as Serbs’: The Role of Ra-

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On the whole, the new studies in the labour history of Southern and Southeastern Europe, which are very different from each other in terms of theory and methodology, are engaged in a dialogue with other social sciences (sociology, anthropology, political economy, economic theory), while most problematize categories and established concepts (such as proletarianization, class, gender, ethnicity, race and nation). These studies often focus on the interactions of culture with relations of production and labour relations or labour regimes. The history of labour has been strengthened by research networks and academic societies. In the 2010s, an internationalization of labour history in Southern Europe is being achieved through the establishment of academic societies and informal networks. In Spain, the research group for Work, Institutions and Gender (Trabajo, Instituciones y Género, TIG) was formed in Barcelona in 1999, and since then has been at the heart of research activities, with the participation of scholars from other Spanish universities. In 2010/2011, Portuguese historians formed the research group for Global Labour History and Social Conflicts (Grupo de Estudo História Global do Trabalho e dos Conflitos Sociais) at the Instituto de História Contemporânea of the NOVA University Lisbon. The International Association of Strikes and Social Conflicts, formed in Lisbon in March 2011, and its academic journal Workers of the world have contributed to the dialogue between Southern European historians and historians from the rest of the world.⁵⁶ The Italian Association of Labour History (Società italiana di storia del lavoro-Sislav) was formed in May 2012,⁵⁷ while the French Association for the History of the Worlds of Work (Association Française pour l’Histoire des Mondes du Travail, AFHMT) was established in June 2013.⁵⁸ The creation of the European kovica’s Blue-Collar Workers in Serbian Social Mobilizations of the Late 1980s”, in Rory Archer, Igor Duda and Paul Stubbs (eds.), Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 132– 154.  https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/grupos-de-investigacao/historia-global-do-trabalho/ (accessed May 15, 2020).  “The foundation of the SISLav: an interview with Luca Baldissara (November 2012)” at https://www.storialavoro.it/eng/the-foundation-of-the-sislav-an-interview-with-luca-baldissaranov-2012/ (accessed May 15, 2020).  David Hamelin, “Pour une histoire du travail !”, Cahiers d’histoire. Revue d’histoire critique 124 (2014): 147– 158 (an interview with the historians Nicolas Hatzfeld, Michel Pigenet and Xavier Vigna, founding members of the French Association). On the rich and long French historiographical tradition in histoire ouvrière/histoire du travail, see Anne Jollet (ed.), “Comment les historiens parlent-ils du travail?”, special issue Cahiers d’histoire, revue d’histoire critique 83 (2001) and Christian Chevandier, Michel Pigenet, “L’histoire du travail à l’époque contemporaine, clichés tenaces et nouveaux regards”, Le Mouvement social 200, no. 3 (2002) : 163 – 169. The revue Le Mouvement social has contributed since its first issue (1960 – 1961) to the development of histoire ouvrière in France.

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Labour History Network (ELHN) in Amsterdam in 2013 enabled researchers and research groups working on the history of labour to meet and strengthen the bonds among scholars from Southern Europe. At the first conference of the ELHN in Turin in December 2015, research groups from Spain formed the Spanish Labour History Network (Red Española de Historia del Trabajo, REHT). Informal networks of scholars have also been established in Greece (in 2014) and Turkey (in 2011).⁵⁹ The sizeable participation of scholars from Southern Europe at the second (Paris, 2017) and third (Amsterdam, 2019) ELHN conferences, as well as at other academic meetings and conferences that now take place regularly in Italy, Spain, France and Greece, confirm the dynamism of the renewed field of labour history in Europe, as well as the interest of Southern European historians in dialogue and collaboration. Studies on the history of labour in Southern and Southeast Europe have been published in the past decade in collected volumes that attempt largescale international comparisons, such as in the case of textile workers,⁶⁰ or shipbuilding and ship repair workers,⁶¹ or in special issues that take a fresh look at classic subjects.⁶² A group of comparative studies provide a link between research from France, Italy, Spain and Greece using the tools of economic and social history, family history and labour history, with a focus on female paid and unpaid work in the fam-

 Marcel van der Linden, “The Growth of a European Network of Labor Historians”, International Labor and Working-Class History 90 (2016): 266 – 273; Christian G. de Vito, “New perspectives on global labour history. Introduction”, Workers of the world I, no. 3 (2013): 7– 29; Leda Papastefanaki, Kostas Paloukis and Nikos Potamianos, “Το ελληνικό Δίκτυο για την Ιστορία της Εργασίας και του Εργατικού Κινήματος. Ελληνικές και ευρωπαϊκές αλληλεπιδράσεις”, Αρχειοτάξιο 18 (2016): 218 – 222. In 2011 an international conference on Ottoman and Turkish labour history in an international perspective was held in Istanbul, giving historians from Turkey, Greece, Iran, Egypt and the Netherlands the opportunity to exchange ideas. On this conference, see M. Erdem Kabadayι and Kate Elizabeth Creasey, “Working in the Ottoman Empire and in Turkey: Ottoman and Turkish Labor History within a Global Perspective”, International Labor and Working-Class History 82 (2012): 187– 200.  Lex Heerma van Voss, Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (eds.), The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650 – 2000 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), which includes case studies from Italy, Spain, the Ottoman Empire and Turkey.  Raquel Varela, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden (eds.), Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World Case Studies 1950 – 2010 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), with case studies from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Romania.  Indicatively: “Back to the factory: the continuing salience of industrial workplace history”, Görkem Akgöz, Richard Croucher and Nicola Pizzolato (eds.), Labor History 61, no. 1 (2020), with case studies from Italy, Croatia and Turkey.

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ily, family businesses and family economies.⁶³ At the core of these studies is the need to give a historical dimension to research on care and unpaid work through different case studies and theoretical approaches. The importance of women’s work for family economies, especially in times of crisis, is another issue that is of interest for research. Crises are seen as those particular periods of economic recession or social and political upheaval during which it is possible to study dynamic gender relations in adaptive family economies within different historical contexts, including that of Southern Europe.⁶⁴ A group of research projects is advancing the study of the history of labour within multinational states, such as the Ottoman Empire and its successor nation-states, focusing on mutual relations, interconnections, and movements of population, ideas, products and practices. The comparative perspective on the labour history of Greece and Turkey offers an alternative approach to the historiographical dialogue across the coasts of the Aegean Sea, as studies on rural labour relations, the impact of ethno-religious divides and emerging nationalisms on labour markets and gender relations in the various workplaces inside and outside the home intersect with each other.⁶⁵ An ongoing research project on maritime labour history explores in a comparative approach the transition from sail to steam navigation and its effects on seafaring populations in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea between the 1850s and the 1920s, while investigating the maritime labour market, the evolving relations among ship-owner, captain, crew and local maritime societies, life on board and ashore.⁶⁶

 Manuela Martini and Anna Bellavitis (eds.), “Family Workshops and Unpaid Market Work in Europe from the 16th Century to the Present”, special issue of The History of the Family 19, no. 3 (2014); Anna Bellavitis, Manuela Martini and Raffaella Sarti (eds.), “Familles laborieuses. Rémunération, transmission et apprentissage dans les ateliers familiaux de la fin du Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine”, special issue of Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines (MEFRIM) 128, no. 1 (2016).  Manuela Martini and Leda Papastefanaki (eds.), “Crises, genre et économies familiales adaptatives dans l’Europe méditerranéenne (fin XIXe-milieu du XXe siècle)”, special section in The Historical Review/La Revue Historique 15, no. 1 (2018); Manuela Martini and Cristina Borderías (eds.), “Coping with crisis: labour markets, institutional changes and household economies from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century”, special issue of Continuity and change. A journal of social structure, law and demography in past societies 35, no. 1 (2020).  Papastefanaki and Kabadayi (eds.), Working in Greece and Turkey.  Research project “Seafaring Lives in Transition, Mediterranean Maritime Labour and Shipping, 1850s-1920s” run, under the guidance of Apostolos Delis, in the Centre of Maritime History of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH http://www.sealitproject.eu/the-project (accessed May 15, 2020).

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Overall, however, in the labour history of Southern Europe, such initiatives for systematic comparative, transnational or entangled approaches are still rather rare. We hope that this volume will help to create the conditions for entangled historical research in the future.

The Chapters of the Volume We will conclude this introduction with an attempt to bring together some of the central issues of the labour history of Southern Europe that are raised in the 14 chapters of this book. First, one of the issues that emerges from the chapters is that of self-employment in Southern Europe. As Vincent Gouzi notes – and not only for Greece but also other countries of Southern Europe – the rates of self-employment and small businesses are high in comparison with countries in other parts of Europe. This structure may be interpreted as the result of a strong cultural resistance to proletarianization, a resistance that was of course not enough to prevent the manifestation in the region of the broader trends of capitalist development, but did limit their impact. Thus, the Italian master artisans appear in Anna Pina Paladini’s chapter as part of the broader world of labour, who, among other things, fought for the creation of a social security system for themselves too. The Spanish ship engineers, as Enric Garcia Domingo demonstrates, sought stable employment as freelancers on dry land after their service in the merchant navy was over. In the case of the street vendors of Athens, explored by Nikos Potamianos through the “minor news” items in the newspapers, independent employment was accompanied by great poverty and very bad living and working conditions. So much so that, according to the analysis by Kostas Paloukis on the neighbourhood of Peristeri, proletarianization resulted in a rise in the living conditions and social status of its inhabitants. Stavroula Verrarou, in examining land ownership and labour in rural Greece, pits herself against the tendency to idealize independent work and small ownership. In her own research, Verrarou combines a diverse range of nineteenth-century sources, such as the Proceedings of Parliamentary Debates, contracts, business archives, electoral lists and autobiographical narratives. As she observes, this special mixture of small ownership and the expansion of wage labour without proletarianization in Greek agriculture was less about the desire of the farmers for independence and more about their insecurity and vulnerability, which led them to seeking multiple sources of income.

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The goal of independent work has been associated, previously by Efi Avde⁶⁷ la, and now by Vincent Gouzi in this volume, with certain cultural structures in the wider area of the Mediterranean, which drive a preference for labour independence and favour the creation and reproduction of small economic units. Gouzi sees the Mediterranean culture of honour as the root of this trend towards self-employment, to the extent that entrepreneurship acts as an expression of masculinity and the desire to reproduce the family unit and maintain its independence against forms of subjugation such as paid work. Furthermore, the family maintains a strong organizational role in the economic activities and provides, to the extent that it is needed, flexible unpaid work of its members in the small enterprise run by the head of the family. Maria Papathanassiou discusses the economic role of the family in her chapter on Austria, pointing to its function as an economic/labour unit that pushes its members into a range of forms of employment and the collection of income from different sources, as well as the relationship of the family to the contract-work systems of labour recruitment. Secondly, different forms of managing labour relations, from paternalism to the systematic benefits of corporate welfare, can be observed in different historical contexts in Southern Europe. Paternalism as a set of attitudes and practices towards labour relations has a special position in the history of labour in this area. Although “paternalism” is a difficult concept to pin down, as it sometimes lacks historical specificity as E.P. Thompson argues,⁶⁸ we can still distinguish in the workplace practices, rituals and discourses that are based on a metaphor of the family, where the employer was the head and father, and the employees— both men and women—the children who are dependent upon him. The largest and most modern enterprises throughout the twentieth century promoted a different model of managing labour, through systematic benefits and services (housing, dining halls, kindergartens, community centres, health care services, etc.) for their workers (corporate welfare or welfare capitalism). Daniel Alves explains how the controversy surrounding the closing of shops on Sundays in Lisbon was connected to the paternalistic view of shopkeepers as to how to manage their shops and their staff. This paternalistic view denied total independence and the transition to adult life to the shop assistants. Alves suggests that paternalism was not a unique characteristic of the shopkeepers of Lisbon alone, and their arguments were similar to those used by shopkeepers in the

 Efi Avdela, “Genre, famille et stratégies de travail”, in Avdela, Le genre, 37– 60.  Edward P. Thompson, “The Patricians and the Plebs,” in Customs in Common (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 24.

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rest of Portugal and even in Europe, both northern and southern. We also encounter the idea of the employer as the father/protector who cares for his underage children, his workers or his employees in Anna Pellegrino’s chapter, which uses the court records for the arbitrations of Italian workers. The divisions and hierarchies in the workplace according to gender and age may perhaps be more closely linked to the paternalistic discourse in which employers expressed themselves. Milan Balaban in his chapter explores a different kind of entrepreneurial paternalism, that of the creation of a modern company town. The Bata company town of Borovo, in today’s Croatia, was unique as it was the only company town in the territory of interwar Yugoslavia with a clear division of production, residential and recreational zones. Balaban describes, through the use of Moravian and Yugoslavian archival sources, the high standards of living in the company town of Borovo and the diverse facilities and social events (such as sports games, concerts, movies) that it provided, highlighting how the Bata Company aimed to create a loyal and stable skilled workforce through the control of the workers’ everyday lives. In his chapter, Paolo Raspadori examines the corporate welfare policies and provisions in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century through the use of surveys conducted by the State Inspectorate of Industry and Labour, the Fascist Association of Italian industrialists and the Italian Parliament. Raspadori adopts a broad definition of welfare capitalism (housing, healthcare, sport facilities, loan funds, etc.) and analyses the evolution of these managerial policies within their political and institutional context to show how they were used as tools for the control and stabilization of labour, to create consensus and to manage the workforce through the institutionalization of industrial relations. Welfare provisions spread and strengthened in Italian companies from 1923 to 1955, mainly in the North of Italy, and Raspadori discusses their uneven, irregular development in terms of geography, sector and size. The focus on corporate welfare offers us a way to understand, through a mirror effect, the transformations of welfare at the national level too. Andrea Umberto Gritti in his chapter examines the managerial strategies of control during an important and critical period for Italy, that of the post-war Reconstruction. Gritti elucidates the role of ideology and sociological research as instruments of control over the labour process. During the interwar period, the implementation of corporate welfare policies was perceived as a means of raising work outputs and achieving productivity, while in the 1950s, corporate welfare policies were mainly aimed at restraining labour conflicts after the great political mobilizations of the post-war period, so as to the assimilate the workforce into the factory organisation. Cultural constructions and managerial practices

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were interrelated in the entrepreneurial milieus of Lombardy, where the ideology of corporate order developed together with the adoption of American organisational techniques that aimed to eliminate the propensity of workers to oppose the factory hierarchy. One of the biggest Italian iron and steel companies, the Falck Steelworks in Sesto San Giovanni, promoted the ideal of belonging to the corporation through the publication of an employee magazine and the development of corporate rituals, in order to contain the waves of labour unrest of the post-war period. Thirdly, most of the chapters in this volume underline the importance of the institutional framework and the struggle for regulation of the labour market. In her chapter, Svetla Ianeva studies an archetypal institution that was primarily aimed at controlling the labour market, the guilds, and discusses the flexible tactics with which they largely retained this ability in the central Balkans in the mid-nineteenth century, despite the expansion of manufacturing beyond the guilds in rural areas. The method that was deemed acceptable in the twentieth century by which a professional group could achieve this control was for trade licenses to be issued for a particular sector. As Paladini and Potamianos show, this was the strategy that certain artisans in post-war Italy and street vendors of interwar Athens respectively pursued. Enric Garcia Domingo’s chapter on the Spanish engineers of the merchant navy offers a precise description of the process of their professionalization through a discussion of their training, the creation of a distinct skill and the recognition of its associated labour rights on ships and elsewhere. Control of the labour market, then, may be won through the struggle to define the limits of professions and skills: these limits are respected even when they are informal, as can be seen in the decisions of the arbitration tribunals in early-twentieth-century Italy, analysed by Pellegrino. The development of institutions for the “protection” of the working class and the provision of an indirect social wage is a theme that is touched upon by many of the contributors to this volume. Raspadori and Balaban examine the “private welfare state” in Italy and Yugoslavia. Comprised of the benefits paid by the employer, it was penurious on a national level but in certain cases could be significant. However, it was mostly state intervention that significantly transformed labour relations and the living standards of the working class in the twentieth century – limiting phenomena such as the employment of old people as street vendors so they could secure a living (Potamianos): labour legislation on work hours, workplace safety, and the suchlike and, of course, insurance systems for health and pensions. Their adoption was the result of both state paternalism from the top down and the radical demands made from the bottom up. In his chapter, Alves examines the conflicts over the introduction of a Sunday holiday in Portuguese shops in the early twentieth century, while in her chapter Paladini

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shows the significance that the demand for the extension of social security to them too had on the trade union activity of craftsmen in post-war Italy. The increase in labour costs brought about by the labour legislation led to attempts to avoid its implementation. As Papathanassiou illustrates, the entrepreneurs, so as to avoid prohibitions on employing minors, moved production whenever possible to other areas – to domestic production, in the case of Austria at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the shipyards of Palermo, as Aurora Ianello demonstrates in her chapter, the labour laws, regulations on worker safety and legislation on subcontracting were violated systematically – with the presence of the mafia adding a particular Sicilian colour to illegal practices that appear to have been rather widespread in other countries too and which led to a “safety net” for workers that was of lower standards than those in North-west Europe. One possible fertile area for research and future studies is how the character of the Southern European semi-periphery was shaped in the twentieth century, not so much from the delay in introducing new institutions, such as labour laws,⁶⁹ but in their incomplete application, which led to relatively low levels of real regulation and contributed to the mushrooming of the informal sector. One parameter that could explain this development is the smaller strength of organised labour in Southern Europe. The aspect of the unions as institutions created by the workers with the aim to “embed labor markets in social institutions”⁷⁰ appears in the studies by Ianello, Alves and Paladini, but its presence in this volume is otherwise minor. Of interest, however, are a few references to demands that were not manifested through the unions and which are usually absent in studies of industrial relations: the appeals lodged by individual workers in the arbitration courts, as discussed by Pellegrino, as well as the representation of ship engineers in public space described by Garcia Domingo and the struggle for the recognition of their profession. This, as Garcia Domingo elucidates, was the work primarily of two leading figures of “intellectuals of the profession” and the circles that formed around them. In some cases, the collective representation of the interests and demands of labour was done not by large unions but by political parties such as the Commu-

 To remain with the chapters in this book, even though the introduction of labour arbitration in Italy – and in the rest of Southern Europe – was delayed, as Pellegrino shows, the Sunday holiday was introduced in the same period in countries of Northern and Southern Europe, as Alves demonstrates.  Wolfgang Streeck, “The Sociology of Labor Markets and Trade Unions”, in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, ed. Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 254– 283.

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nist parties (which were particularly powerful in Southern Europe), which in a certain way continued the tradition of the politicized chambers of labour. The role of the wider political context thus takes on further significance, as it is presented in some of the chapters in this volume. Paolo Raspadori shows how forms of corporate welfare were influenced by fascism and its policies. Kostas Paloukis discusses the contribution of the Greek Communist Party, as well as the effects of the changing context brought about by the Οccupation of the country during the Second World War, on the transformation of the popular culture of the sub-proletariat neighbourhood that he studied. Paladini demonstrates how the political conflicts in post-war Italy related to both state policies towards artisans and their union activities. Fourthly, the paid and unpaid work of women in the workplace and in the family, the economic importance of women’s work in the family and the gender division of labour are discussed by some of the chapters in this book, even though there are no chapters especially dedicated to women’s labour and gender relations in Southern Europe. Svetla Ianeva has found that women were the main workforce in many branches of proto-industrial manufacturing in the Ottoman Central Balkans, as they were involved in carpet making, rose-oil distillation and silk-reeling.⁷¹ Women, however, remained excluded from the unions and the regulations they imposed. The hierarchically inferior character of women’s work emerges in several other chapters in this volume. Pellegrino uses a valuable source, the probiviri arbitrations, to study the regulatory mechanisms of labour relations in Italian towns, but also to explore workers’ identities, their conceptions and models of behaviour. Pellegrino’s findings on women’s work conclude not only that female employment in manufacturing was frequently not permanent, but especially that the authority of the employer seems to be equivalent to patriarchal authority even before the labour arbitration tribunals. The unequal treatment of women as regards pay and the professional hierarchy is detailed impressively in the study of the of the Bata shoemaking industry in Borovo. As Balaban explains in his chapter, women were expected to leave their job after marriage and to devote themselves to their family. Politics for a happy family life in the company town was connected to the maintenance of a clean and tidy house by housewives and the encouragement of male workers to be breadwinners. Stable and healthy family lives (away from alcohol and sexually transmitted diseas The whole household was involved in most proto-industries, often with occasional and seasonal work, a distinguishing feature of proto-industrialisation in rural areas. See also Socrates D. Petmezas, “Patterns of Protoindustrialization in the Ottoman Empire: The Case of Eastern Thessaly”, Journal of European Economic History 19, no. 3 (1990): 575 – 603.

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es) provided the guarantees for a stable and skilled workforce, productivity and clockwork reliability in interwar Yugoslavia. It also seems that women hardly would become head of a family business: one of the “specificities” of the Greek industrial sector identified by Gouzi is the high rates of small enterprises in which members of the family of the (usually male) owner worked en masse. However, Potamianos argues that women in Athens gradually achieved more freedom of movement in the public space, and some of them began to work as itinerant traders at the beginning of the twentieth century. Most, however, had their mobility restricted through their duties as mothers and housekeepers. Finally, in his contribution, Paloukis underlines how the urban space of everyday life in a working-class neighbourhood of Athens in the interwar period was a space in which the working class was made. Through an analysis of popular culture, as expressed in the social spaces of the neighbourhood and in urban folk songs, gender relations are indirectly explored. Masculinity in the neighbourhood is associated with violence and the defence of honour, a crucial element of social relations for working-class culture. The transformations in the expression of masculinity can be related to the changes in the composition of the working class and the expansion of paid labour for young women, with the strengthening of communist radicalism and the linking of the armed defence of individual honour to collective demands during the period of the Occupation.

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Pellegrino, Anna. “Il lavoro artigiano”. In Storia del lavoro in Italia. Il Novecento, 1896 – 1945, edited by Stefano Musso, 84 – 125. Rome: Lit, 2015. Pérez de Perceval Verde, Miguel, Ángel Pascual Martínez-Soto and Jose Joaquin García-Gómez. “Female workers in the Spanish mines, 1860 – 1936”. International Review of Social History. 65/2 (2020): 233 – 265. Pescarolo, Alessandra. “Productive and Reproductive Work: Uses and Abuses of an Old Dichotomy”. In What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present, edited by Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis, and Manuela Martini, 114 – 138. New York: Berghahn, 2018. Petmezas, Socrates D. “Patterns of Protoindustrialization in the Ottoman Empire: The Case of Eastern Thessaly”. Journal of European Economic History 19, no. 3 (1990): 575 – 603. Petmezas, Socrates D. “Responses to Agricultural Income Crisis in a Southeastern European Economy: Transatlantic Emigration from Greece (1894 – 1924)”. In Fra Spazio e Tempo. Studi in Onore di Luigi de Rosa III, edited by Ilaria Zilli, 427 – 487. Napoli: Società degli Storici Italiani-Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici-Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1995. Piqueras, José A., and Vicent Sanz Rozalén. “Traditional History and the new social history of labour in Spain”. In A social history of Spanish labour. New perspectives on class, politics and gender, edited by José A. Piqueras and Vicent Sanz Rozalén, 1 – 18. New York: Berghahn, 2007. Potamianos, Nikos. “From the People to a Class: The Petite Bourgeoisie of Athens, 1901 – 1923”. In Social Transformation and Mass Mobilization in the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean Cities, 1900 – 1923, edited by Andreas Lyberatos, 133 – 145. Heraklion: Crete University Press and Institute for Mediterranean Studies, 2013. Potamianos, Nikos. Οι νοικοκυραίοι. Μαγαζάτορες και βιοτέχνες στην Αθήνα, 1880 – 1925. Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2015. Potamianos, Nikos. “Regulation and the retailing community: the struggle over the establishment of the holiday of Sunday in Greece, 1872 – 1925”. History of Retailing and Consumption 3, no. 3 (2017): 168 – 183. Riginos, Michalis. Μορφές παιδικής εργασίας στη βιομηχανία και τη βιοτεχνία,1870 – 1940. Athens: ΙΑΕΝ – Κέντρο Νεοελληνικών Ερευνών ΕΙΕ, 1995. Riginos, Michalis. “Formes du travail des enfants dans l’industrie et l’artisanat en Grèce (XIXe-XXe siècles)”. In Enfants au travail. Attitudes des élites en Europe occidentale et méditerranéenne aux XIX e et XX e siècles, edited by Roland Caty, 59 – 70. Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2002. Rutar, Sabine. “Introduction: Beyond the Balkans” and “Towards a Southeast European History of Labour: Examples from Yugoslavia”. In Beyond the Balkans: Towards an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe, edited by idem, 323 – 354. Münster: LIT – Studies in South East Europe, 2013. Sarasúa, Carmen. “Technical innovations at the service of cheaper labour in pre-industrial Europe. The Enlightened agenda to transform the gender division of labour in silk manufacturing”. History and Technology 24, no. 1 (2008): 23 – 39. Sarasúa, Carmen. “Women’s work and structural change: occupational structure in eighteenth-century Spain”. The Economic History Review 72, no. 2 (2019): 481 – 509. Sarti, Raffaella. “Historians, social scientists, servants, and domestic workers: Fifty years of research on domestic and care work”. International Review of Social History 59, no. 2 (2014): 279 – 314.

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Sarti, Raffaella. “Toiling Women, Non-working Housewives, and Lesser Citizens: Statistical and Legal Constructions of Female Work and Citizenship in Italy”. In What is Work? Gender at the Crossroads of Home, Family, and Business from the Early Modern Era to the Present, edited by Raffaella Sarti, Anna Bellavitis and Manuela Martini, 188 – 225. New York: Berghahn, 2018. Schmid, Sanela, and Milovan Pisarri, eds. Forced Labour in Serbia. Producers, Consumers and Consequences of Forced Labour, 1941 – 1944. Belgrade: Center for Holocaust Research and Education, 2018. Seferiadis, Serapheim. “Η κρυφή γοητεία της ιδεολογίας: αντιθεωρητισμός και εκλεκτισμός στη μελέτη του εργατικού κινήματος”. Ελληνική Επιθεώρηση Πολιτικής Επιστήμης 8 (1996): 191 – 217. Seirinidou, Vaso. “The Mediterranean”. In European regions and boundaries. A conceptual history, edited by Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi, 79 – 99. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2017. Silva, Ribeiro da, and Helder Carvalhal. “Reconsidering the Southern European model: marital status, women’s work and labour relations in mid-eighteenth century Portugal”. Revista de Historia Econớmica 38, no. 1 (2020): 45 – 77. Sipahi, Ali. “Convict Labor in Turkey, 1936 – 1953: A Capitalist Corporation in the State?” International Labor and Working-Class History 90 (2016): 244 – 265. Stamatopoulos, Dimitris, ed. European Revolutions and the Ottoman Balkans: nationalism, violence and empire in the Long Nineteenth Century. London: I.B. Tauris, 2019. Stanziani, Alessandro. Eurocentrism and the politics of global history. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Streeck, Wolfgang. “The Sociology of Labor Markets and Trade Unions”. In The Handbook of Economic Sociology, edited by Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg, 254 – 283. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Thompson, Edward P. Customs in Common. London and New York: Penguin Books, 1991. Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Toffanin, Tania. Fabbriche Invisibili. Storie di donne, lavoranti a domicilio. Verona: Ombre corte, 2016. Tortella, Gabriel. “Patterns of economic retardation and recovery in south-western Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”. Economic History Review XLVII, no. 1 (1994): 1 – 21. Tsokhas, Kosmas. “War, industrialization and state intervention in the semiperiphery: the Australian case”. Review 19, no. 2 (1996): 197 – 223. Varela, Raquel. “State Policies Towards Precarious Work: Employment and Unemployment in Contemporary Portugal”. International Review of Social History 61 (S24) (2016): 263 – 284. Varela, Raquel, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden, eds. Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World Case Studies 1950 – 2010. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016. Vito, Christian G. de. “New perspectives on global labour history. Introduction”. Workers of the world I, no. 3 (2013): 7 – 29. Wall, Richard, Jean Rodin and Peter Laslett, eds. Family forms in historic Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

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Wallerstein, Immanuel. The modern world-system I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1974. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The modern world-system II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600 – 1750. New York: Academic Press, 1980. Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The relevance of the concept of semiperiphery to South Europe”. In Semiperipheral development. The politics of Southern Europe in the Twentieth Century, edited by Giovani Arrighi, 31 – 39. Beverly Hills, London and New Delhi: Sage, 1985. Wallerstein, Immanuel, Hale Decdeli and Resat Kasaba. “The incorporation of the Ottoman Empire into the world-economy”. In The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy, edited by Huri Islamoglu-Inan, 88 – 97. Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1987. Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Eurocentrism and its avatars: the dilemmas of social science”. Sociological Bulletin 46, no. 1 (1997): 21 – 39. Woolf, Stuart, ed. Domestic strategies: work and family in France and Italy, 1600 – 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1991. Woolf, Stuart, ed. Espaces et familles dans l’Europe du Sud à l’âge moderne. Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1993. Yannitsiotis, Yannis. “Social history in Greece: new perspectives”. East Central Europe 34 – 35 (2007 – 2008): 101 – 130. Zanden, Jan Luiten van. The long road to the industrial revolution. The European economy in a global perspective, 1000 – 1800. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009. Zimmermann, Susan. “Eastern Europe”. Handbook Global History of Work, edited by Karin Hofmeester and Marcel van der Linden, 131 – 155. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2018. Zucca Micheletto, Beatrice. “Épouses, mères et propriétaires: artisanes à Turin à l’époque moderne”. Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire 38 (2013): 241 – 252. Zucca Micheletto, Beatrice. “Only unpaid labour force? Women’s and girls’ work and property in family business in early modern Italy”. The History of the Family 19, no. 3 (2014): 323 – 340.

Part I Small Business, Small Property and Labour

Stavroula Verrarou

Chapter 1 Ownership and Labour in Rural Greece during the Nineteenth Century Abstract: Small ownership remains an essential element in the understanding of the nineteenth century Greek society. Yet, this view overlooks the extent of large property and its social implications, and also underestimates class division. As a result, wage-labour analysis was neglected. However, the study of the commercial agriculture and seasonal migration of thousands of workers suggests a different image of the “quiet” rural world. This study draws upon archival research of notary and private sources to track the rarely visible labour force in the agricultural sector. On one hand, hired labour was often disguised behind sharecropping agreements; on the other, the fragile social relations between workers and landowners were barely mentioned in the press. The financial crisis at the end of the century heavily affected the large property reshaping the social map. Small ownership survived thanks to the immigrant remittances from abroad and substantially contributed to the nationalist ambitions of the Greek State. Henceforth, it would prevail over any alternative narrative about social structure.

Introduction The historical perception on the structure of the Greek society has been formed through the prism of the universality of small ownership¹ since the birth of the Greek State. According to a brief historical account, the peasants took advantage of the Greek Independence War (1821– 1828) and occupied prior Muslim lands which they traditionally cultivated. These lands with the name “Nationals” passed on the possession of the Greek State in the aftermath of the War. The gov-

 As Socrates Petmezas stresses in his analytical article about the Greek historiography on the rural world: “[the domination of the small ownership family tenure system] is the most unshakeable belief in the recent Greek social and economic historiography” in “Η ιστορία του αγροτικού κόσμου από τον Μεσοπόλεμο ως σήμερα. Ακυρώσεις και μετατοπίσεις”. In Ιστοριογραφία της νεότερης και σύγχρονης Ελλάδας 1833 – 2002: Πρακτικά Δ΄ Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου Ιστορίας, vol. 2, ed. Paschalis Kitromilides and Triantafyllos Sklavenitis (Athens: Κέντρο Νεοελληνικών Ερευνών, 2004), 201– 219: 214. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-004

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ernment, with the consent of the native elite, tolerated the occupation of the National Land. The land reform, following fifty years after the Revolution (1871), implemented the distribution of the National Land in small plots and, hence, impeded irrevocably the formation of big property. Thus, a society of pettyowners emerged.² Apparently, in such a society, wage labour issues are of minor interest to the researchers of the nineteenth century. Hired labour is viewed strictly as a seasonal supplement to the family work, especially during the season of field preparation or that of harvest. On the other part, in the domain of big property, landowners showed their preference to the sharecropping system, denying direct exploitation and its benefits, namely the increase of control over the production. Even in the case of the large raisin vineyards, the widespread practice of sharecropping is not only interpreted as the triumph of the family work over wage labour but also as another proof of the small-farmer character of the rural society.³ These views are supported further by the general belief of no social unrest in the Greek countryside; however, close examination reveals many cases of social conflict in local level and shakes the myth of the ideal petty-owners society.⁴ For example, under the circumstances of political turbulence and anarchy during the period of Messovasileia (1862– 1864), many peasants having disputed the contemporary state of affairs attempted to gain property rights on public or private land. On the other hand, original historical research has demonstrated that the local elites were not indifferent to land concentration, especially in the section of the cash-crop cultivation. In the light of new findings, Alexis Franghiadis disput See, for example, the views of two prominent Greek historians with significant impact on the contemporary academic generation: Vassilis Panayiotopoulos, “Η βιομηχανική επανάσταση και η Ελλάδα, 1832– 1871”, in Εκσυγχρονισμός και Βιομηχανική Επανάσταση στα Βαλκάνια τον 19ο αιώνα, ed. V. Panayiotopoulos (Athens: Θεμέλιο, 1999, 1st ed. 1980), 216 – 235; George Dertilis, “Terre, paysans et pouvoir économique (Grèce, XVIIIe-XXe siècle)”, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 47, no. 2 (1992): 273 – 291; and of the same author, “Terre, paysans et pouvoir politique (Grèce, XVIIIe – XXe siècle)”, Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 48, no. 1 (1993): 85 – 107. For a diametrically opposite view see Christos Hadziiossif, “Δημοκρατία και πελατειακές σχέσεις. Τρεις πρόσφατες αναλύσεις της ελληνικής πολιτικής του 19ου αιώνα”, Μνήμων 16 (1994): 167– 197; idem, “Class structure and class antagonism in 19th century Greece”, in Greek society in the making, 1863 – 1913, ed. Philip Carabott (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 3 – 17.  Alexis Franghiadis, “Peasant Agriculture and Export Trade: Currant viticulture in Southern Greece 1830 – 1893”, Phd Thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 1990, 220 – 248.  Two decades ago, Seraphim Seferiades, exploring the concept of contentious politics in the interwar rural world, disputed this myth and associated the peasant militancy with the urban labour movement; see “Small Rural Ownership, Subsistence, Agriculture, and Peasant Protest in Interwar Greece: The Agrarian Question Recast”, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 17 (1999): 277– 323.

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ed the peasant and small-property friendly character of the National Land distribution laws (1871). As he stated, “the Reform aimed to the liberalisation of the land market and the reinforcement of the private property – and not specifically the small property”.⁵ During the nineteenth century, increased European demand for agricultural products placed new incentives on commercial farming that had far-reaching consequences for rural society. It brought both new opportunities of wealth for landowners and critical changes in the labour market. The once fragmented, unpredictable and uncertain labour force of peasants who descended from the mountains to the plains was replaced by a regular, more organised and steady labour market not only ready to meet the needs of commercial farming but also heavily depended on the latter. Working as a labourer was not simply a way for the peasant to supplement his meager income but a means to survive and maintain his small insufficient property and hence his position as independent producer. In this chapter, I will attempt to explore and present the interdependence of rural labour market and big property. I will also argue that only at the turn of the century, when the closing of the French market to the imported Greek raisin took place (1892), leading to a commercial and financial crisis, can we talk about the beginnings of the retreat of big property and the predominance of small ownership. The arguments presented here stem mainly from my dissertation research in the region of Trifylia (province of Messinia in South-West Peloponnese).⁶ One of the principal questions of the research was how the land tenure system was formed in a cash-crop region and the possible changes the distribution of the National Land brought to the ratio of big to small property. The study of the land cessions yielded poor results as far as land concentration is concerned. Nevertheless, the notary archives indicated the presence of an important group of vineyards owners whose properties exceeded one hundred stremmata (ten hectares) each. They were all residents of the nearby agro-town of Kyparissia but were not all strictly landowners in profession. They practiced various professions such as that of a merchant, doctor, state or army officer and others. Many of them had

 Alexis Franghiadis, “Πολιτική εξουσία και σχέσεις γαιοκτησίας στην Ελλάδα, 19ος – 20ος αιώνας”, in Θεωρητικές αναζητήσεις και εμπειρικές έρευνες: Πρακτικά διεθνούς συνεδρίου οικονομικής και κοινωνικής ιστορίας, Ρέθυμνο, 10 – 13. 12. 2008, ed. Socrates Petmezas, Gelina Harlaftis, Andreas Lyberatos and Katerina Papakonstantinou (Athens: Εκδόσεις Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής Πανεπιστημίου Κρήτης – εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2012), 119 – 135.  Stavroula Verrarou, “Από τον κτηματία στον αγρότη. Οικονομικοί και κοινωνικοί μετασχηματισμοί στην επαρχία Τριφυλίας τον 19ο αιώνα”, Phd Thesis, University of Crete, Rethymno, 2014.

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been involved in moneylending and formed the local economic and political elite. The land was a valuable asset which, together with their other activities, shaped their relationship with the peasants and offered them wealth, esteem and local power. Τhe main section is divided into three parts. In the first, I will attempt to trace big property in its various forms. In the second part, I will try to trace the “unseen” labourers in the Greek countryside and define the role of the sharecropping system in the big vineyards. In the third part, I will argue that the widespread view of high wages in the Greek countryside is disputable and attempt to shed some light on the relations between the landowners and the Greek labourers.

Landowners. Continuity and Change Even before the end of the Ottoman rule, many Greek landowners had responded keenly to the foreign demand for raisin by expanding the viticulture with the use of hired labour. In 1805, the traveler Martin William Leake noticed the coexistence of the traditional “metayage” in the corn-fields on the outskirts of Patras and that of hired labour in raisin vineyards. “Patra furnishes the example of the most expensive as well as the poorest mode of agriculture”, he wrote,⁷ echoing the ideas of his countryman Adam Smith about the supremacy of the “English system” of fixed rents and wage labour. After the establishment of the Greek State, “metayage” or sharecropping continued to be the dominant form of exploitation for the middle and big property. Large estates landowners preferred the regime of emphyteusis, the long or perpetual leases of lands. Tenants were committed to improving the land and giving a fixed percentage of the annual produce [kanōn] to the owner of the land. In return they enjoyed lifelong and hereditary rights on the cultivated land.⁸ Such agreements persisted in big property zones such as Attiki, Thebe, Euboea and, later annexed to the Greek State provinces, the Ionian Islands

 Martin Leake, Travels in the Morea, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1830), 145.  Emphyteusis entails long-term or perpetual divided property rights. It is generally considered as a feudal, backward remnant. Notwithstanding, recent studies acknowledge flexibility and adaptability to this specific practice. See, for example, the informative introductory chapter of Gérard Béaur, Rosa Congost and Pablo F. Luna in the collective volume Agrarian Change and Imperfect Property: Emphyteusis in Europe (16th to 19th Centuries), ed. Rosa Congost and Pablo F. Luna (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 11– 38.

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(1864), Thessaly (1881) and Arta (1881).⁹ It was also present in certain regions of Peloponnese, mainly in the midland, in estates established before or right after the birth of the new State, private or ecclesiastical. For example, in Olympia and upper Messinia, large estates were formed when members of the local elite of the same provinces or of nearby Arcadia acquired former Muslim çiftliks at the end of the second Ottoman conquest (1715 – 1821).¹⁰ In the post-revolutionary era, a group of new landowners, often military leaders, emerged. They were either granted parcels of National Land from the State for their services during the Greek Independence War or they purchased land making use of the reform laws during King Otto’s reign (1832– 1862). The Maniot family of Mavromichalis, for instance, was granted extended lands in Lykovouno Laconias.¹¹ Similarly, the brothers and military officers, Anagnostis and Adam Papatsoris, acquired approximately fifty hectares of land in the village of Agrilia in Trifylia.¹² Another military officer, Leon, benefited from King Otto’s laws and obtained more than one hundred hectares in Achaia.¹³ In Messinia, part of the large estate (over two hundred hectares) which belonged to Alexandros Koumoundouros, minister of Finance Finance and Prime Minister, and his father-in-law Perrotis, was formed likewise.¹⁴

 After the birth of the Greek State, the former tenants of the çiftliks became independent sharecroppers. Although owners had the right theoretically to evict them from their land, in fact, they could not easily do so. In 1874, a new Civil Code Plan was meant to define the rights of landowners and tenants but it was not implemented, Thanassis Kalafatis, Αγροτική Πίστη και Οικονομικός Μετασχηματισμός στη Β. Πελοπόννησο, vol. 2 (Athens: Μορφωτικό Ίδρυμα Εθνικής Τραπέζης, 1990 – 1992), 81– 98.  Famous but short-lived was the large property of Panayotis Benakis in Upper Messinia, Giles Veinstein, “Le patrimoine foncier de Panayotis Benakis koçabasi de Kalamata”, in “Raiyyet Rusumu Essays presented to Halil Inalcik on his Seventieth Birthday by his Colleagues and Students”, Journal of Turkish Studies 11 (1987): 211– 233. See also Panayotis Papatsonis, Απομνημονεύματα από των χρόνων της τουρκοκρατίας μέχρι της βασιλείας του Γεωργίου (Athens: Βιβλιοθήκη Γενικών Αρχείων του Κράτους, 1960); Martha Pylia, “Les notables moréotes, fin du XVIIIe début du XIX siècle: fonctions et comportements”, Phd Thesis, Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, 2001; Athanasios Th. Photopoulos, Οι Κοτζαμπάσηδες της Πελοποννήσου κατά τη δεύτερη τουρκοκρατία 1715 – 1821 (Athens: Ηρόδοτος, 2005).  Christos Loukos, “Η ενσωμάτωση μιας παραδοσιακής αρχοντικής οικογένειας στο νέο ελληνικό κράτος: Η περίπτωση των Μαυρομιχαλέων”, Τα Ιστορικά 2 (1984): 283 – 296.  Verrarou, “Από τον κτηματία”, 307.  Stathis Koutrouvidis, “Έγγειες σχέσεις και κοινωνική κυριαρχία. Πολιτικές και πολιτιστικές διαστάσεις. Η περίπτωση του νομού Αχαϊοήλιδος στο 19ο αιώνα”, Phd Thesis, University of Crete, Rethymno, 2007, 235 – 242.  Elias N. Stroumbos, Απάντησις εις την εν τη Συνελεύσει απολογίαν του Αλ. Κουμουνδούρου, πρώην επί των Οικονομικών Υπουργού (Athens, 1863).

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The National Land, i. e. the former Muslim properties and afterward property of the Greek State, attracted the landless peasantry and threatened the existence of these estates. The fact that the owners managed to keep the cultivators and enticed others to come happened mainly thanks to the comparative advantages of the land (such as soil fertility, irrigation possibility and satisfactory rates of cereal productivity) and the introduction of commercial crops. In upper Messinia, Panagiotis Papatsonis, “çiftlik” holder,¹⁵ boasts in his memoirs that he was the first to take vine branches from the vineyard of the Ottoman Aliaga in Kyparissia (capital of Trifylia province) and implant them in his property.¹⁶ Similarly, in the “çiftliks” in the lowlands of Olympia, the raisin vineyard coexisted with the cultivation of subsistence crops.¹⁷ Furthermore, the rent of pastures and the exploitation of the forests yielded a steady income to the owners. Also, certain governmental policies were beneficial for the landowners. In 1880, “dekati”, a tax in kind which pertained in the agricultural produce, was replaced by the monetary tax of the draft animals. The new tax of liberalist¹⁸ Trikoupis favoured the big owners who could transfer the tax on the cultivators and enjoy, thus, tax immunity.¹⁹ These factors combined with the limited availability of the National Land in the “çiftliks” area permitted

 The term “çiftlik” is usually associated with the big private commercial farms of the late Ottoman period. I use it anachronistically in this paper in order to describe the big estates of Ottoman origins in the newborn Greek State. Nonetheless, the remarks of Sakis Dimitriadis about the inappropriateness of the term in the post-Revolutionary period are substantiated; Sakis Dimitriadis, “Οι μεγαλοκτηματίες της Εύβοιας του 19ου αιώνα”, Phd Thesis, National Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, 2018, 20 – 21.  Papatsonis, Απομνημονεύματα, 126.  In 1930 Panayotis Georgakopoulos from Kyparissia still possessed a part of the “çiftlik” of Risovo (Olympia) implanted with cereals and raisin, which he had received as dowry fifty years earlier; Βερράρου, “Από τον κτηματία”, 305.  For a short account on the reception of the liberalism in Greece and its peculiar and rather controversial relation with Trikoupis see Pandeleimon Hionidis, “Greek responses to Cobden”, in Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Richard Cobden bicentenary essays, ed. Anthony Howe and Simon Morgan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 161– 173.  Dekati was a tax-in-kind equal to one tenth of the annual gross agricultural produce. About its replacement by the tax on the draft animals see Manolis Perakis, “Η αντικατάσταση της δεκάτης από το φόρο των αροτριώντων ζώων. Η πρώτη φορολογική αλλαγή του Χαρίλαου Τρικούπη”, in Ο Χαρίλαος Τρικούπης και η εποχή του. Πολιτικές επιδιώξεις και κοινωνικές συνθήκες, ed. Kaiti Aroni-Tsichli and Lydia Tricha (Athens: Παπαζήση, 2000), 275 – 292. Dertilis, however, stressed that the decrease of the taxes on the agriculture during the last fifth of the nineteenth century and onwards was credited to the timeless Greek patronage system and the increased negotiation power of the rural class; Giorgos Dertilis, Ατελέσφοροι ή Τελεσφόροι; Φόροι και εξουσία στο νεοελληνικό κράτος (Athens: Αλεξάνδρεια, 1993).

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up to a degree sustainability of the system. However, during the second half of the nineteenth century, this kind of property was declining. One of the main reasons was the dispute over the property rights among peasants and owners. The quarrels for land possession often led to lengthy judicial debates.²⁰ On the other part, “expensive mode”, the use of hired labour, gradually gained ground over the years, mainly after the middle of the century, since the prospect of high profits motivated the landowners to expand the viticulture at the expense of the subsistence crop cultivation. Capital owners preferred to invest their money in large vineyards and employ “new” modes of exploitation. The investment in the vineyards from big owners and small farmers reshaped the natural and social space. Within fifteen years (from 1875 to 1890) the cultivated vine acreage tripled: from twenty-three to sixty-seven thousand hectares.²¹ Particularly in the regions connected early to the foreign markets, the formation of the large plantations dating back to the end of the Ottoman era had greatly expanded before the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Such regions were Achaia, Korinth, Aigio, Pyrgos and part of Trifylia. A local report at the end of the century asserts that at least the two-fifths of the vineyards in Trifylia belonged to non-peasant owners and depended entirely on hired labour for their cultivation.²² Similarly, in Ilia, according to rough estimations by Alexis Franghiadis, the share of the big owners was more than half of the entire surface covered with raisin vineyards.²³ From a different point of view, in his less detailed study on the National land distribution in Gastouni (Ilia), Dimitris Psychogios refers briefly to examples of large estates in the region, speaking of “Corinthian raisin capitalism”.²⁴ With this in mind, it is no wonder that Western Peloponnese, the main raisin producing area of the Greek State, presented the second highest rates of demographic development after Attiki province. On the western coast of Peloponnese the population increased, while it declined in the central and eastern parts as people (and capitals) migrated to Athens or abroad.  Koutrouvidis, “Έγγειες σχέσεις”, 235 – 242; Verrarou, “Από τον κτηματία”, 165 – 166, 195 – 196, 544; S. Dimitriadis, “Οι μεγαλοκτηματίες”, 529, 551– 565.  Socrates Petmezas, Η ελληνική αγροτική οικονομία κατά τον 19ο αιώνα. Η περιφερειακή διάσταση (Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2003), 132– 133.  Σταφιδική Επιτροπή Κυπαρισσίας, Σταφιδικά. Περί παρακρατήσεως του πλεονάσματος (Filiatra: 1894), 6 – 7.  Franghiadis, “Peasant agriculture”, 195 – 196.  Psychogios adopting the chayanovian view of peasantry underestimates the importance of big landowners. Nonetheless, he confined his research to land cessions and did not consult the land transfer registry as Franghiadis did. Dimitris Psychogios, Το ζήτημα των εθνικών γαιών (Athens: Αγροτική Τράπεζα Ελλάδος, 1994), 219 – 221.

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In short, big property in its various forms is an “endemic” and not strange element to the Greek social fabric. Its impact is significant even in the regions considered to be the fief of petty ownership like Peloponnese. Notwithstanding, the contemporaneous spokesmen and writers who admired the rich, capitalistic agriculture of Western Europe, but exorcised the social divisions of the Western society, consciously underestimated the big property. Konstantinos Karapanos, a member of the Greek parliament and a big landowner himself, gave an explanation on this in 1887: “The properties cultivated with the system of the big farming [μεγάλη καλλιέργεια], under a central and more technical administration, are very rare in Greece. Small farming [μικρή καλλιέργεια] is applied to both big and small property”.²⁵ Thus, having in mind the elaborate capitalistic enterprise of Western Europe, many spokesmen of the nineteenth century underestimated the importance of big property in Greece which employed the sharecropping system and used family work for its cultivation. Even more, the size of the Greek farms could by no means meet the standards of the big western farms. Still, according to another big landowner of the time, the kind of production was critical for the definition of the big property: In cereal producing regions, where the gross income per stremma [0,1 hectare] is usually 60 – 100 okades²⁶ of wheat every two years, i. e. only 15 drachmas per year, a farm of 300 stremmata (i.e. thirty hectares) is considered as small property. On the contrary, in the places where tobacco, vines or raisins are cultivated, a farm of 30 stremmata [3 hectares] exceeds the limits of the small property…²⁷

The economic and political connotations of large property are even more significant. For example, the most important financial institution of the time, the National Bank, kept its doors hermetically sealed to the peasantry but wide open to the big landowners and the middle vineyards holders. Even more, having significant property was a prerequisite for gaining social esteem and fulfilling political ambitions. The peasants felt that their interests were interwoven with the political candidate-owner [κτηματίας]. Hence, once the landowner was elected, the electors expected him – if not demanded – to represent their rights strongly. In the commercial crops regions, evidence relating to the peasantry politics during the nineteenth century indicates a possibly larger impact of the central

 Εφημερίς των συνεδριάσεων της Βουλής, Session ΝΒ΄, 7. 5.1887.  One oka equals 1,128 kilograms.  R. Dimitriades, Ο Γεωργός (Athens: Σύλλογος προς διάδοσιν ωφελίμων βιβλίων, 1901), 48 – 49.

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politics on voters’ behavior. On the contrary, in the zone of emphyteusis the local patronage system seems to have been more powerful.²⁸ Perhaps, Sotiris Sotiropoulos, minister of Finance and big vineyard owner himself, had in mind this heterogeneity when he was suggesting that his tax reform bill should be implemented primarily in the provinces where the local political heads and the wealthiest citizens could pursue the implementation of the tax “honestly and conscientiously”. Elsewhere, he added, the old tax of dekati would continue to stay in force “until the local heads there become sensible”.²⁹

Sharecroppers and Wage Workers In the cash-crop zone, the landowners were principally concerned with securing the necessary labour for the cultivation. Given the imperfect conditions of the commodities and labour markets, the owners often adopted a flexible form of sharecropping.³⁰ The agreements were short-term and usually annual, while the vineyards ceded for cultivation were much larger than the usual size that a family could cultivate by its own means. In the region of Kyparissia, per instance, according to my estimations, the average size of the vineyards ceded to sharecropping exceeded the size of three hectares.³¹ In the same region, the status of the sharecropper in large properties was often similar to that of the superintendent paid in kind or – less often – that of the tenant.³² The owners of the large property preferred the kladouchos [κλαδούχος], a cultivator who was skilled in raisin vine cultivation. The Kladouchos, usually with origins from the Ionian Islands, was involved personally in the cultivation and was in charge of supervising the workers and assuring that each

 S. Dimitriadis, “Οι μεγαλοκτηματίες”, 357– 478.  Εφημερίς των Συνεδριάσεων της Βουλής, Session ΝΑ΄, 11. 3.1871.  Contracts verify the triumph of sharecropping. Out of three hundred and fifty-four contracts collected from the region of Kyparissia during the period 1860 – 1893, three hundred and sixteen were sharecropping agreements; Verrarou, “Από τον κτηματία”, 252– 269. See also Franghiadis, “Peasant agriculture”, 223 – 224.  According to a sample of one hundred and forty-five contracts in which the size of the vineyards is stated; Verrarou, “Από τον κτηματία”, 260 – 261.  As Jon S. Cohen and Francesco L. Galassi note: “…the generic term mezzadria (sharecropping) encompasses a multitude of contracts, some of which conform more or less to the conventional notion of share tenancy while others more closely resemble fixed rent contracts at one extreme and wage labour agreements at the other. In other words, unlike Gertrude Stein’s rose, a sharecropper was not always a sharecropper.”; “Sharecropping and productivity: “feudal residues” in Italian agriculture, 1911”, Economic History Review XLIII, no. 4 (1990): 646 – 656.

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task would be completed efficiently. He was compensated for his work with a percentage of the gross produce, from 40 to 50 %, depending on the maturity and productivity of the plantation but also the capacity of the owner to provide the necessary loans for the cultivation. If the landowners could not meet the expenses, the town merchants supplied the loans with high interest in return. Apparently, the largest part of the provided loans was spent almost entirely on wages. The landowners agreed to share a part of the profits, as well of the loss, in order to mitigate the high cost of the cultivation and the instability of the commerce. On the other hand, through sharecropping, they expected to minimise the cultivation expenses and control the labour force needed. The following example illustrates some of the duties of the kladouchos-sharecropper. In a contract dated in 1884,³³ a landowner and former mayor of Kyparissia ceded a vineyard property of twelve hectares to a kladouchos with origins from the Ionian island of Zante. The duration of the agreement was two years and the cultivator would receive from the owner an annual loan of four thousand drachmas at various stages of the cultivation. One quarter of the loan would be given during the task of hoeing. The sharecropper was to follow the instructions of the owner’s foreman in order to lower the cost of labour: “[the cultivator] should act in such a way that the labour [hoeing] will not cost more than two and a half day wages per stremma”. The sharecropper would be remunerated for his work with two-fifths of the raisin produce, but only after he had fully paid back the loan. Through his lending capacity, the landowner sought to control the final produce. The study of the contracts yields many similar agreements, more or less detailed. The landowners used to concede their vineyards undivided to one or two cultivators under the system of sharecropping. However, in much larger estates, sharecropping had kept its familial character. At the borders between Trifylia and Olympia, a lawyer and owner of forty hectares of vineyards and arable land combined the use of hired labour with the practice of sharecropping. Initially, the task of the implantation of vines was assigned to Tsakones workers and after its completion the owner divided the planted land into small plots (up to two hectares) and ceded them, with plots of arable land in some cases, to landless sharecroppers for two or three years. He also provided them with a house to stay and the necessary pair of oxen.³⁴ Possibly, empirical investigation in Olympia would demonstrate a different socio-economic environment from Trifylia.

 1056 (1884), notary of Kyparissia: Περτουτζής, General State Archives of Greece-Archives of Messinia.  Verrarou, “Από τον κτηματία”, 309 – 313.

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Meanwhile, in the latter, the strong presence of small ownership favoured seasonal labour out of the household, and in Olympia the prevalence of large estates combined with the demographic pressure in a mountainous area created a landless peasantry. This could explain the significant number of servants in the town of Kyparissia with origins from Olympia.³⁵ Despite the considerable presence of the sharecroppers in the contracts, only rarely can we trace day workers. However, hired labour is often implicitly witnessed in the sources. Thus, in periods of labour intensification such as that of hoeing and harvest, coins and small banknotes meant to pay the wages entirely disappeared from the local market. In the correspondence of the National Bank branch in Kyparissia, managers of the branch often complained that “[coins and small banknotes] have been transferred by the workers to the mountainous regions”.³⁶ Indeed, the mountainous communities constituted the main man pool for the labour-consuming plains. Ditch diggers, for example, had origins in the villages on the foot of mountain Parnonas, between Arcadia and Laconia. The region is known as “Tsakonia”³⁷ and “Tsakones” workers were the most preferable for the task of hoeing the vines, but also clearing the wild and preparing the land for planting. In the late Ottoman Greece, the name “Tsakones” became a synonym for “ditch-diggers”.³⁸ Tsakones depended on the seasonal migration and, hence, a large number identified themselves as workers [ergates]. In the census of 1879, almost two thousand workers [ergates] were registered in the province of Kynouria, part of Tsakonia, becoming the second largest registered working population after that of industrial Attiki.³⁹ During the nineteenth century the name “Tsakones” was used to describe the unskilled workers, destined to do any kind of “socially inferior” hard task like that of street cleaner and refuse collector.⁴⁰

 Ibid., 277.  See several letters of various dates, indicatively: 20 February 1878, 20 January 1879, 26 January and 10 March 1881, 8 February, 19 March, 28 May, 31 August, 25 September, 23 December 1883, 8 March 1886, 8 April, 23 August, 23 October 1891; “Αλληλογραφία έμμισθων υποκαταστημάτων προς το Λογιστικό Τμήμα”, Historical Archives of National Bank of Greece.  Tsakonia is a region in the South-Eastern part of the province Kynouria of Arkadia whose residents share distinct cultural characteristics; see indicatively the site www.tsaconianarchives.gr. In the sources of the nineteenth century, the name Tsakones was applied to all the workers with origins of the broader area of the Parnonas villages, including certain villages of Laconia.  Spyros Asdrachas, “Αρδεύσεις και καλλιέργειες στις ελληνικές περιοχές της Οθωμανικής Αυτοκρατορίας”, in Οικονομία και νοοτροπίες (Athens: Ερμής, 1988), 101– 122.  Στατιστική της Ελλάδoς. Πληθυσμός του 1879 (Athens: Τυπογραφείο Σ. Κ. Βλαστού, 1881).  Επαρχιακή Επιθεώρησις, 22.12.1878.

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Workers of the same origin were organised in groups and travelled from place to place for several months, like other professional groups we know of, such as those of stone masons, ceramicists and charcoal burners.⁴¹ A private agreement between a merchant, landowner and deputy in the Greek parliament from Kyparissia and the head of a group of twelve Tsakones, dated in 1872, provides a rare piece of evidence.⁴² The agreement was drawn up in Tripolis, a town in the centre of the mountainous Peloponnese. Further research could probably show if an informal labour market was formed there before the descent of the workers to the coast. The merchant would employ the workers for three and a half months (from late November to early March). The workers ought to be healthy and robust like their representative and work from dawn to dusk. Each man would get, apart from a daily portion of beans, olive oil and wine, 2.9 drachmas per day or three hundred and ten drachmas for the whole period of work. Although this remuneration is much less than what is generally believed to be the Greek workers’ wages, it should be noted that this amount was double the average annual nominal wages of an agricultural servant or equal to the annual income of a half hectare raisin plantation. In other words, it was a substantial income and not just a supplement to what the cultivation of the poor mountainous land could offer. Besides, the security of everyday work for three months, including food and perhaps accommodation, was well welcomed. Certainly, the large farms in Greece (with few exceptions, perhaps) were not enterprises with accounting books as practiced in the western capitalist agriculture, yet most owners did keep records of their payments and transactions. In the fragmentary private archive of the above-mentioned merchant from Kyparissia, a receipt of wage payment dated in 1881 for a three-month employment of Tsakones workers indicates that it was a customary practice on his part. Over time, the demographic changes affected the labour market. Although the migration of the workers from the mountains to the plains would never stop, in the 1880s, the traditional enclaves of labourers in the Eastern Peloponnese had lost a considerable part of their most vigorous and active members. The comparison between the electoral lists of 1872 and 1886 in the municipality of Oinounta in Laconia, part of the broader area of Tsakonia, showed that within fifteen years the communities there had lost almost half of their male adult population. Many of them had moved permanently to the raisin regions for a better

 Christos G. Konstantinopoulos, Οι παραδοσιακοί χτίστες της Πελοποννήσου (Athens: Μέλισσα, 1983).  Verrarou, “Από τον κτηματία”, 288 – 291.

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living. Thus, in 1886, in the same municipality, almost 30 % of the male adults of the village Vamvakou had claimed permanent residency in the town of Gastouni in the rich raisin-region of Ilia.⁴³ Consequently, the demographic rise in the Western Peloponnese along with the distribution of the National Land (1871) and the exhaustion of the most fertile lands resulted in the formation of a local underemployed population depending on wages to supplement its insufficient income.

“Expensive” Labour and “Greedy” Workers In fact, wages were critical for the sustainability of the mountainous communities. Since they were deficient in cereals, they depended heavily on the migration and the money influx from the workers of the plains. It should be added here that the cereal protectionist laws had already been abolished in 1859, facilitating the supply of the market with imported wheat.⁴⁴ Why then is it commonplace in Greek historiography that the cost of labour was very high? The usual explanation given for this is the predominance of the small ownership in combination with the man shortage. However, one should notice the special features of labour demand in the cash-crop regions (seasonality, inflexibility) and their impact on labour cost.⁴⁵ Although it is ascertained that wages increased during the nineteenth century, it is doubtful if the contemporaneous complaints about the extremely high wages in the Greek countryside were justified. According to the data from Trifylia, the average nominal annual wages for the low paid job of the unskilled agricultural servant doubled between the sixties and the beginning of the nineties.⁴⁶ Similar trends have been observed in other professional groups, such as that of masons.⁴⁷ The rise was due to the development of the newborn Greek State which had begun from scratch, and did

 Εκλογικοί Κατάλογοι του δήμου Οινούντος των ετών 1872 και 1886, Συλλογή Βλαχογιάννη, General State Archives of Greece-Central Service (GSAG-CS), http://arxeiomnimon.gak.gr.  Alexandros Mansolas, Πολιτειογραφικαί Πληροφορίαι περί Ελλάδος (Athens: Καραβία Δ.Ν., 1980, 1st ed. 1867), 57– 58.  Christos Hadziiossif, Η Γηραιά Σελήνη. Η βιομηχανία στην ελληνική οικονομία, 1830 – 1940 (Athens: Θεμέλιο, 1993), 32– 33. For an updated account on the labour issues see Leda Papastefanaki, “Μισθωτή εργασία”, in Η ανάπτυξη της ελληνικής οικονομίας τον 19ο αιώνα, ed. Kostas Kostis and Socrates Petmezas (Athens: Αλεξάνδρεια, 2006), 252– 291.  Verrarou, “Από τον κτηματία”, 275 – 280.  Ibid., 285 – 287.

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not necessarily mirror any impressive changes on the level of the workers’ life. The job of the servant remained low paid and undesirable. In the early eighties when Trikoupis launched his ambitious plan of the State‘s modernisation, wages – and living cost, as well – reached a peak. However, the volatility in the raisin commerce and the monetary crisis which occurred in 1884 led to the freezing of wages. The dependence of the agriculture on manpower and the lack of mechanisation prohibited their substantial drop. Evidently, wages gained in importance for the peasantry as the raisin commerce was slipping into uncertainty. In late 1880s, a violent episode between the locals and a group of immigrant workers demonstrates not only the hostility of the local workers to their foreign “competitors” but also their fragile social relation with the landowners. Indeed, in 1889, the vineyards owners of the Northern Peloponnese, seeking cheap labour, welcomed the Ottoman workers (known as “Gekides”) who crossed the Turkish-Greek borders every year to find work.⁴⁸ In a newspaper’s correspondence from Patras dated in the same year we read the following: New help is coming for the raisin vineyards owners, offered from Gekides, who invade the raisin producing regions every year and this year are more than ever. Their invasion had as result the fall of the wages to two drachmas. We think, though, that the authorities ought to protect them from the attacks of local workers, who accuse them – not without justification – of the wages fall.⁴⁹

Only a few days after, those fears came true. Twenty Ottoman workers were involved in a fight with villagers from Aigio, one of the most important raisin producing regions, and some were shot by the locals. The episode was reported briefly in the Athenian press whose correspondents from Patras expressed their worry for “the excellent [lamproi] workers from the East”.⁵⁰ Elsewhere, a local paper in Patras featured an article titled “Gekides and production”,⁵¹ which replied to a former article hosted in an Athenian newspaper. As it was impossible to trace the Athenian newspaper, Ι cite here only the article from Patras. According to it, the correspondent of the newspaper in Athens estimated that the increasing arrival of the foreign workers was disadvantageous to the country for two main reasons. Firstly, it harmed the interests of the local workers and, secondly, the foreigners consumed little and transferred their money abroad. Con After 1887 and the slowdown of the public works, the number of the foreign workers in the vineyards increased; Franghiadis, “Peasant agriculture”, 244– 246.  Αθηναϊκή, 24.11.1889.  Ακρόπολις, 27.11.1889; Αθηναϊκή, 30.11.1889.  Επί τα πρόσσω, 30.11.1889.

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versely, in the article in the newspaper of Patras, the local workers were accused of greediness (they were demanding a daily wage of seven drachmas according to the writer), “quasi-conspiracy” and intention to undermine the production. However, thanks to the presence of the Ottoman workers, wages returned to the “normal level”. The article ended with the wish that the completion of the new railway from Piraeus to Larissa would facilitate the transport of the Ottoman industrious population to the Greek countryside. In contrast with the correspondent of the Athenian newspaper, which advocates the rights of the local workers from a rather economic-patriotic view,⁵² the analyst of Patras’ paper echoes the arguments of the landowners-employers and their social contempt towards the “greedy” and “ungrateful” local workers. Only three years after the episode mentioned above, the commercial and economic crisis put an end to the “imported workers”. Thus, instead of carrying the Ottoman workers, the railway would transfer the Greek soldiers to the battlefront during the Balkan Wars (1912– 1913).

Conclusions In the nineteenth century, the quick expansion of the raisin cultivation as a response first to the English trade demand for dried fruits and then to the French (after 1878) affected inevitably the agricultural economy and social relations in a broad geographical range. The external demand stimulated the interest of the capital owners to invest in the agricultural sector. The new vineyards expanded mainly on the wild or pastures, which meant the extended use of labour on the land. The formation and the cultivation of the vineyards resulted in the steady offer of seasonal work on an annual basis to thousands of Greek workers. The conditions had changed noticeably since the middle of the nineteenth century, when writers who were also members of an enlightened landowners’ minority described the seasonal workers as an ignorant mass, seeking wages occasionally, mainly when the yields failed and the price of the bread increased.⁵³ The vineyards reshaped the social relations in the Greek countryside and augmented the interdependence between landowners and workers.  After the Balkan Wars and especially during the “military decade” of 1912– 1922, hostility and exclusions of the “others” increased; Nikos Potamianos, “”Ντόπιο πράμα!” Το αίτημα “εθνικής προτίμησης” και οι στρατηγικές ελέγχου της αγοράς εργασίας από τις εργατικές συλλογικότητες: Αθήνα και Πειραιάς, 1890 – 1922”, Τα Ιστορικά 55 (2011): 283 – 322.  Εφημερίς της Ελληνικής Γεωργίας (Athens, 1855 – 1856), 57.

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The golden era lasted until 1892, when the French government implemented a strict tariff policy in order to protect the French producers from the cheap imported grapes. The collapse of the commerce ended the success story of the Greek raisin and blew away any agricultural capitalist experiment as the low profits could no longer sustain the labour-intensive viticulture. Furthermore, the domestic market was too weak to replace the international demand and offer the necessary incentives for the capitalist transformation of the agriculture.⁵⁴ The proposed – and finally implemented – solution, the Pronomiouchos Company, favoured the control of the raisin produce from the alcohol industry and the banking system.⁵⁵ On the other hand, the massive emigration to the United States and the national ideal of the Great Greece decompressed – at least temporarily – the social tensions. The decadence of big property in the raisin regions and the support of the small ownership thanks mainly to emigrants’ remittances coincided with the degradation of the Greek province in general and the dominance of small farming. The view of the “mixed-petty-bourgeois-peasant” household, according to Konstantinos Karavidas’ description for the households of the raisin producing regions,⁵⁶ seems to haunt the Greeks and define the way they perceive themselves. Historiography has not been immune to this general trend. In other words, underestimating the impact of large property and rejecting the possibility of class conflict have upgraded the small ownership from a characteristic of the rural world to a critical element of Greek society as a whole. However, we should think if, instead of the independence of the Greek household, it is more preferable to focus on that of its insecurity. The small owner, as an independent producer and a potential wage labourer as well, was struggling to keep his independent status. We should not take for granted that the outcome of his struggle was always positive. Accepting the class differentiation and exploring the “double position of individuals in relation to patri-

 Spanish viticulture also was affected by the closing of the French market and thousands of hectares of vineyards were abandoned. The size, though, of the domestic market supported the big landowners who, in certain cases, proceeded to the creation of brand name wines, gaining, hence, a part of the foreign market; Llorenç Ferrer-Alos, “Les vignobles en Catalogne (XVII – XXVIII siècles): sous emphyteotes, proprietaires et commerçants comissionaires”, in La construction de la grande propriété viticole en France et en Europe (XVI – XX siècles), ed. M. FigeacMonthus and S. Lachaud (Bordeaux: Féret, 2015), 201– 220.  Socrates Petmezas, “Αγροτική οικονομία”, in Ιστορία της Ελλάδας του 20ου αι., vol. Α1, ed. Christos Hadziiossif (Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 1999), 54– 85.  Konstantinos Karavidas, Αγροτικά. Έρευνα επί της κοινωνικής μορφολογίας εν Ελλάδι και εν ταις γειτονικαίς σλαυικαίς χώραις. Μελέτη συγκριτική (Athens: Παπαζήση, 1978, 1st ed.: 1931), 515 – 529.

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archal property and to labour markets”, as Harriet Friedmann suggests,⁵⁷ could lead to fruitful research. Before that, however, we should acknowledge that the “small ownership” narrative has reached its limits.

Sources Unpublished Sources Συμβολαιογραφικά αρχεία Κυπαρισσίας (Notarial records of Kyparissia), General State Archives of Greece-Archives of Messinia. “Αλληλογραφία έμμισθων υποκαταστημάτων προς το Λογιστικό Τμήμα” (Correspondence of paid Branches to the Accounting Department), Historical Archives of National Bank of Greece.

Published Sources Στατιστική της Ελλάδoς. Πληθυσμός του 1879. Athens: Τυπογραφείο Σ. Κ. Βλαστού, 1881. Εφημερίς των Συνεδριάσεων της Βουλής (1871, 1887). Εκλογικοί Κατάλογοι του δήμου Οινούντος των ετών 1872 και 1886, Συλλογή Βλαχογιάννη, General State Archives of Greece-Central Service; http://arxeiomnimon.gak.gr.

Newspapers Επαρχιακή Επιθεώρησις, Pyrgos Ilias. Αθηναϊκή, Athens. Ακρόπολις, Athens. Επί τα πρόσσω, Patras. Εφημερίς της Ελληνικής Γεωργίας, Athens (1855 – 1856).

Bibliography Asdrachas, Spyros. “Αρδεύσεις και καλλιέργειες στις ελληνικές περιοχές της Οθωμανικής Αυτοκρατορίας”. In Οικονομία και νοοτροπίες, 101 – 122. Athens: Ερμής, 1988.

 Harriet Friedmann, “Patriarchy and Property: Reply to Goodman and Redclift”, Sociologia Ruralis 16, no. 2 (1986): 186‐193. See also her article, “World Market, State, and Family Farm: Social Bases of Household Production in the era of Wage Labour”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, no. 4 (1978): 545‐586, where she explains why the theorisation of simple commodity produce is not feasible without reference to wider economic structures.

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Béaur, Gérard, Rosa Congost and Pablo F. Luna. “Emphyteusis: A Practical Question?” In Agrarian Change and Imperfect Property: Emphyteusis in Europe (16th to 19th Centuries), edited by Rosa Congost and Pablo F. Luna, 11 – 38. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. Cohen, Jon S., and Francesco L. Galassi. “Sharecropping and productivity: “feudal residues” in Italian agriculture, 1911”. Economic History Review XLIII, no. 4 (1990): 646 – 656. Dertilis, George. Ατελέσφοροι ή Τελεσφόροι; Φόροι και εξουσία στο νεοελληνικό κράτος. Athens: Αλεξάνδρεια, 1993. Dertilis, George. “Terre, paysans et pouvoir économique (Grèce, XVIIIe – XXe siècle)”. Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 47, no. 2 (1992): 273 – 291. Dertilis, George. “Terre, paysans et pouvoir politique (Grèce, XVIIIe – XXe siècle)”. Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 48, no. 1 (1993): 85 – 107. Dimitriadis, R. Ο Γεωργός. Athens: Σύλλογος προς διάδοσιν ωφελίμων βιβλίων, 1901. Dimitriadis, Sakis. “Οι μεγαλοκτηματίες της Εύβοιας του 19ου αιώνα”. Phd Thesis, Εθνικό Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο, Athens 2018. Ferrer-Alos, Llorenç. “Les vignobles en Catalogne (XVII – XVIII siècles): sous emphyteotes, proprietaires et commerçants comissionaires”. In La construction de la grande propriété viticole en France et en Europe (XVI – XX siècles), edited by M. Figeac-Monthus and S. Lachaud, 201 – 220. Bordeaux: Féret, 2015. Franghiadis, Alexis. “Peasant Agriculture and Export Trade: Currant viticulture in Southern Greece 1830 – 1893”. Phd Thesis. European University Institute, Florence 1990. Franghiadis, Alexis. “Πολιτική εξουσία και σχέσεις γαιοκτησίας στην Ελλάδα, 19ος-20ος αιώνας”. In Θεωρητικές αναζητήσεις και εμπειρικές έρευνες: Πρακτικά διεθνούς συνεδρίου οικονομικής και κοινωνικής ιστορίας, Ρέθυμνο, 10 – 13. 12. 2008, edited by Socrates Petmezas, Gelina Harlaftis, Andreas Lyberatos and Katerina Papakonstantinou, 119 – 135. Athens: Εκδόσεις Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής Πανεπιστημίου Κρήτης – εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2012. Friedmann, Harriet. “Patriarchy and Property: Reply to Goodman and Redclift”. Sociologia Ruralis 16, no. 2 (1986): 186‐193. Friedmann, Harriet. “World Market, State, and Family Farm: Social Bases of Household Production in the era of Wage Labour”. Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, no. 4 (1978): 545‐586. Hadziiossif, Christos. Η Γηραιά Σελήνη. Η βιομηχανία στην ελληνική οικονομία, 1830 – 1940. Athens: Θεμέλιο, 1993. Hadziiossif, Christos. “Δημοκρατία και πελατειακές σχέσεις. Τρεις πρόσφατες αναλύσεις της ελληνικής πολιτικής του 19ου αιώνα”. Μνήμων 16 (1994): 167 – 197. Hadziiossif, Christos. “Class structure and class antagonism in 19th century Greece”. In Greek society in the making, 1863 – 1913, edited by Philip Carabott, 3 – 17. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997. Hionidis, Pandeleimon. “Greek responses to Cobden”. In Rethinking Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Richard Cobden bicentenary essays, edited by Anthony Howe and Simon Morgan, 161 – 173. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. Kalafatis, Thanassis. Αγροτική Πίστη και Οικονομικός Μετασχηματισμός στη Β. Πελοπόννησο, vol. 2. Athens: Μορφωτικό Ίδρυμα Εθνικής Τραπέζης, 1990 – 1992. Karavidas, Konstantinos. Αγροτικά. Έρευνα επί της κοινωνικής μορφολογίας εν Ελλάδι και εν ταις γειτονικαίς σλαυικαίς χώραις. Μελέτη συγκριτική. Athens: Παπαζήση, 1978, 1st ed.: 1931.

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Konstantinopoulos, Christos G. Οι παραδοσιακοί χτίστες της Πελοποννήσου. Athens: Μέλισσα, 1983. Koutrouvidis, Stathis. “ Έγγειες σχέσεις και κοινωνική κυριαρχία. Πολιτικές και πολιτιστικές διαστάσεις. Η περίπτωση του νομού Αχαϊοήλιδος στο 19ο αιώνα”. Phd Thesis. Πανεπιστήμιο Κρήτης, Rethymno, 2007. Loukos, Christos. “Η ενσωμάτωση μιας παραδοσιακής αρχοντικής οικογένειας στο νέο ελληνικό κράτος: Η περίπτωση των Μαυρομιχαλέων”. Τα Ιστορικά 2 (1984): 283 – 296. Leake, Martin. Travels in the Morea, vol. 2. London: John Murray, 1830. Mansolas, Alexandros. Πολιτειογραφικαί Πληροφορίαι περί Ελλάδος. Athens: Καραβία Δ.Ν., 1980, 1st ed. 1867. Panayiotopoulos, Vassilis. “Η βιομηχανική επανάσταση και η Ελλάδα, 1832 – 1871”. In Εκσυγχρονισμός και Βιομηχανική Επανάσταση στα Βαλκάνια τον 19ο αιώνα, edited by Vassilis Panayiotopoulos, 216 – 235. Athens: Θεμέλιο, 1999, 1st ed. 1980. Papastefanaki, Leda. “Μισθωτή εργασία”. In Η ανάπτυξη της ελληνικής οικονομίας τον 19ο αιώνα, edited by Kostas Kostis and Socrates Petmezas, 252 – 291. Athens: Αλεξάνδρεια, 2006. Papatsonis, Panayotis. Απομνημονεύματα από των χρόνων της τουρκοκρατίας μέχρι της βασιλείας του Γεωργίου. Athens: Βιβλιοθήκη Γενικών Αρχείων του Κράτους, 1960. Perakis, Manolis. “Η αντικατάσταση της δεκάτης από το φόρο των αροτριώντων ζώων. Η πρώτη φορολογική αλλαγή του Χαρίλαου Τρικούπη”. In Ο Χαρίλαος Τρικούπης και η εποχή του. Πολιτικές επιδιώξεις και κοινωνικές συνθήκες, edited by Kaiti Aroni-Tsichli and Lydia Tricha, 275 – 292. Athens: Παπαζήση, 2000. Petmezas, Socrates. “Αγροτική οικονομία”, in Ιστορία της Ελλάδας του 20ου αι., vol.Α1, edited by Christos Hadziiossif, 54 – 85. Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 1999. Petmezas, Socrates. “Η ιστορία του αγροτικού κόσμου από τον Μεσοπόλεμο ως σήμερα. Ακυρώσεις και μετατοπίσεις”. In Ιστοριογραφία της νεότερης και σύγχρονης Ελλάδας 1833 – 2002: Πρακτικά Δ΄ Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου Ιστορίας, vol. 2, edited by Paschalis Kitromilides and Triantafyllos Sklavenitis, 201 – 219. Athens: Κέντρο Νεοελληνικών Ερευνών, 2004. Petmezas, Socrates. Η ελληνική αγροτική οικονομία κατά τον 19ο αιώνα. Η περιφερειακή διάσταση. Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2003. Photopoulos, Athanasios Th. Οι Κοτζαμπάσηδες της Πελοποννήσου κατά τη δεύτερη τουρκοκρατία 1715 – 1821. Athens: Ηρόδοτος, 2005. Potamianos, Nikos. “”Ντόπιο πράμα!” Το αίτημα “εθνικής προτίμησης” και οι στρατηγικές ελέγχου της αγοράς εργασίας από τις εργατικές συλλογικότητες: Αθήνα και Πειραιάς, 1890 – 1922”. Τα Ιστορικά 55 (2011): 283 – 322. Psychogios, Dimitris. Το ζήτημα των εθνικών γαιών. Athens: Αγροτική Τράπεζα Ελλάδος, 1994. Pylia, Martha. “Les notables moréotes, fin du XVIIIe début du XIX siècle: fonctions et comportements”. Phd Thesis, Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, 2001. Σταφιδική Επιτροπή Κυπαρισσίας. Σταφιδικά. Περί παρακρατήσεως του πλεονάσματος. Filiatra, 1894. Stroumbos, Elias N. Απάντησις εις την εν τη Συνελεύσει απολογίαν του Αλ. Κουμουνδούρου, πρώην επί των Οικονομικών Υπουργού. Athens, 1863. Seferiades, Seraphim. “Small Rural Ownership, Subsistence, Agriculture, and Peasant Protest in Interwar Greece: The Agrarian Question Recast”. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 17 (1999): 277 – 323.

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Veinstein, Giles. “Le patrimoine foncier de Panayotis Benakis koçabasi de Kalamata”. In “Raiyyet Rusumu Essays presented to Halil Inalcik on his Seventieth Birthday by his Colleagues and Students”, Journal of Turkish Studies 11 (1987): 211 – 233. Verrarou, Stavroula. “Από τον κτηματία στον αγρότη. Οικονομικοί και κοινωνικοί μετασχηματισμοί στην επαρχία Τριφυλίας τον 19ο αιώνα”. Phd Thesis. Πανεπιστήμιο Κρήτης, Rethymno, 2014.

Daniel Alves

Chapter 2 “Half-freedom”: Retail Trade Labour Relations in Lisbon and the Introduction of the Weekly Rest, 1870 – 1910 Abstract: The shops’ Sunday closing in Lisbon in the final decades of the nineteenth century was a relevant issue regarding labour relations. On the one hand, it was related to a liberal stance about the freedom of work and trade by the shopkeepers. On the other hand, it was part of the demands for better working conditions by the clerks. But it was related also to the competitive economy of the retail trade, with the paternalistic view of the shopkeepers toward their employees and with a growing tension towards the regulation of economic activities by the municipal and central authorities. In this study we look at the discussions and controversies surrounding the Sunday closing issue in Lisbon, which had about twelve thousand shops, on average, between 1890 and 1910, and compare with what was happening in other European cities, such as London, Paris, Milan or Athens. The study is based on analysis of the documentation of Lisbon’s Shopkeepers Association, on legislation and newspapers. One of the conclusions is that the retailers in Lisbon, despite being quite liberal and sometimes even radical in their political stance, were very conservative regarding the management of human resources in the shops, and this had an impact on the way the Sunday rest was or wasn’t implemented in the city’s retail trade.

Introduction The controversy surrounding the closing of shops on Sunday was always present in the associative discourse of the shopkeepers of Lisbon in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Much of what was written and discussed at the time was specifically related to the shopkeepers’ defence of the freedom of trade and the shop assistants’ demands for better working conditions. However, the controversy also addressed other issues linked to economic competition between small businesses, to a world view imbued with a certain paternalism and to a growing conflict with official bodies due to the regulation of economic activities. A study on this theme in a major city of the time, Lisbon, in comparison with other international cases like London, Paris, Milan, Madrid or Athens, might https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-005

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shed some light on the confrontation between tradition and modernity, particularly regarding labour relations and the relationship between economic and political interests. Furthermore, the analysis of the arguments exchanged between those who were in favour and those who were against weekly rest and the drafting of a law regulating it has yet another interest. The liveliness of the discussion and the daily details that accompanied it allow us to characterise, in general terms, life behind the counter, and are a good observation point for the labour relations that were established in the shops, an interesting way of examining the tensions and/or complicity between shopkeepers and shop assistants. This study is based on a more advanced research into the associative movement of shopkeepers of Lisbon, its socio-economic characteristics, its social representation and political position between 1870 and 1910.¹ The sources used include mainly those produced by the Commercial Association of Shopkeepers of Lisbon (Associação Comercial dos Lojistas de Lisboa – ACLL), founded in 1870, contained in its historical archive (http://arquivodigitalcomercio.fcsh.unl.pt/), periodicals of the time, including those which were published by associations of shop assistants, some data collected from electoral censuses² and parliamentary debates from the last decades of the Constitutional Monarchy in Portugal.³ The use of the ACLL’s archive was mandatory because we needed to study the public and private discourse of the shopkeepers’ association, and there exists a comprehensive series of records about the board of directors and general assembly meetings that could give us those details. From the analyses of all the meetings records between 1870 and 1910 it was possible to collect information about ACLL’s weekly rest opinions and then use these data to look for more details on newspapers and parliamentary debates. The ACLL represented a social and economic sector that corresponded to about 6 % of all Lisbon’s population at the time (those occupied in the shopkeeping business). In 1890 the number of shopkeepers in Lisbon was more than 10,600, and 12 % of them belonged to ACLL. In 1910 that number had reached more than 11,300 and the number of those associated to ACLL was now more

 Daniel Alves, A República atrás do balcão: os Lojistas de Lisboa e o fim da Monarquia (1870 – 1910) (Chamusca: Edições Cosmos, 2012).  Data about elections was collected for fourteen parishes in Lisbon, for seven general elections between 1878 and 1906. Arquivo Histórico Parlamentar, Assembleias Eleitorais Monárquicas, boxes 1221, 1222, 1223, 1224, 1426, 1427, 1428, 1429 A, 1734B, 1734C, 1734D, 1734E, 1734F, 1890 A, 1890D, 1890F, 1890G, 1932, 1932B, 1932E, 1932F, 1932H, 2073, 2073 A, 2074B, 2159 A, 2159D and 2160.  Available at http://debates.parlamento.pt/catalogo/mc/cd.

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than 19 %.⁴ These shopkeepers registered in ACLL during the last decade of the nineteenth century were mainly from three retail and services sectors: those from the food and drink business (around 46 %); those from the clothes, shoes and accessories shops (around 38 %); and from a variety of businesses, that could range from the optician to the druggist, including goldsmith, among other typologies (around 6 %). In 1910, this picture had changed a bit, with the food and drink businesses (around 35 %) losing ground on the clothes and shoes businesses (around 44 %). The third group of shopkeepers mentioned now represented around 9 % of all associates.⁵ This was the background on which the discussions and polemics about the weekly rest developed, essentially between the 1880s and 1910.

Sunday Closing in Lisbon: Early History The closing of shops on Sunday was an issue that the ACLL has always addressed in a relatively ambiguous manner. The successive governing bodies of the association always sought to maintain a certain neutrality concerning this matter, which had the power to irremediably divide the associative movement of shopkeepers, as it happened abroad. In fact, the governing bodies never concealed the “prudence” with which the issue was always addressed within the ACLL.⁶ Although the subject emerged, occasionally, before the 1880s, it did not seem like a problem which required intervention in “defence of the class”. This was most likely because the issue was still framed, as it happened abroad, by the relationships of complicity or paternalism established between employers and employees, on the one hand, and the propaganda dynamic of the first protest movements of shop assistants, characterised by a commitment to voluntary agreements, on the other. Both factors ultimately contributed to maintaining a low level of conflict. For the shopkeepers of Lisbon, the importance and seriousness of the matter started to become apparent when those movements acquired a legalistic dimension, that is, when they began systematically urging the State to have a regulatory intervention.

 Alves, A República atrás do balcão, 47 and 156.  Alves, 165 – 70; Daniel Alves, “Shopkeepers and the City: The Spatial Economy of the Retail Trade in a European Capital City (Lisbon, 1890 – 1910)”, History of Retailing and Consumption 3, no. 2 (2017): 139 – 158.  ACLL, Relatório de 1906, 16.

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It should be pointed out that the closing of shops on Sunday only appeared in documentation produced by the ACLL in 1888, through discussions in the general meetings. It might also be interesting to note that the first official reference to the issue, which stated that it was the object of a “large study” and that an “evaluation” was being developed to submit to the general meeting, was only made in the annual report of 1892.⁷ Between 1870, the foundation of the ACLL, and 1888 there seem to have been very few mentions, even in the press, at least regarding the position of the shopkeepers or the initiatives sponsored by them. Only a short note in the Diário de Notícias in November 1875 mentioned what seems to have been a voluntary agreement, probably reached that same year, between several shopkeepers of the city, from various lines of business, for the closing of shops on Sunday. However, the news itself, given on a Monday, is illustrative of the failure margin that surrounded these initiatives, since the periodical highlighted precisely the fact that “yesterday, the draper’s shops, which had also entered the agreement of closing on Sunday”⁸ had already been open. Was it the upcoming Christmas season that forced the breach of the agreement, due to a search for higher profit? Or was this just another case of what, at the time, was a tendency for failure in such agreements in the retail trade world? Voluntary agreements to regulate retail closing time, which included the issue of Sunday closing, were never very successful, whether they were presented with the argument that it would reduce the costs of staff, fuel and lighting, or through the Christian notion of Sunday rest, or even with the argument of the defence of the health, education and sociability of shop assistants. In Lisbon, at the end of the 1880s, the failures continued. An agreement to close the shops on Sunday, reached in June 1888, received its first criticisms in the following month because some grocers “do not close their shops”.⁹ The same was true in England, a “nation of shopkeepers” who, in search of “customers”, had built an empire,¹⁰ and something similar seemed to have been normal in its colonies,  ACLL, Relatório de 1892, 12.  Diário de Notícias, no. 3492, 8 November 1875.  ACLL, Boletim, no. 6, June 1888, 5 and no. 7, July 1888, 7; Vítor Ribeiro, O Atheneu Commercial de Lisboa no seu 25o anniversário em 10 June 1905 (Lisboa: Typographia de “A Editora”, 1905), 131. In August 1890, there was a new attempt, organised by a “committee of shop assistants” with the “support” of the ACLL, which also did not achieve great results. Cf. ACLL, Boletim, no. 34, September 1890, 1.  Michael J. Winstanley, The Shopkeeper’s World, 1830 – 1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), 65; Geoffrey Crossick, “Shopkeepers and the State in Britain, 1870 – 1914”, in Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (London: Methuen, 1984), 252.

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because in Victoria, Australia, the movements to voluntarily close shops earlier only achieved frequent “ephemeral” successes.¹¹ Apparently, in some cases, the shopkeepers were even pioneers regarding the demands of the shop assistants, as it seems to have happened in Philadelphia, where the first attempts to set a retail working schedule, through voluntary agreements between shopkeepers, despite being unsuccessful in the long term, began in the 1830s and were carried out by the employers.¹² Most of the time, however, these initiatives were developed by movements of shop assistants, which demanded a working day that would end at eight o’clock in the evening and/or a day of weekly rest, usually on Sunday, something that was frequent in the second half of the nineteenth century. To a certain extent, the same type of initiatives, with the same characteristics, were being carried out in Lisbon, where some reports not only state that shop assistants were already demanding the closing of establishments on Sunday in the 1870s but also mention the “serious conflicts” that this struggle sometimes generated. The years 1882 and 1883 also seem to have been important for the “shop closing” movement, the initiatives returning again in 1887. In Portugal, the Association of Commercial and Industrial Employees had existed since 1854, but the associative phenomenon would only start to grow in the 1880s and early 1890s, when more institutions with the same agenda emerged, such as the Association of Commercial Employees of Lisbon, the Commercial Athenaeum and the Portuguese Federal Association of Shop Assistants, whose membership reached, according to them, “4000 individuals”. At the same time, newspapers linked to the interests of shop assistants and commercial employees were founded, such as O Caixeiro Português, which only lasted three months, O Commercial, also of short duration, and Voz do Caixeiro, with greater longevity.¹³ By 1876, several issues of the Aurora Commercial. Orgão dos Caixeiros Portuguezes, a newspaper linked to the class, had already been published. The growth of militancy and conflict (also linked, in part, to the Church’s own campaign which, since the 1870s, had been devoting more and more atten-

 Michael Quinlan, Margaret Gardner, and Peter Akers, “A Failure of Voluntarism: Shop Assistants and the Struggle to Restrict Trading Hours in the Colony of Victoria, 1850 – 85”, Labour History, no. 88 (2005): 165 – 182.  Marten Estey, “Early Closing: Employer-Organized Origin of the Retail Labor Movement”, Labor History 13, no. 4 (1972): 560 – 570.  O Lojista, no. 11, 25 November 1891; ACLL, Boletim, no. 60, November 1892, 6; Ribeiro, O Atheneu Commercial de Lisboa no seu 25o anniversário em 10 June 1905, 130 – 31; Associação de Socorros Mútuos dos Empregados no Comércio e Indústria, Boletim comemorativo do 99o aniversário (Lisboa, 1953).

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tion to the issue of Sunday rest) may help to explain why the matter became sufficiently relevant in the eyes of the shopkeepers in the second half of the following decade. However, this is not the only factor to be considered and, both in the chronology of the emergence of the issue and in the divisions generated by its discussion, attention must be drawn to the structural changes that the ACLL underwent during these years as mentioned above.

Legislative Attempts to Regulate Weekly rest: Comparative Perspective In the final decades of the nineteenth century, both in the Portuguese case and abroad, considering the failure of voluntarist movements, at a time when social measures begun to be demanded and imposed throughout Europe, it is not surprising that the issue of working schedules and weekly rest became the main and, sometimes, the only cause defended by the associations of shop assistants that were emerging, alarming the shopkeepers.¹⁴ It is relevant to say that although regulations of work conditions started to appear in Portugal since the 1880s, even if at a slower and less extensive rhythm than most of European countries,¹⁵ the “services” sector was not the priority and was left without any major regulatory measure.¹⁶ In 1905, the ACLL presented the historical evolution of the issue in Lisbon in the following way: to try to obtain weekly rest, “the Portuguese shop assistants have, for many years, been taking the most persuasive measures (…). In their initial efforts to this end, they appealed to the employers to cooperate in an agreement and made several conciliatory attempts in this respect (…), but a general closing of the shops on Sunday was never achieved. When all hope was lost (…) they appealed to the government, requesting its intervention”.¹⁷ The result of these efforts would eventually emerge in 1906 – 1907, with a government decree imposing weekly rest.

 Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780 – 1914: Enterprise, Family and Independence (London: Routledge, 1995), 143.  Michael Huberman and Christopher M. Meissner, “Riding the Wave of Trade: The Rise of Labor Regulation in the Golden Age of Globalization”, The Journal of Economic History 70, no. 3 (September 2010): 660.  Pedro Goulart and Arjun S. Bedi, “The Evolution of Child Labor in Portugal, 1850 – 2001”, Social Science History 41, no. 2 (2017): 247.  ACLL, Boletim, no. 12, December 1905, 98.

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The process had been similar abroad and, although with slightly different timelines, the result had been the same, the promulgation of laws. In Spain, where a law was enacted in 1904, the case of Madrid is interesting as a way to see the difficulties of the shop assistants’ movements to oppose the employers’ control over labour relations.¹⁸ In France, in 1906, following a mining strike, weekly rest was converted into law and equally ill-received by the shopkeepers.¹⁹ The case of Greece was somehow similar, since the law passed in 1909 left many issues to be regulated by local authorities leading to the intensification of conflicts about the Sunday holiday.²⁰ In the English case, in 1885, the Empire set an example by publishing a law in the colony of Victoria, which regulated working hours in factories and shops.²¹ In the Metropolis there was already an “old and little applied” law that provided for the closing of shops on Sundays. However, at the end of the nineteenth century, the opening of shops on that day seemed to have intensified, and the shopkeepers started to get divided on the issue, with the medium and large shopkeepers supporting state intervention, and the small shopkeepers remaining clearly against it. The subject began to be discussed in political circles and, in 1904 and 1911, laws regulating retail closing time were published.²² There was a common trend to these laws, besides being the result of long protest movements by shop assistants and the shopkeepers’ fruitless attempts at self-regulation. The laws were “filled with exemptions”: they had “systematic exemptions which weakened their impact everywhere”, and their application was, at times, dependent on a greater or lesser regulation which was delegated to the local authorities.²³ Spain seems to have been pioneer in Europe, with the

 Santiago de Miguel Salanova, “Changes and Continuities in Madrid’s Commercial Activity, 1880 – 1930”, History of Retailing and Consumption 3, no. 3 (2 September 2017): 209.  Philip G. Nord, “The Small Shopkeepers Movement and Politics in France, 1888 – 1914”, in Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (London: Methuen, 1984), 186.  Nikos Potamianos, “Regulation and the Retailing Community: The Struggle over the Establishment of the Holiday of Sunday in Greece, 1872– 1925”, History of Retailing and Consumption 3, no. 3 (2017): 1– 16.  Michael Quinlan and Miles Goodwin, “Combating the Tyranny of Flexibility: Shop Assistants and the Struggle to Regulate Closing Hours in the Australian Colony of Victoria, 1880 – 1900”, Social History 30, no. 3 (2005): 345 – 349.  Winstanley, The Shopkeeper’s World, 94– 99; Crossick, “Shopkeepers and the State in Britain, 1870 – 1914”, 252– 254.  Crossick and Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe, 143 – 144 and 178; Fabiane Popinigis, “Operários de Casaca”? Relações de Trabalho e Lazer no Comércio Carioca na Virada dos Séculos XIX e XX”, Doutoramento, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2003, 86. Quinlan, Gardner,

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adoption of the Sunday closure law in 1904, which included several exemptions for commercial establishments, “allowing non-compliance from the outset”.²⁴ The French case is another example since the resistance sponsored by the shopkeepers’ associations eventually forced the government to give in and create a wide range of exemptions that ultimately “made the strict application of the law [of 1906] impossible”.²⁵ In Greece things were not much different, and the law passed in 1909 was subject to frequent amendments that made its full implementation difficult.²⁶ The English case can also be viewed similarly, as the Shops Act of 1911 achieved nothing more than the definition of meal schedules and a resting period of half a day per week.²⁷ In Belgium, after a long debate and much pressure, to a large extent from the smaller shopkeepers, a law full of exemptions was passed in 1914.²⁸ The shopkeepers’ constant opposition to these laws, or to any attempt to regulate rest hours in the commercial sector, was largely responsible for the ambiguity or weakness of the legislation that was being passed. Except for the wealthiest English shopkeepers, and even with these it is necessary to distinguish between principles and mere economic interest,²⁹ the declared antagonism invariably involved, like in Lisbon, the defence of free trade. Even in Belgium, where early State intervention was requested by the shopkeepers to better overcome the effects of the economic crisis at the end of the nineteenth century, the feelings regarding this type of intervention were contradictory because, “despite everything, it could pose a threat to individual freedom.”³⁰ In France, the shopkeepers’ associations always fought the bureaucratic State that wanted to impose laws and regulations on commercial life, which included the issue of weekly rest.³¹ The small English shopkeepers, in their arguments against the new

and Akers, “A Failure of Voluntarism”, 165 – 182; Quinlan and Goodwin, “Combatting the Tyranny of Flexibility”, 345 – 349.  Álvaro Soto Carmona, El Trabajo Industrial En La España Contemporánea, 1874 – 1936 (Anthropos Editorial, 1989), 591– 92 and 624– 625; Xoxé M. Núñez Seixas, “¿Una clase inexistente? La pequeña burguesía española (1808 – 1936)”, Historia Social, no. 26 (1996): 41.  Nord, “The Small Shopkeepers Movement and Politics in France, 1888 – 1914”, 186.  Potamianos, “Regulation and the Retailing Community”, 7– 9.  Winstanley, The Shopkeeper’s World, 73.  Serge Jaumain, Les petits commerçants belges face a la modernité, 1880 – 1914 (Bruxelles: Éd. de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1995), 130 – 133.  Crossick, “Shopkeepers and the State in Britain, 1870 – 1914”, 253 – 255.  Ginette Kurgan-van Hentenryk, “A Forgotten Class: The Petite Bourgeoisie in Belgium, 1850 – 1914”, in Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (London: Methuen, 1984), 128.  Nord, “The Small Shopkeepers Movement and Politics in France, 1888 – 1914”, 184.

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laws, reinforced the idea that State intervention was not necessary to regulate commercial activity and that only a “free market would guarantee the salvation of small traders.”³²

Weekly Rest, Commercial Freedom and the Discourse of the Shopkeepers’ Association In Lisbon, however, in the mid-1880s, a fraction of the shops was effectively closing on Sundays, usually in the afternoon. It is not possible to present exact numbers or even approximate estimates. However, indirect testimonies confirm the idea that, at least in certain parts of the city, the closing of a section of the shops was already a reality. At the end of December 1886, the Diário Popular reported that the board of the ACLL had called a general meeting for January 9 “at two o’clock”, to get “more members to attend”, because it fell on a Sunday. This was because it was common to notice a certain “monotony (…) on Sundays on the most crowded and joyful streets of the city, when most of the establishments are closed”.³³ In 1890, during a protest campaign of the shopkeepers, the newspaper A Tarde compared downtown Lisbon on a Monday with what usually happened “on Sundays and sanctified days”, because “some shops closed up for the day; others did not open at all”.³⁴ Reports linked to the employees’ associations themselves pointed out, in a critical way, that shop assistants were usually given “the rest of the afternoon and night on Sundays”.³⁵ The practice was certainly not generalised to the whole city or to all types of trade, and the shop assistants did not consider it to be enough. The debate on these matters at the general meeting of 6 February 1888 confirms that at least some shop assistants “already enjoy a half-freedom on Sundays and Holy Days”, an expression that also attests to a paternalism that will always be present in the shopkeepers’ approach to this issue. In addition, it seems to have been easier for shop assistants working in “draper’s shops, merchant’s shops, hardware shops, etc., etc.” to get Sunday rest, than those who worked in

 Crossick, “Shopkeepers and the State in Britain, 1870 – 1914”, 256.  Diário Popular, no. 7103, 30 December 1886; ACLL, Actas da Direcção, 1881 – 1889, no. 161, 30 December 1886; and ACLL, Relatório de 1887, 50.  A Tarde, no. 477, 15 September 1890; O Século, no. 3090, 13 September 1890; and Diário Popular, no. 8397, 14 September 1890.  ACLL, Boletim, no. 6, June 1888, 4.

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shops that sold “basic necessities”, such as “grocery shops, pastry shops, liquor shops, pharmacies, eating houses, bakeries” and others.³⁶ A description of these categories raises the hypothesis that the subject only entered the meetings’ agenda at this time because a new group of members, linked to the first types of shops, was joining the Association as we saw. These members, who were more easily attracted by the shop assistants’ “propaganda” in favour of weekly rest, had probably already given their employees some privileges.³⁷ Although the subject never led to the divisions that were observed in other countries, it was an “issue that always unsettled and divided the meeting”, where the arguments against closing and those who opposed a law that would impose it usually won.³⁸ There were times, however, when shopkeepers were actually interested in closing their establishments on Sunday, and these moments were, in part, another sign of their paternalism. Elections were one of those moments. The ACLL and two other similar associations had been dissolved by protests against taxes, at the end of January 1894. To try to raise voter turnout, the associations issued an election manifesto which stated that they had decided “to close their establishments on Sunday at a time which will allow everyone to exercise their political rights”, in essence “in time for employees and shop assistants to vote”.³⁹ This kind of paternalism regarding the citizenship of shop assistants could, of course, work in the opposite direction, as they could refuse the day off or the early departure from the shop to prevent the vote, as was exposed by the newspaper Século in 1881. Before the elections, there were rumours that the “employers” would prevent the “commercial employees” from voting, and the republican newspaper reported that, during the election, “the shops were closed late and the [electoral] colleges (…) were closed early (…).”⁴⁰ The report is not entirely impartial, but this image might not have been far from the reality of the time, as can be inferred from examples abroad. The paternalism of the English shopkeepers regarding their employees, greatly influenced by the fact that the majority of them “lived in the shops”, was characterised by the same denial of the “civil and political rights” of the shop assistants.⁴¹

 ACLL, Boletim, no. 3, March 1888, 2– 3 (italics in original).  ACLL, Boletim, no. 3, March 1888, 5; no. 4, April 1888, 4.  ACLL, Boletim, no. 13, January 1889, 5. See also ACLL, Boletim, no. 20, August 1889, 2, and no. 55, June 1892, 2.  Vanguarda, no. 1008, 12 April 1894, and Diário de Notícias, no. 10165, 13 April 1894.  O Século, no. 186, 20 August 1881, and O Século, no. 188, 23 August 1881.  Christopher P. Hosgood, “”Mercantile Monasteries”: Shops, Shop Assistants, and Shop Life in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain”, Journal of British Studies 38, no. 3 (1999): 340.

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The two episodes reveal, in addition to obvious political readings, that Sunday closure was still far from being a generalised norm in Lisbon. The shop assistants and their representative associations continued to ask the ACLL to manifest its opinion on the matter and to join their representatives who requested the enactment of a law, as it happened in 1899 when the president of the ACLL replied to yet another attempt by the shop assistants to force the shopkeepers’ association to take a stand. The reply was the same as it had always been and which it would always be: the shop assistants had the right to fight for weekly rest, a “civilizing movement of liberal and democratic aspirations”, but they could not forget that there were also “deeply liberal spirits” on the other side of the counter who could not agree with the always “violent” recourse to the law and who saw “the voluntary closing (…) as a more dignified and honourable solution for all parties concerned”.⁴² The ACLL always tried to justify its position, ensuring that it had never triggered or encouraged any initiative that would go against the “justified aspirations” of shop assistants. As evidence of this it stated that it “had already established one day of rest per week for all its employees”, precisely on Sunday, and that it had supported a decree of the Ministry of Public Works which defined the “Sunday rest of postal workers”.⁴³ Voluntarily, however, it did little or nothing to ensure that the matter would be resolved satisfactorily for both parties. When shopkeepers adopted Sunday closing, it was usually due to external pressure, as was the case in 1903, following a request by the Association of Portuguese Shop Assistants for the ACLL to sponsor a new request for the “promulgation of a law regulating the closing of establishments”. The discussion in the general meeting and the administration’s report highlight, once again, the systematic position of the majority of shopkeepers: public authorities should not interfere in this matter; the solution should result from a propaganda effort by the shop assistants. As always, the shopkeepers did not disagree with the “desideratum”; what they could not accept was the “modus faciendi”.⁴⁴ The same argument came back in 1906, stating that with regard to any law that was imposed, any “appeal to public authorities” would always be considered a “real obstacle to the exercise of industry due to the resulting penalties imposed by the law that regulates weekly rest.”⁴⁵ It is clear that the statements con-

 ACLL, Boletim, no. 26, February 1903, 1– 4. This issue includes a reproduction of Pinheiro de Melo’s reply from 1899.  The decree was published on 9 May 1903. ACLL, Boletim, no. 29, May 1903, 1– 2; Relatório de 1906, 16 and Actas da Direcção, 1906 – 1912, no. 169, 4 October 1906.  ACLL, Relatório de 1903, 7– 8.  ACLL, Relatório de 1906, 16 – 17.

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cealed another motivation for their opposition because agreeing with the laws for other employees and not for shop assistants had clear economic justifications, as was, in fact, also observed in the examples of other countries. The speech of the ACLL in 1906 was not exclusively addressed to the natural audience of its Boletim, the shopkeepers, nor the shop assistants. Its main target was the government of João Franco, which would take crucial legislative steps in this matter, to try to resolve the issue, during that year.⁴⁶ In fact, on 5 October 1906, a draft law on weekly rest was presented to Parliament. On 27 November, the civil legislation commission presented its opinion, and the draft began to be discussed on 1 February 1907. After some debate sessions, the “Sunday rest” draft law, as some members designated it, was broadly approved on 6 February, although it was sent back to the commission due to the many amendments that were proposed.⁴⁷ The justifications put forward for its elaboration were based on health and hygiene criteria, “physiological needs”, and aspects related to the recreation, education and sociability that a day of rest could provide to the shop assistants, not disregarding a certain “religious precept”. The aim was to socially benefit “employees, in general”, both the industrial working class and the shop assistants. The day chosen for this rest was Sunday, important in a “traditionally Catholic country”, but also defended by comparison with the legislation of other countries, such as “Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Norway and, recently, France”, where the day had received preference. The Government was certainly aware of the resistance that these laws had generated and admitted, in the draft law report itself, openness to accept amendments and exemptions.⁴⁸ Despite the approval of the draft law, when the parliament closed down on 12 April the work of the commission had not yet been completed, so weekly rest was eventually the subject of a Government decree dated 3 August.⁴⁹ This decree included almost every exemption of the draft law that had been originally presented to the parliament, as regards to the types of shops that could continue to be open on Sundays. The list did not include grocery, clothing and accessories shops, two of the main classes of shopkeepers represented in the ACLL. However, the capacity of the civil governors and city councils to intervene in the regulation

 Rui Ramos, A Segunda Fundação (1890 – 1926), História de Portugal, VI (Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 1994), 272.  Diário da Câmara dos Deputados (DCD), session of 5 October 1906, 3 – 4; session of 27 November 1906, 3; session of 1 February 1907, 4– 8; session of 6 February 1907, 12.  DCD, session of 1 February 1907, 8 – 11.  ACLL, Boletim, no. 34, October 1907, 95; the date indicated by ACLL is 7 August.

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of rest periods was already defined, which, similarly to what happened abroad, would certainly create many difficulties in the equitable application of the law. For those under the age of sixteen, weekly rest was mandatory, regardless of the type of shop or factory in which they worked. Fines and even prison sentences were also laid down for those who did not comply with the mandatory weekly rest period, to be generally observed on Sunday, with some adaptations for certain professional classes.⁵⁰ The subsequent complaints forced the government to further increase the exemptions including a possible exemption from weekly rest, by decision of the civil governors, for establishments that only employed owners and “people from their family”.⁵¹ After the fall of the Government of João Franco, the ACLL’s position regarding the decree became much clearer and, in essence, it was the same it had always been. On the grounds that it was a decree published under “dictatorship”, the Association had refrained from commenting on it when it had been published. Now that the political moment was different, in April, May and June 1908, it reproduced a report from 1893 which, in turn, was based on a representation that had been taken to the City Council of Lisbon in 1888, to reaffirm that “the imposition would be a stain that would tarnish the sympathetic idea” of weekly rest. The decree represented “an attack on public law, on the right to work and on the freedom of trade”, a denial of the “equity” that should govern the relations between individuals and, necessarily, between the “shop assistants’ class” and the “commercial class”.⁵² Although the arguments against Sunday closing maintained a significant emphasis on the issue of free trade, they also revealed other less theoretical and more practical motives. One of the arguments for keeping the shops open on Sunday was connected to obvious economic issues, the survival of the business, although it was presented as part of the popular “customs” and “tradition”, of the habits rooted in the customers. Working-class consumption was, to a large extent, dictated by its free time, hence the importance of keeping the shops open until later in the day and not closing on Sundays, at least in the morning, since opening the shops on that day meant enjoying a competitive advantage, not letting “a number of small transactions” escape to the neighbour

 ACLL, Boletim, no. 34, October 1907, 94– 95.  ACLL, Boletim, no. 34, October 1907, 96. In Belgium, the same type of shopkeepers were included in the exemptions set out for the first draft laws on weekly rest presented in 1903. Jaumain, Les petits commerçants belges face a la modernité, 130.  ACLL, Boletim, no. 40, April 1908, 31– 32; no. 41, May 1908, 39 – 40; and no. 42, June 1908, 47. See also ACLL, Boletim, no. 13, January 1889, 4– 5; no. 60, November 1892, 5 – 7; and no. 66, May 1893, 4– 6.

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on the other side of the street; it meant “taking advantage of any interests, as insignificant as they might seem”. In a small world crowded with shops, keeping the shops open for longer hours and more days per week represented a “necessity”.⁵³ Despite the divisions on the subject witnessed in the meetings, the “freedom” aspect, the voluntary agreement, always triumphed. The “principle” of Sunday closure was already accepted by “a large number” of shopkeepers, but what did the “practice” reveal? In their view, the issue should be carefully analysed because there were many “interests” at stake, that is, the economic principle prevailed over the social principle, no matter how nice the latter seemed.⁵⁴

Labour Relations at the Shop Counter: the Shopkeepers’ Paternalism Within the controversy surrounding the closing of shops on Sunday was also the shopkeepers’ paternalistic view on how to manage the shop and its staff. Some shopkeepers refused to close their businesses on Sunday and to extend the “halffreedom” that the shop assistants already enjoyed, supporting their opinion with a very peculiar notion of freedom. This “radiant goddess” that was being demanded by the shop assistants could not, to a large extent, be granted to them mostly because they did not know how to take advantage of it. These “young people”, instead of taking advantage of these “free hours” to devote themselves to study, for example, spent them on “strolls”, on “bacchanals”, impoverishing their health and “pockets”. To give more freedom to the shop assistants was to hand them over to a life of “harmful excesses and frolics.” It was a wasteful class, who did not think about the future, nor care about saving money. Trade, however, was one of the activities “that requires more seriousness”, and the shop assistant was, therefore, required to behave in a prudent, moderate and “modest” way, to be “cautious in his spending”, because only in this way would he gain the necessary “trust” to deal with “other people’s possessions”.⁵⁵ With some cynicism, this advice was dictated by the life experience of the shopkeepers who had also been shop assistants. The “boys” who were asking for a weekly rest law should set their eyes on the example of their employers, most of whom had already lived through “the bitterness and works that this

 ACLL, Boletim, no. 3, March 1888, 2, and no. 12, December 1905, 99.  ACLL, Boletim, no. 66, May 1893, 4– 6. See also no. 28, April 1903, 6 – 7.  ACLL, Boletim, no. 3, March 1888, 3 and 5; no. 26, February 1903, 1– 2.

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class” was complaining about. Their rejection of a law regulating the issue was also the result of a “friendly and protective feeling” that led them to protect their employees from “mistakes”, from the “dangers” and inconveniences of weekly rest. The “greed” of the employers, as it was sometimes classified by the shop assistants, the almost “military” discipline necessary for the management of the shops, was imposed by the desire of the shopkeepers to look after the education of the shop assistants. They were, even due to their age, at a “dangerous” stage of their development as men and could fall into “harmful habits”.⁵⁶ Paternalism, however, was present for a reason, for it was this “saving subjection” that would allow many of them to save enough money and generate working habits to achieve, later on, an “independent position”.⁵⁷ Paternalism, however, was not an exclusive feature of the shopkeepers of Lisbon, and their arguments were not far from those used by their colleagues in the rest of the country and even abroad. All over Europe, shop assistants were subjected to tight restrictions on freedom and a level of paternalism that turned the shop into an “oppressive atmosphere”.⁵⁸ At the end of the nineteenth century, labour relations in Spanish shops, for example, still presented pre-capitalist features, namely paternalism, the practice of living in the shops and lack of wage differentiation.⁵⁹ In Milan the “paternalistic system” was still common, although it was increasingly contested by the shop assistants, where strong socialist tendencies prevailed.⁶⁰ Not even the Department Store world could escape the temptation of using the paternalistic system to demonstrate social concern, on the one hand, and ensure “labour control” and business management, on the other.⁶¹ In Bon Marche, in Paris, for example, the life of the employees was regulated like in the “barracks”.⁶²

 O Lojista, no. 13, 12 December 1891, and no. 34, 30 May 1892. See also O Mundo, no. 2918, 18 December 1908.  O Lojista, no. 34, 30 May 1892.  Crossick and Haupt, The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe, 177– 178.  Núñez Seixas, “¿Una clase inexistente?”, 40.  Jonathan Morris, The Political Economy of Shopkeeping in Milan, 1886 – 1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 225 – 237.  Geoffrey Crossick and Serge Jaumain, eds., Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850 – 1939 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 19 – 20 and 125 – 126.  Imitating, in fact, the old habits of “small businesses”. Philip G. Nord, Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 63 – 64; Jaumain, Les petits commerçants belges face a la modernité, 49.

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This kind of paternalism “denied” or sought to delay the total independence, the transition to adult life, of the shop assistants,⁶³ while it also aimed to instil the idea that social problems could only be solved through a particular way of life. Thus, the publications by federations and associations of shopkeepers all over Europe exalted several fundamental virtues related to the bourgeois society, namely the praise of work, economisation or thrift, order, family and property, a tendency the ACLL did not depart from. At the same time, they condemned laziness, waste, chaos, moral lassitude and poverty. All this is visible in the arguments presented above. In essence, the shopkeepers regarded “their way of life and their methods of production as an exemplary solution” for the social conflict that was growing at the end of the nineteenth century. “Patriarchal relationships, the possibility of upward social mobility through business, educational qualifications: these were the solutions that society should adopt to avoid poverty, rootlessness (…).”⁶⁴ The fact that many shop assistants lived and worked in the same place, in accommodations made available by the employers, ultimately reinforced their dependence on them. This situation helped to place them in a position of greater subservience, which was enhanced by “the mechanisms of paternalism” present in the relationships between employers and shop assistants. The development of the image of the shopkeeper as the “benevolent paterfamilias” of the shop assistant did not conceal, however, a different aim, that of maintaining, in the shop, the precarious balance between the necessary distance, essential for the hierarchical management of the business and to sustain the authority behind the counter, and the desired identification, crucial for building a sense of complicity, of shared interests, where the struggle for or commitment to the economic survival of the shop were emphasised.⁶⁵

 Peter Bailey, “White Collars, Gray Lives? The Lower Middle Class Revisited”, The Journal of British Studies 38, no. 3 (1999): 277; Hosgood, “Mercantile Monasteries”, 322– 352.  Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, “The Petty Bourgeoisie in Germany and France in the Late 19th Century”, in Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Jürgen Kocka and Allan Mitchell (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 315 – 316.  Hosgood, “Mercantile Monasteries”, 323 – 325.

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Labour Relations at the Shop Counter: Shop Assistants’ Working Conditions These relationships were significantly influenced by two factors: on the one hand, by how young the shop assistants were when they began their careers, many of whom had only recently arrived in the city; on the other, by the expectation of upward social mobility transmitted by the life behind the counter and the employer’s discourse. In the end, the two situations created more leeway for employers to impose their paternalism. Furthermore, it made it easier for employees to accept these demands. In order for these factors to definitively contribute to settling the labour conflict, working conditions had to be acceptable, and expectations had to be met with relative ease and frequency. Regarding working conditions, the evidence available reveals that the shop assistants’ demands were not unfounded. Concerning the expectations of social ascension, although the data collected cannot be presented as conclusive, it reveals that, at least among shopkeepers, there was a certain idealisation of what a man of humble origin could achieve through work and persistence. That is, their life paths ended up being examples of how, through hard work, some shop assistants could reach the position of shopkeeper. The initial conditions that were offered to those who wanted to make a career in commerce did not seem to be the best. Shopkeepers admitted, in 1903, that the shop assistants and the cashier trainees were, at times, “rudely treated by their employers and regarded as mere production machines”, that they were not given “a day of recreation, an hour of rest”, and that their payment consisted of “poor and bad” quality food, “severe punishments for the slightest faults” and “an old pallet on the counter for a bed.”⁶⁶ Working hours did not help to create a very favourable image of life in commerce either, sometimes considered harder and more demanding than that of the industrial workers, and therefore justifying the complaints and protests. Those who usually got up “at 7 a.m. and worked actively until 10 p.m.” were entitled to a period of rest during the weekend. The shop assistant led a “cloistered and tedious” life, and rest was beneficial for his health and even for the productivity of the shop. The “long hours” spent in the “narrowness of a counter”, which could reach “16 to 18 hours a day!”, were damaging for the physique of the “young” shop assistants, “perhaps the class that contributes the most to

 ACLL, Boletim, no. 29, May 1903, 1.

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physics disease”, as was stated in the general meeting by a shopkeeper who defended the cause of the weekly closure. A full day of rest was not an unreasonable request and it made the “cloistered” working week more bearable.⁶⁷ It is curious to see the association made between life in the shop and life in a monastery, the “cloistered life”, because that was precisely the image used in England, in the 1870s, to characterise the subjugation of the shop assistants to the permanent demands of the employers.⁶⁸ Nevertheless, for a substantial part of the shopkeepers, there was a reason behind this paternalistic view. Many of those who criticised the shop assistants and who drew their attention to the value of work, honesty and solidarity with their employers had already gone through the cursus honorum of commercial life. The very young entrance in the shop, at the age of ten to twelve, as a cashier trainee, was followed by a learning and integration period, which usually lasted until the trainee reached eighteen. The age of the cashier trainees, “those young employees, (…) is between twelve and eighteen years old”.⁶⁹ After this period, commitment to work would eventually lead the trainee, if the owner of the commercial house was happy with him, to the position of shop assistant and, in some cases, of bookkeeper. Between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-two, on average,⁷⁰ if the shop assistant had saved enough money, been responsible and enterprising, he could embrace his “independence” by going into business himself. In some cases, complicity with the employer and dedication to the shop could lead to a succession that began with the offer of the position of partner and which could end with the transfer of the business.

Conclusion The issue of weekly rest in the shops and services reveals a particular social and economic proximity between the European society of the centre and the peripheries. The points of contact that can be found when comparing cities as different as Lisbon, Paris, Athens, London or Madrid are striking. Looking at the discourse

 ACLL, Boletim, no. 3, March 1888, 5; no. 4, April 1888, 5; no. 6, June 1888, 4– 5; no. 60, November 1892, 6; O Lojista, no. 36, 13 June 1892; and ACLL, Relatório de 1908, 24.  Hosgood, “Mercantile Monasteries”, 336.  ACLL, Relatório de 1908, 24.  The age calculation was made on the basis of the analysis of electoral census data (already presented), where that interval was most frequent in the transition from the category of “shop assistant” to another related to the ownership of a shop. For the years 1878 to 1906, one hundred and sixty-six individuals were studied.

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of Lisbon’s Shopkeepers Association, the press and even the political discourse in Parliament, it is clear that, like in other major European cities, labour relations between shopkeepers and shop assistants in Lisbon were experiencing moments of tension during the so-called Belle Époque. The demands of the shop assistants for a day of weekly rest and the resistance of the shopkeepers to the intervention of the State to regulate this matter are two sides of a barricade which, despite having tense moments, never reached a revolutionary point. The shopkeepers kept postponing, as much as possible, a definitive, or at least satisfactory, resolution of the matter by using the metaphors of voluntarism and freedom of trade. When state regulation finally began to arrive, in most cases, at the turn to the twentieth century, the social and economic strength of the shopkeepers, based on professional associations which, in some cases, like in Lisbon, already had decades of activity, allowed the introduction of so many exemptions to the laws that few benefits were actually introduced in the hard life of the shop assistants. In addition to this, the paternalism and iron hand that ran life in the shops, as well as the construction and spread of an ideal of self-made man, integrity, hard work and dedication, gave the shopkeepers enough weapons to convince the shop assistants to remain in a resigned life and to oppose modernity, which was gaining strength in other sectors of the economy. The fact that the shop assistants of Lisbon were only able to secure a “half-freedom” on Sundays is symptomatic of the strength of some traditions in European society, at least until the eve of the First World War.

Sources Arquivo Histórico Parlamentar, Assembleias Eleitorais Monárquicas, boxes 1221, 1222, 1223, 1224, 1426, 1427, 1428, 1429 A, 1734B, 1734C, 1734D, 1734E, 1734F, 1890 A, 1890D, 1890F, 1890G, 1932, 1932B, 1932E, 1932F, 1932H, 2073, 2073 A, 2074B, 2159 A, 2159D and 2160. Associação Comercial de Lojistas de Lisboa, Actas da Direcção, 1886. Associação Comercial de Lojistas de Lisboa, Boletim, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1892, 1893, 1903, 1905, 1907 and 1908. Associação Comercial de Lojistas de Lisboa, Relatório, 1887, 1892, 1903, 1906 and 1908.

Newspapers A Tarde, 1890. Diário da Câmara dos Deputados, 1906 and 1907. Diário de Notícias, 1875 and 1894.

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Diário Popular, 1886 and 1890. O Lojista, 1891 and 1892. O Mundo, 1908. O Século, 1881 and 1890. Vanguarda, 1894.

Bibliography Alves, Daniel. A República atrás do balcão: os Lojistas de Lisboa e o fim da Monarquia (1870 – 1910). Chamusca: Edições Cosmos, 2012. Alves, Daniel. “Shopkeepers and the City: The Spatial Economy of the Retail Trade in a European Capital City (Lisbon, 1890 – 1910)”. History of Retailing and Consumption 3, no. 2 (2017): 139 – 58. Associação de Socorros Mútuos dos Empregados no Comércio e Indústria. Boletim comemorativo do 99o aniversário. Lisboa, 1953. Bailey, Peter. “White Collars, Gray Lives? The Lower Middle Class Revisited”. The Journal of British Studies 38, no. 3 (1999): 273 – 90. Carmona, Álvaro Soto. El Trabajo Industrial En La España Contemporánea, 1874 – 1936. Anthropos Editorial, 1989. Crossick, Geoffrey. “Shopkeepers and the State in Britain, 1870 – 1914”. In Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, 239 – 69. London: Methuen, 1984. Crossick, Geoffrey, and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt. The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780 – 1914: Enterprise, Family and Independence. London: Routledge, 1995. Crossick, Geoffrey, and Serge Jaumain, eds. Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850 – 1939. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. Estey, Marten. “Early Closing: Employer-Organized Origin of the Retail Labor Movement”. Labor History 13, no. 4 (1972): 560 – 70. Goulart, Pedro, and Arjun S. Bedi. “The Evolution of Child Labor in Portugal, 1850 – 2001”. Social Science History 41, no. 2 (2017): 227 – 54. Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard. “The Petty Bourgeoisie in Germany and France in the Late 19th Century”. In Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Jürgen Kocka and Allan Mitchell, 302 – 22. Oxford: Berg, 1993. Hentenryk, Ginette Kurgan-van. “A Forgotten Class: The Petite Bourgeoisie in Belgium, 1850 – 1914”. In Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, 120 – 33. London: Methuen, 1984. Hosgood, Christopher P. “”Mercantile Monasteries”: Shops, Shop Assistants, and Shop Life in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain”. Journal of British Studies 38, no. 3 (1999): 322 – 52. Huberman, Michael, and Christopher M. Meissner. “Riding the Wave of Trade: The Rise of Labor Regulation in the Golden Age of Globalization”. The Journal of Economic History 70, no. 3 (September 2010): 657 – 85. Jaumain, Serge. Les petits commerçants belges face a la modernité, 1880 – 1914. Bruxelles: Éd. de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1995.

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Miguel Salanova, Santiago de. “Changes and Continuities in Madrid’s Commercial Activity, 1880 – 1930”. History of Retailing and Consumption 3, no. 3 (2 September 2017): 201 – 22. Morris, Jonathan. The Political Economy of Shopkeeping in Milan, 1886 – 1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Nord, Philip G. Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Nord, Philip G. “The Small Shopkeepers Movement and Politics in France, 1888 – 1914”. In Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, 175 – 94. London: Methuen, 1984. Núñez Seixas, Xoxé M. “¿Una clase inexistente? La pequeña burguesía española (1808 – 1936)”. Historia Social, no. 26 (1996): 19 – 45. Popinigis, Fabiane. “”Operários de Casaca”? Relações de Trabalho e Lazer no Comércio Carioca na Virada dos Séculos XIX e XX”. Doutoramento, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2003. Potamianos, Nikos. “Regulation and the Retailing Community: The Struggle over the Establishment of the Holiday of Sunday in Greece, 1872 – 1925”. History of Retailing and Consumption 3, no. 3 (2017): 1 – 16. Quinlan, Michael, Margaret Gardner, and Peter Akers. “A Failure of Voluntarism: Shop Assistants and the Struggle to Restrict Trading Hours in the Colony of Victoria, 1850 – 85”. Labour History, no. 88 (2005): 165 – 82. Quinlan, Michael, and Miles Goodwin. “Combating the Tyranny of Flexibility: Shop Assistants and the Struggle to Regulate Closing Hours in the Australian Colony of Victoria, 1880 – 1900”. Social History 30, no. 3 (2005): 342 – 65. Ramos, Rui. A Segunda Fundação (1890 – 1926). História de Portugal, VI. Lisboa: Círculo de Leitores, 1994. Ribeiro, Vítor. O Atheneu Commercial de Lisboa no seu 25o anniversário em 10 de Junho de 1905. Lisboa: Typographia de “A Editora”, 1905. Winstanley, Michael J. The Shopkeeper’s World, 1830 – 1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983.

Anna Pina Paladini

Chapter 3 Policies for Artisans in Italy: the Transition from Fascist Corporatism to Post-war Welfare State, 1925 – 1960 Abstract: The chapter focuses on the changes in policies for the craft sector in Italy between the fascist regime and the first republican governments (1925 – 1960). Since the first legal measures in this particular field of labour, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the artisan was hard to be defined because of his bivalence, both entrepreneur and worker, and because of the ambiguity of the craft work itself. In 1926 the fascist regime founded the first national artisan organisation, the Fascist Federation of Artisans, and in the thirties some social policies were approved in the corporative project, with the only purpose of limiting the effects of the economic crisis and strengthening the consensus, rather than introducing and guaranteeing new labour and social rights or sustaining the sector. The crucial step occurred in the fifties, when the new artisan associations demanded different policies starting from the legal definition of artisan firm, but considering also health insurance and old age pensions. These claims interbred with the interest of new political parties – not only the main government one (Christian Democrats) – for the middle class, that was considered as an essential asset towards social integration. In the second half of the decade, the government passed some important laws, which defined the new labour policies and social protection for the craft sector. Although they did not constitute a coherent policy and left some problems unresolved, they can be considered as an attempt by some representatives of government parties and artisan associations to promote the contribution of the craft sector to post-war stability and the realisation of democratic principles.

Introduction This essay focuses on an area of labour, that of the craft sector, which between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe, and in particular in Italy, was not a well-defined world and had unclear boundaries. This was due primarily to the ambiguity of the nature of the artisan, somewhere between entrepreneur and https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-006

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workman, then because he was often confused with a small businessman or with an artist or because of the difficulty of taking a census of informal artisan labour often done in rural contexts by the farmers. It was these characteristics which made it difficult for the Italian legislature, when it took an interest in the field after the First World War, to define it in order to create specific regulations.¹ The title of the first Italian law concerning the sector, Sulle piccole industrie (About small industries) approved in 1919, did not include any clear legal definition referring to the artisan firms as well as to the small industries; for that reason, it concerned the entire magmatic universe of small firms. Unlike theme concerning the Italian industrial development and the work connected with it, which has been the subject of wide historiographical discussion in Italy, that of the craft sector remains mostly un-researched, especially as far as the transformation it underwent in the twentieth century is concerned. In fact, as it has been stated, the concept of “craft labour” (in Italian, artigianato) and its development in modern times “present a series of historiographical important interpretative issues” regarding at least three levels of analysis. First of all, the relationship between craft and industry and the boundary between the two spheres; then the social and economic role of craft labour, which is not immutable but varies in relation to epochs, social contexts and the precise forms that it takes. Lastly, the various cultural and political connotations that have been attributed to the term “craft” over history, contributing to

 On the difficulties connected with the definition of artisan in Italian case study refer to: Andrea Colli, I volti di Proteo. Storia della piccola impresa in Italia nel Novecento (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002); Anna Pina Paladini, Confartigianato dalle origini al consolidamento democratico (1946 – 1958) (Milan: Guerini and associati, 2016); Anna Pellegrino, “Il lavoro artigiano”, in Storia del lavoro in Italia. Il Novecento. 1896 – 1945. Il lavoro nell’età industriale, ed. Stefano Musso (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2015), 84– 125. Regarding the western-central European context of the early twentieth century and the debate on middle classes and their definition until 1914, see The Petite Bourgeoisie in Europe 1780 – 1914: Enterprise, Family and Independence, ed. Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz Gerard Haupt (London-New York: Routledge, 1984); Splintered Classes. The European Lower Middle Classes in the Age of Fascism, ed. Rudy Koshar (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990); Steven M. Zdatny, The politics of survival. Artisans in Twentieth Century France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Peter Heyrman, “Belgian Catholic entrepreneurs’ organisations, 1880 to 1940”, Journal of Business History 56 (2011): 163 – 186; Elisabetta Caroppo, Per la pace sociale. L’istituto internazionale per le classi medie nel primo Novecento (Galatina: Congedo, 2013). On the same topic in the eastern Mediterranean area, refer to the studies of Nikos Potamianos: “From the people to a class: the petite bourgeoisie of Athens. 1901– 1923”, in Social transformation and mass mobilization in the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean cities, 1900 – 1923, ed. Andreas Lyberatos (Heraklion: Crete University Press 2013), 133 – 145.

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the construction of models of identity that differ not just between epochs but also in relation to each culture and its attitude to labour.² In the next pages I will consider these aspects in relation to a key period for the Italian economy and society: that of the transition from Fascism – which first legitimised the craft sector as an economic one – to the Republic,³ a transition which was at its height in the 1950s. In this decade the state, the political parties and associations representing entrepreneurs and workers found it necessary to define new policies for the sector, following the failure of the fascist attempt at corporatism. In the post-war period the connection between the craft sector and the industry established by Fascism was questioned by the new artisan associations; moreover, the overall idea of the craft sector and its function in both economy and society was modified by the new parties, starting from their political and social programmes. These changes, together with the effect in Italy of a wider discussion on the role of middle classes in European society, influenced the demands of the associations for the sector. Besides, the new laws for the craft sector by the Italian governments in this period gave a decisive imprint for the policies of the following decades. According to some studies they were even decisive for the birth of the Italian industrial model focused on small and medium enterprises.⁴ In order to analyse these issues, my research approaches both political science studies concerning the origins and forms of representation of interest groups, in particular those of companies,⁵ and historical studies that focus on the economic and social policies of the first Italian republican period, an age investigated so far in many of its aspects but still little known in relation to the processes that invested sectors of labour other than large industry and agriculture.⁶ The main purpose is to identify the start-up phase of a specific legislation

 Pellegrino, “Il lavoro artigiano”, 84– 90 (quotation on p. 84).  Pellegrino states that “the fall of the regime involved a net breakdown”, 90.  On the main aspects and authors of this debate see the introduction to Giuseppe Maria Longoni and Alberto Rinaldi, “Industrial Policy and Artisan Firms (1930s–1970s)” in Forms of Enterprise in 20th Century Italy, ed. Andrea Colli and Michelangelo Vasta (Cheltenham UK-Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing: 2010), 204– 224.  Some examples of these studies are: Costruire la democrazia. Gruppi e partiti in Italia, ed. Leonardo Morlino (Bologna: il Mulino, 1991); Liborio Mattina, I gruppi di interesse (Bologna: il Mulino, 2010); Paolo Feltrin and Stefano Zan, Imprese e rappresentanza. Ruolo e funzioni delle associazioni imprenditoriali (Rome: Carocci, 2014).  There is a wide bibliography on these topics in Italy. Only some of the main studies can be mentioned here: Piero Barucci, Ricostruzione, pianificazione, Mezzogiorno: la politica economica in Italia dal 1943 al 1955 (Bologna: il Mulino, 1978); L’economia italiana dal 1945 a oggi, ed. Augusto Graziani (Bologna: il Mulino, 1979); Franco Bonelli, “Il capitalismo italiano. Linee generali

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for the artisan labour sector in Italy and to deepen its characters, trying to clarify the demands of the category and how they were expressed (how and when the specific groups of interests organised themselves, how the legitimisation of artisan associations in the institutions of government happened). Secondly, the aim is to know how the new democratic parties met the needs of the artisans. The main question is if the political choices implemented by post-WWII parties should be considered as “subsidy” and subsistence policies for the sector aimed to the consensus of these social and economic groups – as it has been stated in numerous studies since the 1970s⁷ – or if these policies were an attempt of the governments to carry out a clear political and economic project in opposition to alternative political and economic choices. In this sense, it will be interesting to analyse the differences in approach to the problems of the sector by some of the main Italian parties: those leading the country, the main one of which – as it will be better explained later – was Christian Democracy (Dc), but also the opposition, in particular the Italian Communist Party (Pci). Therefore, the sources used in this research are various: the documents of the main national organisations representing the interests of artisans and industrialists, in particular those of Italian General Craft Confederation (Confartigianato) and of the Italian General Confederation of Industry (Confindustria), which refer to the Fascist and Republican period and are preserved in their central archives in Rome; the political papers of the Dc, consulted at the archive of the

d’interpretazione”, in Storia d’Italia. Annali, vol. 1, ed. Ruggiero Romano and Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 1978), 1242– 1256; Mariuccia Salvati, “Amministrazione pubblica e partiti di fronte alla politica industriale”, in Storia dell’Italia repubblicana, vol. I, ed. Francesco Barbagallo (Turin: Einaudi, 1994), 413 – 536; Fabrizio Barca, “Compromesso senza riforme nel capitalismo italiano”, in Storia del capitalismo italiano dal dopoguerra ad oggi, ed. Fabrizio Barca (Rome: Donzelli, 1997), 3 – 115; Pierluigi Ciocca and Gianni Toniolo, Storia economica d’Italia, vol. 1 (Milan-Rome-Bari, Cariplo-Laterza, 1999). On industrialist see: Liborio Mattina, Gli industriali e la democrazia. La Confindustria nella formazione dell’Italia repubblicana (Bologna: il Mulino, 1991); on agriculture and its associations refer to: La Confagricoltura nella storia d’Italia. Dalle origini dell’associazionismo agricolo nazionale ad oggi, ed. Sandro Rogari (Bologna: il Mulino, 1999); Storia della Confederazione Italiana Agricoltori: rappresentanza, politiche e unità contadina dal secondo dopoguerra ad oggi, ed. Emanuele Bernardi, Fabrizio Nunnari and Luigi Scoppola Iacopini (Bologna: il Mulino, 2013). There are also some recent studies about shopkeepers in the republican era: Davide Baviello, I commercianti e i primi anni della repubblica (1946 – 1951) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2008); Bruno Maida, Il prezzo dello scambio. Commercianti a Turin (1940 – 1943) (Turin: Scriptorium, 1998); Bruno Maida Proletari della borghesia: i piccoli commercianti dall’Unità a oggi (Rome: Carocci, 2009).  Giuliano Amato, Il governo dell’industria in Italia (Bologna: il Mulino, 1972); Il caso italiano, ed. Fabio Luca Cavazza and Stephen Graubard (Milan: Garzanti, 1974); later, Salvati, “Amministrazione pubblica e partiti” and Barca, “Compromesso senza riforme”.

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Luigi Sturzo Institute in Rome, and, finally, the parliamentary acts of the first two legislatures of Republican Italy (1948 – 1953 and 1953 – 1958).

In the Fascist Era: the Artisan Labour in the Corporative Project As many studies have already pointed out,⁸ in the 1930s fascist corporative policies, aimed at reconciling the different problems of the world of work,⁹ were intertwined with the regime’s measures regarding social policy (various types of welfare assistance, insurance against occupational disease and accidents, sickness benefits and family allowance). It was not however its aim to introduce and assure new rights for the worker or to reduce social inequalities, but to contain the effects of the economic crisis after 1929 and reinvigorate consensus. In the craft sector such choices were clearly visible. First of all, it is necessary to point out that during the 1920s, the first part of the fascist period, there was an important push to organise the artisan sector, which was a significant slice of the manufacturing sector (as shown by the industrial census of 1937 to 1939 – 40, with about a quarter of those working in the secondary sector being artisans).¹⁰  Alessio Gagliardi, Il corporativismo fascista (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010); Gianni Silei, Lo Stato sociale in Italia. Storia e Documenti (Manduria-Rome-Bari: Lacaita, 2004), 291– 362. For the key features of the welfare state in Italy, see Stefano Sepe, Le amministrazioni della sicurezza sociale nell’Italia unita (Milan: Giuffrè, 1999), 1– 26; Paolo Mattera, “Introduzione: la storia del welfare state in Italia, quali basi e quali prospettive?” in Momenti del welfare in Italia. Storiografia e percorsi di ricerca, ed. Paolo Mattera (Rome: Viella, 2012), 9 – 16; Sabino Cassese, Governare gli italiani. Storia dello Stato (Bologna: il Mulino, 2014), 291– 312. For social policies in Italy between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, see Fulvio Conti and Gianni Silei, Breve storia dello Stato sociale (Rome: Carocci, 2005); Maurizio Ferrera, Valeria Fargion and Matteo Jessoula, Alle radici del welfare all’italiana (Venice: Marsilio, 2012), 29 – 78.  As is well known, the corporative model of organisation of economic and social interests used the corporations to suppress the demands of the workers and subject them to the employers’ needs, depriving them both of their own autonomous representative bodies, which were external to the state administration, in order to control them by the state through the corporative system. See Gagliardi, Il corporativismo fascista; Sabino Cassese, Lo Stato fascista (Bologna: il Mulino, 2010). Recently Laura Cerasi studied the connection between corporatism and work as a meaningful link of the fascist state in “Corporazione e lavoro. Un campo di tensione nel fascismo degli anni Trenta”, Studi Storici 4 (2018): 941– 962.  On quantitive data of artisan firms see Vera Zamagni, “L’economia artigiana nell’Italia contemporanea”, in Storia dell’artigianato italiano, ed. Agenore Bassi and other authors (Rome: Etas libri, 1979), 235; Longoni and Rinaldi, “Industrial Policy and Artisan Firms”, 206 – 207.

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In that decade, some political processes which had begun after the First World War, aimed at small manufacturing activities, came to fruition. In the post-war period, the first to be launched was the law 1009 of 1919 (Sulle piccole industrie). This law was born from the initiative of some prominent political figures of liberal Italy, such as Luigi Luzzatti, committed to promoting productive and credit cooperation in favour of small manufacturing activities, and Francesco Saverio Nitti, actively involved in encouraging state intervention in the sector¹¹; it was also placed within the broader intellectual and cultural debate discussed in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century on the political and social role of the middle classes for the overcoming of the opposition between capitalism and socialism and of the consequent social conflict, as well as on the role of the state towards these classes.¹² Not foreseeing any distinction between small industries and artisan sector, due to the mentioned difficulties of univocal definition of the two sectors, involved in continuous and sudden changes in the different areas of Italy as well as in Europe, the objective of the law was to stimulate post-war self-employment in small manufacturing activities, both in urban and rural contest, through the encouragement of local committees under a national Committee’s supervision. The action of these committees was a watershed in the development of the idea of forming trade associations. Thanks to their local organisation and to the participation of small industries and artisan firms, they represented the first cells of organisations which became the mouthpieces for the two categories regarding their respective problems, dealing first with the need for respective definitions and creating an awareness of their distinct nature compared to that of large industry. It is not by chance in fact that already in the mid 1920s two significant events had taken place: firstly, in 1925, due to pressure from these committees, the fascist government set up a public body, Ente Nazionale per le Piccole Industrie (the National Organisation of Small Industries), which then became Ente Nazionale per l’Artigianato e le Piccole Industrie (the National Organisation of Artisans and Small Industries, known in Italy with the acronym ENAPI)¹³; secondly, in 1926 the Federazione fascista degli artigiani (the Fascist Federation of Artisans), the first national body to represent the interests of Italian artisans, was set up.¹⁴

 Anna Pina Paladini, Tra Stato e parastato: l’Ente Nazionale per l’Artigianato e le Piccole Industrie (1925 – 1978) (Congedo: Galatina, 2017).  On these aspects refers to Caroppo, Per la pace sociale.  Anna Pina Paladini, Tra Stato e parastato.  Zamagni, “L’economia artigiana”, 250 – 252.

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Since the beginning of the fascist era, the ENAPI was interested by a gradual movement, reached in 1928,¹⁵ from Nitti’s effort to modernise these sectors and from Luzzatti’s co-operative proposals to its subjection to the fascist economic choices and to the strategy for achieving consensus. During the 1930s, this public agency, controlled by the Confindustria and the Fascist Federation of Artisans, became a corporative instrument aimed to reach an agreement between the different economic and social interests of artisan and small industries with big manufacturing activities.¹⁶ Since the first post-war period, in fact, the relation of small firms with the larger ones was antagonistic because of their different needs and because of the prevail of the demands of the big industries on the smaller ones; for this reason, the latter tried to obtain the independence from Confindustria, dominated by big industries. This national association had been established in Italy in 1910, but in the fascist period it lost its autonomy and joined fascist corporations. It was the first association representing large sectors of production: big and small industry, artisans, landowners, public services, business leaders. When contrasts with small firms emerged, Confindustria opposed any attempt of promoting an autonomous association for small and medium industries – which constituted the largest part of the industry in Italy – in order not to lose its membership base and the increasing influence of a few large industries in the political sphere.¹⁷ As far as the artisan was concerned, some case studies focusing on a local level analysis have shown that moves towards setting up associations had al-

 In that year, fascism carried out a process of “fascistisation” of public bodies, both those newly established and those inherited from the previous period, putting an end to the project of a more efficient administration and favouring a more massive role of the fascist party and its corporations in their management. The Italian studies on this topic are numerous; they mainly concern the history of individual public bodies. Some interesting summary essays on this subject are those by Mariuccia Salvati, “Gli enti pubblici nel contesto dell’Italia fascista. Appunti su storiografia e nuovi indirizzi di ricerca”, Le Carte e la Storia 2 (2002): 28 – 41, and “The long history of corporatism in Italy”, Contemporary European History 2 (2006): 223 – 244.  On the sources about the fascist period of the ENAPI (reports on its yearly activities, ministerial document, presidents and management groups etc.), see Anna Pina Paladini, Tra Stato e parastato; some specific aspects of this author’s research were previously published also in the article “Tra Stato e parastato: le origini e l’avvio dell’Ente Nazionale Artigianato e Piccole Industrie tra le due guerre mondiali”, Società e Storia, 141 (2013): 485 – 530.  Some attempts to found autonomous representative associations of small industries were carried out in Milan and Turin at the beginning of the 1920s. See Mara Anastasia, “I piccoli commercianti torinesi, il primo dopoguerra e l’avvento del fascismo (1919 – 1922)”, Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi 33 (1999): 19 – 53; Giulio Sapelli, Fascismo, grande industria e sindacato (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1975), 23 – 38.

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ready begun in the second half of the nineteenth century¹⁸; however, it was in the 1920s that a wider association was aspired to. It happened in the first place thanks to the cultural revival which was carried out under Fascism, which, with a view to widening the regime’s consensus, praised this world as opposed to the industrial and capitalistic one as a model of “healthy” productive and social relations, providing a mythic portrayal of the sector that often did not correspond to the real living and working conditions of many artisans. The second incentive to the birth of a national organisation was the launch of a corporative programme in the economic sector.¹⁹ The birth, in 1926, of the Fascist Federation of Artisans was the heart of this process; however, it was hindered by Confindustria for the same reasons of the opposition to the independence of the small industries.²⁰ In fact, one of the main demands that originated in the Fascist Federation of Artisans was for a definition of artisan which tended to modernise the sector, going beyond the fixed list of traditional artisan crafts,²¹ and also including some sectors of the small industry, thus depriving Confindustria of an important percentage of its members. With the worsening of the economic situation after 1929 and the split between the needs of artisan work and those of industry, Fascism, wanting to promote its own interests in adhering the different members of the world of labour to the corporative spirit,²² intervened in the 1930s to eliminate the conflicts, giving a back seat to small producers’ demands for progress. The regime limited the autonomous organisation of the craft sector, obliging its federation to join Confindustria and giving the latter the prerogative of establishing the size of the artisan’s firms, limiting it to a maximum of five employees (against, for example,

 The “Fratellanza Artigiana d’Italia”, for example, was founded in Florence in 1861. See Anna Pellegrino, La città più artigiana d’Italia. Firenze 1861 – 1929 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012), 273 – 320.  Zamagni, “L’economia artigiana”, 250 – 252.  Nevertheless, as some studies have shown, the law on labour union, approved in the same 1926, strengthened Confindustria and its widespread presence in the whole country thanks to the introduction of the mandatory membership instead of the optional one, thus removing the chance of its weakening. The new law in the same topic in 1934 accomplished this process; Luca Lanzalaco, Dall’impresa all’associazione: le organizzazioni degli imprenditori: la Confindustria in prospettiva comparata (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1990), 131– 150; Mattina, Gli industriali e la democrazia, 81– 88.  Francesco Fusillo, “Artigianato”, in Enciclopedia del Diritto, vol. III (Milan: Giuffrè, 1958), 133 – 134.  Gagliardi, Il corporativismo fascista, 65 – 69, 136 – 140.

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the ten of France and the twenty-five of Hungary).²³ Thus, the Fascist Federation of Artisans was weakened, including only the smallest firms and those in which the master artisans worked exclusively by their hands, without any machinery (list of traditional “crafts”). It should also be emphasised that, in line with these choices, the government never gave an adequate response to most of the artisan federations’ requests for regulation, in particular in relation to the recognition of a specific collective contract for the artisan, different from that of the industrialist (which was considered to have too many costs for small producers), and regarding apprenticeships and the introduction of an artisan “patente di mestiere” (trade licence), a kind of certificate verifying that the artisan was qualified in his specific job. Production, credit, commerce and working hours were also regulated in exactly the same way as they were in the industrial sector. In fact, the subordination of the Fascist Federation of Artisans to Confindustria and the lack of specific regulations for the artisan allowed the regime to continue to use the sector as the main outlet for unemployment.²⁴ On the other hand, fascism tried to compensate for the inequalities in the artisan sector by intervening in two ways: in the first place, exempting the category from some obligations regarding safety at work and introducing some compensatory social security measures,²⁵ and in the second place entrusting to the Fascist Federation of Artisans the leadership of the previously mentioned Ente Nazionale per le Piccole Industrie (ENPI). This in fact became the Ente Nazionale per l’Artigianato e le Piccole Industrie (ENAPI, The National Association of Artisans and small Industries) in 1930 and directed its activities increasingly towards artisans. In this way the government guaranteed the presence of the state by the side of small manufacturing producers in difficulty, preserving at the same time the relationship with big industry. However, it was a kind of occasional help mainly aimed at gaining consensus and bending small firms to the economic needs of the regime, postponing its development and the solution of its problems on a future date.²⁶

 Fusillo, “Artigianato”, 135; Colli, I volti di Proteo, 57– 73; Sapelli, Fascismo, grande industria, 23 – 38; Stefania Sanguanini, “I “mezzadri urbani”. Il sindacato fascista degli artigiani”, Italia Contemporanea, 165 (1986): 30 – 52.  Sanguanini, “I “mezzadri urbani. Il sindacato fascista”, 43 – 52.  Sanguanini notes that companies that used “small machinery”, for example, were excluded from accident insurance, thus reducing fiscal burden, and that the wife and family members of the proprietor did not have to comply with the forty weekly working hours, thus allowing greater profit.  Paladini, Tra Stato e parastato, 21– 86.

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The 1950s: the New Artisan Associations and the Definition of Artisan Firm Despite the limits which have been underlined, there is no doubt that at the end of the fascist period the craft sector had a very different profile if compared to the beginning of the 1920s: its experience as national association had led to a concrete awareness of its needs and of its different features from other production sectors.²⁷ The same theoretical gains made in the period between the two world wars (legal definition of the sector, apprenticeships, trade licence), opened the debate again after 1945, when the suppression of the fascist associations and the birth of the democratic parties put an end to a shared representation in the sector and led to the creation of numerous new organisations representing the interests of artisans apart from those of industry. After the collapse of Fascism, in the last period of the Second World War (1943 – 1945), new parties were formed in Italy. The main among them were: the Christian Democracy (Dc), which gathered Catholic-inspired politicians and was led by Alcide De Gasperi; the Italian Communist Party (Pci) led by Palmiro Togliatti; and the socialists (Psi) whose leader was Pietro Nenni. Because of the beginning of the Cold War and the extension of the US’s influence on Italy, the initial collaboration between all new Italian democratic parties stopped: during the fifties (this political period was called centrismo), Dc led the government with minor parties (Liberal Party, Pli, was among them), while Pci and Psi formed the opposition. These political changes were also reflected in the formation of new associations representing workers and employers, which were divided into numerous conflicting bodies. As for the workers, for example, in 1948 the unitary union was divided into three organisations sided with the three main parties: Cgil (Pci), Cisl (Dc) and Uil (Psi). Regarding the representation of autonomous artisans and small entrepreneurs, some new bodies, independent from Confindustria, were founded in the same year: the Italian General Craft Confederation (Confartigianato) and the National Craft Confederation (Cna), respectively close to the government parties (Dc and Liberal Party in the first place) and to the left parties (communist and socialist), were the most important among

 Piero Gazzotti, L’artigianato del tempo fascista (Rome: Centro Internazionale dell’artigianato, 1942), 97– 201; Zamagni, “L’economia artigiana”, 251.

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these new associations.²⁸ The two associations were also in contrast about the relationship with big industries: the former agreed with Confindustria, the latter was opposed to it. The first issue these associations worked for was a legal definition of the artisan and artisan firms, free from the fascist legacy. Being a turning point of the associations’ demands in order to obtain their own institutional legitimation, the debate on the nature of the artisan, his role and social and economic function, was extensive and interesting. Different interpretations of the artisan were put forward by the confederations themselves: Confartigianato considered him as a small businessman, different but not in contrast with a big entrepreneur; on the contrary, Cna maintained that his social and working position was closer to that of the manual worker and saw him as a victim of the capitalistic organisation of the labour world. Confindustria supported Confartigianato in its opinion thanks to good mutual relationships, at the same time it was interested in the distinction between artisans and small industries and in retaining the representation of the latter’s interests, thus considering as artisan firms the smallest and less developed manufacturing activities. Identification of the distinctive characteristics of the sectors ranged from qualitative aspects (the proprietor’s direct personal involvement in the work, direct training of apprentices, creativity and artistic skills, limited use of machinery, place of artisan firm at the home of the master) to quantitative ones (number of employees and apprentices and number of family members among the workers) and to wider reflections on the relationship of the artisan to other members of the middle classes (based on the debate and theories born in the international context at the end of the nineteenth century).²⁹ Finally, in 1956 a law (n. 860) was approved defining the artisan firm, not referring to the type of trade activities but to the size of firms. The number of employees was fixed at a threshold even lower than the rest of Europe: up to ten employees, including family members, plus ten apprentices in no series work; up to five employees, including family members, plus five apprentices in series production work; no limit of employees (but up to twenty apprentices) in the artistic firms. The choice of size of firms as the main criterion was an exception in western Europe, where generally the definition of artisan firms was linked to the type of activities and the certification of expertise. Confartigianato criticized  Paladini, Confartigianato dalle origini, 27– 56.  Historical Archive of the association of industrialist (Confindustria), Archival collection Artisan and Small industries, proceedings and documents (1946 – 1956). Rich sources on this topic are also in Confartigianato’s journal L’Artigianato d’Italia (1947– 1957) and in the parliamentary acts of the same period. For more details, see Paladini, Confartigianato dalle origini, 87– 104.

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above all the last defect in the law because of the suppression of its proposal of a trade licence (“patente di mestiere”). Nevertheless, the new law finally recognised the autonomous dignity of the sector and was a good compromise between the various proposals: it placed the stress on certain traditional aspects of the artisan activity, such as the familial character of an artisan firm and the proprietor’s role as guide and master, but also recognised that machinery could be used as well as sources of energy, freeing the sector at the same time from the fascist “list of crafts”. The setting up of new provincial registers of artisans in fact had a different purpose from the control-based one of the past: no longer that of forcing the sector into fixed frameworks, but to make it easier for artisans to access the facilities provided for their benefit in various areas, such as social security, taxation and health. Furthermore, it should be noted that this debate on the characteristics of the artisan and the artisan’s firm was of fundamental importance in bringing about a radical change in how the artisan was perceived and to mark the differences from the corporative past. In this discussion the craft sector was no more an idyllic labour in contrast with the industrial one as it had been in the fascist propaganda, but it was a specific and autonomous sector of the world of work, whose aspects and problems had to be analysed according to a scientific approach. At the same time the new legal definition encouraged the strengthening of the democratic artisan associations, whose activities paved the way to new policies for the artisan work. In fact, alongside the issues already discussed in the fascist era, which were regaining importance during the 1950s, new issues emerged, like the sector’s claim to the right to healthcare and pensions. These were the result both of the debate on a welfare reform in Italy based on the Beveridge Plan’s pattern and of the enactment of the social laws concerning other sectors of labour promoted by the first republican governments.³⁰

The Role of the New Democratic Parties and the Artisans’ Demands If, as has been said, after unification of Italy (1861) and during the fascist period (1922– 1943) the craft sector brought together the ruling classes’ policies on

 Paladini, Confartigianato dalle origini, 171– 188. See also Marco De Nicolò, Storia della Confederazione Nazionale dell’Artigianato (Bologna: il Mulino, 2016), 163 – 171; Bruno Maida, Artigiani nella città dell’industria. La Cna a Turin (1946 – 2006) (Turin: Edizioni SEB, 2007), 111– 118.

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work,³¹ after the Second World War the political interest was first concentrated on other fronts: that of land workers and manual workers.³² It was the artisan associations which, despite the weakness of their early activities due to their internal conflicts, managed to capture the interest of the political parties, thanks to the organising of numerous conventions and meetings (both national and international) and participation in workshops with government ministers.³³ These strategies were mainly brought about by Confartigianato, which would become the favourite representative of artisans for the political institutions; the Cna, instead, being close to the parties of the opposition, preferred the protest not only through the newspapers, but also through the strikes in the streets asking for better conditions both for self-employed artisans and for workers. If Confartigianato asked for the recognition of artisans as an autonomous sector and for specific rights (less taxes, pensions, credit, healthcare), at the time it developed a hostile attitude towards state intervention which it saw as limiting their autonomy. On the other hand, the Cna tended to come across as a weaker association than Confartigianato, since it was subjected to the directives of the Italian communist party (Pci). It compared the condition of the artisans to that of the working class because of the policy of low wages that affected workers and productive middle classes; it denounced that governments placed primacy on big industry and called for more state intervention to solve some problems such as the discipline of the prices of raw materials.³⁴ Even though slowly, the republican parties began to consider the artisans as a social sector to govern and sustain through specific legal measures for guaranteeing social equality and stability and so, especially in the case of the governing parties, to improve the governability of the nation, removing the communist revolutionary danger. However, the attitudes of the parties – and sometimes of the different wing within each party – towards the sector were different because of the diverse role they recognised to the artisan firms in the post-war society and economy. Only since 1956 did the Pci stopped seeing in the artisan a “social sector to be hegemonized” and began to consider with greater attention the possibility of its real involvement in the economic and social policy promoted by the party as

 Pellegrino, Il lavoro artigiano, 124.  Stefano Musso, Storia del lavoro in Italia dall’unità ad oggi (Venice: Marsilio, 2002), 188 – 208.  My research on this topic enables me to agree with those studies that have highlighted the role of the representative associations in promoting the development of sector policies. In particular see Longoni and Rinaldi, “Industrial Policy and Artisan Firms”, 223.  On the diversity of strategies of the two associations, refer to Paladini, Confartigianato dalle origini; De Nicolò, Storia della Confederazione, 127– 162.

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an ally of the working class in the struggle against the big capitalistic monopolies.³⁵ On the contrary, in the vision of the main government party, the Christian Democracy (Dc), craft sector was a key part of economic policy since its founding documents (such as the Code of Camaldoli, dated 1943). In the analysis of the Dc small enterprises were considered as an essential element for the reconstruction of Italy’s economy and society which had to be centred on the diffusion of the small property, on workers’ dignity and on social solidarity. Within the Christian Democratic Party it was above all the left-wing group that was inspired by the Church’s Christian-social doctrine, gathered around Giuseppe Dossetti and more attentive to social issues and problems of work,³⁶ to urge the start of economic policies in favour of the artisans, criticising some initial economic measures marked by a prevalent liberal line.³⁷ Even the Italian liberal party (Pli), a minor party in the government area, showed interest in the sector, especially since the election of Giovanni Malagodi as general secretary in 1954. With him the party’s representative basin was better defined in the middle classes in the framework of a conservative program, aimed at “counterbalancing, not accompanying, the pressures of the Social Democrats and the left-wing of Dc”, which

 De Nicolò, Storia della Confederazione, 139.  After the first political elections of the republican era, on 18 April 1948, with the great success of Dc, the Christian democrat Dossetti and his group insisted on a political line of incisive reforms, inspired by the values of evangelical justice and solidarity and without mediation with other liberal and social democratic political forces. His opinion was in contrast with the choices of the prime minister Alcide De Gasperi, who, however, was not an advocate of liberal principles, and this led to Dossetti’s decision to abandon politics in 1951. After this crisis, De Gasperi decided to include members of the left-wing of the party (in particular Amintore Fanfani) in his seventh government (July 1951-June 1953) and to support a “compromise solution” in economic field. See Francesco Malgeri, L’Italia democristiana. Uomini e idee del cattolicesimo democratico nell’Italia repubblicana (1943 – 1993) (Rome: Gangemi, 2005), 75 – 81; on the history of Dc refer to Agostino Giovagnoli, Il partito italiano. La democrazia cristiana dal 1942 al 1994 (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1996). On the political action of this group in favour of the artisan sector see A. P. Paladini, The Christian Democratic Party and the policies for the craft sector in Italy during the 1950s, paper presented to the Workshop on “Christian Democracy and Labour after World war II”, Civitas Symposium 2017, Milan, 26 – 27 October 2017, in press by Kadoc (Documentation and Research Center on Religion Culture and Society), Leuven.  On the economic policy of the first Alcide De Gasperi governments, which Italian historians have long studied for its mixed features, here we refer to the recent article of Piero Barucci, who argued about a “mixed economy” “La politica economica durante l’epoca democristiana”, Studi storici 1 (2012): 119 – 139.

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threatened to put the moderate governments to an end (in Italian centrismo) and pave the way for the centre-left alliance.³⁸ All these different political reasons definitely encouraged the start of artisan legislation. Nevertheless, the ruling classes’ initial approach to the sector did not fully answer the associations’ needs. Following the model of foreign legislation, artisan associations demanded an “organic” program for the artisans’ activity, that is a programme divided into a set of laws which tackled their problems in a comprehensive and exhaustive way, taking into consideration the question of the legal definition of craft sector and firm as a necessary premise to addressing credit, tax and social security issues. In their opinion, the government intervened, instead, with the launching of measures to deal above all with some urgent needs connected to the economic contingencies of the post-war period or with laws confined to specific areas of the sector, without taking an overall view of the artisans’ problems.

The First Laws for the Sector: Subsidy Policies or Social Policies? Among the first government measures was one on credit, which led to the setting up of a credit institution named Artigiancassa (1947) to provide finance for artisan activities, mainly aimed at overcoming the difficulty of acquiring raw materials. It had been launched also in the face of the intensification of the crisis in the sector, partly due to the credit squeeze imposed by the liberal policy of the Minister of Budget Luigi Einaudi during the fourth De Gasperi government.³⁹ If this law was a first sign of state intervention in the sector, there were considerable limitations which conditioned its smooth running: sparse funding, restrictions on access to credit and difficulties for artisans to relate to and to make use of this central credit institution. The artisan associations highlighted these numerous limitations, promoting a first reform of its provisions in 1952 and then a new reform in 1956, which made Artigiancassa more suited to the

 On liberal interest for middle classes after the WWII, see Giovanni Orsina, L’alternativa liberale. Malagodi e l’alternativa al centro sinistra (Venice: Marsilio, 2010), 48 – 65 (quotation on p. 63).  On Einaudi’s position on the middle classes refer to Luca Tedesco, “Luigi Einaudi e la trasfigurazione mitica dei ceti medi”, Studium (2006), 757– 779.

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needs of the sector thanks to new cooperation with other banks closer to the artisans.⁴⁰ For the Italian historiography, this credit law showed the distinctive character of the Dc’s policy towards artisans, based on the defence of corporate interests for the sake of consensus, against any need for development in the sector, starting a “subsidy policy” towards it that would be pursued in the following years.⁴¹ However, in light of recent studies, which are examining in depth the role of the Christian Democrat left-wing in the policies of those years, these interpretations appear to be rather schematic and reductive. Through the credit provision and the other measures concerning artisans, which will be analysed in the next pages, the left-wing of Dc was trying to implement a program of social reforms that favoured a progressive enlargement of participation in the rights enshrined in the new Constitution. It was Amintore Fanfani⁴² in fact, close to the political ideas of this group, who instituted the Artigiancassa in 1947 as he was Minister of Labour and Social Security (1947– 1950); he tried also to distinguish the artisan family allowance from the industrial one, started professional training for artisan journeymen within the law on employment reform in 1949 and hindered unemployment in the sector.⁴³ Meanwhile, in Parliament other members of the same Christian-social group gathered around the political journals “Cronache sociali” and “Iniziativa democratica”, as Gerolamo Lino Moro, member of the Azione Cattolica Italiana (Italian Catholic Action), and Vittoria Titomanlio, representative of the catholic workers’ associations named Acli, promoted laws in favour of artisans. These first attempts to start artisan legislation  Marcello Tondo, I crediti speciali. Credito mobiliare (Rome: Bancaria, 1962), 215 – 231; Amedeo Giannini, Crediti speciali (Milan: Giuffrè, 1960), 177– 195; Stefania Gondolini, “La Cna dalle origini agli anni Sessanta”, in Da artigiani a imprenditori. La Cna di Forlì-Cesena nella grande trasformazione. 1954 – 2004, ed. Roberto Balzani (Cesena: Il ponte vecchio, 2004), 36 – 43; Longoni and Rinaldi, “Industrial Policy and Artisan Firms”, 212– 214; Paladini, Confartigianato dalle origini, 151– 155.  Refer especially to Amato, Il governo dell’industria, 33; Salvati, “Amministrazione pubblica e partiti”, 413 – 536; Barca, “Compromesso senza riforme”, 27– 28 (the quotation belongs to Barca).  Amintore Fanfani (1908 – 1999) completed his studies at the Catholic University of Milan, paying special attention to the themes of capitalism, corporatism (he proposed a Catholic corporatism that was alternative to the fascist one) and social security. He was among the leading exponents of the so-called “second generation” of the Christian Democrat Party, Dc’s party secretary (1954– 59; 1973 – 75) and prime minister several times (1958 – 59, 1960 – 62, 1962– 63, 1982– 83, 1987). On the figure of Fanfani in the period analysed here, refer to Malgeri, L’Italia democristiana, 82– 97; Amintore Fanfani. Formazione culturale, identità e responsabilità politica, ed. Alberto Cova and Claudio Besana (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2014).  Giampiero Fumi, “Fanfani al Ministero del Lavoro (1947– 1950): lotta alla disoccupazione e regolazione pubblica”, Amintore Fanfani, ed. Cova and Besana, 263 – 308.

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were strengthened after 1954, when Fanfani became the political secretary of the Dc. Between 1955 and 1959, in fact, the Christian democrat group led by Fanfani worked unceasingly towards specific legislation for the artisan sector. In addition to Moro and Titomanlio, also the undersecretary of industry, Fiorentino Sullo, very close to the economic policy of Fanfani and committed to curb the power of Confindustria and the liberal pressures, encouraged the transition to more balanced social policies and labour regulations, starting with the workers and the artisans.⁴⁴ In this period the artisan associations, above all Confartigianato, played an active role, too: they were consulted by the institutions and the ministerial bodies in the negotiation of interests, where they did not fail to highlight the reasons for the disagreement on the measures under way and to formulate alternative or corrective proposals. Furthermore, this phase helped to better define the relations between Confartigianato and Dc, creating a political partnership between them: Italian historical research has often referred to the couple Confartigianato-Dc as a natural and obvious fact since the very birth of the first. Instead, in the light of sources consulted for this study, the collaboration was a complex political process due to the presence in the artisan association of different cultural currents, both Catholic and non-Catholic, both political and non-political,⁴⁵ but also for the already mentioned diversity of opinion on some laws. In this sense it is important to remember that in the first half of the 1950s, Confartigianato tried also to reach out to the liberal party (Pli) in order to have the Parliament discussion of an “Artisan’s Code” as opposed to the fragmented character of the governing laws carried out by the Dc (Confartigianato defined them “a drip-feed policy”).⁴⁶ Regulation regarding apprenticeships is probably the most useful example for understanding the different way of looking at things between government and artisan associations. In fact, the artisan associations wanted to deal with this question together with three other points: the rules about the title of “master artisan” (“maestro artigiano”, the expertise qualification the artisan needed in order to train apprentices), that of the “firm school” (“botteghe scuola”, respon-

 Anna Lucia Denitto, “Fiorentino Sullo”, Italian Encyclopaedia “Treccani”, 49 (2019): http:// www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/fiorentino-sullo_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. I am indebted to the author for a preview of her contribution.  These different components had led to an initial division of the association into two different associations between 1948 and 1952: one of Catholic and Christian Democratic inspiration (called “Italiana”), the other apolitical and close to Confindustria (called “Generale”), then reunited again in Confartigianato. Paladini, Confartigianato dalle origini, 27– 56; 133 – 149.  On the relation between Confartigianato and the liberals see Paladini, Confartigianato dalle origini, 151– 169.

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sible for training new journeymen and master artisan) and, lastly, the “trade licence” (“patente di mestiere”, obtained by an apprentice’s final exam in order to certificate artisan job expertise). The government though only dealt with the updating of regulations for apprentices in the industrial sector, with very limited results. However, the most significant measures towards overcoming the fascist approach to problems in the sector came between 1956 and 1959, when laws on healthcare and invalidity and old-age pensions were respectively approved. In this area, the issues of the artisan sector coincided with government action towards the introduction of a welfare state.⁴⁷ Setting aside the idea of comprehensive reform of the Italian social security system on the model of the “Beveridge Plan” tried in the post-war period, the Italian ruling classes in the 1950s opted for reform and integration of the already existing welfare model through specific measures for individual social and work categories. The launch of social security and welfare measures were not only intended to enhance electoral support for the parties, but also to attract ever wider layers of society into the democratic system,⁴⁸ creating a development pattern where the liberal economic choices could be tempered by the state intervention aimed at the realisation of the social rights introduced by the Republican Constitution.⁴⁹ It was in this phase that provision regarding obligatory health insurance for the artisan category was discussed and approved.⁵⁰ The merit of this law was that it marked the move from the voluntary health service of the fascist era, guaranteed by private health insurance, to the obligatory service financed by the  For the Italian welfare state in 1945 – 1975 and its study, see Maurizio Ferrera, “Trent’anni dopo. Il Welfare State europeo tra crisi e trasformazione”, Stato e mercato 81 (2007): 341– 375; Mattera, “Introduzione”, 9 – 16; Silei, Lo Stato sociale. See also Metello Cavallo, Lo Stato sociale in Italia. Dalla formazione alla crisi (Bologna: Pàtron, 2000).  Ferrera, Fargion and Jessoula, Alle radici del welfare, 145; Morlino, “Introduzione” and “La relazione tra gruppi e partiti. Conclusioni”, Costruire la democrazia, ed. Morlino, 7– 40, 447– 485.  This purpose was the most important ideological basis for the transition from central to central-left governments, carried out by the Prime minister Fanfani during the third republican legislature (1958 – 1963). On these matters, refer to Claudio Besana, “Alla ricerca di una via per le riforme in campo economico e sociale. Note sui governi Fanfani della terza legislatura”, Amintore Fanfani, ed. Cova and Besana, 309 – 345; Le istituzioni repubblicane dal centrismo al centrosinistra, 1953 – 1968, ed. Pier Luigi Ballini, Sandro Guerrieri and Antonio Varsori (Rome: Carocci, 2006).  In the 1950s obligatory health insurance was extended to many social categories before involving artisans: journalists, domestic workers, state managers and state retirees, farmers and sharecroppers; Ferrera, Fargion and Jessoula, Alle radici del welfare, 123. On the social measures for artisans and on the sources used for studying them, see Paladini, Confartigianato dalle origini, 189 – 213.

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state and the artisans themselves. Provincial health insurance was introduced, guaranteeing healthcare to artisan firms’ owners and their families all over the country. The recognition of the right to healthcare, like that which followed for invalidity and old-age pensions, had some limits and these were criticised by the associations that represented the category (the artisans asked for a wider medical assistance, not limited to hospitalisation insurance but extended to pharmaceutical supplies). Nonetheless, the approved law was a good compromise between the egalitarian aspirations of the parliamentarians of the left parties, the solidarity principles of the Catholics and the Christian democrats and the limits imposed by the state budget. The right to sickness assistance was a goal as significant as those relating to easing the tax burden and improving working conditions, access to credit and market. It also contributed to the civil and social progress of the artisans, allowing them to benefit from the most important innovations introduced by the democratic system, namely the recognition of the right to health. Another achievement of equal importance was the introduction of obligatory insurance for invalidity and old age, obtained approximately three years later, as part of the progressive enlargement of Italian welfare, which guaranteed even greater social protection.⁵¹ In addition to this, the period of reform in the artisan sector led to the creation of “Artisan committees” (economic bodies) and “Public health service societies” (mutual sickness funds) with functions and responsibilities in regions and provinces. These bodies were elected and therefore required the direct participation of the artisans, through their respective representatives, for the management of significant aspects of their sector. These organisations not only brought democracy to the artisans but also brought together the representative associations of the category as intermediaries between the state and the artisan’s world of work. The associations of the artisan interests thus strengthened their relations with the political institutions as well as those with the category in the country, both objectives to which the artisans’ associative world worked hard since its rebirth after the collapse of Fascism. In fact the fascist regime had promoted the entrance of workers in the political institutions, but the corporative choice had stifled the role of the associations by exalting the centrality of the fascist state. In the second post-war period, instead, the new associations assumed an active role as instruments of claiming

 Nevertheless, this model has been criticised by the historians because of the increase in social security institutions and the lack of an overall reform plan. Sepe, Le amministrazioni della sicurezza, 252– 259.

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interests, able to lobby the institutions thanks to the dialectic discussion with the parties. This happened in the absence of an overall administration reform which could define their role in the new republican democracy, thus filling a vacancy left by the state.⁵² They claimed the fundamental request for full recognition of the dignity and autonomy of the sector, but they did not fail to exert their pressure even to obtain special facilities and incentives for artisans in various fields (credit, family allowances, taxes, assistance and apprenticeship). As a result, the set of laws approved in these years was very wide and was unparalleled in the rest of Europe.⁵³ It favoured the entry of artisans into the democratic regime by promoting their active participation through a series of elective intermediary bodies in the relationship with the state, but above all thanks to a network of social and economic facilities guaranteed by the government under the pressure of the artisan associations. The state and above all the main ruling party – the Dc – elaborated these policies responding to the need to consolidate the small business and its economic and social role within the framework of its own political project for the country and not only for the purpose of consensus. This aspect of the mere “subsidy policy”, to which many studies dwell, would rather accentuate in the years following the 1950s, when many of the advantages introduced by the laws mentioned so far would broaden, favouring the persistence of a layer of small firms that still characterises the Italian industrial model.

Conclusions The 1950s proved to be central to the change in artisan policies in Italy. Although the new policies concerning artisan work did not totally satisfy the demands of artisan associations, because of the fragmentary nature with which they had been drawn up, which in turn was mostly due to the lack of comprehensive reform of administration in the country, on balance the decade was overall positive. The legislative vacuum in the sector had been filled, the transition had been made from a mythologised idea of artisan – typical of the fascist propaganda – to a “scientific” analysis of the sector and the artisan associations had assumed a true role as intermediaries between the craft sector and the political institutions.

 Barca, “Compromesso senza riforme”, 3 – 115.  Longoni and Rinaldi, “Industrial Policy and Artisan Firms”, 222.

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On the one hand, the associations committed themselves to the recognition of the autonomy of the sector on a juridical level as a prerequisite for the launch of a real artisan policy capable of supporting the economic development of firms and guaranteeing workers’ rights. On the other hand, the parties elaborated their own political plans including an artisan sector and assigning it functions far from the fascist ones. They looked with great interest at the integration of artisans and, more generally of the middle classes, into the democratic system, but with different projects: some highlighted the socio-economic closeness of the artisans to the workers and peasants in anti-capitalist function (Italian Communist Party); others stressed their autonomy and spirit of initiative and recognised their importance for the stability of the so-called centrism governments (Italian Liberal Party). In particular, according to the main ruling party, the Christian Democracy, the craft sector should have been the pivot of a society based on small private property and social solidarity that had to mitigate capitalism; for these reasons its development had to be encouraged. These pages argue that the need for consensus, present both on the front of artisan representation, where the associations were in competition with each other, and on the political one, where the parties needed to expand their electoral base, are not enough to explain the start of a policy in favour of artisans in the 1950s. The new laws were structured on different juridical levels and aspired not only to the search for the consensus but also to the attempts by some representative of government parties and artisan associations to promote, through economic and financial facilitations and social welfare, the contribution of the craft sector to post-war stability and the realisation of democratic principles, especially in their economic and social aspects.

Bibliography Amato, Giuliano. Il governo dell’industria in Italia. Bologna: il Mulino, 1972. Anastasia, Mara. “I piccoli commercianti torinesi, il primo dopoguerra e l’avvento del fascismo (1919 – 1922)”. Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi 33 (1999): 19 – 53. Ballini, Pier Luigi, Sandro Guerrieri and Antonio Varsori, eds. Le istituzioni repubblicane dal centrismo al centro-sinistra, 1953 – 1968. Rome: Carocci, 2006. Barca, Fabrizio. “Compromesso senza riforme nel capitalismo italiano”. In Storia del capitalismo italiano dal dopoguerra ad oggi, edited by Fabrizio Barca, 3 – 115. Rome: Donzelli, 1997. Barucci, Piero. Ricostruzione, pianificazione, Mezzogiorno: la politica economica in Italia dal 1943 al 1955. Bologna: il Mulino, 1978. Barucci, Piero. “La politica economica durante l’epoca democristiana”. Studi storici 1 (2012): 119 – 139.

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Gazzotti, Piero. L’artigianato del tempo fascista. Rome: Centro Internazionale dell’artigianato, 1942. Giannini, Amedeo. Crediti speciali. Milan: Giuffrè, 1960. Giovagnoli, Agostino. Il partito italiano. La democrazia cristiana dal 1942 al 1994. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1996. Gondolini, Stefania. “La Cna dalle origini agli anni Sessanta”. In Da artigiani a imprenditori. La Cna di Forlì-Cesena nella grande trasformazione. 1954 – 2004, edited by Roberto Balzani, 36 – 43. Cesena: Il ponte vecchio, 2004. Graziani, Augusto, ed. L’economia italiana dal 1945 a oggi. Bologna: il Mulino, 1979. Heyrman, Peter. “Belgian Catholic entrepreneurs’ organisations, 1880 to 1940”. Journal of Business history 56 (2011): 163 – 186. Koshar, Rudy, ed. Splintered Classes. The European Lower Middle Classes in the Age of Fascism. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990. Lanzalaco, Luca. Dall’impresa all’associazione: le organizzazioni degli imprenditori: la Confindustria in prospettiva comparata. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1990. Longoni, Giuseppe Maria, and Alberto Rinaldi, “Industrial Policy and Artisan Firms (1930s– 1970s).” In Forms of Enterprise in 20th Century Italy, edited by Andrea Colli and Michelangelo Vasta, 204 – 224. Cheltenham UK-Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing: 2010. Maida, Bruno. Il prezzo dello scambio. Commercianti a Turin (1940 – 1943). Turin: Scriptorium, 1998. Maida, Bruno. Artigiani nella città dell’industria. La Cna a Turin (1946 – 2006). Turin: Edizioni SEB, 2007. Maida, Bruno. Proletari della borghesia: i piccoli commercianti dall’Unità a oggi. Rome: Carocci, 2009. Malgeri, Francesco. L’Italia democristiana. Uomini e idee del cattolicesimo democratico nell’Italia repubblicana (1943 – 1993). Rome: Gangemi, 2005. Mattera, Paolo. “Introduzione: la storia del welfare state in Italia, quali basi e quali prospettive?” In Momenti del welfare in Italia. Storiografia e percorsi di ricerca, edited by Paolo Mattera, 9 – 16. Rome: Viella, 2012. Mattina, Liborio. Gli industriali e la democrazia. La Confindustria nella formazione dell’Italia Repubblicana. Bologna: il Mulino, 1991. Mattina, Liborio. I gruppi di interesse. Bologna: il Mulino, 2010. Morlino, Leonardo, ed. Costruire la democrazia. Gruppi e partiti in Italia. Bologna: il Mulino, 1991. Musso, Stefano. Storia del lavoro in Italia dall’unità ad oggi. Venice: Marsilio, 2002. Orsina, Giovanni. L’alternativa liberale. Malagodi e l’alternativa al centro sinistra. Venice: Marsilio, 2010. Paladini, Anna Pina. “Tra Stato e parastato: le origini e l’avvio dell’Ente Nazionale Artigianato e Piccole Industrie tra le due guerre mondiali”. Società e Storia, 141 (2013): 485 – 530. Paladini, Anna Pina. Confartigianato dalle origini al consolidamento democratico (1946 – 1958). Milan: Guerini and associati, 2016. Paladini, Anna Pina. Tra Stato e parastato: l’Ente Nazionale per l’Artigianato e le Piccole Industrie (1925 – 1978). Congedo: Galatina, 2017. Paladini, Anna Pina. The Christian Democratic Party and the policies for the craft sector in Italy during the 1950s. Paper presented to the Workshop on “Christian Democracy and

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Vincent Gouzi

Chapter 4 Industrial Employment, Enterprise Structures and their Anthropological Foundations. The Case of Greece Abstract: Industrial labour’s history is bound with that of employment and of entrepreneurs. This paper aims at identifying the local differences in industrial activities and production structures as well as explaining them eventually by their different cultural contexts and behaviors. Our approach follows a first way, quantitative, based on available statistical series of enterprises and of employment, mainly from the Second World War up to the recent period of crisis, and comparing them as far as possible with those of European Union countries in order to identify the specificities of Greece. The industrial labour world in Greece is characterized by a high rate of entrepreneurship, of non-salaried employment, of small-sized companies and auto entrepreneurs, of legal forms ensuring manager’s independence and of family “gendered” employment. In a second way, qualitative, we revisit the anthropological researches made in the Mediterranean Basin by Tillon and Bourdieu’s studies in Algeria, Campbell, Friedl and later by Tsoukalas, Avdela, Papastefanaki and many others in Greece, focusing on the deep determiners of economic behavior. They emphasize the central role of the family unit as the matrix of the industrial small company, shaping many industrial branches and especially building activity, as well as honour as the value which structures the relationship between enterprise and State and inspires entrepreneurship.

Introduction The enterprise, as a place where capital is mobilised and where work is organised to produce goods and services, is at the centre not only of economic activity but also of social organisation. It is not an abstract place: it brings together people who are involved in different historical processes and in specific spaces; it reflects the particular organisation of different societies “at work”. Economists such as Schumpeter, Veblen, North and Acemoglu and anthropologists such as Sahlins or Clastres have attempted to connect economic analysis to institutional, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-007

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sociological and anthropological approaches in order to explain these differences. This article is based on an investigation into the ways and means of entrepreneurship and work in Greek industry,¹ which has revealed profound differences with other European Union countries. It aims to correlate the data that has been observed in the anthropological habitus described in different post-war studies. Industry and Greece are, incidentally, privileged fields of observation as one is the vector of great social transformation² and the other a centre of Mediterranean anthropology.³ I thus propose first to explain the Greek difference by comparing the enterprise and employment structures with those of other European Union countries. Secondly, I will focus on the anthropological behaviours described in different studies, which appear to correspond to these particularities.

Specificities of Greek Enterprises and Employment in the European Union To illustrate the complexity of entrepreneurship, the distribution of companies and people at work by status, gender, size and legal form at first need to be described. In this context, the specific features of Greek industry can be spotted from very early on in the interwar period persisting up today.

The Role of Self-employment Entrepreneurship in Greece is particularly vigorous among the EU countries (Table 4.1) and this can be related to the importance of self-employment (Table 4.2). This can be observed in the national economy in general as well as in industry. A first observation concerns the relation between the number of enterprises and the total or active population. Greece has the highest number of enterprises per hundred inhabitants in Europe after Portugal and the highest number of en-

 This article is based on Vincent Gouzi, L’industrie Grecque de la Reconstruction à la Crise, 1950 – 2014, unpublished PhD thesis (Paris: Inalco, 2017).  See Karl Polanyi, La Grande Transformation. Aux origines politiques et économiques de notre temps (Paris: Gallimard, 1983).  See John G. Peristiany, Honour and Shame (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).

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terprises in relation to its active population. Italy, and to a lesser extent Spain, are the closest countries to Greece. A second observation concerns the number of industrial companies. Although, at first, we expect a low density of industrial companies, this is not the case at all. Greece has the largest number of industrial enterprises for its active population after Italy (industrial enterprises per hundred employees) and by far the largest for its population active in industry (per hundred employees in industry). Table 4.1: Number of enterprises per hundred inhabitants, per hundred workers and number of industrial enterprises (including construction) per hundred workers and per hundred industrial workers in 2011. Countries

Nb enterpris- Nb enterprises/ Nb industrial enter- Nb industrial enterprises es/ hab  workers prises/ active s/ indust workers

Greece France Portugal Belgium Denmark Geramny Spain Italy Netherlands EU 

, , , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , , ,

Source: Eurostat. Enterprises in 2010, population in 2011.

These two observations confirm the strength of entrepreneurship – even in industry – in Greece, as well as in the other European Mediterranean countries. It must also be said that Greek history is not lacking great “captains” of industry: Hatzikyriakos; Kanellopoulos; Bodosakis; Stasinopoulos; Mytilinaios. These observations can be linked to the place of self-employment in the Greek national economy, which in 2014 reached a share of 30.7 %. In industry, the self-employed represent 27.8 % of the total; in industry, excluding construction, the rate is still 22.6 %. Construction is indeed a privileged field for craft, as it constitutes 39 % of the working population of this branch. In all these aspects, self-employment rates are by far the highest of the sample and very much above the EU average.

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Table 4.2: Respective shares in Europe of independent employment in the national economy, Transformation, Construction and Industry (including construction) in 2014 (in %).

UE  Belgium Germany Greece Spain France Italy Netherlands Portugal

Whole Economy

Transformation

Building

Industry

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

Source: Eurostat. Employment Surveys 2014.

Self-employment in Greece has a long legacy: in 1928, 45.7 % of the working population exercised an independent activity while 37.6 % did so in industry.⁴ The census data for 1951 confirm the importance of this independent working population (43.4 % in the national economy and 26.7 % in industry). The corresponding rate in the total working population was 34.5 % in France and 41 % in Italy.

The Role of Unpaid Family Employment Both the 1928 and 1951 population censuses in Greece record a particularly high share of unpaid family employment in the total working population, 23.3 % and 17.3 % respectively. This was due to its importance in agriculture, and the fall of its share follows the fall of the agricultural working population. In industry (excluding construction), unpaid family employment in both 1928 (4.8 %) and in 1951 (3.2 %) was low, in services too, while in construction it was negligible. Yet, although small, the role of unpaid family employment among the total working population far exceeds what we observe in other European countries. In 1951, the rate for Greece is comparable with that of Italy (16 %), while France had a slightly lower rate (13 %). However, between 2008 and 2014 (Table 4.3) the sit-

 See Nicolas J. Svoronos, Recensement de la Population de la Grèce de 1928. Introduction au Tome III fascicule premier, Professions. (Athens: Imprimerie Nationale, 1937). Then manager of the First section of the General Statistical Service of Greece, Svoronos linked this independence to the lack of any social issue. I, in contrast, will link it to the culture of enterprise.

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uation had completely changed: the European average barely reaches 1.2 % while in Greece it is four times greater. With the industrial boom and rural exodus, unpaid family employment slowly dissolves into the salary system. Its share in industrial employment (excluding construction) in Greece went from 5.9 to 5.2 % according to the industrial censuses from 1958 to 1988, while according to employment surveys from 1995 to 2014 it fell from 6.3 % to 3.4 %. It was negligible in construction. Conversely in services (excluding Administrations), its share grows from 12 % to 13.5 % between 1958 and 1988 (industrial censuses) while from 1995 to 2014 it shrinks from 8.5 % to 3.9 % (employment surveys). Table 4.3: Unpaid family employment in the working population of some European countries, in 2008 and 2014 (in %).

Belgium Germany Greece Spain France Italy Netherlands Portugal EU 





, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

Source: Eurostat. Employment Surveys 2008 and 2014.

The Distribution of Employment by Gender Women occupy a specific place in employment, which gender studies have strongly and thankfully highlighted. These studies, in specifying women’s role in the process of industrialisation, have met the anthropological definition of gender and raised the question of its historic formation in our societies. The female employment structure in Greece differs significantly from that of the EU. This can be observed from several angles, from its place within the total working population and by sectors and branches to its distribution in statutory positions. In the EU in 2014, a real convergence can be observed in national economy between Greece and the EU average in terms of female employment (42 % versus 46.1 %). The female employment rate in Greece is slightly lower in industry; it is significantly lower in construction, even more in services and significantly higher in agriculture.

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History has “gendered” the role of women in the economy and this goes back a long time. Among the Greek working population, female employment often represents in the earliest censuses the “black hole” of indetermination. Women exist, but their employment is not defined, or less defined than that of men. For instance, in 1928 in agriculture, where a more-or-less equal distribution between men and women might be expected, men account for one million active workers out of a total of one and a half million. In 1951, again, Greece stands out for a female employment rate of only 18 %, significantly lower than in Portugal with 22.4 %, Italy with 25.5 % and France with 34.1 %. These figures reflect not only a difference in industrial development, but also in the conception of female work. The convergence in industry may be real, yet the global average masks differences from branch to branch and thus the rates are generally lower: in mining and metal working (7 % versus 15 %); in furniture (12 % versus 23 %); in machinery and transport equipment, maintenance and repair, the numbers in Greece are insignificant. In other branches where the presence of women is traditionally more important, the Greek rates are again lower, such as food (39 % versus 43 %), textiles and clothing (46 % versus 68 %) and pharmacy (40 % versus 48 %). It is worth noting that in public services, the Greek rate is higher than the EU average (26 % versus 22 %) and even more in waste collection and treatment (28 % versus 16 %). Finally, the very low rate of women’s employment in construction in Greece is even lower than EU average (5 % versus 10 %). The distribution of employment by gender in Greece is highly differentiated according to economic activities and more than in the rest of the EU. The gender distribution of statutory positions in the Greek national economy in 2014 (Table 4.4) presents a strongly defined profile compared to the EU. The share of women in independent jobs is sharply lower than that of men and reversely higher in unpaid family and waged workers. In industry (excluding construction), the professional status of women in Greece from 1951 until 2014 (Table 4.5) confirms the strongly gendered nature of employment. The rate of female employment in industry increases slowly during this period, far less than male employment. But, with the exception of 1951, it also exceeds male employment for unpaid family workers until 1995, from when it starts to decrease until 2014. Conversely, the rate among employers, very low at the beginning of the period, increases slowly but significantly up to 2014. For independent workers, the rate grows until 1974 (including tailoring), then drops to 1988 before rising slightly with the crisis. Waged work follows the general trend. The distribution by position and by gender confirms the above analysis. The share of employers in female employment is initially five times lower than that of

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Table 4.4: Distribution of female and male professional status in the EU28 in 2014 (in %). Independent workers

UE  Belgium Germany Greece Spain France Italy Netherlands Portugal

Unpaid familial workers

Waged workers

F

M

F

M

F

M

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

Source: Eurostat. Employment Survey 2014.

male employment; however, after 1981 the difference decreases slowly, with women’s share increasing as that of men decreases. For independent workers, the shares are similar at the beginning, but they then diverge so that the male share is double that of women. The share of unpaid family workers in female employment is four times higher, but the gap tightens at the end of the period to 2.6 times higher. Finally, the share of women in waged employment increases throughout the period at the expense of other statuses. Women dominate and the difference with men increases with the crisis. Women’s shift towards the salaried work accompanies the decline of the textile, clothing and leather industry. It also accompanies the decline of unpaid workers after 1995, which is perhaps related to the desire to benefit from social security payments. Compared with men in Greece and in the EU, women’s professional positions in the economic sectors and industrial branches show large differences, which suppose a different concept of organisation of the enterprise and at work.

The Role of the Very Small Enterprises in Industry Industry relies in Greece on a network of companies consisting mainly of Very Small Enterprises (VSE employing less than ten employees). It can be assumed that many of them correspond to the self-employed mentioned above. It would also have been useful if the statistics had distinguished for this purpose between isolated craftsmen or entrepreneurs who employ only one employee, and those who employ between two and nine employees.

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Table 4.5: Female employment in industry (excluding construction) and distribution of female and male employment by professional status (in %). Status

employers and independant workers unpaid familial workers waged workers together Status

Female employment rate by professional status 













, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

Female distribution by professional status 













employers and independant workers unpaid familial workers waged workers total

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

Status

Male distribution by professional status

employers and independant workers unpaid familial workers waged workers total















, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

, , , ,

Source: Elstat. Employment per status from 1967 to 2014.

Beyond the numbers, the position of the VSE must be assessed according to its share in total employment, in turnover and in added value. The 2013 Eurostat SBS statistics again highlight the specificity of the VSE in Greece, regardless of the criterion selected (Table 4.6). A specific entrepreneurial structure can be identified, the dual structure, which is dominated by VSEs, both in terms of companies and employment when compared to the EU average and in which large companies join the EU average in turnover and added value. The largest numbers of medium-sized companies, those with between ten to forty-nine employees, are to be found in Italy, Spain and Portugal, while the lowest numbers are in Greece, close to the figures for France.

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Table 4.6: Distribution of industrial companies (excluding construction) by size in Europe in 2013 in %, based on number of enterprises, number of employees, turnover and added value. Enterprise

< 

 – 

 – 

> 

Turnover

< 

 – 

Greece France Portugal Spain Italy EU 

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

Greece France Portugal Spain Italy EU 

, , , , , ,

Employment Greece France Portugal Spain Italy EU 

 – 

> 

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

Added Value , , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

, , , , , ,

Greece France Portugal Spain Italy EU 

, , , , , ,

Source: Eurostat. SBS statistics 2013.

This prevalence of VSEs can already be detected in the industrial censuses of 1930s, even if there is a lack of precision regarding craft. Industrial companies (excluding construction) with fewer than five employees then represented 92 % of the total. In 2005, they still represent 87 %. This prevalence of the VSE can also be correlated to the specific role of independent workers.

The Role of Sole Proprietors in the Legal Forms of Entrepreneurship What economic history tells us about the legal forms of the enterprise at the time of the Industrial Revolution is that the personal, independent and family enterprise has long prevailed over the more “social” and elaborate forms of general partnerships, stock companies and limited partnerships.⁵ If the modernisation of the legal structures in Europe seems real when judged by the position occupied by stock companies and other partnerships in recent industrial statistics

 See Patrick Verley, La révolution industrielle (Paris: Gallimard Folio, 1997) and Denis Woronoff, Histoire de l’industrie en France du XVIè siècle à nos jours (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1994).

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(Table 4.7), an exceptionally high rate of personal companies and a low rate of stock companies sets Greece far apart from the European average. Yet, the place of the personal affair (sole proprietor) remains important throughout the EU. It dominates not only in Greece, Portugal and Italy, but also in Germany, and the difference between personal and stock companies is minor in the Netherlands and France. We observe also a high level of stock companies in Spain and Portugal, although this is not consistent with a Mediterranean model, but rather with local legal traditions and practices. Table 4.7: Distribution by legal form of industrial enterprise (excluding construction) in Europe in 2007 (in %).

Belgium Denmark Germany Greece Spain France Italy Netherlands Portugal

E

E

E

Total

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , , ,

        

E1: sole proprietorship. E2: stock company. E3: other associative forms.⁶ Source: Eurostat. Statistics SBS 2007.

The Greek attachment to personal status can be found early on in the statistical data: in 1920, the share of stock companies in industry was only 0.43 % (18.5 % with over twenty-five employees) while in 1930 it was 1.05 %. After the Second World War, we may observe a great increase in stock companies and a strong push for forming partnerships. By cross-referencing the legal form with the size of the company for the year 1988 (Table 4.8), we can confirm that VSEs with fewer than five employees dominate the form of sole proprietorship and, by deduction, we can conclude that they are comprised mainly of the self-employed. We can also note, however, that they dominate the forms of partnerships and limited liability and they

 According to the Eurostat definitions, E1 signifies sole proprietorship (enterprises owned exclusively by one natural person, i. e. atomikes epicheirisis), E2 signifies limited partnerships and joint stock companies (with or without limited liability) and E3 is general partnership, cooperatives, publicly-owned companies and non-profit associations.

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also occupy a high position among limited partnerships. This suggests, in all three cases, that there is an association between members of the same family. Table 4.8: Distribution of Greek industrial companies (excluding construction) by size and by legal form, in 1988 (in %).

Sole proprietorship unltd partnership ltd partnership Joint stock Joint stock ltd liability Cooperatives Others Total

– emp

– emp

 –  emp

 –  emp

 –  emp

>  emp

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

, , , , , , , ,

Source: Elstat. Industrial census for 1988.

We do not have the cross data for the period 1988 to 2014, which would allow us to appreciate the evolution of the legal forms in Greece and in the EU during the crisis. Besides, the only two cross references of legal status and size in Greece are those of 1920 and 1988 censuses and that shows the little interest for such a research. Nonetheless, it is hard not to connect the personal character of businesses with their small size and with the place of independent employment.

Anthropology of the Enterprise Given the above figures, industrial entrepreneurship in Greece appears to consist of a set of original practices that are clearly distinct from those found elsewhere in the European Union and are deeply rooted in the past. The main features of these practices are independence, small size, personal status and family and gender specialization. Undertaking does not only produce a field of activity and economic behaviour that differs according to the sector or branch of activity; it produces in Greece a particular social morphology. These practices express cultural structures that have been well described in different studies realised from the 1960s to the 1980s by Greek and foreign anthropologists working on Greek cities and villages and recently at the occasion

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of gender studies by Greek authors, mainly in Industry.⁷ These texts help to perceive in the entrepreneurial form the organisational role of the family and in the taste for independence the soul of entrepreneurship.

The Family Behind the Company It is worth noting that the family as an economic agent never appears in the statistics as a producer, only as a consumer (household). Neither legal forms, nor working status, nor gender analysis refers to it. Yet, behind the figures given above, it is difficult to elude the presence and the permanence of the family: most of the industrial companies listed in the Athens Stock Exchange are controlled by families, as are the thirty industrial companies whose proprietors were interviewed in Messinia.⁸ Anthropologists and historians have highlighted in families the economic dynamics as well as some of the features of their internal organisation and behaviours, many of which can be observed even today in modern industrial companies.

a) The Economic Dynamics of the Family Constantinos Tsoukalas⁹ has described the dynamics of one rural Greek society, anchored on a small piece of land property in the Peloponnesian mountains, and its family strategies of reproduction. This is probably based on an older cultural “fund,”¹⁰ that of a familial, patriarchal and autarkic entity forced by the scarcity of arable soil on the Mediterranean shores and by the necessity of perpetuating the integrity of its landholdings in order to insure the survival of its members. For that purpose, it has developed mechanisms of inheritance, dowry and migration, which are more or less coercive depending on the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

 For a recent historiographical essay, see Leda Papastefanaki, “Labour in economic and social history: the viewpoint of gender in Greek historiography”, Genesis. Rivista della Societá Italiana delle Storiche XV/2 (2016), 59 – 83.  See Vincent Gouzi, op. cit.  Constantinos Tsoukalas, Εξάρτηση και Αναπαραγωγή. Ο κοινωνικός ρόλος των εκπαιδευτικών μηχανισμών στην Ελλάδα (1830 – 1922) (Athens: Θεμέλιο, 1977).  See Germaine Tillion, Le harem et les cousins (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966).

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The transition from the countryside to the city and from the small land property to the liberal, commercial or industrial business did not result in the disappearance of this model but in its transformation. For Tsoukalas, this presents a negative economic balance, because it freezes Greek society in an unproductive, and even anti-productive, “petit bourgeois” model, that of the metapratis. ¹¹ I argue that, on the contrary, this social mobility is not limited to “unproductive” activities, but it instead extends to all economic activities and expresses an underlying economic growth, the time of which is the time of industrialisation and the place of which is the family enterprise. The great economic transformation operated by the industrialisation in Greece in the period following the Second World War and the dynamics of the secondary sector in the midst of the recent crisis prove that this interpretation is valid: the support of this evolution was the family unit, in the form of the very small personal business, independent workers and often unpaid female employees. In the family unit, the division of risks and labour takes place in everyday life and allows the most effective possible exploitation of the comparative advantages, innovations and opportunities available. This mobility started early in Greece. It drove the Epirot traders to Italy and Central Europe, the Chiot ship owners to Piraeus and then London, the Piliorit people of Ambelakia to Vienna and then Egypt to sell their textile products, and the Anafiots to construction in Athens.

b) The Family Organisation of the Enterprise and Specific Behaviours In his work on the Algerian Kabylie, Pierre Bourdieu has shown the capacity for transformation and adaptation of the family unit to different environments: “Reinterpreted, many precepts of the religious and social tradition are given a new meaning and function in the world of modern economics.”¹² The mutual aid within families is converted into an agreement, a partnership. The family organization of the enterprise (parents, neighbours, compatriots) offers competitive

 Metapratis: dealer, a simple intermediary, who takes his cut without any added value, akin to the Marxist concept of compradore.  See Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologie de l’Algérie (Paris: Que sais-je PUF, 1958) and La domination masculine (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998). Bourdieu described the adaptability of the Mzab region. Isolated and in the middle of the most hostile desert, the Mozabites were able to perpetuate their way of life thanks to immigration to the large coastal towns. This is very reminiscent of the thoughtful emigration of the small landowners of the mountainous Peloponnese and the same family loyalties characterise them too.

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prices. “Without completely giving up the personal relationship, it realizes the passage from pre-capitalist (barter) to capitalist (monetary) exchange.” John K. Campbell and Ernestine Friedl have described the family economic unit in rural Greece, which is strictly organised, gendered, and perceived by its members as an enterprise: “Vasilika men were thinking of their farms as commercial enterprises and were applying to their operations, albeit without thinking, modern cost accounting principles where family members’ labor is a chargeable profit… They think of their agricultural activity as a business enterprise.”¹³ The internal organisation of the family enterprise follows the patriarchal model in expressing the prevalence of male values.¹⁴ But as Campbell points out, in a dyadic system,¹⁵ each sex plays a relatively balanced role and every member of the family, sheltered by the walls of the home, benefits from a great freedom of speech. Campbell also insists on the fact that young men, through their marriage, are separated from their family of origin and create their own “enterprise”, thus escaping the authority of the patriarch. The family division of labour is an ancient practice, defined by precise social codes. It is not incompatible with evolution and allows an effective distribution of the roles in an industrial company. It fosters its reproduction over several generations by simultaneously employing parents and children and enables women to participate actively in the operations as wives or sisters.¹⁶ The data above suggest that this model continues to animate the Greek enterprise. After two or three generations, the property of many companies remains in the hands of the owning family. They are proud of this generational continuity  John K. Campbell, Honour, family and patronage, a study of institutions and moral values in a Greek mountain community (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964). Ernestine Friedl, Vassilika, a village in modern Greece (Stanford: Spindler, Stanford University, 1962).  See the very interesting analysis in Zizi Salimpa, Γυναίκες εργάτριες στην ελληνική βιομηχανία και στη βιοτεχνία 1870 – 1922 (Athens: Ιστορικό Αρχείο Ελληνικής Νεολαίας, 2002), 155. Salimba shows that this model was explained perfectly by the economic press at the beginning of the twentieth century. She emphasises the role of the chief of the enterprise as the chief of a family, in charge of the young female workers, of the factory’s neatness in a similar way to the neat interior of a house, of employment conceived as the opportunity to create the dowry and as a financial but also symbolic means to take time to learn the virtues of work, patience and discipline. She observes the relationship between the work on the spinning loom and women’s asexuality, as denoted by the English term of spinster.  Dyadic because, unlike southern Mediterranean countries, the woman benefits from a share of the inheritance that is equal to that of a man, which obliges her to create a dowry of a value equal to his share. This results in a real balance within the family and between its members.  In the plain of Kalamata, the Zygouris family runs the two family businesses. Brother and sister Dimitris and Evgenia Gyfteas share the tasks of the technical and commercial management of Agrovim.

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and explain it in the presentation of their activities. It proves their capacity to master the evolution of techniques and markets and to exploit the advantages of the environment (naval armaments, currants, metalwork and building materials, Mediterranean diet, cosmetics). Family also has a spatial expression. The inside/outside relationship, noted by Renée Hirshon in Greece and by Germaine Tillon and Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria,¹⁷ is characterised by the spatial notion of home as a place protected from the sight of others. It is at first a feminine space, in which the occupant’s honour is protected by the secret that covers the activity inside vis-à-vis the outside. A similar attitude characterises the secret that covers, in Greece, the personal data of a business owner and the accounting of an enterprise, which are reluctantly communicated to the state. Real and declared revenues differ, as do the “objective” and market values of real estate property; all are systematically underestimated, if not hidden. Labour relationships in Greece, as shown above, are governed by these familial codes. As Bourdieu observes in Kabylie and as do, after him, many historians of the working class in Greece, the absence of class conflicts is “characteristic of this civilization, where economic relations are always personal and direct: the pact that unites them (boss and worker) is interpreted in the logic of honour, so that the major conflict is less between employees and bosses than between borrowers and usurers.” We can add, with Efi Avdela,¹⁸ that Greek trade unionism remained a male affair, even in women’s businesses such as textile or tobacco, and note with Dimitra Lambropoulou the role of male bodies in the social demands of construction workers.¹⁹

c) Economic Activities Oriented by Family Strategies The process of industrialisation in the post-war period has been determined to a large extent by family preferences. The four main branches have been: food; tex-

 Renée Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe. The social life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus (Oxford: Berghahn, 1998).  Efi Avdela, Le genre entre classe et nation: essai d’historiographie grecque (Paris: Syllepse, 2006)  Dimitra Lampropoulou, Οικοδόμοι. Οι άνθρωποι που έχτισαν την Αθήνα 1950 – 1967 (Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2009). The body (Soma, Σώμα) is the concept which organises the claims about arduousness at work in the building industry. The fact that the term somatio (σωματείο), which refers to corporatist or proto-industrialist organisations, is used rather than syndikalismos is significant.

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tiles-clothing-leather; wood-furniture; and building. In 1950 these activities represented 75 % of industrial GDP, in 1960 65 % and still in 1970 55 % and they are clearly gendered, as shown by the 2014 data above. Construction is profoundly marked by family values. Labour is almost exclusively male and boasts the values of physical strength, of the pride in the accomplished work and the independence of self-employment. It is funded by the allocation of dowries for the purchase of apartments and by the transformation of land savings into fixed assets (apartments) by way of dation in payment, a nonmonetized practice in rural societies. The illegal constructions, on the margins of Athens, mobilise the energy of family, relatives and neighbours in the self-construction of the family house following the very ancient mode characteristic of the rural world. Large developers are rare and specialised in commercial real estate. Construction has been the main support of industrial development. We can observe that building has occupied a major place in employment and GDP and has been the engine of post-war industrial development (1950 – 1980) by its spill over effect on building materials, semi-processed products (cement, glass, aluminium, stone and marble) and household equipment (furniture, textiles, household electrical appliances, bathrooms and kitchen equipment). In these last activities, it has made possible both the installation of large units of production and the creation of a very dense network of small transformers-installers. Land private property is at the centre of economic activity. The debate on the role of the means of production in industrial development is a debate of social significance. In independent Greece, as in revolutionary France, land property has mainly been rural. But it has also generally permitted the family unit to adapt to the tremendous evolutions of the last two centuries. Land property is the bedrock of Greek society. This much has been clear in the successive agrarian reforms. It can be seen today in the fact that 75 % of Greeks are homeowners. This is the highest rate in the EU27 after Spain (80 %) and is a phenomenon that clearly divides Southern and Northern Europe.²⁰ The role of land property can also be seen in the transformation of Athens during the “Thirty Glorious” years from 1945 to 1975.²¹ Private initiatives have indeed helped to meet the needs of reconstruction and of the accommodation of migrants resulting from the massive rural exodus towards Athens. The mobilisation of popular savings and a cheap labour force were the factors in this production, which radically modified the urban  See Claudie Louvot Runavot, Le logement dans l’UE : la propriété prend le pas sur la location (Paris: Economie et Statistique N°243, 2001).  See Lampropoulou, op. cit. See also Thomas Maloutas, Αθήνα, κατοικία, οικογένεια. Ανάλυση των μεταπολεμικών πρακτικών στέγασης (Athens: EKKE – Εξάντας, 1990).

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landscape. Land was supplied by both illegal construction and dation in payment (antiparochi).²² Yet, the obsessive attachment to land property is also a blockage to economic development and public facilities. Excessive fragmentation has undoubtedly weighed on the productivity of agriculture. Moreover, the protection of property rights becomes abusive when it paralyses the process of expropriations that are needed for the realisation of many public works (road and rail communications, town planning, big industrial investments). Expropriations in Greece are indeed subordinated not only to the determination – often excessive – by the judge of the amount of the compensation, that is the value of the expropriated property, but also to its effective payment, without which the works cannot start. As a matter of caution, major works contracts provide for such delays, for the late payment of interest and for the compensatory allowances bound to these delays. As soon as the delay due to the expropriations generates interest and compensation higher than the amount of the initial market, the bidder and his banks stop the work and negotiate new conditions with the public administration. The seizures of insolvent debtors’ real estate, the acquisition of which has been financed by banks whose risk is guaranteed by mortgages, had been blocked until 2017 by the successive crisis governments to protect home properties. Seizure, a process carried out daily by banks in the entire rest of the EU within the strict and protective framework of the law, in Greece ends up in a social debate. By stripping mortgage guarantees of any significance, these practices exclude the very possibility of loans for the acquisition of a principal residence. In the long run, family strategies command different branches of industrial employment. They distribute the employment of their members – men, women and even children – not just according to economic interest, but also according to their abilities, supposed or not. The choice of activities is determined by distinct patterns (habitus) which make, for instance, textiles the privileged domain of women (and young girls)²³ and building the privileged domain of men. Even if female employment does not always result from a family strategy, the gendered

 Antiparochi: The “dation of payment” is a legal operation by which a debtor gives the property of a good or a range of goods belonging to him as total or partial payment of his debt. Thus, the debtor of inheritance duties pays it off by giving to the state a work of art; the debtor of the price of land sold by its owner pays it off by giving to the latter an apartment in the building that he has built on this very land. The land developer thus buys a piece of land without paying the price for it.  See Leda Papastefanaki, Εργασία, τεχνολογία και φύλο στην ελληνική βιομηχανία. Η κλωστοϋφαντουργία στον Πειραιά 1870 – 1940 (Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2009).

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character of employment is still visible; it is reasonable to assume that these behaviours are related to traditional family representations, and reflected within each family unit.

Independence: the Soul of the Enterprise The place of independent work and the vivacity of Greek industrial entrepreneurship find their origin in the Mediterranean culture of honour. Entrepreneurship is the expression of the andréité (andrismos, masculinity) of the family system in the economic domain or, if we wish to overcome the gender opposition, the – organised – desire to maintain and reproduce the family unit. The competition that opposes one’s “equals” is based on the family unit’s economic autonomy. Independence, autonomy, autarky are the terms which express the strength of the relationship of the basic unit to the outside world. Any subordination – the wage link – calls into question the boundaries, and consequently the cohesion, of the family unit. Traditional culture thus values self-employment, subcontracting (within the family) and the craftsman’s skill, which guarantees him this autonomy. The enterprise in Greece is not so much an instrument of economic exploitation as a way to access independence. In this sense, the anthropologists meet the eighteenth-century moralists, such as John S. Mill.²⁴ The archetypal male virtue is “philotimia”, a mixture of the noble ambition to win, with which the “equals” are endowed, and honour, which they have to defend. Competition between equals is a matter of honour, by which the superiority of one over the others can be affirmed. It is the “fighting spirit” of the business manager, quoted by Friedl, to invent his products, to conquer his markets and thus to ensure his economic and social superiority. Bourdieu notes in the “Sociology of Algeria” that “the economic domain is never constituted as autonomous, and, as a consequence, is governed, at least ideally, by the same system of values (namely the code of honour) as the other interpersonal relationships.”²⁵

 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy (London: John and Parker, 1849): “I cannot think that they [the labourers] will be permanently contented with the condition of laboring for wages as their ultimate state. To begin as hired laborers, then after a few years to work on their own account, and finally employ others, is the normal condition of laborers in a new country.” But he underlines also that “Something better should be aimed at, as the goal of industrial improvement”, rather than such an extreme dispersal of the basic units.  Op. cit.

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The benefits of this conception of entrepreneurship are evident in modern enterprises. In order to favour creativity and individual productivity, work relations leave employees and contractors with much room for initiative and autonomy. The volatility of the markets on the one hand and the need to be perceived as different by the supply of new products on the other compel a constant adaptation. In this sense, the independent and the “small” unit is often the most agile. The counters to this are the weakness of the inter-enterprise organizations, the difficulty of joining forces to conquer markets, a clientelist relationship with the state and the resulting incapacity of the latter to create and to manage a framework useful to economic activity. J.S. Mill already emphasised this opposition between independent units, scattered and thus limited in their ambitions, and collective sets able to achieve more ambitious goals, but which alienate the independence of the “labourers”. Between these two opposed poles, the forms of organisation vary and probably express ancient cultural funds whose economic efficiency is relative to the time and space being considered. Independence culture is also expressed by patronage. The radical opposition between equal families, not bound by blood, requires mediation in order to enable a peaceful life in society and prevent a state of permanent war. The first mediation takes place with the marriage of the girls, which forces an alliance between families. The second transforms the abstract contractual relationship between supplier and customer, boss and worker, and subject and power (village, province, central state) into a personal and concrete relationship of patron and client. Patronage or clientelism,²⁶ as scholars have observed, constitutes the indispensable link between a society that is closed in on its families but is highly active economically, and an administration that was invented in the early nineteenth century to ensure the independence of the new state. The family, through the “godfathers” of the spouses (koumbari) and of the children (noni), aspires to get closer to its supplier, to its banker and to the state employee in order to access valuable networks and partially neutralise the effects of domination. In the economic sphere, this personalisation determines the terms of payment, its modalities (checks to cover the payment), its delays (of payment of invoices) and banking facilities (interventions for letters of guarantee or credit lines); instruments for which Greece occupies a very distinctive place in EU as regards their use, akin to Italy and Spain.²⁷ In public life, personalisation settles relations between the state and enterprises, such as author In English, the term patronage does not have the same meaning as the term patronage in French. In English, it means “clientelism”, the relationship between “patron” and “client”.  See the Atradius and Intrum Surveys for 2014, which note the lowest percentage of cash payments in Greece, the longest delays and the longest unpaid delays.

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isation to operate, access to bank credit, fiscal facilities (alleviated controls, honourable transactions, advantageous classifications) and benevolence of the judges. In a society that is socially, linguistically and geographically fragmented, clientelism offered many advantages and the code of honour which governs it prevented abuses. However, in a society that experienced deep post-war transformations, and is hence unified by a network of fast communications, a common language (the demotic) and a homogeneous lifestyle, clientelism is a corrupting force. The state neglects the functions which facilitate growth (balanced budget, public debt service, public facilities, fiscal neutrality and fluidity of the capital market) while the system of credit distribution works as a mere extension of the administration. Private persons in return adopt a behaviour of “give and take”²⁸ and institutional guerrilla tactics by refusing the repayment of credit and the payment of taxes, social contributions and public services charges (public transport, electricity) and by withdrawing their deposits from those banks in which they have no confidence.²⁹ Through private debt inflation, the crisis reveals the resistance to what affects the social bond.

Conclusion A direct relationship between the data produced and economic family unit and its independence does not exist. Even so, a link is highly probable either in the persistence of gender determination and unpaid work, or in self-employment and personal enterprises, as well as in industrial activities, all aspects for which Greek industrial society makes its preferences clear. Such differences need not be analysed in terms of backwardness or progress. Indeed, the entire history of the industrial revolution is inhabited by the process that leads from the proto-industrial workshop to the modern factory, punctuated by successive innovations and multiform adaptations. In this process, Karl Marx has imposed his class vocabulary, rejecting the “labourer” in

 Give and take, “donnant-donnant” in French: I contribute, but to the extent of what I receive.  In 2015, 44 % of the outstanding loans of banks were considered non-performing. Between 2009 and 2015 banks lost almost half of their deposits (€242 billion in December 2009 and €131 billion in June 2015). The late payments of the state to its suppliers amounted to €4.6 billion in December 2015 and the late payments of the taxpayers, for 2015 only, amounted to €10.4 billion, bringing the total amount of outstanding loans to €82.3 billion. The late payments to the social security agencies amounted to €15.8 billion at the end of 2015, while late payments to the Public Power Corporation came to €4.4 billion in 2015.

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the hell of pre-industrial archaism and opposing in an unequal balance of power the boss and the “worker” (labour implies a noble activity, work a hardship, a suffering), the bourgeois and the proletarian. I believe, on the contrary, that small craft-type companies have been able, throughout this process, to master the technological innovations and to find their place as sub-contractors of global industrial networks, to which they provide the advantages of creativity, autonomy, agility, direct and personal relations and better prices, and all this in the most modern branches (automotive, aeronautics, pharmacy). Industrial activity depends on “autonomous” behaviours, which are variable in time and space and are subject to being modified by their environment. If globalisation tends to unify behaviours by expanding the competitive space to the scale of the world, then it also contributes to valuing their differences. Economic agents express themselves through the distinctive quality of their products. They achieve this by relying on local and strongly characterised cultures. Developing “specialties”, patents, labels (Mediterranean diet), all forms of comparative advantages and ways to distinguish oneself from the general competition and organising subcontracting in networks and districts are ways to distinguish oneself in the generalised competition. They rely upon the flexibility which the family organisation fosters and which the culture of the fighting spirit encourages.

Sources Chronological Series Elstat and Eurostat.

Bibliography Avdela, Efi. Le genre entre classe et nation: essai d’historiographie grecque. Paris: Syllepse, 2006. Bourdieu, Pierre. Sociologie de l’Algérie. Paris: Que sais-je PUF, 1958. Bourdieu, Pierre. La domination masculine. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998. Campbell, John K. Honour, family and patronage, a study of institutions and moral values in a Greek mountain community. Oxford: Clarendon, 1964. Friedl, Ernestine. Vassilika, a village in modern Greece. Stanford: Spindler, Stanford University, 1962. Herzfeld, Michael. The Poetics of Manhood. Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Hirschon, Renée. Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe. The social life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus. Oxford: Berghahn, 1998.

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Lampropoulou, Dimitra. Οικοδόμοι. Οι άνθρωποι που έχτισαν την Αθήνα 1950 – 1967. Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2009. Louvot-Runavot, Claudie. Le logement dans l’UE: la propriété prend le pas sur la location. Paris: Economie et Statistique N°243, 2001. Maloutas, Thomas. Αθήνα, κατοικία, οικογένεια. Ανάλυση των μεταπολεμικών πρακτικών στέγασης. Athens: EKKE-Εξάντας, 1990. Papastefanaki, Leda. Εργασία, τεχνολογία και φύλο στην ελληνική βιομηχανία. Η κλωστοϋφαντουργία στον Πειραιά 1870 – 1940. Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2009. Papastefanaki, Leda. “Labour in economic and social history: the viewpoint of gender in Greek historiography”, Genesis. Rivista della Societá Italiana delle Storiche XV/2 (2016): 59 – 83. Peristiany, John G. Honour and Shame. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Prevelakis, Georges. Athènes. Urbanisme, culture et politique. Paris: L’Harmattan 2000. Polanyi, Karl. La Grande Transformation. Aux origines politiques et économiques de notre temps. Paris: Gallimard, 1983. Salimba, Zizi. Γυναίκες εργάτριες στην ελληνική βιομηχανία και στη βιοτεχνία 1870 – 1922. Athens: Ιστορικό Αρχείο Ελληνικής Νεολαίας, 2002. Stuart Mill, John. Principles of Political Economy with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy. London: John and Parker, 1849. Svoronos, Nicolas J. Recensement de la Population de la Grèce de 1928. Introduction au Tome III fascicule premier, Professions. Athens: Imprimerie Nationale, 1937. Tillon, Germaine. Le harem et les cousins. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966. Tsoukalas, Constantinos. Εξάρτηση και Αναπαραγωγή. Ο κοινωνικός ρόλος των εκπαιδευτικών μηχανισμών στην Ελλάδα (1830 – 1922). Athens: Θεμέλιο, 1977. Verley, Patrick. La révolution industrielle. Paris: Gallimard Folio, 1997. Woronoff, Denis. Histoire de l’industrie en France du XVIè siècle à nos jours. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1994.

Part II Formal and Informal Labour, Family Patterns

Svetla Ianeva

Chapter 5 Guild and Non-guild Labour in the Central Balkans during the Nineteenth Century Abstract: The chapter discusses the co-existence and interplay between guild and non-guild labour in the central part of the Ottoman Balkans during the nineteenth century. In order to establish the main characteristics of labour within the guilds, it enquires into issues such as the regulation of craftsmen’s labour activities by the guilds and by the Ottoman state, the composition and recruitment of the workforce and some aspects of the craftsmen’s business practices. The study focuses also on manufacturing beyond the guilds – the activities of the rare small-scale urban producers who were not guild-members, as well as those of the numerous rural and urban dwellers engaged in proto-industries. It pays special attention to women’s economic activities, since women from the central Balkans could not enter the guilds but were the main workforce in several branches of proto-industrial manufacturing. The role of migration, as a phenomenon which had an important impact on the characteristics and dimensions of the labour market in the region, is also considered. On the basis of the analysis of concrete cases of conflict or of cooperation between the guilds and “free” labour, the study aims at demonstrating that their interactions were not always those of opposition but could also be complementary.

Introduction Although guilds in the Ottoman Empire have been a topic of research for decades, a notable growth of interest in their study can be noticed particularly in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The main themes of study and questions for debate among historians have been the origins of the guilds, their nature (should they be considered and studied as Ottoman institutions or as more or less autonomous organisations?), their relationships with the authorities and especially with the Ottoman state, their economic role (for instance, an impediment to economic change and modernisation or not?), guild regulations, the financial and social functions of guilds, guilds and political life, the time and forms of the decline of the guilds etc. The answers to these questions have depended not only on the different approaches adopted, but also, to a great extent, on the availability, choice and use of the sources. The existing scholarhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-008

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ship has brought to light the diversity and complexity of the guilds in the Ottoman Empire, important divergences depending on time and place as well as the problem with generalisations, at least at this stage of research.¹ Within this historiographical context, this article will discuss the co-existence and interplay between guild and non-guild labour in the central part of the Ottoman Balkans in the nineteenth century. The study is based on a variety of primary sources from different origins such as guild codes and guild chronicles; orders, petitions, complaints and other documents exchanged between craftsmen or their guilds and the local or central Ottoman authorities; state records such as tax-registers (temettuât defterleri, cizye defterleri, and other tax-registers); kadı sicils, as well as documents generated by private individuals and communities – registers of the religious and of the municipal communities and personal archival collections of documents of merchants containing also trade books and correspondence. As additional sources, memoirs, traveller accounts and nineteenth-century newspapers have also been used. By bringing together a wide range of relevant sources from the region examined, the article aims at overcoming the limitations resulting from the use of only a particular type of source, mentioned above. The article will first examine the main characteristics of labour within the guilds, since, as in the rest of the Ottoman Empire, they dominated the landscape of the urban economic activities in the region during the period examined. It will enquire into issues such as the regulation of craftsmen’s labour activities by the guilds and by the Ottoman state, the composition and recruitment of the workforce and some aspects of the craftsmen’s business practices. The study will at the same time consider manufacturing beyond the guilds – the activities of the rare small-scale urban producers who were not guild-members, as well as those of the numerous rural and urban dwellers engaged in proto-industries. It is important in this respect to examine women’s economic activities, since women from the central Balkans could not enter the guilds but were the main workforce in several branches of proto-industrial manufacturing. The role of migration, as a

 For a detailed discussion of the historiography on Ottoman guilds and of the different approaches to their study see Suraiya Faroqhi, “Understanding Ottoman Guilds”, in Crafts and Craftsmen of the Middle East: Fashioning the Individual in the Muslim Mediterranean, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi and Randi Deguilhem (London: I.B.Tauris, 2005), 3 – 40; Suraiya Faroqhi, Artisans of Empire: Crafts and Craftsmen under the Ottomans (London: I.B.Tauris, 2009); Nelly Hanna “Guilds in Recent Historical Scholarship”, in The City in the Islamic world. Vol. 2., ed. Salma K. Jayyusi, Renata Holod, Attilio Petruccioli and Andre Raymond (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 895 – 921; Onur Yıldırım, “Ottoman Guilds in the Early Modern Era”, International Review of Social History 53 (2008), 73 – 93.

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phenomenon which had an important impact on the characteristics and dimensions of the labour market in the region, is also considered. On the basis of the analysis of concrete cases of conflict or of cooperation between the guilds and “free” labour, the article aims at demonstrating that their interactions were not always those of opposition but could also be complementary. The sources examined testify that, all through the nineteenth century, a large portion of the manufacturing activities in the central part of the Ottoman European provinces took place within the guilds and was thus subject to both guild and state control and regulation. Most craftsmen small-scale producers as well as most people providing services in the cities were organised in guilds. This was also the case of the cutlers, the urban aba (coarse woollen cloth) and şayak (finer woollen fabric) weavers, the tailors of coarse woollen clothes and the gaytan (woollen braid) makers, working for distant markets. The relatively few in number factory workers, engaged in the state and in the private plants in the region, as well as the producers of the semi finished goods in proto-industries, on the other hand, were not guild members. An important issue to be considered concerns the composition of the workforce within the guilds. It should be first noted that, alike generally in Ottoman manufacturing, in most industries in the central part of the Balkans no particular ethno-linguistic or religious division of labour existed and there were notable similarities in the principles of composition, the hierarchical structure, the organisation and the general mechanisms of functioning of the guilds, notwithstanding their ethno-confessional composition. The simultaneous coexistence of mixed and homogenous in ethno-religious terms craft corporations can be observed and there is no evidence of the predominance of one of these two patterns, nor of the practice of ethno-religious segregation in the composition of the guilds. In Sofia, for example, only one third of the existing sixty-three guilds were homogeneous with regards to their ethno-religious composition, while all the other were mixed and included Muslims and Orthodox Christians (in most of the cases of mixed corporations), Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Jews (in four of the cases), Orthodox Christians and Jews (in two of the cases), while the esnaf of the goldsmiths was composed of Orthodox and Catholic craftsmen and that of the bakers included an ekmekçi belonging to the Armenian millet.² Furthermore, in most industries in the central part of Ottoman Rumelia, no rigid gender division of labour can be observed during the nineteenth century,

 Диаманди Ихчиев, “Еснафски документи и еснафски организации в турско време”, Списание на Българското икономическо дружество, 1907, 7, 454– 56.

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except for traditional urban crafts, usually organised in guilds, in which masters as well as journeymen and apprentices were male. The workforce in the centralised manufactures was also composed of male journeymen and apprentices, while in the first silk-reeling and wool textile factories both female and male labour was employed, in different operations. The crossing of gender lines was most clear in some of the proto-industries – men, women, girls and boys participated in carpet making, rose-oil distillation and in silk-reeling; in aba, şayak and gaytan production women and girls were usually occupied in spinning and men in weaving and in braid plaiting. Actually, most proto-industries engaged, sometimes part-time and seasonally, the household as a whole. Within this basic unit of production (usually a nuclear family with quite numerous children) there was a certain, again not rigid, division of labour between the members of the rural or urban household. The nineteenth century is an interesting period for the study of the forms, the levels and the impact of state and guild control and regulation on industrial activities. The present study will try to avoid the limitations of what Suraiya Faroqhi has referred to as the “institutionalist” approach, which considers guilds only as an Ottoman institution through which state economic and fiscal control and regulations are applied to the urban population.³ It will also try to overcome the views considering the guilds as highly, if not entirely, autonomous organisations of craftsmen and the regulation and control of their activities as an entirely intra-corporative matter having for the most part a negative, delaying effect on the economic development. The problems of the regulation of the manufacturing activities will be studied, trying to take into account all the agents of regulation and control and their interrelations in different economic contexts as well as the changes during the Tanzimat period. While examining the concrete manifestations of regulation and control in different branches and urban centres and at different stages of the industrial production, one could first note that although on the whole state and guild regulation and control remained important during the period examined, there were significant differences in the levels, objectives and roles of this control depending on the economic and institutional context, the scale and the character of the production. On one hand there were the small-scale craft productions and services in the big urban centres, with old corporative traditions, working mainly for the local market under closer administrative supervision. Among them, those most ex-

 Suraiya Faroqhi, “The Fieldglass and the Magnifying Lens: Studies of Ottoman Crafts and Craftsmen”, The Journal of European Economic History 20 (spring 1991): 1, 29 – 57.

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posed to a higher and much more direct state regulation and control remained obviously the basic commodity productions and services considered essential for the urban population and the army. A continuation of such direct but selective administrative intervention by the local authorities in the control of the quality during the Tanzimat period can be observed. Thus, in the important administrative centre Stara Zagora (Eski Zağra), for example, according to a correspondence published in the newspaper Tsarigradski vestnik in May 1854, among the first measures taken by the new kaymakam was the control of the quality and the weight of bread. He, first, convened the local bakers and warned them against fraud over the quality and quantity of bread, and, afterwards, even resorted to corporal punishment of a baker selling half-baked bread.⁴ In a different economic context, the guild regulation and control of the quality and the standards of soap production in the small mountain town Koprivshtitza in the late 1850s, for example, aimed at the prevention of unfair competition among the guild members on the limited local market and had a predominantly egalitarian significance. The code of the guild of the soap-makers in this town included a text stipulating that if someone used irregular fat for the soap, he was to be punished, his workshop being closed preventing him from working, and if he refused to obey the guild’s decision he was to be delivered to the “Turkish judge” (the kadı).⁵ What should be noted here are the different levels and agents of the control and their interrelation and hierarchy, the administrative intervention coming only in a second instance and being mentioned in the guild code itself. In large-scale mass productions for distant markets, on the other hand, guilds’ control and regulation of labour activities had acquired new, more market-oriented objectives. The focus was on the control of the quality, the standards and often of the raw materials of the production, as for example in the cases of aba and gaytan making in Karlovo, Plovdiv, Panagurishte and Kustendil. The respective guilds, far from being incompatible with the market mechanisms and an impediment to the development of manufacturing in the region, became an agent for the standardisation of the production, in order to make it more competitive and adapted to the requirements of liberalised trade and mass export on distant imperial and foreign markets. The guilds functioning in these branches succeeded in combining the interests of both the small producers and the emerging entrepreneurs and demonstrated greater adaptability to the conditions of lib Цариградски вестник from 15 May 1854.  “Проектоустав от 1857 за сапунджийски еснаф в Копривщица”, in Юбилеен сборник по миналото на Копривщица (20. 04. 1876 – 20. 04. 1926) vol.1 (Sofia: Държавна печатница, 1926), 559.

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eralised trade. The guild-members who managed to organise larger enterprises for export did not have to leave the guilds; quite to the contrary, having become richer and more influential, some of them took the lead of the guilds and even used credit from the guilds’ funds in order to further enlarge their manufacturing activities for the distant markets.⁶ These guilds benefited from a relatively greater autonomy, while guilds in productions mainly for a limited local market in larger administrative centres seem to have had more traditional functions under greater administrative control. An interesting area of focus is that of the attitude of the Ottoman administrative and judicial authorities towards guild monopolies and privileges in the Tanzimat period. The sources examined indicate that, following concrete, mostly fiscal, interests, the authorities took different decisions ranging from providing the local economic agents and their guilds with the traditional support for their activities to the strict application of the declared new policies of laissezfaire. This varying attitude can be illustrated by the following examples. In 1851, according to a correspondence in the newspaper Tsarigradski vestnik, local craftsmen and merchants selling their production on the big Serres (Siroz) fair succeeded in obtaining from the authorities the concession that the fair be opened eight days in advance “according to their own interests and not those of the external merchants, visiting different fairs”.⁷ On the other hand, a petition of the guild of the Maritsa (Meriç) raftsmen, presented to the Edirne administrative authorities in 1841, requesting a restriction on the building of additional new rafts and asking for confirmation of the “holy order from Sultan Murad Hudavendikâr’s time” granting them their privileges, was rejected. The answer of the authorities stipulated that “according to the Tanzimat and the Sultan’s will it is necessary to create favourable conditions for the progress of trade and of the economic activities of everyone in order to multiply their benefits. The claim of the guild means monopoly which is forbidden.”⁸ As for the regulation and control of the different aspects of guild labour, it could first be observed that several measures regarding the number and the composition of the guild personnel were applied. The recruitment of the auxiliary labour force, the engagement of the apprentices, as well as the promotion of the journeymen to the rang of master-artisans were strictly controlled by the guilds

 See Nikolai Todorov, The Balkan City, 1400 – 1900 (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1983), 218 – 37.  Цариградски вестник from 31 March 1851.  Стефан Цонев, “Към въпроса за разложението на еснафската организация у нас през епохата на Възраждането”, Трудове на Висшият институт за народно стопанство – Варна 1 (1955 – 1956): 45.

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and recorded in the guild chronicles. The documents examined show that the apprentices came from urban as well as from rural milieu (in the last case – usually from the villages surrounding the urban centres). It is important to note however that, as the guild codes and chronicles studied testify, the number of the çırağs (apprentices) and kalfas (journeymen) employed by the individual master was not limited by guild regulation, while, obviously, that of the masters members of the guild was. A common measure of regulation of the number of master-artisans – guild members were the variations in consecutive years in the size of the admission fee for the new masters (called başkalık or ustalık). In many guilds in the region examined furthermore the sons of master-artisans paid only half of the admission fee, which shows a preference for keeping the profession and the respective skills within the guild milieu, without nevertheless “closing” the corporation to outsiders, as was the case in certain European guilds towards the end of the eighteenth century and in nineteenth-century Sarajevo, for example. We could argue that the control on the recruitment and on the training and promotion of the auxiliary labour force, practised by the guilds in the region examined, aimed not only at limiting the number of the guild members (and thus the intra-corporative competition), but had also the objective to prevent harming the reputation of the corporation by bringing out on the market bad quality goods produced by insufficiently skilled craftsmen.⁹ The sicils of Rusçuk and Bitola from the first half of the nineteenth century testify that the local authorities continued to fix, in collaboration with representatives of the respective guilds, the narh (maximum prices) of the basic commodities, considered essential for the population of the big cities, and to control their observation by the local craftsmen.¹⁰ There is no evidence, in the guild codes and chronicles of the nineteenth-century corporations in the central part of the Ottoman Balkans studied, of any direct limitation of the volume of the production, neither in the small-scale craft productions for the local market, nor in proto-industries.¹¹ Nevertheless some corporative norms and practices, such as  For more detailed data on the regulations of the recruitment and of the training of the auxiliary labour force in central Rumelia, in a comparative perspective with the rest of the Balkans, see Svetla Ianeva, L’artisanat et les corporations de métier dans la partie centrale des Balkans pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle (Florence: European University Institute, 1997), 134– 50, 208 – 213, http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5841.  Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Ориенталски отдел [hereafter NBKM OO], R 23, p. 91a; R26, p.190b; Турски документи за македонската историja, vol 2., ed. Панта Џамбазовски (Skopje: Институт за национална историja, 1951), 57, 82  Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [hereafter NBKM BIA], IIA 7742; IIA 7741; IIA 7738; IIA 7740; IIA 7667; IIA 7735; IIA 7668; IIA 7761; IIA 7644; IIB 9468; IIA 2855; collection 5, a.e. 1; f. 440, a.e.1.

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the collective provisioning in raw materials, which was largely practised by the guilds in the region,¹² apart from guaranteeing the quality and the standards of the production, could have had such an aim and effect. Furthermore, unlike in most West and Central European corporations, as testify the guild codes and registers examined, in the region under study the duration of the workday was not an object of regulation and control by the guilds. In the productions destined to distant imperial or foreign markets, this was probably due to the large opportunities for export, which attenuated the competition among the guild members, as well as to the location of part of the labour activities “at home” which made impossible the control of the working hours. Several memoirs also testify that especially the auxiliary personnel – the apprentices and the journeymen engaged in these branches – continued their labour activities until late in the evening or from very early in the morning.¹³ The notable presence of clock-towers in several urban centres in the region¹⁴ as well as the spatial organisation of the urban economic activities in specialised streets (çarşı) suggest on the other hand that at least the workshops located in the central commercial area of the towns and cities would have closed at the same time, which did not necessarily mean the end of the workday, as we have seen. An additional reason for not limiting the duration of the workday by guild regulation could have been to remain competitive in front of the large presence, as we shall further see, of non-guild labour in the region. It can be concluded that, instead of contrasting the role of corporate regulation with state intervention in manufacturing activities and arguing for the exclusiveness of one of these factors or that they were incompatible with purely market regulative mechanisms and had lost their significance in the nineteenth century, it would be more productive to stress and investigate the simultaneous and often interdependent action of these factors. Depending on the specific economic contexts, different levels and models of intervention and of interaction between the different agents of regulation and control, having not only an alterna-

 Ianeva, L’artisanat et les corporations de métier, 186 – 90.  They usually performed these activities in their “dormitories” (rooms located in their masters’ houses or in the back of the workshops), or, in times of the seasonal professional migrations of the abacıs, for example, in the hans and caravanserais. See, for example: Захари Стоянов, Записки по българските въстания (Sofia: Български писател, 1962), 91; Михаил Маджаров, Спомени (Sofia: Издателство Дамян Яков, 2004), 69, 88.  Andreas Lyberatos, “Clocks, Watches and Time Perception in the Balkans. Studying a Case of Cultural Transfer”, in Encounters in Europe’s South-East. The Habsburg Empire and the Orthodox World in the 18th and 19th centuries, ed. Harald Heppner and Eva Posch (Bochum: D. Winkler, 2012), 238 – 40.

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tive but also a complementary character in some cases, can be observed. This concerns several aspects of craftsmen’s economic activities, such as the observation of the quality and of the standards of the production, the provision of raw materials and their quality control, the control of prices, of the number of guild members and their professional training. State commissions for goods and services remained a special field of interaction between craftsmen, their guilds and the state. Depending on the particular economic context, regulative measures could pursue considerably different aims and have different results.¹⁵ Having examined guild labour, we will further discus manufacturing beyond the guilds. The sources studied testify that all through the nineteenth century in several towns and cities in the region there were a few craftsmen who were not guild-members. These were either people whose number was too small to form a guild or newcomers to the cities who, at least for some time, exercised their profession outside the respective guild. On the basis of the cases analysed below we shall try to demonstrate however that, from a quantitative point of view, the main concentration of non-guild labour could be found in proto-industrial manufacturing, which in the central part of the Ottoman Balkans developed both in rural and urban environment. In this region, the wool spinners and the rural woollen cloth weavers, as well as the rose-oil distillers, the carpet-producers and the silk-reelers, were usually non-guild workers. Thus non-guild workers, peasant and urban men and women, were the main actors in proto-industrial silk-reeling destined to export to Bucharest, Brashov (Kronstadt), Moscow and Central Europe, organised in the Gabrovo – Tarnovo and Stara Zagora regions by the merchant Haci Hristo Rachkov in the late eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. None of these home-based producers, nor any of the salaried reelers of finer silk in the centralised manufacture, organised by the same merchant in Kazanlık, were guild-members.¹⁶ During the same period, numerous households in more then seventy urban and rural localities of the Vratza region were also part-time engaged in market oriented silk-thread reeling, organised and controlled by merchants from the Hadjitoshev family. The latter exported the silk thread from this region to domestic and external markets (to Russia, the Ottoman capital, Central Europe, France

 Ianeva, L’artisanat et les corporations de metier, 229 – 34.  Svetla Ianeva, “Тhe Commercial Practices and Protoindustrial Activities of Haci Hristo Rachkov, a Bulgarian Trader at the End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century”, Oriente Moderno XXV, no. LXXXVI (2006): 1, 80 – 83.

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and Northern Italy) and introduced different forms of organisation of labour, presenting the characteristics of Kaufsystem and of putting-out or Verlagsystem. ¹⁷ The predominance of non-guild labour in proto-industrial manufacturing could be observed in the cases of carpet-weaving and of rose-oil distillery as well. In the Berkovitza – Chiprovtzi – Tzaribrod – Pirot region carpet-weaving destined to distant markets – to the imperial fairs, the Ottoman capital and Central Europe as well as for supplying the Ottoman army – engaged part-time mainly women and girls, but sometimes also men, from numerous rural and urban households in the area during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Keeping the organisation of the working process unchanged at the level of the domestic workshop, the merchants, who exported the carpets and in some cases provided the producers with the raw materials, organised a sort of decentralised factories employing non-guild labour. These “factories” were similar to those existing in many other proto-industrial regions in Europe as well as in other provinces of the Ottoman Empire (as, for example, in the Uşak rug production in Anatolia).¹⁸ Similarly, the rose-oil distillers employed in the mass, regionally specialised production, organised by local merchants and localised in the Edirne and Plovdiv surroundings, at Kazanlık, Stara and Nova Zagora (Eski and Yeni Zağara), Karlovo, Kalofer and Klisura, were all non-guild workers. This production was destined to exportation on distant markets – to France (30 %), England (20 %), Austria, Germany and Italy (30 %), USA (10 %) and to the Ottoman European, Arab and Asiatic provinces (10 %).¹⁹ A proto-industrial production, particularly indicative for the correlation between guild and non-guild labour, was the tailoring of coarse woollen clothes in several localities in the central Balkans, such as Plovdiv, Karlovo, Koprivshtitza, Kazanlık, Sliven, Samokov, Tarnovo etc.²⁰ In the eighteenth and nineteenth

 Svetla Ianeva, “Des activités professionnelles et réseaux commerciaux de quelques marchands bulgares pendant la période initiale de l’incorporation des Balkans ottomans dans l’économie-monde (fin du 18e – début du 19e siècle)”, Etudes balkaniques XLVII (2011): 4, 80 – 89.  Donald Quataert, Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 158.  Svetla Ianeva, “Main Characteristics of and Changes in Industrial Activity in the Central Balkans During “the Long 19th Century””, in The Economic Development of Southeastern Europe in the 19th Century, ed. Edhem Eldem and Socrates Petmezas (Athens: Apha Bank Historical Archives, 2011), 217– 18.  This production has been the object of detailed studies in historiography; see for example Todorov, The Balkan City, 209 – 37; Michael Palairet, The Balkan Economies c. 1800 – 1914. Evolution Without Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 66 – 84, 186 – 202; Svetla Ianeva, “Регулация на занаятчийското производство в българските земи през първата половина на 19 век”, Исторически преглед LIV (1998), 3 – 4, 8 – 13.

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century, the tailors of aba clothes (the abacıs) benefited from a very large, almost unlimited market not only in the Balkans and in the Ottoman capital but also in Anatolia, Syria and Egypt since these clothes were traditionally worn by most of the male rural population all over the Empire. Gradually some of the abacıs assumed entrepreneurial functions dealing mainly with the organisation and the marketing of the production. They employed numerous journeymen and apprentices of their own and acted as intermediaries in the export to distant markets of the production of part of their “colleagues”, who thus became dependent on them in different forms and on different levels.²¹ Similarly, the producers of woollen braids for the decoration of the aba clothes (the gaytancıs) from the region were organised in guilds and worked not only for the local but also for the imperial markets. While their guilds, in order to prevent intra-corporative competition on the local market, controlled quite strictly, through several regulations in their codes, labour within the guilds (the number of master artisans and the recruitment and promotion of the auxiliary labour force, as we have seen above and as previous research by Nikolai Todorov and Andreas Lyberatos has shown),²² the abacı and gaytancı corporations did not oppose the organisation by some of their members of manufactures for the production of the raw materials necessary, namely the woollen yarn and the woollen fabric. In these protoindustrial enterprises numerous workers outside the guilds were employed. This attitude of the guilds can be explained, on one hand, by the fact that these mass woollen productions were mainly destined to export outside the region, to external, very large markets, and on the other hand with the influential positions within the guilds of the masters who organised such manufactures. We should also have in mind that these manufactures actually enlarged the supply with raw materials in the region by engaging numerous peasant households in spinning and weaving wool at a larger scale, as an additional occupation to their agricultural and stockbreeding activities. Nevertheless, as Andreas Lyberatos has demonstrated in his research, conflicts between the guilds and such entrepreneurs were not excluded – some of them, with higher ambitions, not only to dominate on the markets but also to monopolise the state commissions of wool-

 “Кондика на Пловдивския абаджийски еснаф, преведена от М. Апостолидис и Ал. Пеев”, Годишник на Народната библиотека и музей в Пловдив, 1930, III Научна част (1932), 3 – 186.  Todorov, The Balkan City, 219 – 26; Andreas Lyberatos, “‘Çelebis’ and Guildsmen in Pre-Tanzimat Plovdiv: Breaking through the Orthodox Ancien Régime “, in Political Initiatives ‘From Bottom Up’ in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Antonis Anastasopoulos (Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2012), 112.

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len cloth, engaged in a struggle over the control of the supply with raw materials.²³ During the nineteenth century the participation of women in market oriented textile manufacturing grew. Women from the small town of Kalofer, for example, were involved in market oriented textile manufacturing as spinners, braid and şayak producers. Even the nuns from the Kalofer monastery were regularly commissioned to produce large quantities of woollen cloth by some merchants from Plovdiv, as several sources testify.²⁴ Women from the towns of Karlovo, Gabrovo, Kalofer and the surrounding villages were spinning wool and further either selling it to the gaytancıs or weaving şayak, which they then sold to the woollen cloth merchants who exported it to the distant imperial markets.²⁵ In order to assess the place and weight of non-guild labour in the local economy and to analyse its relations with the guilds, it is particularly important to consider the interactions between the merchants-entrepreneurs, many of whom were guild-members, and the women wool-spinners and weavers. Sometimes the merchants were providing some of these women with raw wool; they were commissioning the production of woollen braid or fabric and were occasionally advancing them with money.²⁶ This pattern seems to have been common for the proto-industrial woollen production in the mountain areas of the Central Balkans. In the nineteenth century, the gaytancıs from Karlovo, Sopot, Gabrovo and Pirdop, who were exporting woollen braid almost everywhere in the Ottoman Empire, employed an impressive number of home-based salaried urban and rural women – 1,700 to 2,000 for each town. In the mid nineteenth century the remunerations of the women – wool-carders and wool-spinners were discussed by the masters – members of the gaytancı guilds and then fixed upon a common agreement at three or four guruş per day.²⁷ In this case we can observe that the guilds were involved in the regulation of the wages of the non-guild workers employed by the masters-entrepreneurs, the aim of this regulation being not so much to avoid competition on the markets of the finished product,

 Lyberatos, “‘Çelebis’ and Guildsmen”, 115.  Никола Начов, Калофер в миналото. Книга Първа (Sofia: Земиздат, 1990), 69 – 75.  Svetla Ianeva, “Female Actors, Producers and Money Makers in Ottoman Public Space: the Case of the Late Ottoman Balkans”, in Ottoman Women in Public Space, ed. Kate Fleet and Ebru Boyar (Leiden and Boston: BRILL, 2016), 57– 59.  Начов, Калофер в миналото, 407– 08.  Иван Унджиев, Карлово. История на града до Освобождението (Sofia: Издателство на Българската академия на науките, 1962), 55; Константин Косев, За капиталистическото развитие на българските земи през 60-те и 70-те години на 19 век (Sofia: Издателство на Българската академия на науките, 1968), 78, 82, 135.

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but mostly to regulate the availability and the price of the raw materials produced by the salaried workers (presumably to the detriment of the latter). Some newly studied sources show, on the other hand, a different, less flexible and more traditional, attitude of some of the guilds to the growing presence of non-guild labour in market oriented manufacturing. Thus, for example, two undated documents (probably from the mid 1840s)²⁸ from Triavna (a village located at the foot of the central Balkan (Stara planina) mountain, well known for its production of silk accessories) testify on the involvement of local women in the production of silk belts and laces, as well as of a serious conflict between them and the local guild of the kazas. ²⁹ The local elders and an important number of the village dwellers addressed two letters of complaint to their representative in the kaza meclis of Tarnovo, Georgui pop Simeonov, in which they accused one of the local çorbacıs, Nikola Chushkov, of causing the conflict and asked for his punishment and removal from office. According to them, under his influence, the kazas “rose against” the poor local women and widows who, “with their labour are feeding and providing with clothing their children, having learned a craft, as everywhere in the world nowadays”.³⁰ It was further stated in the letters that some of the local women weaving silk belts and laces were even paying the poll-taxes and other expenses of their husbands. Unfortunately the documents do not provide any further details of the conflict, which had provoked, according to authors of the complaints, “unprecedented trouble, lament and violence” in the village.³¹ Most of the villagers apparently sympathised with the local women, since fifty five of them signed one of the documents, including the ten local priests.³² In proto-industrial productions in the region, generally, only exceptionally were there individual written contracts between the entrepreneurs and the producers.³³ Individual oral contracts and transactions were probably more common, but they are difficult to be traced with certainty in the sources. The sources studied testify that, in several cases, as for example in the case of the silk-reeling for export organised by Haci Hristo Rachkov in the Gabrovo – Tarnovo region,

 NBKM BIA, IIA 4354; IIA 4401. The approximate date of these documents could be established by comparing the signatures on the documents with signatures on other documents issued from Triavna.  Kazas – artisan, producing silk accessories.  NBKM BIA, IIA 4401.  Ibid.  NBKM BIA, IIA 4354.  See the case of the aba production organised by the Gümüşgerdans in the Rodope mountain region, studied by Nikolai Todorov: Todorov, The Balkan City, 245 – 47.

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the entrepreneur was dealing with representatives of the producers – either of a number of households, of a mahalle (neighbourhood), or of a whole village – about the delivery and the advanced and final payments of the raw silk. Thus traditional institutions such as the mahalle or the village community were involved in the organisation and control of dependent non-guild labour.³⁴ In other cases the entrepreneurs were combining the later form with entrusting their own agents-intermediaries, part of their commercial networks, with the collection and the payment of the production to the home-based workers, as shown by the registers of the Hadjitoshev family, for example.³⁵ While analysing the interrelations between the guilds and non-guild labour, another important factor, with notable impact on the industrial activities in the region in general and on the size, composition and characteristics of the labour market in particular, should be considered: namely, the quite significant in numbers migrations over longer or shorter distances, which can be clearly observed through the sources³⁶ since the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. One of their consequences was the growing number of people engaged in manufacturing activities. This phenomenon can be traced in large administrative and economic centres with large populations and local demand for different commodities, as well as in smaller towns. It was particularly visible in the proto-industrial regions as well as in some large-scale craft productions for export to distant markets, in which it found expression mainly in the employment of numerous new apprentices and journeymen.

 Светла Янева, “Стопански практики през Възраждането – търговският тефтер на х. Христо Рачков, опит за микроанализ”, Исторически преглед 59 (2003): 3 – 4, 41– 42.  Ianeva, L’artisanat et les corporations de métier, 83.  The registers, particularly illustrative of this process are the following: the tax-registers from Rusçuk: Държавен архив Русе, f. 44k, op.1, a.e.9, 1– 59; a.e.13, 3 – 166; a.e.11, 17– 32; a.e.7, 14– 17; a.e.84, 1– 67 and from Samokov (Samako): Istanbul Başbakanlık Arşivi Temettuat defterleri n.11197, 11199, 11200, 11201, 11206, 11207, 11213, 11214, 11216, 11217, 11227, 11233, 11236, 11238, 11239, 11244, 11249, 11250, 11252, 11258, as well as the registers of the guilds of the abacıs of Plovdiv (Filibe): “Кондика на Пловдивския абаджийски еснаф”, 3 – 186, of the abacıs and gaitancıs of Karlovo: NBKM BIA, IIA 7742, II A 7741, II A 7738, II A 7740 and the registers of the guilds of the goldsmiths and of the blacksmiths of this town: Христо Гандев, “Фактори на българското възраждане 1600 – 1830”, in Проблеми на Българското Възраждане (Sofia: Наука и изкуство, 1976), 111– 16. Other sources in which one can find testimonies on this phenomenon are the registers of the town community of Jeravna from 1842 to 1869: NBKM BIA, II A 7700, II A 7702, II A 7699, II A 7696, a tax-register from Sofia from 1850: NBKM BIA, Единично постъпление от 1950 година, 246 ss., translated from Greek by Keta Mircheva, a defter of the meclis of Kotel from 1860: NBKM OO, f. 188, a.e. 9, 1– 3 and Konstantin Moravenov’s Памятник на пловдивското християнско население в града и за общите заведения по произносно предание, written in 1869 and published in 1984 (Plovdiv: Hristo G. Danov, 1984).

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Several sources, such as the temettuât defterleri of Samokov from 1844³⁷ and a tax-register from Sofia for the collection of the poll tax from the local Orthodox community in 1850,³⁸ testify that apart from the traditional temporary transfers of specialised groups of craftsmen during military campaigns or for state constructions, and the movements of workers in professions which were by definition seasonal and migrant based (such as building, brick-making and carpentry)³⁹, important migrations of artisans from normally sedentary professions can be observed in the central part of the Balkans during the nineteenth century. In the case of Sofia, the craftsmen registered as absent in 1850 belong to twentyfour of the sixty-four crafts practised in this city: 10.7 % of them were furriers, 5.3 % hatters, 9.9 % tailors, 5.3 % abacıs, 6.9 % rope-makers, 4.6 % potters, 3.7 % goldsmiths, 2.3 % shoemakers, while only 9.9 % were masons and 12.2 % fountain-makers. More than 82 % of them were master-artisans and only 17.6 % apprentices. We can observe that the craftsmen were also more than 49 % of all the taxpayers registered as absent, representing thus the most mobile professional group in the city. The destinations of their transfers, indicated in 95 % of the cases, covered almost all of the European Ottoman provinces, especially the western section, including Bosnia and Macedonia, while other destinations were Plovdiv and Edirne. More than half of the migrant craftsmen from Sofia, however, chose the Ottoman capital. The migration of some of the textile workers seems to have been seasonal and can be explained as commercially motivated, with such workers being attracted to greater potential economic gain in important centres of consumption such as the Ottoman capital, Edirne and the region of Anatolia. Furriers too could themselves have taken their products to the WestBalkans regions, traditional for their exports, and thus would have been only temporary absent. Most of the absences of craftsmen from Sofia registered in 1850, however, seem to be due to a definitive emigration from the city to the new destinations indicated. One of the several possible reasons for these migrations could be the establishment in urban centres with important local demand, where some space for an intensification of craftsmen’s activities still existed, probably no longer the case in Sofia by the 1850s. Similarly, the migrations of craftsmen from the central part of the Balkans towards the North-Eastern part of the peninsula in the 1860s and 1870s, which

 Istanbul Başbakanlık Arşivi Temettuat defterleri n.11197, 11199, 11200, 11201, 11206, 11207, 11213, 11214, 11216, 11217, 11227, 11233, 11236, 11238, 11239, 11244, 11249, 11250, 11252, 11258.  NBKM BIA, Единично постъпление от 1950 година, 246 ss.  See Michael Palairet, “The Migrant Workers of the Balkans and Their Villages (18th Century – World War II)”, in Handwerk in Mittel-und Südosteuropa, ed. Klaus Roth (München: Südosteuropa-Gesellshaft, 1987), 23 – 32.

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have been studied by Nikolai Todorov,⁴⁰ were related to the growth of the urban centres in the North-Eastern part of the Rumelian provinces and the demand for manufactured goods, following the administrative Tanzimat reforms in the 1860s and the establishment of Rusçuk as the capital of the Tuna vilayet-i. This process was also stimulated by the improvement in communications in the region (the beginning of steamboat navigation along the Lower Danube and the construction of railways). The Ottoman capital and Edirne, with their exceptionally large and, in the Reform period, growing demand for certain commodities, related to the reforms in the administration and the army, became particularly attractive for artisan labour also.⁴¹ The population in the larger administrative centres benefited apparently also from a more favourable economic and political climate during the reform period. Among the different consequences of the migrations of craftsmen from rural areas or from other towns to urban centres with larger demand and better security,⁴² the most relevant for our study is that this phenomenon resulted in the enlargement of the labour market in manufacturing and became one of the important sources of “free” labour in several towns and cities in the region. Apparently some of the newcomers at least for some time practiced their craft free of guild regulation and membership. Their professional activities could cause competition and provoke reactions from the local guild-members, but we shall further try to demonstrate that the interrelations between them and the guilds were not always marked by opposition. In most cases such migrant craftsmen remained only temporarily outside the guilds, as their usual professional path was to be co-opted, incorporated within the guilds. Here the case of a Syrian Armenian abacı, Hacı Kiriak Melkon, could be quoted. As several records in the chronicle of the abacı guild of Plovdiv from the beginning of the nineteenth century testify, he was in professional contact with abacıs from Plovdiv, who were selling their produce in the Syrian provinces. At the very beginning of the nineteenth century, he moved to Plovdiv, soon after that was co-opted in the local abacı corporation and even became head of the abacı guild of Plovdiv and

 Todorov, The Balkan City, 366 – 83.  Никола Ганев, Страници из миналото на град Севлиево (Veliko Tarnovo, 1925), 50; Istanbul Başbakanlık Arşivi Temettuаt defter n.11252, 38; Петър Цонев, Из стопанското минало на Габрово (Sofia: Държавна печатница, 1929), 285 – 314; NBKM BIA, f. 557, a.e. 1, 41.  A phenomenon observable already in the beginning of the nineteenth century, during the times of political troubles and mass banditry in the Balkans, called by Vera Mutafchieva “times of the kırcalıs”; see Вера Мутафчиева, Кърджалийско време (Sofia: Издателство на Българската академия на науките, 1993); in French: L’anarchie dans les Balkans à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2005).

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was re-elected as such for a period of almost ten years, from 1811 to 1820.⁴³ Such attitude of the guilds in the region towards “external masters”, aiming at co-opting them at certain conditions and putting their activities under guild control rather than trying to interdict the exercise of their “free” labour, could also be supported by evidence from the guild chronicles of the Panagiurishte dyers from 1866⁴⁴ and of the Bratzigovo masons and of the Karlovo gaytancıs from the 1840s. The statute of the guild of the masons in Bratzigovo stipulated that masters “who had not served in the guild” could join it but had to pay a double admission fee.⁴⁵ Similarly, in the mid 1840s the Karlovo braid makers took the decision to admit in their professional corporation gaytancıs “from outside” on the condition that the latter paid an entrance fee twice the regular amount, obeyed the guild and accepted to make only the type of braid that they usually produced but not the coloured ones.⁴⁶ The guild thus delimited the market and kept control of the quality and standards of the production. The fact that these guilds benefited from large markets, within and outside the region, was probably decisive for the attitude towards “the external craftsmen” adopted. Some of the guild codes, at the same time, of both guilds working for the local market and guilds in productions for large-scale export, provided for prohibitions and penalties for their members who would establish partnerships with people outside the corporation.⁴⁷ These stipulations referred to partnerships with non-skilled artisans, who had not undergone training within the guild, as well as to partnerships with immigrant masters. They were probably not only a way of ensuring the guild priority in the respective branch and locality but also a measure for preventing bad quality production which could harm the image of the guild on the market. In conclusion, on the basis of the sources from the Central Balkans studied, we could argue that the guilds in the region demonstrated an impressive vitality, flexibility and adaptability to the changing conditions during the nineteenth century and remained an important factor in economic life. Manufacturing beyond the guilds was another very important element of the economy in the re-

 “Кондика на Пловдивския абаджийски еснаф”, 119 – 20, 129, 136, 144, 150.  “Закон за бояджийския еснаф в Панагюрище от 1866 година”, in Кирил Стоянов, “Българските еснафи през турско робство (история, организация и дейности)”, Годишник на Висшето търговско училище Варна, 1942, 85 – 87.  NBKM BIA, IIA 7735, 1– 3.  NBKM BIA, IIA 7740, 81.  As, for example, the code of the guild of the gaitancıs and of the dyers of Kustendil: “Кондика на гайтанджийския и бояджийския еснаф в Кюстендил от 1866 година”, in Кирил Стоянов, “Българските еснафи”, 93 – 95.

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gion examined. Non-guild labour, engaging individual master-artisans, entire households, involving also numerous women, was widely present and particularly notable in proto-industries, located in rural as well as in urban settings. We could argue that the role and weight of dependent, non-guild labour in the region grew over time. The relationships between the guilds and the workers outside the corporations were not necessarily those of conflict. They could vary, according mostly to demand and thus to competition on the market(s), and were therefore rather relaxed in mass productions for export out of the region, the final development in this case being usually the incorporation of the “outsiders” within the guilds. The activities of the non-guild workers were apparently important enough to sometimes become the object of special provisions in the guild codes. In some cases, as we have seen, they were included in the proto-industrial networks of masters-entrepreneurs – members of the guilds as producers of the raw materials for the mass productions destined to be exported. The attitude of the local guilds and guild-members to “free” labour varied according to the specific conditions in the particular branch and/or urban centre, but could be generally characterised as quite flexible, as inclusive rather than exclusive.

Sources Unpublished Sources Istanbul Başbakanlık Arşivi, Temettuat defterleri n. 11197, 11199, 11200, 11201, 11206, 11207, 11213, 11214, 11216, 11217, 11227, 11233, 11236, 11238, 11239, 11244, 11249, 11250, 11252, 11258. Държавен архив Русе [State Archives – Russe], f. 44k, op.1, a.e.9; a.e.13; a.e.11; a.e.7; a.e.84. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Ориенталски отдел [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Oriental Department], Sicil R23. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Ориенталски отдел [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Oriental Department], Sicil R26. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Ориенталски отдел [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Oriental Department], f. 188, a.e. 9. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7700. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7702. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7742.

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Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7741. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7738. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7740. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7667. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7735. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7668. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7761. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7644. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7696. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 7699. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIB 9468. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 2855. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], collection 5, a.e.1. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 4354. Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], IIA 4401.

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Национална библиотека “Св. Св. Кирил и Методий”, Български исторически архив [National Library “St. St. Cyril and Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgarian Historical Archives], f. 557, a.e.1.

Newspapers Цариградски вестник

Published Sources “Закон за бояджийския еснаф в Панагюрище от 1866 година”. In Кирил Стоянов, “Българските еснафи през турско робство (история, организация и дейности)”. Годишник на Висшето търговско училище Варна (1942), 85 – 87. “Кондика на гайтанджийския и бояджийския еснаф в Кюстендил от 1866 година”. In Кирил Стоянов, “Българските еснафи през турско робство (история, организация и дейности)”, Годишник на Висшето търговско училище Варна (1942), 93 – 95. “Кондика на Пловдивския абаджийски еснаф, преведена от М. Апостолидис и Ал. Пеев”. Годишник на Народната библиотека и музей в Пловдив, 1930, III Научна част (1932), 3 – 186. “Проектоустав от 1857 за сапунджийски еснаф в Копривщица”. In Юбилеен сборник по миналото на Копривщица (20. 04. 1876 – 20. 04. 1926) 1 (Sofia: Държавна печатница, 1926), 559. Маджаров, Михаил. Спомени. Sofia: Издателство Дамян Яков, 2004. Моравенов, Константин. Памятник на пловдивското християнско население в града и за общите заведения по произносно предание. Plovdiv: Христо Г. Данов, 1984. Стоянов, Захари. Записки по българските въстания. Sofia: Български писател, 1962. Турски документи за македонската историja, vol 2., edited by Панта Џамбазовски. Skopje: Институт за национална историja, 1951.

Bibliography Faroqhi, Suraiya. “The Fieldglass and the Magnifying Lens: Studies of Ottoman Crafts and Craftsmen”. The Journal of European Economic History 20 (spring 1991): 1, 29 – 57. Faroqhi, Suraiya. “Understanding Ottoman Guilds”. In Crafts and Craftsmen of the Middle East: Fashioning the Individual in the Muslim Mediterranean, edited by Suraiya Faroqhi and Randi Deguilhem, 3 – 40. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. Faroqhi, Suraiya. Artisans of Empire: Crafts and Craftsmen under the Ottomans. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Hanna, Nelly. “Guilds in Recent Historical Scholarship”. In The City in the Islamic world. Vol. 2., edited by Salma K. Jayyusi, Renata Holod, Attilio Petruccioli and Andre Raymond, 895 – 921. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

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Ianeva, Svetla. L’artisanat et les corporations de métier dans la partie centrale des Balkans pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle, 134 – 50, 208 – 213. Florence: European University Institute, 1997. Ianeva, Svetla. “Тhe Commercial Practices and Protoindustrial Activities of Haci Hristo Rachkov, a Bulgarian Trader at the End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century”. Oriente Moderno XXV, no. LXXXVI (2006): 1, 77 – 92. Ianeva, Svetla. “Des activités professionnelles et réseaux commerciaux de quelques marchands bulgares pendant la période initiale de l’incorporation des Balkans ottomans dans l’économie-monde (fin du 18e – début du 19e siècle)”. Etudes balkaniques XLVII (2011): 4, 74 – 95. Ianeva, Svetla. “Main Characteristics of and Changes in Industrial Activity in the Central Balkans During “the Long 19th Century””. In The Economic Development of Southeastern Europe in the 19th Century, edited by Edhem Eldem and Socrates Petmezas, 197 – 224. Athens: Apha Bank Historical Archives, 2011. Ianeva, Svetla. “Female Actors, Producers and Money Makers in Ottoman Public Space: the Case of the Late Ottoman Balkans”. In Ottoman Women in Public Space, edited by Kate Fleet and Ebru Boyar, 48 – 90. Leiden and Boston: BRILL, 2016. Lyberatos, Andreas. “‘Çelebis’ and Guildsmen in Pre-Tanzimat Plovdiv: Breaking through the Orthodox Ancien Régime”. In Political Initiatives ‘From Bottom Up’ in the Ottoman Empire, edited by Antonis Anastasopoulos, 95 – 103. Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2012. Lyberatos, Andreas. “Clocks, Watches and Time Perception in the Balkans. Studying a Case of Cultural Transfer”. In Encounters in Europe’s South-East. The Habsburg Empire and the Orthodox World in the 18th and 19th centuries, edited by Harald Heppner and Eva Posch, 231 – 254. Bochum: D. Winkler, 2012. Mutafchieva, Vera. L’anarchie dans les Balkans à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Istanbul: Isis Press, 2005. Palairet, Michael. “The Migrant Workers of the Balkans and Their Villages (18th Century – World War II)”. In Handwerk in Mittel-und Südosteuropa, edited by Klaus Roth, 23 – 46. München: Südosteuropa-Gesellshaft, 1987. Palairet, Michael. The Balkan Economies c. 1800 – 1914. Evolution Without Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Quataert, Donald. Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Todorov, Nikolai. The Balkan City, 1400 – 1900. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1983. Yıldırım, Onur. “Ottoman Guilds in the Early Modern Era”. International Review of Social History 53 (2008): 73 – 93. Гандев, Христо. “Фактори на българското възраждане 1600 – 1830”. In Проблеми на Българското Възраждане, 23 – 153. Sofia: Наука и изкуство, 1976. Ганев, Никола. Страници из миналото на град Севлиево. Veliko Tarnovo, 1925. Ихчиев, Диаманди. “Еснафски документи и еснафски организации в турско време”. Списание на Българското икономическо дружество (1907), 7, 445 – 456. Косев, Константин. За капиталистическото развитие на българските земи през 60-те и 70-те години на 19 век. Sofia: Издателство на Българската академия на науките, 1968.

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Мутафчиева, Вера. Кърджалийско време. Sofia: Издателство на Българската академия на науките, 1993. Начов, Никола. Калофер в миналото. Книга Първа. Sofia: Земиздат, 1990. Унджиев, Иван. Карлово. История на града до Освобождението. Sofia: Издателство на Българската академия на науките, 1962. Цонев, Петър. Из стопанското минало на Габрово. Sofia: Държавна печатница, 1929. Цонев, Стефан. “Към въпроса за разложението на еснафската организация у нас през епохата на Възраждането”. Трудове на Висшият институт за народно стопанство – Варна 1 (1955 – 1956), 1 – 56. Янева, Светла. “Регулация на занаятчийското производство в българските земи през първата половина на 19 век”. Исторически преглед LIV (1998), 3 – 4, 3 – 36. Янева, Светла. “Стопански практики през Възраждането – търговският тефтер на х. Христо Рачков, опит за микроанализ”. Исторически преглед 59 (2003): 3 – 4, 30 – 67.

Nikos Potamianos

Chapter 6 Between Workers and the Retailing Community: the Street Vendors of Athens in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century Abstract: This chapter addresses two questions related to the street vendors of early twentieth century Athens. First, how did they survive despite the proliferation of shops? Many factors contribute to the reproduction of itinerant trading, including the gaps in the network of shops in remote neighbourhoods; the role played by street vending as a refuge for the old and the sick; the symbiotic relationship developed among hawkers and many shopkeepers; and the serving of a clientele of women, whose mobility in the public space was limited, making it therefore convenient to buy goods sold by hawkers on their doorstep. Second, how should one conceptualize street vendors in terms of their position in the class structure, and how did they perceive themselves in terms of profession and social class? This chapter argues that there was a differentiation within the social group of itinerant and “stationary” traders: despite the downgrading and informalisation of itinerant trading, a part of them still tended to identify not with the working class or an underclass of poor people working in the informal sector but with a community of retailers.

Introduction This paper constitutes a first approach to a topic that remains totally unexplored in the Greek historiography and rather understudied internationally. While other social scientists can rely on field research to study street vending,¹ there are very

 Indicatively: Sharit K. Bhowmik, Street vendors in the global urban economy (London: Routledge, 2010); Christian Zlolniski, Janitors, Street vendors and activists. The lives of Mexican immigrants in Silicon Valley (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 2006); Susanne Teltscher, “Small trade and the world economy: informal vendors in Quito, Equador”, Economic geography 70, no. 2 (1994): 167– 187; Enzo Mingione, “Social reproduction of the surplus labour force: the case of Southern Italy”, in Nanneke Redclift and Enzo Mingione, Beyond employment. Household, gender and subsistence (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1985), 14– 54. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-009

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few historical research projects that have been based on archives.² Itinerant trading has been one of the most invisible economic activities, leaving very few traces behind: as the informal sector is beyond state control, tax or other records of peddlers can hardly be found; the problems of the trade were not discussed in the newspapers and the parliament; the moments of collective action were rare, and the few associations lived less than those of other social groups; itinerant traders do not belong in the categories of the population that wrote memoirs or left private archives. This author’s own research is based on the combination of evidence drawn from published sources, novels, some archival material and particularly newspapers: “small news” and chronicles of everyday life in Athens provide rich information about street vendors. Unsurprisingly, itinerant and street trading became only recently a topic of historical research per se. It seems that the most significant and ambitious works come from students of the early modern European history who, following Braudel, highlight the economic importance of itinerant trading in the networks of distribution, particularly in the countryside, and focus on aspects of ambulant trading such as the role of seasonal migration, the gender and ethnic division of labour etc.³ The literature on nineteenth and twentieth century peddlers lacks attempts of synthesis and holistic studies; hardly, to our knowledge, can one speak of an ongoing debate among historians on street vending. There are, however, significant papers that raise a variety of issues, from the point of view of social and urban history; for instance, the extent to which the state policies towards street vending were conditioned by the need to police and impose order on

 Laurence Fontaine, Histoire du colportage en Europe (XVe-XIXe siècle) (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993); Sigrid Wadauer, “Mobility and irregularities: itinerant sales in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s”, in Thomas Buchner and Philip R. Hoffmann-Rehnitz (eds.), Shadow economies and irregular work in urban Europe 16th to early 20th centuries (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2011), 197– 216; idem, “Establishing distinctions: unemployment versus vagrancy in Austria from the late nineteenth century to 1938”, International Review of Social History 56 (2011): 31– 70; idem, “Asking for the privilege to work: applications for a peddling license (Austria in the 1920s and 1930s)”, in Andreas Gestrich, Elizabeth Hurren and Steven King (eds.), Poverty and sickness in modern Europe. Narratives of the sick poor, 1700 – 1938 (London and New York: Continuum, 2012), 225 – 246. Many chapters in Melissa Calaresu and Danielle van den Heuvel (eds.), Food hawkers. Selling in the streets from antiquity to the present (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), are based on visual materials.  Danielle van den Heuvel, “Selling in the shadows: peddlers and hawkers in early modern Europe”, in Marcel van der Linden and Leo Lucassen (eds.), Working on labor: essays in honor of Jan Lucassen (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 125 – 151.

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the city.⁴ This “antagonistic relationship to authority” was related to modernising urban projects and the popular resistance to them, as well as the state’s and in general the sedentary society’s deeply-rooted distrust of the culture of mobility– an expression of which was the correlation of the itinerant trading with vagrancy and delinquency.⁵ The economic as well as the cultural background of the survival or even flourishing of street vending are examined in studies on India, Americas and Europe, where it constituted an economic activity that provided much-needed employment to immigrants and native poor people.⁶ This paper will focus on the issue of street vendors’ position in the class structure and their identity in terms of profession and social class. The combination of very low income and prestige on the one hand and independence at work (or at least a significant degree of independence) on the other hand poses some difficult questions to a Marxist-inspired theory of social classes. A possible conceptualisation of their class status could be based on the theory of Erik Olin Wright about “contradictory locations within class relations”⁷: the street vendors, as individuals placed in such a contradictory location, could be polarised either towards the working class or towards the petite bourgeoisie according to their own specific situation and to the general political and ideological developments. As will be seen, there are indications that a tendency towards petite bourgeoisie did exist among a (however small) minority of

 Daniel M. Bluestone, “The pushcart evil. Peddlers, merchants and New York city’s streets 1890 – 1940”, Journal of Urban history 18, no. 1 (1991): 68 – 92; Anneke Geyzen, “Marchands ambulants, réglementation et police à Bruxelles au XIXe siècle”, Le mouvement social 238 (2012): 53 – 64; Molly Loberg, The struggle for the streets of Berlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).  Victoria Kelley, “The streets for the people: London’s street markets 1850 – 1939”, Urban History 43, no. 3 (2016): 391– 411; Wadauer, “Establishing distinctions”.  David Green, “Street trading in London: a case study of casual labour 1830 – 1860”, in James H. Johnson and Colin G. Pooley (eds.), The structures of nineteenth century cities (Croom Helm: London, 1982), 129 – 151; John Benson, “Hawking and peddling in Canada, 1867– 1914”, Histoire Sociale – Social History 35 (1985): 75 – 83; Serge Jaumain, “Un metier oublié: le colporteur dans la Belgique du XIXe siècle”, in Revue Belge d’ Histoire Contemporaine, 307– 356; Neelardi Bhattacharya, “Predicaments of mobility. Peddlers and itinerants in 19th century NW India”, in Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchepadass and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds.), Society and circulation: mobile people and itinerant cultures in South Asia 1750 – 1950 (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006), 163 – 214; Wadauer, “Mobility and irregularities”; Melina Teubner, “Street food, urban space and gender: working on the streets of nineteenth century Rio de Janeiro”, International Review of Social History 2019 (special issue 27): 229 – 254.  Erik Olin Wright, Class, Crisis and the State (London: NLB, 1978) and idem, Classes (London and New York: Verso, 1985).

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itinerant traders in Athens – provided there is not an insistence on stability and relative prosperity as fundamental qualities of the petite bourgeoisie. Alternative conceptualisations that attempt to locate those self-employed without property in the framework of working-class formation appear perhaps more productive. Liakos and Pizanias, two historians that studied the popular strata of Greek cities in the early twentieth century, used the terms “a category without name” and “poor people” to describe the labouring poor who did not suit the usual definition of the working class, as they were not “proper” wageworkers but frequently changed occupation and sought employment equally in wage and in independent jobs, while their households as a rule drew income from multiple resources.⁸ These semi-proletarian households have been correlated in particular with the countries of the periphery and semi-periphery⁹; however, it has been argued that working-class households drawing supplementary income from street vending could be found in Great Britain as well,¹⁰ while casual labour (including street vending) may be due to the irregularity and the often seasonal character of industrial work both in the semi-periphery and metropolis.¹¹ Moreover, the concept of the “subaltern workers” introduced by van der Linden should be taken into consideration here: itinerant traders seem to fit well in a notion of “self-employed workers” whose labour power was commodified by themselves.¹² There are, of course, more “classical” ways to integrate the hawkers in the broader working-class community: for instance, to assume they form part, more than anything else, of the reserve army of labour. After all, street vending constituted one of the ways available to poor people to cope with unemployment and underemployment. However, this reserve army of labour in certain circum-

 Antonis Liakos, Εργασία και πολιτική στην Ελλάδα του μεσοπολέμου (Athens: Εμπορική Τράπεζα, 1993), and Petros Pizanias, Οι φτωχοί των πόλεων (Athens: Θεμέλιο, 1993). Pizanias eventually developed a polemic against any conceptualisation of Greek society in terms of class structure: “Ο κύκλος και το τετράγωνο”, Ελληνική Επιθεώρηση Πολιτικής Επιστήμης 7 (1996): 155 – 178; for a non-orthodox Marxist answer see Serafeim Seferiadis, “Η κρυφή γοητεία της ιδεολογίας”, Ελληνική Επιθεώρηση Πολιτικής Επιστήμης 8 (1996): 191– 217.  Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983).  John Benson, The penny capitalists. A study of 19th century working-class entrepreneurs (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983).  Kostas Fountanopoulos, “Μισθωτή εργασία”, in Christos Hadziiossif, Ιστορία της Ελλάδας του 20ού αιώνα (Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 1999), v.A1, 87– 121; Leda Papastefanaki, “Καταμερισμοί εργασίας και πολιτικές διαχείρισης της εργασίας στις ελληνικές πόλεις (τέλη 19ου-πρώτη δεκαετία 20ού αιώνα)”, in Η πρώτη δεκαετία του 20ού αιώνα (Athens: Εταιρεία Σπουδών, 2012), 145 – 166. For some of the London districts see Green, “Street trading in London”.  Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the world (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008).

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stances may be transformed to a “marginal mass”, as unemployment beyond a certain point ceases to be functional to capitalist accumulation.¹³ “Lumpen proletariat” and “underclass” are two other concepts that have been used in this context, characterised by strong connotations of (im)morality as they mostly refer to an underworld of beggars, prostitutes and criminals; as concerns our subject, some forms of street vending were perceived as disguised begging in interwar Austria, while we will provide some examples of small criminality associated with itinerant traders in Athens.¹⁴ The prolific presence of odd jobs has been connected with the emergence of a huge informal sector in countries of the periphery and semi-periphery.¹⁵ Low entry barriers in terms of skill, capital and organisation, small scale of operation, unregulated and competitive markets, and a low capacity for accumulation all characterise a particular form of informal economy (the self-employment of poor people struggling to survive) and more specifically street vending.¹⁶ However, this conceptualisation of street vending has to become more historicised¹⁷ and located within the context of both the establishment of the distinction between formal and informal economy and the developments in retailing. Street vending remained outside the trends of formalisation of the economic activities and industrial relations from the end of the nineteenth onwards, which included the gradual stabilisation of the workforce, collective bargaining, introduction of la-

 José Nun, “The end of work and the ‘marginal mass’ thesis”, Latin American Persperctives 27, no. 1 (2000): 6 – 32.  An interesting point here is that the emergence of the concept of unemployment at the end of the nineteenth century, together with the regularisation of the wage work as consistent and sedentary, created new definitions of non-work and irregular work and reinforced the correlations of peddling with vagrancy and begging: Thomas Buchner and Philip R. Hoffmann-Rehnitz, “Introduction: irregular economic practices as a topic of modern (urban) history – problems and possibilities”, in Buchner and Hoffmann-Rehnitz (eds.), Shadow economies, 3 – 36; Wadauer, “Establishing distinctions”; idem, “Asking for the privilege to work”. For the “distance from the productive process” as “the trademark of the lumpenproletariat” see Ernersto Laclau, On populist reason (London and New York: Verso, 2005), 142– 146.  Lila Leontidou, “Αναζητώντας τη χαμένη εργασία”, Επιθεώρηση Κοινωνικών Ερευνών 60 (1986): 72– 109; idem, Πόλεις της σιωπής. Εργατικός εποικισμός της Αθήνας και του Πειραιά 1909 – 1940 (Athens: Πολιτιστικό Ίδρυμα Ομίλου Πειραιώς, 1989); Cem Behar, A neighbourhood in Ottoman Istanbul (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), 116 – 117.  Alejandro Portes, Economic sociology (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010), 132– 145.  Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and Jan Lucassen, in “Introduction: informalization in history”, in idem (eds.), Workers in the informal sector: studies in labour history, 1800 – 2000 (Delhi: Macmillan India, 2005), 1– 19, include the “lack of historicity” among the weaknesses of the “informal sector labour force” approaches in labour history.

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bour legislation, social security institutions and higher levels of state intervention. Τhe emergence and the uneven expansion of the new institutional and economic environment marginalised the activities that remained in the realm of the informal, below the new norms of regulation of the economic activities. Τhe social status associated with the informal economic activities declined in the contemporary period. Retailing provides a good example: while before the nineteenth and twentieth centuries many itinerant traders must have been closer to the middle of the social ladder, the massive development of shops could only lead to the downgrading of those exercising the street version of retailing. This turns to this chapter’s ambition to contribute to the discussion: despite the downgrading and informalisation of itinerant trading, it seems that in early twentieth century Athens the world of formal retailing had remained a point of reference for many street hawkers. By attempting to combine insights from labour history and history of retailing, and using the scant evidence gathered regarding the street vendors’ sense of belonging, we will argue that there was a differentiation within this social group and that a part of them tended to identify not with the working class or an underclass of poor people but with a community of retailers. In the first part of the chapter the available evidence on street vending in Athens as an economic activity will be presented, and the structures of retailing that permitted its reproduction will be discussed. In the second part, the social status and the class identities of the itinerant traders will be examined.

Retailing and Itinerant Traders In the beginning of the twentieth century a network of shops had been well established and constituted indisputably the main form of retailing in Athens, the largest urban centre of Greece.¹⁸ We often forget how novel this development was¹⁹: traditionally retailing was conducted mainly in fairs, markets and by itinerant traders, while there were many goods that were sold directly by the artisans who made them (either settled in workshops, or traveling). The significance of periodic markets and peddlers diminished during the nineteenth century in Greece, as transportation improved, industrial products were imported or man-

 Nikos Potamianos, Οι νοικοκυραίοι. Μαγαζάτορες και βιοτέχνες στην Αθήνα 1880 – 1925 (Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2015).  Frank Trentmann, Empire of things. How we became a world of consumers from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first (London: Penguin, 2016).

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ufactured in the country and artisans produced more for the general market than to order. However, the figure of the itinerant trader did not vanish from the landscape. On the contrary, he found his place in the streets of Athens by assuming a new role in the growing city. This was not a Greek peculiarity: such a trend was marked as well in developed economies, as in Great Britain and Germany where the number of itinerant traders probably increased in the second half of the nineteenth century.²⁰ This is not to say that there had not been a significant transformation in retailing; if we were to stress one single trend, it would be the transition from the itinerant and periodic retailing to the settled and everyday-working retailing outlet. But we should not miss the fact that the street-hawkers had their share too of the increase in consumption caused by urban growth. Athens experienced a rapid growth in the first decades of the twentieth century, passing from approximately 130,000 inhabitants in 1896 to 460,000 in 1928. In 1920 police recorded about 5,000 licensed street vendors in Athens²¹ – and since they had to pay in order to get the license to practice their profession, it’s most likely that there were more hawkers who weren’t licensed. Itinerant traders, thus, constituted something more than 2 % of Athens’ population in 1920, while in Berlin in 1900 this was estimated to be 1 % and in Vienna in 1934 less than 2 %.²² These itinerant traders were selling a great variety of goods, from food and flowers to cigarettes, coffee grinders and carpets²³; green-grocers, egg sellers, haberdashers and milkmen were by far the biggest trades.

How Itinerant Trading was Reproduced The question that arises is why and how was the itinerant trade kept being reproduced in Athens, despite the proliferation of shops. It has been suggested that in the case of food retailing, the strong seasonal fluctuations of supplies (be-

 Dietrich Denecke and Gareth Shaw, “Traditional retail systems in Germany”, in Dietrich Denecke and Gareth Shaw (eds.), Urban historical geography. Recent progress in Britain and Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 76 – 86; Martin Phillips, “The evolution of markets and shops in Britain”, in John Benson και Gareth Shaw, The evolution of retail systems, c.1800 – 1914 (Leicester – London – New York: Leicester University Press, 1992), 53 – 75.  Άμυνα, 4 June 1920.  Denecke και Shaw, “Traditional retail systems”; Wadauer, “Mobility and irregularities”.  Χρόνος 1 January 1907, Εστία, 16 August 1909.

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fore the rise of the international food trade, the invention of freezing technologies etc.) created difficulties for their distribution through shops (with their high fixed costs), which could be efficiently dealt with by the more flexible itinerant trade.²⁴ Ηawkers could serve more efficiently areas of the economy where demand was low or unstable.²⁵ There are more factors that account for the survival of itinerant trade. First of all, there were gaps in the network of shops, particularly in the new neighbourhoods that were created by the continuous expansion of Athens from the 1870s onwards.²⁶ It seems that in these remote and less densely populated neighbourhoods, particularly before the establishment of means of public transportation, the variety of goods sold in the streets was bigger.²⁷ Secondly, in the years before the welfare state, selling in the streets constituted a sort of traditional refuge for the old, the sick or the disabled who could not be employed otherwise and did not claim any noteworthy commercial profit.²⁸ It was, thus, more difficult to be expelled from the market due to the competition they faced from the shops. Thirdly, a division of labour was developed, to an extent, between itinerant traders and shopkeepers. The consumption of the workers that lived in some of the remote new neighbourhoods perhaps was not enough to support many and various shops, but this was not a problem for itinerant traders with zero operating costs. Thus some shopkeepers, by supplying the itinerant traders with goods at wholesale price, gained a share in the sales to the poor without being subjected to the costs and risks necessary in dealing with them directly.²⁹ Moreover, it was easier for the shopkeepers to sell through this channel foods that had become stale, such as bread or pastry.³⁰ Some greengrocers, too, who were buying

 D. G. Alexander, Retailing in England during the industrial revolution (London: The Athlone Press, 1970), 85.  Michael Winstanley, The shopkeepers’ world 1830 – 1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), 6.  See the remarks of Dim. Skouzes in Zoi Ropaitou-Tsapareli, Ρουφ-Βοτανικός, Γκαζοχώρι (Athens: Φιλιππότη, 2004), 89. Cf. Benson, “Hawking and peddling in Canada”.  Ακρόπολις, 25 December 1896.  Wadauer, “Asking for the privilege to work”; Anneke Geyzen, “Marchands ambulants, réglementation et police à Bruxelles au XIXe siècle”, Le movement social 238 (2012): 53 – 64; Benson, The penny capitalists, 101. Two of the three street vendors interviewed by Εμπρός, on 10 January 1902, were old men, while in Σκριπ on 1 and 16 September 1908 stories were published of an old man and a disabled ex-soldier who had both turned to itinerant trading but committed suicide as they could not make the ends meet; see also Άστυ, 2 March 1894, and Αθήναι, 3 October 1909.  Alexander, Retailing in England, 63 and 76.  Εφημερίς των συντεχνιών, 24 February 1891, and Ακρόπολις, 25 January 1909.

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vegetables and fruits of mixed quality, used to give poorer quality goods to itinerant traders to sell them in poor areas or in the central streets.³¹ This symbiotic relationship manifested itself also in the case of Piraeus’ association of greengrocers, in which in 1917– 20 both shopkeepers and street-hawkers participated.³² On the other hand, of course, the relationship between itinerant traders and shopkeepers might be construed as competitive and hostile. More visible, in Greece as well as in other European countries,³³ are the complaints expressed by many shopkeepers against hawkers.³⁴ Not only they could sell cheaper, as they didn’t have to pay rents and taxes, but they could also avoid, to a certain extent, restrictions and regulations concerning, for example, mandatory closing times.³⁵ Sometimes the shopkeepers used derogatory characterisations: in 1895 shopkeepers of the square of Dimopratirio thanked the police for removing from their area the “dirty itinerant beings” that were causing a disturbance, swearing and fighting.³⁶ Especially aggressive were the complaints against the “stationary traders” who parked their hand-carts in front of the shops of commercial streets, not only restricting access to them but also competing with them by selling similar goods at lower prices.³⁷ The shopkeepers who resided in Aiolou street and Athenas street were par excellence among those who mobilised against the stationary traders, and in 1928 they founded an association in order to demand their removal.³⁸

 Εμπρός, 17 September 1911. See also Εμπρός, 27 September and 1 October 1911, for the price and the quality of the fruits and vegetables sold by peddlers to the factories’ workers.  Πρακτικά ΔΣ του Σωματείου καταστηματαρχών και πλανοδίων οπωροπωλών Πειραιώς, 15 February 1920 (GSEVEE Archive). The financial transactions between shopkeepers and itinerant traders can be deduced as well from some crime news (Εμπρός, 22 August 1901, and Αστραπή, 26 July 1909) and chronicles (Εμπρός, 22 September 1915).  Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, The petite bourgeoisie in Europe 1780 – 1914 (London: Routledge, 1995), 51, 129 and 157; Jonathan Morris, The political economy of shopkeeping in Milan 1886 – 1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 136 – 137; Serge Jaumain, Les petits commerçants Belges face á la modernité 1880 – 1914 (Brussels: Université de Bruxelles, 1995), 73; John Merriman, The red city. Limoges and the French nineteenth century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 13 and 58; Wadauer, “Mobility and irregularities”.  Άστυ, 11 March 1894; Πόλις, 3 March 1895; Σκριπ, 9 December 1904; Εμπρός, 22 November 1906; Ακρόπολις, 16 May 1909.  Molly Loberg, The struggle for the streets of Berlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 83.  Παλιγγενεσία, 11 December 1895.  Ακρόπολις, 26 July 1905; Εμπρός, 9 December 1907; Εφημερίς των δήμων, 7 March 1910.  Νέον Άστυ, 9 July 1910; Ριζοσπάστης, 27 June 1923; Εμπρός, 19 November 1928; and Αγών, 28 August 1931.

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A fourth contributing factor to the survival of itinerant trade may have been the limited mobility of women in the public space.³⁹ Wouldn’t the traditional restrictions imposed on their free movement in the city affect their ability to visit the shops? In fact, we still don’t know much about the gender division of labour within the Greek family and its change in respect to who was doing the shopping. It seems that until the beginning of the twentieth century shopping from the central market of Athens was a men’s duty, but in 1922 “Athenian gentlemen and ladies” were reported to shop there.⁴⁰ In the case of the neighbourhood groceries and bakeries things probably were different. Between 1890 and 1920 both patterns of gender division of labour are referred to in fiction and non-fiction sources: shopping for food by men when they were paid and returning home,⁴¹ and shopping mainly by women within the limits of the neighbourhood.⁴² One would expect women to get more involved in food shopping as shops proliferated and the importance of the central market diminished, while their contribution (or not) to the household income must have been another determining factor. Moreover, women gradually achieved more freedom of movement in the public space, and some of them began to work as itinerant traders: in 1912 there is detail of the first woman appearing who roamed the streets selling fruits and vegetables.⁴³ However, women’s mobility was restricted as well by their duties as mothers, when their children were small. Therefore, as long as restrictions and obstacles of any kind and degree to women’s presence in the public space existed, either at certain points in their life or irrespective of their life cycle, it was more convenient to sell on their doorstep. This was exactly the point raised in a newspaper’s appraisal of itinerant traders’ usefulness: “they serve the  Limitations existed well into the period under examination, with differentiations according to class and respectability: Nikos Potamianos, Της αναιδείας θεάματα. Κοινωνική ιστορία της αποκριάς στην Αθήνα, 1800 – 1940 (Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2020), 217– 240.  Νέαι Αρχαί, 6 August 1922. For earlier references to exclusively male presence in Varvakeios Market see Ακρόπολις, 25 December 1896; Ώρα, 31 December 1875.  This picture is given in fiction by Aggelos Vlachos, “Τα χρήματα”, [1886] in Διηγήματα (Athens: Νεφέλη, 1997), 247– 280: 273, and Constantinos Christomanos, Η κερένια κούκλα (Athens: Μπάυρον, n.d.) [first published in 1911], 9 and 25. According to Athanasios Attart, Ο Άγιος Φίλιππος Αθηνών και οι περί αυτόν κατεδαφισθέντες ναοί από του 1ου αιώνος έως σήμερον (Athens, 2003), 61, in the poor old-city neighbourhood of Saint Philippos in the beginnings of the twentieth century it was men who bought food for the whole week from the neighbourhood shops when they were paid on Saturday evening.  Ακρόπολις, 8 August 1892, 1 and 16 October 1908. For this pattern in fiction, see Ioannis Kondylakis, Οι άθλιοι των Αθηνών (Athens: Γαλαξίας, 1964) (first published in 1895), 177 and Alexandros Papadiamantis, “Τα Χριστούγεννα του τεμπέλη” (first published in 1896), in his Άπαντα (Athens: Δόμος, 1984), v.3, 156 – 164.  Εφημερίς των Κυριών, 15 May 1912.

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mothers of little children, who can’t get out of their house”.⁴⁴ And when police in 1920 forbade itinerant grocers from selling in a certain neighbourhood, near the Market, its residents complained that now women were forced to dress formally and go to the Market in order to shop.⁴⁵ Karkavitsas depicts, in a chronicle of Athens life, the picture of an itinerant greengrocer calling out his wares in a neighbourhood whose population, in the morning, consisted mainly of women who appeared at the doorways of their houses and bought what they needed.⁴⁶ This pattern, of itinerant traders selling to women at home, contradicts to an extent the insecurity that was sometimes expressed regarding the omnipresent peddlers. Being often unknown in the neighbourhood, anonymous individuals who were not subjected to structures of social control, they were sometimes thought of as a potential threat to the social order. We can find in the news references to thefts by hawkers or fights in which they play a leading role⁴⁷ and of course love affairs of cheating wives with itinerant traders or incidents of sexual harassment of women or children by hawkers.⁴⁸ It seems that there had been several attempts of the authorities to exercise some control over street vendors before the First World War; in general, however, these attempts had to do directly with public hygiene (particularly with selling foodstuff in the streets)⁴⁹ as well as with freeing the streets and the pavements from the stalls of the “stationary” traders.⁵⁰ The obligation of itinerant traders to acquire a license in order to practice their profession wasn’t established before the end of the 1910s.⁵¹ Τhe distinction between itinerant and stationary street vendors (that is, between those traveling across the city and those who stood always in the same place in the

 Σκριπ, 1 July 1912.  Εμπρός, 3 July 1920.  Andreas Karkavitsas, “Η καμήλα”, Εστία, 7 February 1895.  Εμπρός, 30 November 1899, 8 March 1901, 25 December 1904, 7 August 1909, 19 October 1910, 30 March 1915 and 25 May 1916; Ακρόπολις, 7 July 1907 and 1 April 1912.  Εμπρός, 17 December 1903, 28 August 1909 and 19 December 1922.  Εμπρός, 10 January 1900, 17 June 1900 and 9 June 1911.  Πόλις, 3 March 1895; Σκριπ, 6 October 1904; Πατρίς, 23 September 1909; Καιροί, 10 January 1910; Αστραπή, 20 July 1910; Ακρόπολις, 3 November 1910; Εστία, 20 May 1911; Εμπρός, 24 November 1906, 9 December 1907, 3 July 1920 and 11 May 1925.  Ριζοσπάστης, 6 February and 11 November 1918, and Εσπερινόν Νέον Άστυ, 10 November 1918. In terms of providing a license to recorded traders, the only attempts we have detected so far took place in 1903 and 1907 (Σκριπ, 10 May 1903, and Ακρόπολις, 12 August 1907); the success of the measures, if any, must have been only temporary.

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pavement or in the street) acquired a legal status in the same years, when a different kind of license for the stationary was introduced.⁵² Nevertheless, there were many itinerant traders who had a steady relationship with a specific clientele, serving a certain territory. This can be detected in expressions such as “the exclusive peddler of our street” used in newspapers’ chronicles.⁵³ Besides, how could a street-hawker sell goods on credit (as we read that happened in Kountouriotika neighbourhood), if he had not a regular presence in the area?⁵⁴

Class Structure and Identities Whichever theoretical approach one chooses regarding the class position of the street vendors, it is clear that it wasn’t determined more by their work-autonomy and independence than it was by the negligible capital, low income and prestige, lack of any serious prospect of improvement of the situation of the overwhelming majority of them, and certainly much greater fatigue and physical pains in comparison to shopkeepers. Besides, what most of them sought was not independence but employment, which they had difficulty finding elsewhere; it would not be incorrect to argue that they had become street hawkers out of need, not out of choice,⁵⁵ although there certainly were itinerant traders that chose this kind of self-employment in order to escape work in factory.⁵⁶ As easy it was to work as an itinerant trader (indicative is the frequent employment

 Ioannis Kalyvitis, Αστυνομικόν λεξικόν (Athens, 1928), entry “πλανόδιοι πωληταί και στάσιμοι”.  Karkavitsas, “Η καμήλα”. An itinerant greengrocer with a “well-defined territory” in specific streets of the neighbourhood of Psyri appears in Alexandros Papadiamantis, “Φιλόστοργη”, in his Άπαντα, (Athens: Δόμος, 1984), v.3, 95 – 103.  Nikolaos Paradeisis, Αμπελόκηποι (Athens, 2003), 179.  The labour union of butchers of Piraeus sent a petition to the Prime Minister in 1920, demanding government action to be taken against the unemployment in their trade; they highlighted the fact that, after the prohibition of selling meat in the streets, they had lost a refuge from unemployment: Archive of Prime Minister’s Political Office, file 354 (General Archives of the State). Ριζοσπάστης, 27 June 1923, replied to those attacking the street vendors that they were soldiers who had been demobilised after many years of military service and war. Cf. Benson, “Hawking and peddling in Canada”, and Jaumain, “Un metier oublié”, for peddling as the last resort for the unemployed.  William Reddy, “The moral sense of farce: the patois literature of Lille factory laborers 1848 – 70”, in Steve Kaplan and Synthia Koepp (eds.), Work in France. Representations, meaning, organization and practice (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1986), 364– 392: 379.

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of children⁵⁷ and of newcomers in the city)⁵⁸, it was as easy to abandon the occupation: in 1925 the relatively low rates of membership in the association of itinerant shopkeepers and greengrocers of Piraeus was attributed to the “nonpermanency of the profession”.⁵⁹ As for their social prestige, a newspaper chronicler stated in 1916 that, even if the profits were high, his involvement in trading in the street would have made him feel ashamed.⁶⁰ It is true that sometimes we encounter in the “small news” in the newspapers cases of relative prosperity of the itinerant traders: one who employed an assistant, another who had a few deposits in a bank; but more common are stories about people dying of starvation or committing suicide, tired of the hardships of life.⁶¹ It is telling how the Greek state perceived their position. Since they were selfemployed, they were obliged to pay the professions’ tax; yet, it was acknowledged that the profits of the street hawkers were entirely insignificant and the corresponding tax should be “very light indeed”.⁶² As for the inspectors of labour relations who signed a report about workers’ housing in 1921, they included itinerant traders in their inquiry without the slightest hesitation.⁶³ One year previously, a newspaper published by the non-socialist trade unionists described street vendors as “honourable workers”, whilst the “Newspaper of the Workers”

 “Έμποροι των οδών (γυρολόγοι)”, Οικονομική Επιθεώρησις 4 (1876): 47– 48; Myrto Dimitropoulou, Athènes au XIXe siècle: de la bourgade à la capitale, Phd thesis, Université Lumières Lyon 2, 2008, 211– 212; Αθηναϊκά Νέα, 12 October 1940.  Maria Damilakou, Έλληνες μετανάστες στην Αργεντινή 1900 – 1970, Phd thesis, University of Crete, 2001, 67 and 208 – 209. In early modern Europe it was mostly immigrants, women and Jews that became street vendors; that is, social categories that were not allowed by the guilds to work in the “proper” commerce: Danielle van den Heuvel, “Food, markets and people. Selling perishables in urban markets in pre-industrial Holland and England”, in Calaresu and van den Heuvel (eds.), Food hawkers, 84– 106.  Dimitrios Zotos, Η οργάνωσις της επαγγελματικής και βιοτεχνικής τάξεως εν Ελλάδι (Piraeus, 1925), 98.  Αστήρ, 19 January 1916.  Εμπρός, 24 January 1907; Σκριπ, 2 November 1905 and 10 August 1924; Εμπρός, 25 June 1901, 22 and 24 January 1907, 3 January 1910, 1 April and 6 June 1911, 9 April 1915. Cf. Jaumain, “Un metier oublié”.  Memo of the Ministry of Finance to the tax offices in 1907: Δελτίον του Υπουργείου των Οικονομικών 1908, 325 – 326. According to the minister of Finance’s preamble of the law BXϟB in 1899 (Archive of Stefanos Dragoumis, file 180.2, Gennadeion library), very few itinerant traders had been taxed since 1867.  Leontidou, Πόλεις της σιωπής, 144.

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in 1910 defended the itinerant traders against the police and referred to their arduous struggle to earn their living.⁶⁴ But how did they perceive their own social position? Unsurprisingly, the evidence this author has managed to detect is poor; it sheds, however, some light into the issue – and perhaps it is representative of the broader trends. In 1932 members of the communist group of “Archeiomarxistes” created a bloc in an already existing street vendors’ association in Athens. The identity of the itinerant trader they proposed in their call to organise in the union was based on two elements of their experience: first, their very low income (“we hardly earn our living”); second, the fact that they had found refuge in this occupation after they had lost their jobs in other professions. Archeiomarxistes itinerant traders, thus, conceived their social group as, more than anything else, part of the reserve army of labour: their social reference was the workers who had been unemployed after the economic crisis of 1929.⁶⁵ A sense of belonging to the working class, however, wasn’t necessarily related to left-wing views: the representative of the “association of green-grocers and itinerant traders” that joined the Greek Federation of Workers in 1919 was a conservative unionist.⁶⁶ Perhaps the association in which Archeiomarxistes sought to intervene was the first one founded in 1911, when the broader trend in Greece towards founding associations coincided with a (more intense than usual) clash with the authorities in 1910 due to police measures that regulated street-selling. The friction with police regarding issues of public order in the city was frequent; it seems, therefore, that the main objective of the associations of street hawkers founded in the 1910s and 1920s was the representation and defense of their members’ interests towards the authorities⁶⁷: even a purchasing cooperative of street vendors played

 Άμυνα, 4 June 1920, and Εφημερίς των εργατών, 8 June 1910. Σκριπ, 1 July 1912 was also using the term “workers” for them.  Η πάλη των τάξεων, 8 April 1932.  Ριζοσπάστης, 6 March and 19 December 1919.  Εφημερίς της Κυβερνήσεως [Government Gazette] v.A´ no. 151, 22 June 1911 (statute of the association of itinerant traders) and v.A´ no. 277, 4 October 1911 (statute of the association of itinerant milkmen of Piraeus). In a report about the foundation of an association of the itinerant greengrocers in 1912, persecutions by the police was referred to as their major problem; it seems, however, that there was also a plan of purchasing cooperative: Σκριπ, 1 and 2 July 1912, and Εμπρός, 2 July 1912. It seems that the next associations of itinerant traders were founded between 1917– 1922 (associations of itinerant greengrocers, of newsboys and of street vendors of peanuts), while between 1922 and 1924 the associations of itinerant fishmongers, shoeshiners and porters were founded, as well as of itinerant and stationary vendors of pastry: Nikolaou Igglesi, Οδηγός της Ελλάδος 1925 – 1926 (Athens, n.d.), 561– 575. The association of itinerant and stationary traders that appears in Εμπρός, 10 November 1922, retained an office in the centre

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this role in 1919.⁶⁸ In 1927– 1936 the issue of removal of the makeshift stalls of the stationary vendors from the central streets became dominant; assemblies and demonstrations of street vendors resulted in the foundation of new associations, even the organisation of a “national congress of itinerant small professionals”.⁶⁹ These associations were few and short-lived. However, as regards the issue discussed here, we must stress that membership of a professional association, let alone a purchasing cooperative, indicated a relationship with the profession that was not perceived as entirely provisional and occasional. Moreover, in the objectives of the first of these associations in 1911 was included the commercial education of its members and the establishment, in the future, of a cooperative shop, while in its statute there was a discussion of the status of the members “in case they establish a shop of their own”. In these provisions a different perception appears of street vendors’ social position, closer to what we could call “retailing community”: it was in relation to this community that the ambitions of upward social mobility were expressed. Probably these ambitions were better-founded in the nineteenth century. According to an 1876 article, itinerant traders were in general young people, as they “usually become merchants with fixed shops and artisans by the age of 40”.⁷⁰ Success stories like Lambropoulos’s, the founder of one of the first department stores who had begun his career as a street vendor, contributed to the survival of such expectations.⁷¹ Moreover, in the interwar years street vendors were influenced not only by the labour movement but also by the petite-bourgeoisie organisations; an indication for this is the adoption of the rhetoric and terminology of the latter, evident in collective texts such as a protest signed by one hundred itin-

of Athens: this probably wasn’t common, and came as a consequence of its involvement in the licensing process of the street vendors.  Πατρίς, 28 April 1919.  Ελεύθερον Βήμα, 19 November 1927; Εμπρός, 29 May 1929; Ελεύθερον Βήμα, 22 September 1930; Φωνή Παγκρατίου, 9 May 1931; Αθηναϊκά Νέα, 24 July 1932. The collective action of the street vendors has been associated in other countries as well with their resistance to authorities’ plans to “clear” the streets: Wadauer, “Mobility and irregularities”; Loberg, The struggle for the streets; Trentmann, Empire of things, 208 – 209 (Mexico).  “Έμποροι των οδών (γυρολόγοι)”. Papadiamantis, in a short story written in c.1892 (“Μεγαλείων οψώνια”, in his Άπαντα, v. 4, Athens: Δόμος, 1985, 421– 430), depicted an old man, an ex itinerant greengrocer, who had earned enough money to send his son to study abroad; although this may be somewhat far-fetched, the realist views of the author mean that it sounded credible to state that the profits of an itinerant trader in the mid-nineteenth century, when there was no serious competition by shops in the neighbourhoods, might be similar to the profits of a successful shopkeeper in the end of the nineteenth century.  Αφοί Λαμπρόπουλοι 1901 – 1999 (Athens: Ίδρυμα Λαμπροπούλου, 2016).

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erant traders in 1933 where they define themselves as “small professionals” and speak of the “interests of their class”.⁷² A sense of belonging in a retailers’ community can be detected in 1896, when four “stationary” street vendors imitated the shopkeepers who offered goods and services (e. g. eating free for a year in one’s restaurant) to the Greek winner of the Marathon in the first Olympic Games in Athens.⁷³ It was partly a spontaneous enthusiastic response to an event that caused excitement all over the country, and partly a calculated act of advertising one’s commercial business as patriotic and popular-minded. Put in the context of the rise of advertisement practices at the end of the nineteenth century,⁷⁴ their initiative made them appear as prestigious members of the business community, and certainly as something more than “penny capitalists” striving to survive. In a sense, thus, this can be also seen as an individual strategy of distinction from the bulk of the street vendors – which is indicative of a certain degree of differentiation within this social group. On two occasions such a differentiation not only was expressed more explicitly, but it also constituted the basis on which competition was developed and demands for exclusion from the market of those who didn’t have a permanent relationship with the profession were formulated. In 1907 a conflict is reported between the itinerant vendors of peanuts who were exercising the profession permanently (“professionals”) and the unemployed who occasionally sold peanuts in the beerhouses (“amateurs”). The police intervened in favour of the “professionals”, probably seeking better control of street life: a license would be needed from then onwards for the peanuts vendors, who would have to wear a special hat with their license number.⁷⁵ Five years later, in Piraeus, the street vendors of pastry “who exercised the profession for a long time” demanded that everybody selling pastry in the street should be obliged to pay a professional tax, so that it would be harder for “vagabonds” to enter the profession.⁷⁶ In both cases a core of itinerant traders with a stable relationship with the profession makes its appearance, and they turn against their occasional colleagues. Their demands, as well as the way they define themselves and those to be excluded, are similar to practices and discourse encountered in the world of

 Ελεύθερον Βήμα, 7 December 1933.  Ακρόπολις, 29 March 1896: they offered him “whatever he wants” from their wares, which they were selling “in front of the National Bank”. The offers made by shopkeepers etc. are methodically recorded in Άστυ, 19 – 30 March 1896.  Mich. Lambros, “Η ρεκλάμα εν Ελλάδι”, Εστία 37 (1894): 113 – 117 and 131– 139.  Ακρόπολις, 12 August 1907. Of course we don’t know if this measure was actually implemented –and for how long.  Ακρόπολις, 10 June 1912.

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shopkeepers and master artisans. There, in several cases, a body of people with a more or less steady relationship with the trade differentiated themselves in their rhetoric from those exercising the profession occasionally.⁷⁷ In the same vein, groups of workers aspired to monopolise certain labour markets by employing a discourse against competitors who had not a steady relationship with the trade and proved to be inappropriate.⁷⁸ To return to the itinerant traders, we don’t know much about this core of “professionals” working full-time in the trade: how many were they, and how old in the profession? Were these characteristics related to a possibly higher income?⁷⁹ Probably we shouldn’t expect them to be more than a small minority⁸⁰: we assume that pluriactivity of the urban poor was the dominant pattern that shaped the occupation of street selling. In any case, the profile of street vendors as underemployed people without a “profession”, who sought occasionally income in various jobs, was certainly enhanced after 1922, when Greece lost the wars with Turkey and received a million and a half of refugees from Asia Minor and Thrace. As it was impossible for the refugees to become immediately integrated into the labour market of Greece, a good deal of them had to invent their jobs and turned to street vending in order to survive. After 1922 “all the streets were filled with stationary traders’ outlets”,⁸¹ and shopkeepers’ protests against itinerant traders grew further.⁸² Nevertheless, it seems that even in the interwar years there were enough “professionals” to control certain associations, such as the one that demanded in 1931– 32 that the more senior vendors were granted the license to sell in the most privileged places.⁸³ In a nutshell, various patterns of differentiation within the social group of street vendors were detected, as regards both the material conditions of their existence and their self-perception. Some street hawkers were more or less integrated in the neighbourhood community, while others remained anonymous – a distinction which perhaps was related to the one between the vendors engaged

 Potamianos, Οι νοικοκυραίοι, 178 – 179 and 217– 219.  Nikos Potamianos, “Greek labour movement and national preference demands, 1890 – 1922”, in Leda Papastefanaki and M. Erdem Kabadayı (eds.), Working in Greece and Turkey: A Comparative Labour History from Empires to Nation States, 1840 – 1940 (Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2020), 286 – 307.  The officials who prepared a law on municipal tax in 1918 defined four categories of itinerant traders according to their tax-paying ability: Εμπρός, 27 November 1918.  Cf. Fontaine, Histoire du colportage, 181– 182, and Geyzen, “Marchands ambulants”, 56 – 57.  Αγών, 18 September 1931.  Εφημερίς των επαγγελματιών, 31 March 1927; Μακεδονία, 17 June 1930; and Βιοτεχνικόν Βήμα, 25 August 1932.  Φωνή Παγκρατίου, 9 May 1931; and Αθηναϊκά Νέα, 24 July 1932.

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consistently in the profession and those who practiced it occasionally. Another differentiative factor was the specific relationship of the street vendors with the shopkeepers: complementary or competitive? We can assume that the “stationary” vendors had a somewhat steadier relationship with trading than those traveling across the city, while the introduction of a license in order to trade in the streets probably contributed as well to the formation of a core of people identifying with a profession. These different material conditions must have been related to the different ways street vendors perceived their social position. The identification with the emerging working class seems to be a significant tendency in these years. Yet, in this paper we put the emphasis on an alternative tendency that has been rather neglected by historians: the development of forms of identification with the retailing community.

Sources Unpublished Sources Archive of Prime Minister’s Political Office 1917 – 1922, file 354 (General Archives of the State). Archive of Stefanos Dragoumis, file 180.2, Gennadeion library. GSEVEE Archive: Πρακτικά ΔΣ του Σωματείου καταστηματαρχών και πλανοδίων οπωροπωλών Πειραιώς.

Newspapers Αγών, 1931. Αθήναι, 1909. Αθηναϊκά Νέα, 1932. Ακρόπολις, 1892, 1896, 1902, 1905, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1912. Άμυνα, 1920. Αστραπή, 1909, 1910. Αστήρ, 1916. Άστυ, 1894, 1896. Βιοτεχνικόν Βήμα, 1932. Δελτίον του Υπουργείου των Οικονομικών, 1908. Ελεύθερον Βήμα, 1927, 1930, 1933. Εμπρός, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1906, 1907, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1920, 1922, 1925, 1928, 1929. Εσπερινόν Νέον Άστυ, 1918. Εστία, 1909, 1911. Εφημερίς των δήμων, 1910.

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Εφημερίς των επαγγελματιών, 1927. Εφημερίς των εργατών, 1910. Εφημερίς των Κυριών, 1912. Εφημερίς της Κυβερνήσεως [Government Gazette], 1911 v.A´. Η πάλη των τάξεων, 1932. Καιροί, 1910. Μακεδονία, 1930. Νέαι Αρχαί, 1922. Νέον Άστυ July, 1910. Οικονομική Επιθεώρησις, 4 (1876). Παλιγγενεσία, 1895. Πατρίς, 1909, 1919. Πόλις, 1895. Ριζοσπάστης, 1918, 1919, 1923. Σκριπ, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1908, 1912, 1924. Φωνή Παγκρατίου, 1931. Χρόνος, 1907. Ώρα, 1875.

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Maria Papathanassiou

Chapter 7 Aspects of Industrial Child Labour in Late Imperial and Interwar Austria Abstract: The chapter deals with industrial child labour in late imperial Austria as well as in the interwar Austrian republic. It draws on state authorities’ reports and surveys, as well as on contemporary studies and autobiographical documents. In Austria, as elsewhere in Europe, this was a time of heated public and parliamentary debate on bills and laws restricting child work, a time of compulsory schooling and of rapid expansion of the middle-class ideal of a protected childhood. In terms of official numbers, children appear to have been of continually decreasing importance to the Austrian industrial sector. Yet, they continued to play a crucial role in branches, where work was mainly or exclusively organized on a family, kin or other group basis, i. e., in brickworks, where groups of seasonal male migrants from the Italian peninsula, adults as well as minors, were often employed, or in glassworks. Furthermore, industrial child labour remained important within the context of the putting-out system, in home industry, which, in rural as well as urban settlements (particularly in Vienna), had survived the expansion of the factory system in many ways, and made a strong reappearance during periods of crisis. Children, boys as well as girls, undertook mainly auxiliary but crucial tasks along rather loose gender and age lines. In terms of age and working hours, their work was largely illegal, and it seems that they often moved from factories to the putting-out, domestic industry, where people worked basically unseen by the authorities.

Introduction Children – a term which in the legal context of modern European history generally refers to minors under fourteen or fifteen years of age and, in the period following the establishment of compulsory schooling, to preschool as well as school-age minors – have always worked. They have worked in the rural and urban economy, within the context of the household economy or outside of it, for their parents, siblings and relatives or on behalf of strangers. The self-evident fact that children worked would only be undermined by romantic and elite/midhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-010

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dle-class ideas or ideals on carefree childhood and, subsequently, compulsory schooling. From the mid-1990s, historians (including this author) began to underline that children (especially, though not exclusively, working-class children, both urban and rural) have always worked, in all sectors of the economy, formally as well as informally. Within this context, scholars have also placed terms such as work or labour under scrutiny, for example, when dealing with children who made a living through improvised occupations or begging.¹ Yet, industrial child labour,² which this article deals with, was the first form of child work to attract the interest of historians and the one that dominated postwar historiography for several decades. The history of child labour in Europe has usually been the history of industrial child labour and, in particular, of child labour in factories and workshops. Historians’ preference, so to speak, could be attributed to the fact that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrial settings were sites of a radical economic transformation that attracted considerable numbers of workers. They thus made children’s work conspicuous and visible to elite observers, the authorities and a rising public opinion, many of whom, furthermore, noticed a glaring contradiction between the growing middle-class ideal of a protected, carefree childhood and children’s hard work. Heated parliamentary debates and restrictive legislation left their mark on the history of industrial child labour in the nineteenth century and have become invaluable sources for historians.

 See Ning de Coninck-Smith, Bengt Sandin and Ellen Schrumpf (eds.), Industrious Children: Work and Childhood in the Nordic Countries 1850 – 1990 (Odense: Odense University Press, 1997); Maria Papathanassiou, Zwischen Arbeit, Spiel und Schule: Die ökonomische Funktion der Kinder ärmerer Schichten in Österreich 1880 – 1939 (Vienna and Munich: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik and R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999); Marjatta Rahikainen, Centuries of Child Labour: European Experiences from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); Jane Humphries, Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).  In contrast to other languages, English gives historians a choice in this respect, and for the most part English-language historians have preferred child labour to child work. “Child work” may have or have not problematic, i. e. exploitative features. “Child labour” implies hard work and exploitation; it points to child work’s interference with children’s well-being, most importantly with children’s health and education (school attendance). According to the International Labour Organisation, “not all work done by children should be classified as child labour that is to be targeted for elimination … the term child labour is often defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity … that is harmful to physical and mental development.” “What is child labour,” accessed 4 March 2020, http://www.ilo.org/ ipec/facts/lang-en/index.htm. In Europe industrial work was widely and consistently thought to jeopardise children’s well-being in the period under examination.

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The particular interest of historians in industrial child labour is largely, if not mainly, also due to children’s part in the seminal transformation of the European economy that was the (first) industrial revolution, which began in mid- to late eighteenth-century Britain and spread throughout continental Europe in the early part of the following century. Children’s role in the British industrial revolution has been, and continues to be, lively debated by scholars across a range of disciplines and, of course, by historians, especially economic ones. The debate covers a number of issues such as the kind of jobs undertaken by children in the industrial sector, the causes of their employment, its costs and benefits for the economy, employers, families and the children themselves. In an effort to interpret children’s employment in the industrial sector and assess its importance for the British economy, economic historians ask the following questions: was children’s work required for the industrial revolution and early industrialisation to take place? Did employers adapt technology and labour methods to children’s bodies and capacities? To what extent was children’s employment premeditated and organised by politicians and businessmen in need of a cheap, disciplined and abundant labour force? To what extent were working children exploited by adults?³ In much the same way, the studies of continental historians on child labour have usually concentrated on children’s work in factories and workshops, as well as on the importance of children’s work for a country’s or region’s industrial economy, starting from the seventeenth as well as the eighteenth centuries and the era of mercantilism.⁴ Studies that refer, in whole or in part, to industrial

 Indicatively: Clark Nardinelli, Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Pamela Horn, Children’s Work and Welfare, 1780 – 1890 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Sara Horrell and Jane Humphries, “Child Labour and British Industrialization,” in Child Labour: A Thing of the Past?, ed. Michael Lavalette (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 76 – 100; Peter Kirby, “The Historic Viability of Child Labour and the Mines Act of 1842,” in Lavalette, Child Labour: A Thing of the Past?, 101– 117; Jane Humphries, “Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review 66, no. 2 (2012): 395 – 418; Peter Kirby, Child Workers and Industrial Health in Britain, 1780 – 1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013).  See Roland Caty (ed.), Enfants au travail: Attitudes des élites en Europe occidentale et méditerranéenne aux XIX et XX siècles (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2002); Annika Boentert, Kinderarbeit im Kaiserreich, 1871 – 1914 (Paderborn, Munich, Vienna and Zurich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007). An overview of older literature in Papathanassiou, Zwischen Arbeit, Spiel und Schule, 12– 14.

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child labour in Austria cover the era of absolutism as well as the first half of the nineteenth century and are regionally focused.⁵ This contribution refers mainly to the late-imperial Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire but also to the interwar Austrian state, and thus to two different, yet considerably overlapping, geographical spaces in Central Europe. The chapter draws on this author’s previous research on children in Austria, which focused on their role in rural as well as urban family economies, stressing the importance of their economic contribution to sectors other than the one with which child labour in Europe had been hitherto mainly identified, namely industry. So, in a sort of reverse direction, this article intends to bring to the fore a topic dealt with on the margins of this author’s older (German-language) study,⁶ namely children’s work in the industrial sector; it elaborates and reflects on it under the light of additional source material as well as new literature. It addresses a historiographically “traditional” form of child labour in Europe – industrial child labour – albeit in a period that has not generated as lively a debate among historians as the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, or, in other words, the “first” industrial revolution and early European industrialisation in general. By the late nineteenth century, children’s work in industry had already been largely restricted by law, compulsory schooling had become established in most European countries and the notion of a protected, carefree childhood dominated public discourse in European societies. The general consensus in the literature is that during the second half of the nineteenth century, “industrial child labour gradually decreased”.⁷ Yet, industrial child labour continued to exist and, meanwhile, research has made clear that in highly industrialised countries, such as late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury Germany, child work in industry was by no means negligible.⁸

 Gustav Otruba, “Zur Geschichte der Frauen- und Kinderarbeit im Gewerbe und Manufakturen Niederösterreichs,” Jahrbuch für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich 34 (1958– 1960): 143 – 179; Peter Feldbauer, Kinderelend in Wien: Von der Armenpflege zur Jugendfürsorge (17. – 19. Jahrhunndert) (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1980); Gerhard Wanner, Kinderarbeit in Vorarlberger Fabriken im 19. Jahrhundert (Feldkirch: Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Vorarlberg, 1986).  Papathanassiou, Zwischen Arbeit, Spiel und Schule, 107– 141.  Wanner, Kinderarbeit in Vorarlberger Fabriken im 19. Jahrhundert, 16. For the relevant scholarly debate, see Maria Papathanassiou, “Approaches to the History of Child Labour in Europe,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte/Economic History Yearbook 48, no. 2 (2007): 231– 242, here 236 – 239.  See Annika Boentert’s thorough research on child labour in the German Empire, Boentert, Kinderarbeit im Kaiserreich.

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Questions and Sources This chapter will try to assess the importance of industrial child labour for the economy, working-class families and children themselves. It will argue that, although from a quantitative point of view, children’s contribution to the Austrian industrial economy as a whole was rather minimal in the period under examination, child labour remained crucial in particular branches and in home industry (Heimindustrie, Hausindustrie) as a whole. Children’s employment depended on the methods of production applied in each case, on the level of mechanisation, the ways the labour force was recruited and on how labour was divided among workers. Historians have often pointed to Austria as a relatively late or slow industrialiser, discerning a first period of development in the 1850s and 1860s (interrupted by the 1873 crisis) and a second one from 1895 up to the outbreak of the Great War. Others have shown that between 1865 and 1885 (or even 1880, according to some), Austrian industry steadily and rapidly developed.⁹ In the period of concern to this chapter, Austrian industry was in full development, though this was concentrated in specific regions of the empire, for example around Vienna or in parts of Bohemia.¹⁰ The chapter draws on a number of sources, particularly the factory inspectors’ annual reports from 1884 to 1937, regarding Cisleithania, the Austrian half of the empire, and, after the end of the First World War, Austria.¹¹ To these we should add the three volumes of detailed factory inspectors’ reports

 Richard L. Rudolph, “Quantitative Aspekte der Industrialisierung in Cisleithanien,” Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848 – 1918, vol. 1, Die Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973), 233 – 249, see 234; Herbert Matis and Karl Bachinger, “Österreichs Industrielle Entwicklung,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848 – 1918, vol. 1, Die Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, 105 – 232.  For the evolution of the Austrian industrial economy, see also Roman Sandgruber, Ökonomie und Politik: Österreichische Wirtschaftsgeschichte vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna: Überreuter, 1995), 233 – 314, see 311– 313; Peter Eigner and Andrea Helige, Österreichische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna and Munich: Verlag Christian Brandstätter, 1999), 79 – 102.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, über ihre Amtstätigkeit 1884 – 1916 (Vienna: Verlag des Zentral-Gewerbe-Inspektorates, 1885 – 1917); Berichte der Gewerbe-Inspektoren Österreichs über ihre Amtstätigkeit 1917 – 1926 (Vienna: Verlag des Zentral-Gewerbe-Inspektorates, 1918 – 1927); Berichte der Gewerbe-Inspektoren Österreichs über ihre Amtstätigkeit 1927 – 1937 (Vienna: Verlag des Zentral-Gewerbe-Inspektorates, 1928 – 1938).

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on home industry in Austria at the turn of the century, published in 1901.¹² The chapter also makes use of the findings of a large-scale state survey on working children and child work of all kinds, conducted through the public school system in 1907 (around the time that the First Austrian Conference on the Protection of Children took place in Vienna)¹³ and published in 1908.¹⁴ This survey had been preceded by smaller scale surveys on child labour conducted on the initiative of schoolteachers,¹⁵ who thus brought the issue to the fore. Reports and surveys offer quantitative as well as qualitative data on industrial child labour. Autobiographical evidence, drawn mainly from the Collection of Biographical Records,¹⁶ an archive at the University of Vienna, is also taken into account. These are written (or transcribed) testimonies predominantly by elderly people, mostly women but also men, many of whom spent their childhoods in the first three decades of the twentieth century. For the most part they authored more or less extensive texts recounting their (and in a few cases their parents’ or grandparents’) childhood, youth and life in general, and presented them to the Vienna archive in the 1980s and 1990s. Their specific testimonies on child labour in industry, though mostly short and fragmentary, complement official sources in regard to the workings of the family economy and shed light on children’s experiences with industrial work.¹⁷

 Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, über die Heimarbeit in Österreich, 3 vols. (Vienna: Alfred Hödler, 1900 – 1901).  Schriften des Ersten Österreichischen Kinderschutzkongresses in Wien, 2 vols. (Vienna: k.k. Hof und Staatsdruckerei, 1906).  Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit in Österreich im Jahre 1908, Arbeitsstatistisches Amt, pt. 2, nos. 1– 2 (Vienna: Hölder, 1910 – 1913). On the survey in detail (especially on the long political debates and procedures that preceded it), see Brigitte Pellar, …mit sozialpolitischen Erwägungen: Staatliche Arbeitsstatistik und Gewerkschaftsmitsprache im Handelsministerium der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna: Verlag des Österreichischen Gewerkschaftsbundes, 2013), 351– 365.  Papathanassiou, Zwischen Arbeit, Spiel und Schule, 28, 29; also Renate Seebauer, Kein Jahrhundert des Kindes: Kinderarbeit im Spannungsfeld von Schul- und Sozialgesetzgebung (Vienna and Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2010), 55 – 64.  Dokumentation lebensgeschichtlicher Aufzeichnungen (Institute of Economic and Social History, University of Vienna), hereafter cited in notes as Doku.  A large number of the collection’s documents has been published in separate or thematic volumes, edited by the Collection of Biographical Records, in the Βöhlau Verlag book series Damit es nicht verlorengeht…

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Assessing Numerical Data According to the 1907/08 survey, industry was the third largest employer of children in early twentieth-century Austria. Almost 23 % of Austrian schoolchildren surveyed worked in industry, as opposed to more than 62 % in agriculture and almost 57 % at home conducting housework, but with the percentages of children employed in the hospitality, trade and transport sectors or in delivery services lying far behind.¹⁸ The numbers of working children recorded in the factory inspectors’ reports between the early 1880s and the late 1930s were very small and in steady decline: in 1884, the first inspection year, 1,307 children were recorded, a number which fell to well below a thousand in the following years and barely exceeded four hundred in 1916, which was the last full recorded year for the Austrian half of the empire. In interwar Austria, the yearly reports recorded just a few dozen children working in factories and workshops and only six in 1937, a year before the “Anschluss”. Furthermore, according to the 1884 report, children made up a little more than a half per cent of the industrial workforce; this small percentage was the largest recorded and a considerable one when compared with percentages such as 0.07 (1910) or 0.008 (1930).¹⁹ Although these extremely low numbers must be taken as minimum numbers,²⁰ they are a far cry from the approximately 15 %, and at times 35 %, of children among the workforce of Austria’s textile and paper mills during the first half of the nineteenth century,²¹ and remained very low for around fifty years, which implies that on the whole child labour in factories and workshops tended to disappear from the 1880s at least. A number of interrelated factors and developments may account for this. The 1885 child labour law (preceded by a number of decrees and laws that had regulated child labour in factories and workshops since the absolutist era) inhibited the employment of children under fourteen

 Some 34.8 % of the schoolchildren in the Austrian half of the empire were surveyed. Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit, pt. 2, no. 1, 15, 16, 22.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1884, 8; Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1910, l, 2, Berichte der Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1930, xiv, xv.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1884, 25, 37, 86.  According to a 1845 report cited by Peter Feldbauer, Kinderelend in Wien: Von der Armenkinderpflege zur Jugendfürsorge 17. – 19. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Verlag fü r Gesellschaftskritik, 1980), 110. See also Felix Butschek, “The Industrialization and the Social Question in XIXth Century Austria,” The Journal of European Economic History 19 (1990): 257– 270; Gerhard Wanner, Kinderarbeit in Vorarlberger Fabriken im 19. Jahrhundert (Feldkirch: Kammer fü r Arbeiter und Angestellte fü r Vorarlberg, 1976), 65.

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years of age in factories and under twelve years of age in workshops.²² Furthermore, the 1869/70 law introducing eight years of compulsory schooling in Austria was strictly enforced, and this certainly acted as a barrier to children’s employment, though compulsory schooling in the Habsburg empire dated back to 1774 and Maria Theresa’s “Allgemeine Schulordnung”.²³ From the 1880s on, elaborate industrial technology and heavy industry – which could hardly be operated by children’s hands – were expanding, particularly in the steel and iron, machine, electrical, tyre, motor vehicle and chemical industries.²⁴ Also, the notion of childhood as a protected, carefree period in life and the idea of the “priceless” child were expanding in Europe. And, in any case, from the wider economic structure perspective, in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century AustriaHungary, the agricultural economy remained in a stronger position than industry, with more than half of those living in the Austrian half of the monarchy still employed in the former in 1910.²⁵ Numerical data in both the factory inspectors’ reports between 1884 and 1937 and the 1908 survey show that child labour remained important in particular branches such as textiles, an old, “traditional” child labour “employer”,²⁶

 Gustav Otruba, “Zur Geschichte der Frauen- und Kinderarbeit in Österreich,” Bericht über den neunten Österreichischen Historikertag in Linz: veranstaltet vom Verband der österreichischen Geschichtsvereine im September 1967 (Vienna: Verband Ö sterreichischer Geschichtsvereine, 1968), 98 – 106, here 99; Siegmund Kraus, Kinderarbeit und gesetzlicher Kinderschutz in Österreich (Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1904), 59.  Eva Maria Hörmanseder, “Schulbildung zwischen Politik und Realität” (Diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2013), 12– 52; on the history of the Austrian education system, see Helmut Engelbrecht, Geschichte des österreichischen Bildungswesens, vols. 3 – 4 (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1984 and 1986).  Matis and Bachinger, “Österreichs Industrielle Entwicklung,” 145 – 146; Sandgruber, Ökonomie und Politik, 294.  Robin Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1765 – 1918: From Enlightenment to Eclipse (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 239 – 245. Notably, factory inspectors and surveys in neighbouring, highly industrialised Germany constantly recorded much higher, though also declining, numbers (usually in the thousands) of minors under the age of fourteen working in the industrial sector or in particular industrial branches during the same time period, though it is likely that differences in population numbers between the two countries mainly account for this: see the data and tables in Boentert, Kinderarbeit im Kaiserreich, 231– 232, 277– 278, 360.  Wilfried Feldenkirchen, “Kinderarbeit im 19. Jahrhundert. Ihre wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Auswirkungen,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 26 (1981): 1– 41, here 12. Edward P. Thompson, Die Entstehung der englischen Arbeiterklasse, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987), 362. Jürgen Kuczynski, “Studien zur Geschichte der Lage des arbeitenden Kindes in Deutschland von 1700 bis zur Gegenwart,” in Die Geschichte der Lage der Arbeiter unter dem Kapitalismus, ed. Jürgen Kuczynski (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1968), 19, 60.

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the garment industry and the stone, soil, clay and glass industry.²⁷ Furthermore, data from both sources indicate that industrial child labour was more often a boys’ than a girls’ issue, though boys did not form an overwhelming majority in the industrial sector as a whole, and that gender mattered as to the industrial sectors children were more likely to be employed in: just over half (55.2 %) of industrial child workers were boys, according to the 1908 survey. The number of boys steadily outweighed that of girls in the reports and this may have to do with male children being considered more “suitable” for work outside the home. Girls outweighed boys overwhelmingly in the textiles (in many ways, a “female” domain)²⁸ but very few girls were registered in “male” branches, such as the construction or metalwork industries, and the distribution of boys in the various other branches appears to have been much more balanced. The decline of child labour in industrial settings shown in the factory inspectors’ reports does not necessarily mean there was a decline of child labour in industry as a whole; in reality, many more minors under fourteen years of age were occupied in industry than the reports implied, albeit in home industries. Contemporaries, such as economists, university professors, teachers, legislators, politicians, civil servants and campaigners against child labour, shared the view that children were largely employed in putting-out industries and presumed that their workplace was being transferred to their home.²⁹ In 1908, almost thirty-five thousand children working in the industrial sector were recorded in the survey, compared to eight hundred and seventy-three in the reports of the same year, a huge difference due mainly to the structural differences between the two sources. Yet it is worth noting that the largest differences in the numbers of working children between the 1908 survey on child work and the 1908 factory inspectors’ report are to be found in branches where, according to accompanying

 In German: Industrie in Steinen, Erden, Ton und Glas.  Tables in Papathanassiou, Zwischen Arbeit, Spiel und Schule, 113 and 115.  Michael Hainisch, “Vorschläge zur Regelung der Kinderarbeit vom wirtschaftlichen und sozialpolitischen Standpunkte,” in Gutachten, Berichte und Materialien zu den Verhandlungsgegenständen des Zweiten Österreichischen Kinderschutzkongresses in Salzburg 1913: Schriften des Zweiten Österreichischen Kinderschutzkongresses, ed. Josef M. Baernreither (Salzburg: In Kommission bei M. Perles, in Selbstverlag der Zentralstelle für Kinderschutz und Jugendfürsorge, 1913), 1, 571– 620, here 582; Ferdinand von Trautmansdorff, Kinderarbeit: Nach einem Referat erhalten in der Vollversammlung des Erziehungsrates am 7. Juni 1914 (Vienna: Kommissar für Kinderschutz, 1914), 12; Franz Zizek, “Gesetzgebung und Verwaltung: Staatliche Erhebungen über die Kinderarbeit,” Zeitschrift für Kinderschutz und Jugendfürsorge 1 (1909): 62– 64, here 62; Kraus, Kinderarbeit und gesetzlicher Kinderschutz in Österreich, 195; Käte Duncker, Die Kinderarbeit und ihre Bekämpfung (Stuttgart: Verlag von J. H. W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1910), 17. On Germany, cf. Boentert, Kinderarbeit im Kaiserreich, 1871 – 1914, 231, 233, 236, 290.

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school reports, the putting-out system was applicable and home industry rather common, like textiles (17,216 compared to eighty-four), the wood, braiding, turning and carving industry (5,103 compared to fifty-six), the garment and cleaning products industry (4,259 compared to one hundred and eleven) or the leather, hides, bristle, hair and feather industry (1,683 compared to fourteen).³⁰ Though a literal transfer of children’s workplaces from factories and workshops to family houses cannot be solidly supported by the statistics, it is clear that children in Austria were extensively employed in home industries at a time when the small numbers of child factory workers were in steady decline.

Work in Industrial Settings For industrialists who illegally employed children under fourteen years of age in their factories (they were, for the most part, factory and not workshop owners), children undoubtedly constituted a cheap labour force. When asked by the inspectors, factory owners would usually plead ignorance of the law and attribute child employment to the pressure exerted over them by the children’s povertystricken parents and their own willingness to help the poor survive. Factory inspectors may have romantically discerned between “humanly disposed industrialists pressed by the parents” and “the big industrialist with less humane motives” in 1884; yet they strived, as one of them put it in 1916 (during the First World War), “to keep this valuable human material away from the dangers of factory work”.³¹ School reports and autobiographical evidence both agree that child labour in factories and workshops was underpaid and wages generally amounted to a third of men’s and half of women’s wages. Children could be paid by time or piecework, and there were considerable, even extreme variations of payment for the same type and/or amount of work within the same region or settlement. A few examples suffice: brickworkers in their early teens earned from forty hellers up to 2.5 crowns per day in Bohemia, and from six to eight crowns per week in Lower Austria, for such physically demanding tasks like digging clay and forming bricks. Younger children carrying glass products to the lehr in glass factories earned thirty heller per hour in Styria and between one and 1.20 crowns  In German: Textilindustrie/Industrie in Flecht-, Holz- und Schnitzwaren/Bekleidungs- und Putzwarenindustrie/Industrie in Leder, Häuten. Borsten, Haaren, Federn. Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1908, lxii, lxiii; Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit, pt. 2, no. 1, 31– 60.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1884, 25; Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1916, 74.

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per day in Lower Austria.³² Still, children’s wages usually consisted part of a collective wage controlled by adults and were indispensable to a family’s survival. Unsurprisingly, the inspectors’ reports constantly recorded the efforts on the part of the parents to put their children to work despite legal restrictions. They most usually applied to the authorities for permission, so that their children would be allowed to work during school vacations and/or before they turned fourteen. In 1898, for example, thirty children, aged ten to thirteen and accompanied by their mothers, requested the factory inspectorate in Tyrol for permission to work in the construction industry during the school vacation.³³ Parents (usually of large families) argued that they needed children’s wages and/or that having their children work at their side was the only way to keep them under control. In 1886, the Olmütz inspector reported: “For as long as we don’t manage to raise the worker’s education level, and indeed to improve his living conditions, we should expect over and over again that this worker considers all decrees ordered by the humane legislator as a restriction on his self-determination and looks for means to simply circumvent such conditions.”³⁴ Throughout the period in question, the inspectors noted, over and over again, that children worked next to their parents or relatives. The description of individual cases indicates that labour organisation in industrial settings that occupied children usually had some or many of what could be termed “pre-industrial”, “protoindustrial” or “early industrial” features: workers were employed, either officially or unofficially, not on an individual level; they were employed on a group level and this group all too often was a family group – it could be every form of family, usually a nuclear family, also an extended one or a group of relatives. This form of labour recruitment appears to have gone hand in hand with piecework. Children worked next to parents and siblings, assisting them, usually by carrying and fetching materials or products. Such cases were found in spinning mills, steel mills, steam boiler plants, stonemasonry firms, sawmills, wooden box factories, cellulose and paper factories – mostly, however, in glassworks, brickworks as well as in the construction industry. For example, the 1888 report from Upper Austria found two boys under fourteen years of age carrying bundles

 See Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit, pt. 2, no. 2, 259, 260; Helga Windhager, “Die Kinder- und Frauenarbeit in den Fabriken Österreichs: Vom Vormärz bis zu 1910” (Seminar paper, University of Vienna, 1976); Hanna Sturm, Die Lebensgeschichte einer Arbeiterin: Vom Burgenland nach Ravensbrück (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1982), 56, 57; Johann Böhm, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Vienna : Verl. d. Österreichschen Gewerkschaftsbundes, 1986), 45.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1898, 283.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1886, 370.

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of band iron in a steel mill: “The fathers were workers in the steel mill, and they asked me what they were supposed to do with the boys, since the latter had finished school and they (the fathers) could not allow that boys to idle all day long.” In 1911, again in Upper Austria, three schoolboys and a ten-year-old schoolgirl were found working next to their parents in a large sawmill. The boys carried wood and the girl collected wood waste.³⁵ In glassworks (and brickworks), where reports (and the 1908 survey) constantly found comparatively high numbers of children, this form of family/ group labour force recruitment appears to have been important from the 1880s up to the early twentieth century. In 1896, a factory inspector attributed child labour in glassworks in (extensively industrialised) Bohemia to “the peculiar working conditions that occur in the glass industry, whereby the glassmaker has to provide not just his assistants, but also the ones who carry glass products to the annealing lehr, and much too often he makes use of his own school-age children in order to save money”.³⁶ Minors under fourteen appear to have been a steady presence in glassworks in Lower Austria in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Characteristically enough, approximately one hundred children (mostly boys) were employed in the glassworks of the same employer, in carrying, cutting or packing glass in the Gmünd district in 1904.³⁷ All in all, labour recruitment on a group, often family, basis, which went hand in hand with a limited use of technology in industrial settings, resulted in children working in particular industrial branches as late as the first decades of the twentieth century. The case of the brickmaking industry is most telling in this respect.

The case of brickworks The brickmaking industry alone appears to have employed most of the children working in industrial settings with more than twenty workers.³⁸ Furthermore, il-

 Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1888, 103; 1911, 113.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1897, 273.  Harald Winkler, Land und Glas. Leben und Arbeiten im Oberen Waldviertel/350 Jahre BrandNagelberg (Weitra: Bibliothek der Provinz, 2016), 162– 165.  Cf. Kraus, Kinderarbeit und gesetzlicher Kinderschutz in Österreich, 88 – 89. Combining data from the inspectors’ reports and teachers’ surveys, Kraus, himself a teacher at a school for the blind in Vienna, estimates the number of children employed in brickworks in Lower Austria at the time to be between five hundred and six hundred.

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legal child labour (which basically referred to the employment of children under twelve years of age and/or exceeding the eight-hour working time limit) comes up more often in regard to brickworks than other sectors.³⁹ On the eve of the First World War, factory inspectors stressed that brickmaking factories accounted for the majority of law infringements.⁴⁰ In the period under study, the labour organisation in brickworks favoured children’s employment, though technological development gradually changed traditional ways of labour recruitment and must have made child labour largely obsolete by the late 1930s. Child labour came up particularly in industrial settings where bricks (and tiles as well as other building materials made of clay or clay minerals) were manufactured mainly by hand, namely in brickyards, and less so in brickworks, where machines (like the brick-pressing machine) were used. In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Austria, both systems of production appear to have been in operation, sometimes literally side by side, in the same brickmaking factory, though hand manufacturing steadily declined during the interwar years.⁴¹ As the 1908 factory inspectors’ report put it, child labour was “deeply associated with the particular way of working in brickworks, where bricks are manufactured by hand”. There “the piecework groups consist of the members of a family, which gathers its children around during time off from school and asks them to carry out certain tasks”.⁴² According to Klementine Pulz, born in Lower Austria in 1923, children whose parents worked in mechanised brickworks with brick-pressing machines “had it much better” as “they did not have to work”. As a young child whose fingers bled from the difficult task of carrying fresh bricks with her small hands, she naturally envied them.⁴³ In brickworks, where bricks were manufactured by hand, work life and family life were entangled. Working tasks were already assigned to young children, who often literally grew up with brickmaking: they spent the warm months of the year in the workplace (since brickmaking was seasonal and brickworkers were

 Erhebung, 1908, pt. 2, no. 1, 33, 34. Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1901, lxxxi; 1905, cxi; 1907, cxxxvi; 1912, clxxxvi; 1913, cli; 1914, cxxxiv; 1915, ci; 1916, cxxii; Berichte der GewerbeInspektoren, 1921, lxi; 1931, 77.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1913, clii; 1914, cxxxiv.  For a history of the brickmaking industry in Lower Austria and the Vienna region, see Erika Iglauer, Ziegel -Baustoff unseres Lebens (Volkskundliche Veröffentlichungen 1), (Horn, Vienna : Berger 1974), 14– 90. On the brickmaking industry in the Habsburg Monarchy, see also Matis and Bachinger, “Österreichs Industrielle Entwicklung,” 156 – 157.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1908, cxxii.  Doku, Pulz, “Blutige Finger,” 2; “Brief,” 2, 3.

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unemployed in winter), for the most part at the side of their parents and siblings.⁴⁴ Children well under the legal age limit of fourteen or twelve (depending on the size of the industrial setting) – they were usually around ten years of age but often as young as five or six – were assigned specific tasks: they mainly carried fresh bricks to the drying space, arranged them and turned them over again and again, in order to accelerate the drying process. In particular, young children were believed to be more capable of carrying out such tasks due to their small bodies and feet, which permitted them to move among the lines of drying bricks without damaging the product.⁴⁵ Although most children recorded by the authorities were boys, both boys and girls worked in brickworks, usually undertaking the same tasks. Older boys appear to have occasionally conducted “adult work” as well, tasks that demanded particular physical strength: they dug out clay, carried it to be kneaded and cut, and formed it into bricks.⁴⁶ In the old type brickmaking factories during the interwar period, children’s earnings remained indispensable to family income and the threat of fines does not appear to have deterred brickworkers from engaging their underage children. As Marie Toth, born in 1904 into a Bohemian brickworker family, put it, “without child labour they [the adults who were unemployed in winter] wouldn’t have earned much”.⁴⁷ In her autobiographical narrative, she recalls her family’s everyday (working) life in a brickworks in Leobersdorf (Lower Austria), the hardship faced by her parents, her father’s lung illness due to unhealthy working conditions and his death, which further reduced the family’s meagre income, and her mother’s struggle for survival. She and her three siblings self-evidently assisted their mother in everyday work, sharing her fears and anxieties caused by a precarious working life which demanded great physical strength (“My mother weighed only 50 kilos. All women were so undernourished”). Saving the fresh drying bricks from rain in the middle of the night was a matter of life and death, and underpaid piecework generated further anxiety: When I was four years old, when father died, and even before, I had to pick up every brick. And the bricks should also not get wet. Sometimes my mother woke up in the middle of the night … My oldest sister was then ten years old … My mother woke my oldest sister up at

 Cf. Iglauer, Ziegel, 251– 254.  Erhebung, 1908, pt. 2, no. 1, 33. Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1903, 106.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren: 1889, 320; 1896, 82; 1897, 189; 1898, 215; 1899, 93; 1900, 10, 27; 1901, 283; 1902, 116; 1904, 65; 1907, cxxvi; 1909, cviii; 1911, cxxxix. Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit, pt. 2, no. 1, 33. Heinrich Holek, Unterwegs: Eine Selbstbiographie (Vienna: Bugra, 1927), 154.  Doku, interview with Marie Toth, 16 November 1993.

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four o’clock in the morning. She had already started school, but before she had to work every day. Mother woke her up and said: ‘Come, Anna, you have to wake up! Come, come with me to the brick kiln, you have to help me at work.⁴⁸

Children’s work experiences were associated with the experience of migration – either indirectly (through the stories of their parents and other family members) or directly. In the early twentieth century, most children in Viennese and Lower Austrian brickworks were children of Moravian and Bohemian migrants.⁴⁹ German- and Slovak-speaking children from Moravia and Bohemia, as well as minors from Hungary and Italy, were largely employed in late imperial Austrian brickworks.⁵⁰ Austrian factory inspectors would often meet and make entries on Italian children – in most cases under the age limits set by Austrian child labour laws – boys who had moved from Italy to Austria, usually together with their fathers, older brothers and/or other adult relatives. Gender perceptions were powerful and, thus, economic migration to more or less distant regions appears to have been a boys’ rather than a girls’ issue. Organised in working groups under the supervision of an Italian middleman, these boys often came from central or northern Italy to work seasonally in brickmaking factories in Upper Austria and Salzburg, but also in Styria, Carinthia and Lower Austria. Their actual age was difficult to assess and they often lacked the workers’ books required for legal employment.⁵¹ In the words of the Linz factory inspector: The father takes his ten-year-old son, who lacks any supervision and perhaps also any bread to eat at home, with him to Austria. Here, the child has to work next to his father and carry out the assigned tasks … This lasts from five o’clock in the morning to eight o’clock in the evening with very short breaks … The foreman, as well as the father, does not reveal the child’s real age until we ask for the workers’ books. But instead of them, they give us passports, certificates of origin.⁵²

 Doku, Toth. Cf. Iglauer, Ziegel, 110. Also the interviews by the ethnologist Erika Iglauer in Iglauer, Ziegel.  Iglauer, Ziegel, 40. Michael John, Albert Lichtblau, Schmelztiegel Wien – einst und jetzt: Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart von Zuwanderung und Minderheiten (Vienna, Cologne and Weimar: Bö hlau, 1990), 29. See also Josef Ehmer and Hermann Zeitlhofer, “Ländliche Migration in Böhmen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 53, no. 1 (2005): 40 – 58. On children working in brickworks in imperial Germany, see Annika Boentert, Kinderarbeit im Kaiserreich, 1871 – 1914 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2007), 283 – 286.  Kraus, Kinderarbeit und gesetzlicher Kinderschutz in Österreich, 88.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1884, 86; 1890, 103; 1886, 117; 1888, 103; 1899, 73; 1892, 113; 1894, 94; 1895, 69; 1896, 63; 1897, 64, 85, 116, 226; 1898, 67, 91, 117; 1899, 33, 52, 73; 1900, 81, 434; 1901, lxxxi; 1902, 116, 229, 268; 1904, lxxv; 1923, 118. See also Doku, interview with Toth.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1890, 103.

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In brickmaking factories in neighbouring Germany during the same period, Italian migrant child labour appears to have been common as well, and inextricably connected with the employment of pre-existing labour groups, a form of labour recruitment that favoured child work, as noted above. Within such labour groups, children were exposed to maltreatment: press reports on Italian seasonal migrants refer to the abuse of the Mulis, as those workers carrying the bricks were called, “often children of 10 to 12 years of age”, by the Italian head of the working group (Capuzat), who directed “swear words, kicks, punches” at them whenever something went wrong with their work.⁵³

Industrial Work at Home By virtue of its character, child labour in home industries was principally hidden from public view, and this may account for the fact that it was barely subject to legal restrictions before 1918.⁵⁴ Working children come up, though rather randomly, in the detailed labour inspector reports on industrial home work (Heimarbeit) that were published in three volumes in 1901 (and which should not be confused with the factory inspectors’ reports published annually from 1884 onwards) (see Questions and Sources). The 1907/08 survey and older smallscale ones do mention child labour in home industries, which also comes up in press articles, contemporary studies,⁵⁵ as well as in autobiographical records from the Vienna Collection of Biographical Records, though very briefly for the most part (see Questions and Sources).⁵⁶ Home industries were usually associated with a putting-out system, whereby adults and children worked under great pressure in order to meet strict deadlines and to increase their pay, by producing as many items as possible. They were, to a greater or lesser extent part, of the pluriactivity that still characterised rural as

 See the following issues of Der Ziegelarbeiter: Zeitschrift zur Wahrung der Interessen der gesamten in den Ziegeleien Österreichs beschäftigten Arbeiterschaft: “Die italienischen Ziegelarbeiter. I,” no. 8 (1911): 2– 3; and “Die italienischen Ziegelarbeiter. II,” no. 9 (1911): 1– 2.  Bundesgesetzblatt 1918, especially pars. 2, 4, 7, 9 – 10, 15 – 17.  See Emanuel Herrmann, “Feuilleton: Die Bedeutung und Zukunft der Hausindustrie,” Wiener Abendpost: Beilage zu Wiener Zeitung 201 (1 September 1873): 1605 – 1606; Käthe Leichter, Wie leben die Wiener Heimarbeiter? Eine Erhebung über die Lohn- und Arbeitsverhältnisse von 1000 Wiener Heimarbeitern (Vienna: Verlag für Arbeit und Wirtschaft, 1923).  Doku, Johanna Müller, Hedwig Duscher, Johann Birnbauer, Felix Nöbauer, Anna Martin, Hermine Kominek, Reinhold Klaus, Hedwig Hawle, Rosa Puhm, Rudolfine Haiderer, Anton Kriebert, Karl Klein, Kunschak, Agnes Pohanka, Johanna Kalisch, Josefine Weihs, Leopold Steurer and Gertrud Mücke.

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well as urban working-class households in late imperial and interwar Austria and which included producing goods for self-consumption Cottage industries, with roots in the early modern era and particularly the eighteenth century, were still operating in rural Austria, in the mountainous parts of the Bohemian lands, the Vorarlberg, and Upper and Lower Austria in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, that is, the late imperial period. Afterwards, in the small interwar Austrian state, cottage industries such as weaving, embroidery and knitting remained crucial to the economic life of small peasants and cottagers in mountainous regions as the Vorarlberg, upper Mühlviertel in Upper Austria or upper Waldviertel in Lower Austria.⁵⁷ In cities too, notably Vienna, working in putting-out home industries was not uncommon in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, industrial work at home appears to have revived during the First (Austrian) Republic due to economic instability and crisis, which favoured the employment of a cheap labour force under conditions that could easily evade laws and control by government officials. In this context, specific jobs in the sewing industry were undertaken by working-class women (often as an additional income source) and carried out at home.⁵⁸ In rural as well as in urban settings, child labour was crucial for the family economy. Work in home industry was mostly seasonal, and thus one out of several sources of household income, in the town as well as in the country; in rural regions it was usually carried out in winter, when there was barely any work in the fields. “While in summer it is only children and the elderly … that make pillow lace, the winter gathers the whole family in front of the lace pillow,”⁵⁹ state the 1901 labour inspectors’ reports. It was also generally a very intensive work that took place under great time pressure and demanded high concentration – on the part of all household members, including children. From a very early age (usually the age of five), children undertook various, mostly ancillary

 Leichter, Heimarbeiter, 4, 20, 88; Andrea Komlosy, “”Wo der Webwaaren-Industrie so viel fleißige und geübte Hände zu Gebote stehen”: Landfrauen zwischen bezahlter und unbezahlter Arbeit,” in Frauen-Arbeitswelten: zur historischen Genese gegenwärtiger Probleme, ed. Birgit Bolognese-Leuchtenmüller and Michael Mitterauer (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1993), 105 – 132; Bericht der k. k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren über die Heimarbeit, vol. 3; Doku, Hedwig Duscher, “Mein Leben,” 7, 16, 26, 27, “Die Arbeit von meinem Vater,” 53; “Brief,” 5. See Markus Cerman, “Protoindustrielle Entwicklung in Österreich,” in Proto-Industrialisierung in Europa. Industrielle Produktion vor dem Fabrikzeitalter, ed. Markus Cerman and Sheilagh Ogilvie (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1994), 161– 175.  Leichter, Heimarbeiter; Reinhard Sieder, “Zur alltäglichen Praxis der Wiener Arbeiterschaft im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts” (Habilitation diss., University of Vienna, 1988), 75 – 80.  Bericht der k. k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren über die Heimarbeit, vol. 1, 354, 355. and vol. 2, 103.

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tasks that appeared simple but were time-consuming and physically demanding for their age: winding bobbins for weaving was typical work for a child (though, as noted by labour inspectors in the 1900s, young children were too short and often had to work standing up).⁶⁰ Children also lined up and sewed glass beads, threaded buttons, constructed parts of toys and brushes, made rosaries, prepared hair nets and basketware, assorted needles and pins, wrapped candies for Christmas, etc.⁶¹ Children constituted a generally disciplined and cheap labour force that family economies and adult home workers (Heimarbeiter) could not do without. Thus, in early twentieth-century Vorarlberg, knitters with no children of their own usually employed minors from nine upwards for threading.⁶² Industrial home work was generally low paid; more so work conducted by minors. According to reports from numerous school principals in 1907, children’s payments were “extremely low … they did not correspond to work accomplished, [and] were in no proportion to working time, effort and harmful effects”.⁶³ Characteristically, children who sewed on buttons or worked on pillow lace received only a fourth or even a tenth of an adult’s wage.⁶⁴ Still, in reality most children’s payments (just like their payments in brickworks, glassworks and other industrial settings) were essentially part of a collective family/household payment, and it is from this relational aspect that it should be assessed. Indeed, child work substantially boosted adult home workers’ income, as shown in the case of a woman in Graz who made artificial flowers and increased her production rate by 40 % thanks to the help of her two grandchildren.⁶⁵ Or in the case of a bodice seamstress, who managed to save several hours per week, sending her son to deliver the products instead.⁶⁶ Product or working material delivery were particularly time-consuming, since it meant travelling a few miles on foot to bring working material from or deliver products to the factory, workshop or businessman’s office. It was preferably a child’s job, so that the production pace would not be interrupt-

 Bericht der k. k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren über die Heimarbeit, vol. 2, 98.  Cf. the data put together by Siegmund Kraus a few years after the volumes with the inspectors’ reports on home industry in Austria were published: Kraus, Kinderarbeit und gesetzlicher Kinderschutz in Österreich, 98 – 144.  Bericht der k. k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren über die Heimarbeit, vol. 3, 210, 214; Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit, pt. 2, no. 1, 50.  Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit, pt. 2, no. 2, 535.  Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit, pt. 2, no. 2, 258; Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, über die Heimarbeit, vol. 1, 359.  Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1919, 198.  Bericht der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren über die Heimarbeit, vol. 3, 111.

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ed at all, not even one or two days a month, and home workers could meet deadlines without jeopardising their pay. Children’s working experience was generally that of highly intensive, repetitive work usually (though not if space was limited) by the side of adults: Reinhold Klaus, born in 1881 in Warnsdorf (northern Bohemia), recalls working next to his parents as a young child. His father was “in winter a weaver, in summer a mason”. House weaving, alternating with work in textile mills, represented a crucial source of income for this household.⁶⁷ His particular experience of intensively coordinated and demanding industrial home working was close to that of urban children a few decades later, like Karl Klein and Rudolfine Haiderer in Vienna. The former recalls sitting still and working at an intense pace next to his parents, who made leather purses and bags a few years before the outbreak of the war. Among others, the boy cut the leather and his mother sewed the pieces together, or he rubbed the purses with a piece of cloth and removed the edges from the bags.⁶⁸ Haiderer and her sister, whose mother sewed locksmith trousers in the 1930s, had to turn the trousers inside out and lump them together; the girls also delivered the products and brought new material back home.⁶⁹ Children were generally proud of working and helping their families, but the highly intensive, repetitive work in the limited space of small rooms was strongly associated with negative experiences, succinctly implied in the brief autobiographical accounts on industrial home work. Still, here like elsewhere, children barely challenged the necessity of working. The daughter of a cottager family, born in 1924 in Upper Austria, helped from an early age with house weaving in winter. She recalls: Space was tight in the room, a weaving loom, in winter two looms, the spool wheel took up a lot of space … We had learned weaving while we were at school already, the same with winding bobbins. This was equally important; without bobbins we couldn’t weave. Winding bobbins was hard already. We had open wounds on our fingers all the time … Once in a while, father made a leather finger for us to put on, but they didn’t last long, depending on the thread. Otherwise it was a funny job…⁷⁰

   

Doku, Reinhold Klaus, “Das Grüne Buch der Kindheit,” 17, 18, 53, 54. Doku, interview with Klein, 20 November 1993. Doku, Haiderer, “Sonntagskind,” 6, 7, “Brief,” 1. Doku, Duscher, “Mein Lebenslauf,” 19.

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Concluding Remarks In late imperial and interwar Austria, children’s employment in the secondary sector neither dominated the picture of child labour, nor was it negligible. In factories and workshops where the labour force was still recruited on a group (family, kin or other) basis and piecework dominated, child labour was self-evident – this was partly the case in brickyards and glassworks. Yet, restrictive laws meant that it was also largely illegal, mainly in terms of age and working hours, and it seems that children often moved from factory to domestic industrial work and the putting-out industry. Putting-out persisted in rural regions within the context of household pluriactivity; furthermore, during the First World War and in the interwar period it spread to urban settlements and, in particular, Vienna due to economic instability and insecurity.⁷¹ In home industry, people worked basically unseen by the authorities, workers were paid by piece and households could barely dispense with child work if products were to be delivered on time. In Austria, as elsewhere in Europe, this was a time of heated public and parliamentary debate on bills and laws restricting child work,⁷² a time of compulsory schooling and of rapid expansion of the middle-class ideal of a protected childhood. The latter contradicted the harsh reality of poor children and makes the history of industrial child labour in this late stage of European industrialisation (which includes Austria, despite its presumed delay) all the more challenging. In fact, the European history of child labour in industry is still worthy of research, especially on the microlevel (the level of a sector, a settlement, an industrial setting, a household), which could shed more light on details and, thus, on microeconomic as well as cultural factors.

 Berichte der Gewerbe-Inspektoren, 1921, lxxxii. Leichter, Wie leben die Wiener Heimarbeiter?, 4.  On the debate see Maria Papathanassiou, “Protected from Work? Children in Discourse and Children’s Experiences in Central Europe (from the late Nineteenth Century to the Interwar Period),” in Stories for Children, Histories of Childhood: Histoires d’Enfant, Histoires d’Enfance, vol. 1, Civilisation, ed. Rosie Findlay and Sébastien Salbayre (Tours: Presses Universitaires François Rabelais, 2007), 141– 67, here 144– 153.

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Sources Autobiographical Sources Dokumentation lebensgeschichtlicher Aufzeichnungen (Documentation of life history Records – Institute of Economic and Social History, University of Vienna): autobiographical documents by Johann Birnbauer, Hedwig Duscher, Hedwig Hawle, Rudolfine Haiderer, Reinhold Klaus, Karl Klein, Hermine Kominek, Johanna Kalisch, Anton Kriebert Kunschak, Anna Martin, Gertrud Mücke, Johanna Müller, Felix Nöbauer, Agnes Pohanka, Rosa Puhm, Klementine Pulz, Leopold Steurer, Marie Toth and Josefine Weihs.

Official Publications Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, über ihre Amtstätigkeit 1884 – 1916. Vienna: Verlag des Zentral-Gewerbe-Inspektorates, 1885 – 1917. Berichte der Gewerbe-Inspektoren Österreichs über ihre Amtstätigkeit 1917 – 1926. Vienna: Verlag des Zentral-Gewerbe-Inspektorates, 1918 – 1927. Berichte der Gewerbe-Inspektoren Österreichs über ihre Amtstätigkeit 1927 – 1937. Vienna: Verlag des Zentral-Gewerbe-Inspektorates, 1928 – 1938. Berichte der k.k. Gewerbe-Inspektoren, über die Heimarbeit in Österreich, 3 vols. Vienna: Alfred Hödler, 1900 – 1901. Bundesgesetzblatt 1918. Erhebung über die Kinderarbeit in Österreich im Jahre 1908, Arbeitsstatistisches Amt, pt. 2, nos. 1 – 2. Vienna: Hölder, 1910 – 1913. Schriften des Ersten Österreichischen Kinderschutzkongresses in Wien, 2 vols. Vienna: k.k. Hof und Staatsdruckerei, 1906. Schriften des Zweiten Österreichischen Kinderschutzkongresses, edited by Josef M. Baernreither, 2 vols. Salzburg: In Kommission bei M. Perles, in Selbstverlag der Zentralstelle für Kinderschutz und Jugendfürsorge, 1913. Michael Hainisch. “Vorschläge zur Regelung der Kinderarbeit vom wirtschaftlichen und sozialpolitischen Standpunkte.” In Gutachten, Berichte und Materialien zu den Verhandlungsgegenständen des Zweiten Österreichischen Kinderschutzkongresses in in Salzburg 1913: Schriften des Zweiten Österreichischen Kinderschutzkongresses 1, edited by Josef M. Baernreither, 571 – 620. Salzburg: In Kommission bei M. Perles, in Selbstverlag der Zentralstelle für Kinderschutz und Jugendfürsorge, 1913.

Newspaper articles Der Ziegelarbeiter: Zeitschrift zur Wahrung der Interessen der gesamten in den Ziegeleien Österreichs beschäftigten Arbeiterschaft. “Die italienischen Ziegelarbeiter. I”. No. 8 (1911): 2 – 3 / “Die italienischen Ziegelarbeiter. II.” No. 9 (1911): 1 – 2.

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Contemporary studies Duncker, Käte. Die Kinderarbeit und ihre Bekämpfung. Stuttgart: Verlag von J. H. W. Dietz Nachfolger, 1910. Kraus, Siegmund. Kinderarbeit und gesetzlicher Kinderschutz in Österreich. Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1904. Leichter, Käthe. Wie leben die Wiener Heimarbeiter? Eine Erhebung über die Lohn- und Arbeitsverhältnisse von 1000 Wiener Heimarbeitern. Vienna: Verlag für Arbeit und Wirtschaft, 1923. Trautmansdorff, Ferdinand von. Kinderarbeit: Nach einem Referat erhalten in der Vollversammlung des Erziehungsrates am 7. Juni 1914. Vienna: Kommissar für Kinderschutz, 1914. Zizek, Franz. “Gesetzgebung und Verwaltung: Staatliche Erhebungen über die Kinderarbeit.” Zeitschrift für Kinderschutz und Jugendfürsorge 1 (1909).

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Hörmanseder, Eva Maria. “Schulbildung zwischen Politik und Realität”. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna, 2013. Horn, Pamela. Children’s Work and Welfare, 1780 – 1890. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Horrell, Sara, and Jane Humphries. “Child Labour and British Industrialization.” In Child Labour: A Thing of the Past?, edited by Michael Lavalette, 76 – 100. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999. Humphries, Jane. Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Humphries, Jane. “Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution.” Economic History Review 66, no. 2 (2012): 395 – 418. Iglauer, Erika. Ziegel -Baustoff unseres Lebens (Volkskundliche Veröffentlichungen 1). Horn, Vienna: Berger 1974. Kirby, Peter. “The Historic Viability of Child Labour and the Mines Act of 1842.” In Michael Lavalette, Child Labour: A Thing of the Past?, 101 – 117. Liverpool University Press, 1999. Kirby, Peter. Child Workers and Industrial Health in Britain, 1780 – 1850. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013. Komlosy, Andrea. “”Wo der Webwaaren-Industrie so viel fleißige und geübte Hände zu Gebote stehen”: Landfrauen zwischen bezahlter und unbezahlter Arbeit.” In Frauen-Arbeitswelten: zur historischen Genese gegenwärtiger Probleme, edited by Birgit Bolognese-Leuchtenmüller and Michael Mitterauer, 105 – 132. Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1993. Kuczynski, Jürgen. “Studien zur Geschichte der Lage des arbeitenden Kindes in Deutschland von 1700 bis zur Gegenwart.” In Die Geschichte der Lage der Arbeiter unter dem Kapitalismus, edited by Jürgen Kuczynski. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1968. Lichtblau Albert, John Michael. Schmelztiegel Wien – einst und jetzt: Zur Geschichte und Gegenwart von Zuwanderung und Minderheiten. Vienna, Cologne and Weimar: Bö hlau, 1990. Matis, Herbert and Karl Bachinger. “Österreichs Industrielle Entwicklung.” In Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848 – 1918, vol. 1. In Die Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, edited by Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch, 105 – 132. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973. Nardinelli, Clark. Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Okey, Robin. The Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1765 – 1918: From Enlightenment to Eclipse. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Otruba, Gustav. “Zur Geschichte der Frauen- und Kinderarbeit im Gewerbe und Manufakturen Niederösterreichs.” Jahrbuch für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich 34 (1958 – 1960): 143 – 179. Otruba, Gustav. “Zur Geschichte der Frauen- und Kinderarbeit in Österreich.” In Bericht über den neunten Österreichischen Historikertag in Linz: veranstaltet vom Verband der österreichischen Geschichtsvereine im September 1967, 98 – 106. Vienna: Verband Ö sterreichischer Geschichtsvereine, 1968. Papathanassiou, Maria. Zwischen Arbeit, Spiel und Schule: Die ökonomische Funktion der Kinder ärmerer Schichten in Österreich 1880 – 1939. Vienna and Munich: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik and R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999.

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Part III Industrial Labour Relations in Southern Europe

Milan Balaban

Chapter 8 Everyday Life in the Bata Company Town Borovo before the Second World War Abstract: The chapter analyzes everyday life in the Bata company town of Borovo, then in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, today Croatia, during the fourth decade of the twentieth century. The chapter gives a short historical introduction on the overall history of the Bata Company from its beginnings in Zlín, today the Czech Republic, to becoming one of the largest shoe producers in the world during the second half of the twentieth century. We also discuss the development of the Bata Company in Yugoslavia, from its beginning in the twenties until the nationalization of the Company’s assets in 1946. In the central part of the text we deal with everyday life in Borovo and Bata’s quest to form an ideal worker in a perfect garden city. Also analyzed are different aspects of the life of the worker, conditions of work, their social and cultural life, as well as changes introduced by Bata for workers, their families and the environment in which they lived. We also analyze the construction of the factory town and the living conditions of the workers in factory settlement.

Introduction and Literature This chapter deals with everyday life in the Bata company town of Borovo, in modern day Croatia, from its foundation in 1931 until the beginning of the Second World War. The introduction covers the history of the Bata Company from their beginnings in Zlin and the development of the Bata Company in Yugoslavia during the interwar period. The main text describes everyday life in Borovo and Bata’s quest to form the “ideal worker” in a “perfect garden city.” We analyse different aspects of workers’ life: their working conditions, their social and cultural life, and the changes introduced by Bata to their families and the environment in which they lived. This chapter employs sources from several archives in the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia. Among them, the most important for this research were archival finds in the Moravian State Archive in Zlin and funds in the Archive of Yugoslavia in Belgrade. Another was the National and University Library in Zagreb, where the newspaper Borovo, which was widely used as a historical source for this chapter, is stored. Scientific literature mostly neglected everyday https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-011

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life in its coverage of the only company town in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, so this paper mainly relies on archival sources and the aforementioned newspaper, Borovo. The most important secondary source was Kemal Hrelja and Martin Kaminski’s monograph Borovo. Jugoslovenski kombinat gume i obuće, published in 1971 on the fortieth anniversary of Borovo’s existence.¹ Among other important works was Martin Jemelka and Ondřej Ševeček’s book, which in their extensive look at the European phase of Bata’s expansion, dedicated one of sixteen chapters to the case of Borovo and its factories.² In addition, those same authors formed the editorial team which prepared a book on Bata’s company towns, where the focus and scope exceeds the European framework.³ The other authors who dealt with this subject, such as Ivana Žebec,⁴ Croatian architect Zlatko Karać,⁵ or historians of the older generation like Mira Kolar-Dimitrijević and Svetlana Ljubljanac,⁶ covered only certain aspects of Bata’s operation in Yugoslavia. Their works were mostly dedicated to single themes or to limited time periods. The works of historians from socialist Yugoslavia had somewhat anticipated limitations. This can be seen clearly in the most important book published at that time on this topic, from Hrelja and Kaminski. Long sequences about the communist party organisation and its activities in the factory, with exhaustive chapters dedicated to the different technical aspects of production in Borovo and organisation of work, were nevertheless complemented with invaluable data about the factory, the structure of the Bata system in Yugoslavia, production statistics, etc.⁷ Alongside works specifically dedicated to

 Kemal Hrelja and Martin Kaminski, Borovo. Jugoslovenski kombinat gume i obuće (Slavonski Brod: Historijski institut Slavonije, 1971).  Martin Jemelka and Ondřej Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu. Evropská kapitola globální expanze (Prague: Academia, 2016).  Martin Jemelka and Ondřej Ševeček (eds.), Company Town of the Bata Concern. History – Cases – Architecture (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2013).  Ivana Žebec, “Utjecaj češkoga kapitala na razvoj Vukovara u razdoblju između dva svjetska rata”, Društvena istraživanja 17 (2008): 101– 124.  Zlatko Karać, Bata-Ville/Borovo, Urbani razvoj i spomenički značaj industrijskog grada europske vrijednosti (Vukovar: Gradska knjižnica, 2008); Zlatko Karać, “Osnovna analiza urbanističko-arhitektonskog razvoja Vukovara; Kompendij dosadašnjih istraživanja”, Prostor 2, no. 1– 2 (5 – 6) (January 1994): 77– 96; Zlatko Karać, “Satelitski industrijski grad koncerna Bata / Satellite Industrial Town of Bata Concern”, in Darja Radović-Mahečić (ed.), Moderna arhitektura u Hrvatskoj 1930ih / Modern Architecture in Croatia 1930s (Zagreb: Institut za povijest umjetnosti, 2007), 205 – 208.  Svetlana Ljubljanac, “Početak rada fabrike Bata u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji”, Zapisi 4 (2015): 168 – 178.  The value of this book is heightened since the large company archive in Borovo was destroyed during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. Today, historians do not have those archival funds which

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Borovo, outside literature dedicated to the subject of company towns was used to support a broader theoretical framework. Among the most important of these was the work edited by Borges and Torres.⁸

Historical Development of the Bata Company The Bata Company, founded in 1894 in Zlín, started to develop rapidly during the First World War, thanks to large military contracts and technical innovations. After the war, in a society challenged by the post-war economic crisis, Tomas Bata applied an intensive rationalisation of the production process in industry, based on American models and usage of the assembly line, and started a new era in the development of the company.⁹ For a growing enterprise, the Czechoslovak market became too small, so Bata turned his attention to foreign customers. The first wave of establishing firms abroad began after WWI, when sister companies were founded in the USA (1919), Yugoslavia (1920),¹⁰ the Netherlands (1921), Denmark and Poland (1922) and England (1924).¹¹ By 1925, the Bata Company covered almost half of all Czechoslovak exports of shoes, and represented three quarters by 1931. Expansion of the Company was slowed by growing protests abroad from artisans and small footwear producers as well by the outbreak of the economic crises in 1929. During the Great Depression individual countries protected their producers by raising tariff barriers, introducing contingent’s duties on imports,¹² and encouraging various forms of boycott of Bata’s shoes. To support the export and sale of his own products, besides establishing sister companies, Bata also transferred production to foreign countries. The manufactured footwear in these factories was not subject to import restrictions, and the export of these shoes to the colonies of the individual countries was more financially favorable

were on disposal to K. Hrelja and M. Kaminski during the writing of their book, so our dependence on the results of their research is amplified.  Marcelo J. Borges and Susana B. Torres (eds.), Company Towns: Labor, Space, and Power Relations across Time and Continents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).  Jemelka and Ševeček (eds.), Company Towns of the Bata Concern, 37.  Statni okresní archiv Zlín (State District Archive Zlin, further SOkA Zlín) SOkA Zlín, f. Baťa, sign. XXVII, i. č. 8, k. 1879.  Bohumil Lehár, Dějiny Baťova koncernu (1894 – 1945) (Prague: Státní nakladatelství politické literatury, 1960), 294.  Central and Eastern European states had high customs regulation even before Great Depression. See more on this issue in Aleksandar Miletić, “Deglobalization in the Periphery, Tariff Protectionism in Southeast and East-Central Europe 1914– 1928”, in Tokovi istorije 3 (2014): 69 – 89.

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in comparison with importing goods from Zlín.¹³ The first factories opened abroad were in Ottmuth, Germany and Borovo, Yugoslavia (1931). In subsequent years, plants were established in Chelmek, Poland, Möhlin, Switzerland and Hellocourt, France (1932); Konnagar, India and Tilbury, England (1933); and Best, Netherlands (1934).¹⁴ During these years, the Bata Company produced not only shoes, but also developed other areas of production, and wanted to establish the largest possible degree of autarky and produce all the required products within the different branches of the company. To achieve such vertical integration and secure a smooth and fast process from the acquisition of raw materials, through the production of final products, up to their delivery to customers, Bata founded its own tanneries and power plants and produced its own textile, rubber and chemical products, etc.¹⁵ Furthermore, in order to avoid high costs in its endeavour to rationalise the building of factory facilities and homes for workers, the firm founded its own construction department. Some of the best Czech architects were recruited, including František L. Gahura, Jan Kotěra, Vladimir Karfík, Antonín Vítek and others, as well as world-class architects such as Le Corbusier. All these policies were pursued in order to maximise productivity and lower the price of shoes. At the same time, the firm invested in the social life of its employees, and the average salary in Bata factories was always well above the average level in the countries in which the firm operated. Bata founded company towns¹⁶ in which workers’ accommodation at the time was also above the average standard of workers’ housing in most of Europe, with electricity, hot water, a flushing toilet, and other amenities. Nevertheless, these benefits were also accompanied by a strong element of control on the part of the employer. Workers were not able to buy the

 Lukáš Perutka and Milan Balaban and Jan Herman, “The presence of the Baťa Shoe Company in Central America and the Caribbean in the Interwar period (1920 – 1930)”, América Latina en la Historia Económica (ALHE) 25, no. 2 (2018): 47– 48.  Zdeněk Pokluda, Ze Zlína do světa, 37– 39.  Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 64.  In the 1930s the following company towns were established: Baťov (today Otrokovice, Czech Republic) in 1930, Vel’ké Bošany (today Slovakia) in 1931, Borovina (today Czech Republic), Třebνč (today Czech Republic) in 1931, Borovo (today Croatia) in 1931, Ottmuth (today Poland) in 1931, Chelmek (Poland) in 1932, Mohlin (Switzerland) in 1932, Bataville (France) in 1932, East Tilbury (Great Britain) in 1933, Batadorp (Netherlands) in 1934, Batanagar (India) in 1934, Napajedla (today Czech Republic) in 1935, Batizovce (today Svit, Slovakia) in 1936, Zruč nad Sázavou (today Czech Republic) in 1939, Bat’ovany (today Parízanske, Slovakia) in 1939, Batawa (Canada) in 1939, Belcamp (USA) in 1939, Sezimovo Ústí (today Czech Republic) in 1939 and Martfu (Hungary) in 1942.

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homes in which they lived, and if they lost their job they were forced to leave their accommodation as soon as possible. Every aspect of life in the company town was controlled in accordance with the paternalist ideals of the owner, and if employees did not behave in accordance with rules and company regulations they were held responsible. The Bata Company did not allow trade unions except for those organised by the firm itself. Socialist and communist activists and party members were fired. Workers were motivated by means of a share in the company profit, but also held responsible for losses, which were deducted from their incomes.

Bata Company in Yugoslavia The Bata Company in Yugoslavia was founded in 1920. Until the end of the 1920s, the number of Bata stores grew to around twenty, but there was still no production, as the shoes and accessories were imported from Czechoslovakia. With outbreak of the Great Depression and import restrictions the firm decided, in accordance with the already discussed new strategy of spreading capital and production facilities, to open a factory also in Yugoslavia. The first effort, establishing production in leased facilities of the Elsa factory, in the small town of Apatin, did not achieve preferred results, and the focus moved to the better situated Vukovar, which fulfilled all of Bata’s ideal conditions for the foundation of a factory (traffic connections, available workforce comprised of a rural population, availability of raw materials).¹⁷ In the following years, after establishing the factory in Borovo, the Bata Company became the dominant shoe producer in the entire country, and covered almost 90 % of domestic shoe production and sales. From its establishment in Yugoslavia, and through the interwar period, the Bata Company tried to maintain good relations with the Yugoslav authorities. Nevertheless, as the first shoe imports from Czechoslovakia, and then its incountry production after 1931, endangered domestic producers and especially small artisans, the Company was exposed to growing protests. Those protests and strikes led the Yugoslav government to introduce several measures to contain the expansion of the Bata Company at the beginning of the 1930s, and even adopted legal measures in 1936, which had a similar character as the so-

 Milan Balaban, Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii (Zlín: Univerzita Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně, 2018), 70.

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called Lex Bata laws introduced earlier in Switzerland and France. However, for unknown reasons, those measures were never carried out.¹⁸ Table 8.1: Number of employees and footwear production in the period 1931 – 1941 for the Bata Company in Yugoslavia.¹⁹ Year

Number of employees

Overall number of employees

Footwear production in pairs – , ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, (,,)²⁰ ,, (,,) ,, (,,) ,, (,,)

Borovo factory

Retail network

       

  , , , , , ,

    , , , ,

 , , , , , , ,



,

,

,



,

–

–



,

 In the summer of 1936, the Yugoslav government drafted laws which would constrain the expansion of the Bata Company and its complete dominance of the market. After several months of work, a regulation was adopted which aimed to limit the number of stores in the company retail network, halt the opening of new production facilities and forbid shoe repairs in Bata shops. However, this measure was never published in the Official Gazette of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which was a legal condition for its implementation. See more on this issue in Balaban, Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii, 137– 142.  Hrelja and Kaminski, Borovo, 41– 42.  Arhiv Jugoslavije (Archive of Yugoslavia, Belgrade further AJ), 17– 103 – 103, Izvještaj o pregledu Koncerna “Bata” Borovo, 1945, 15. In parentheses are data from the Report on Bata Company made for the new communist government in Yugoslavia in 1945. Those numbers are sometimes a bit different from the data that are used by the majority of previous authors on this subject, and which can be found in different documents issued by the Bata Company itself. However, we cannot determine with absolute certainty which data are correct. The majority of historians dealing with the Bata Company, such as Ondřej Ševeček, Martin Jemelka and Martin Marek, argue that the production statistics in the Bata factories are mostly of an orientation character and from this distance in time we cannot presently uncover which data are completely accurate, since Bata Company routinely issued conflicting numbers in different documents.

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Living in Borovo The idea of founding a company town, in which workers would have all possible benefits and modern living conditions, did not come from Tomáš Baťa, founder of the Company. There is a rich worldwide literature on this topic,²¹ but Borovo was unique in that this was the only company town on the territory of interwar Yugoslavia.²² Borovo’s construction completely incorporated the idea of creating the ideal garden city, with a clear division of production, residential and recreational zones. The settlement was built outside of larger urban areas, which was normal for the Bata Company, which gained with that choice greater autonomy and outsized influence on the local community. Borovo became the largest and most successful investment of the Bata Company outside of Czechoslovakia during the interwar period, with its one hundred and forty-seven residential buildings with four hundred and ninety flats, twenty public and nineteen factory buildings. Other Bata company towns were significantly smaller. On example

 Under the term of a company town, we understand the settlements in which the company is not only a provider of jobs, but at the same time provides the necessary social and cultural services for its employees. In such a factory town, the company provides the conditions for permanent housing or at least part of it. The company is therefore not only an employer but also landlord, and it has a much greater impact on the everyday life of workers than is the case in larger urban areas. In those settlements, relations between employers and employees showed a higher degree of dependency. In addition to a considerable degree of control, these towns are in many cases characterised by different aspects of paternalist capitalism, in which employees are expected to show strong loyalty in exchange for a higher level of material and social opportunities. Satisfied and trustworthy employees are then expected to avoid conflicts, increase work productivity and thus increase the prosperity of the employer. Such sites were at least partially planned and consisted of at least two separate zones, working and residential, with the possibility of building a social part. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, similar factory towns evolved in Europe. With the acceleration of the process of industrialisation, these concepts expanded to other parts of the world. In the second half of the twentieth century, during the process of globalisation and the disappearance of various industries, factory settlements began to transform in accordance with diversification in the labour market or completely disappeared. See more on the different concepts and approaches to factory towns in Marcelo J. Borges and Susana B. Torres (eds.), Company Towns: Labor, Space, and Power Relations across Time and Continents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Linda Karlson, Company towns of the Pacific Northwest (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003); Oliver J. Dinius and Angela Vergara, Company towns in the Americas: landscape, power, and working-class communities (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011); Margaret Crawford, Building the workingman’s paradise: the design of American company towns (London: Verso, 1995).  In Istria, which was at that time part of Italy, there were two additional company towns, Podlabin and Raša. Only after 1945 year did this region became part of Yugoslavia.

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in French Hellocourt were two hundred and seventy-six flats and seven dormitories for bachelors, and as well nine factory buildings; another was in Ottmuth in Germany where there were ten factory and thirty-seven residential buildings; elsewhere, in Best in the Netherlands there were eleven factory and thirty-four residential buildings; and in Chelmek in Poland there were nine factory and seventeen residential buildings.²³

Figure .: Plan of Borovo.²⁴

The estate is built on seventy-one hectares, purchased from the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the architectonic project was the work of Czech architects Fran-

 See more in Balaban, Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii, 85 – 86.  Zdeněk Pokluda, Baťa, inspirace pro Československo (Zlín: Nadace Tomáše Bati, 2018), 54.

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tišek L. Gahura, Vladimir Karfík and Antonín Vítek.²⁵ Already in 1933 twenty-four residential buildings were constructed.²⁶ One year later there were eighty buildings in the settlement²⁷; by 1936 there were one hundred and twenty-two buildings, and at the beginning of WWII there were already one hundred and fortyfive housing units.²⁸ The average size of flats in the settlement was between fifty and seventy square metres.²⁹ Flats in which employees lived with their families were, by the standards of the period, very advanced for workers’ housing, with running water, flush toilets, electricity, and other amenities.³⁰ One-floor houses were divided into a daily and nightly zone, and on the ground level were the kitchen, living room, bathroom and pantry. On the first floor were two rooms, one for adults and a second for children.³¹ Lodgment was connected with employment, and workers could not purchase the houses in which they lived. In case they lost their job, for any reason, married workers had to leave their flats within a month, and unmarried workers during the same day.³² Only workers who were disciplined, married and worked more than a year in the firm could get housing in the settlement.³³ A family house became the main symbol of life in Borovo, as the company supported and promoted stable family life, and that type of housing was available only for families.³⁴ Bachelors lived in dormitories, and it was expected that women, after marriage, would stay at home and take care of the household and family. From the very day they moved in, new inhabitants were tasked with keeping the settlement clean and tidy, as well as maintaining the houses in the best conditions, if they wanted to continue with their usage. Weekly rent was thirty dinars, while electricity was delivered from the factory power plant. Houses

 Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 418.  Státní okresní archiv Zlín (State District Archive Zlín, further SOkA Zlín), f. Baťa, sign. XXVI, Export, inv. č. 4, f. 1– 36.  AJ, 65 – 1347– 626, Cjelokupno postrojenje Bata Borovo, 5 January 1935.  AJ, 17– 103 – 103, Izveštaj o pregledu koncerna Bata, 1945.  AJ, 65 – 1347– 626, Cjelokupno postrojenje Bata Borovo, 5 January 1935.  AJ, 65 – 1347– 26, Cjelokupno postrojenje Bata Borovo, 5 January 1935  Žebec, “Utjecaj češkoga kapitala na razvoj Vukovara u razdoblju između dva svjetska rata”, 113.  Balaban, Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii, 100.  Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 419.  Ibid., 77. However, only a smaller number of the workers were able to get housing in the company town. The majority of them lived outside of the workers’ colony. Nevertheless, thanks to good salaries, they were able to build their own homes in the old village of Borovo, in which the number of residential buildings more than doubled in just one decade from 517 in 1931 to 1,076 in 1941.

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were supplied with water from the wells in the colony.³⁵ Certain uniformity of the interior of factory flats was expected, so the management suggested how workers could organise the interior, what kind of pictures to have, such as with religious motives, or with beautiful landscapes and family photos.³⁶ Children’s rooms were to have images of, for example, animals or children at play, which were all to be reminiscent of a carefree and happy childhood.

Figure .: Standard double flat house in Borovo.³⁷

In the company town, running water was drawn from the wells, which eliminated hitherto quite widespread cholera, which had taken its toll year after year, but was particularly widespread in 1873 and 1910, when the death toll was measured in the dozens.³⁸ The first two wells were dug in 1933,³⁹ and an additional six, which were supposed to cover the increasing needs of the growing population of the settlement, were installed over the remainder of the decade.⁴⁰ However, even after the introduction of electricity, which was sold to households below market price, at a cost of two dinars per one KWH,⁴¹ a large proportion of older households in Borovo still remained without access to the electricity

      

Newspaper Borovo (further Borovo), 11 November 1933. Borovo, 16 December 1933. Karać, Bata-Ville/Borovo, 10. Borovo, 13 October 1934. AJ, 65 – 1347– 626, Cjelokupno postrojenje Bata Borovo, 5 January 1935. AJ, 17– 103 – 103, Izvještaj o pregledu koncerna Bata 1945. Which was four times less than commercial price (author remark).

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grid, which was supplied from the factory plant.⁴² Because of that, use of electricity was propagated, as well usage of the cookers, irons and other electrical appliances, which were easing life in the household, in order to attract those dwellers to also connect to the electric grid.⁴³ To reach the proclaimed ideal of garden city, 5,000 seedlings of poplars were planted in Borovo in the empty space between buildings, and on the way to the factory. The trees were supposed to further improve the appearance of the village, as well as the quality of life in it.⁴⁴ However, due to poor preservation of green areas which were constantly damaged or neglected, inspections were introduced in the spring of 1935 which monitored the treatment of lawns and yards. They tallied the damage and billed the expense to the house in front of which the claim was made.⁴⁵ Residents of the village were required to keep their lawns and gardens tidy, and to shovel the snow when it fell.⁴⁶ In 1933 the Bata company lodged an application with Yugoslav authorities for the construction of a school,⁴⁷ which was completed by the beginning of the school year 1934/1935.⁴⁸ The school, which was built as a standard Bata red-brick building, had four classrooms, a staff room, principal’s office, washroom, bathroom, closet and dressing room. The building was electrified and had steam heating, as well as a large yard of 100x100 metres, planted with poplars.⁴⁹ Next to the school another building was constructed with four flats for teachers.⁵⁰ As this school had become too small to accommodate all the children in the village, a new school named after King Peter II was opened in 1938, equipped with the latest equipment, which had the status of experimental school.⁵¹ In 1934 a kindergarten was opened for the children of the factory workers, attended by those aged four to seven years, before starting primary school.⁵² The kindergarten was located in the school building.⁵³ In addition to the furniture with children’s proportions, the children were given their own playground

 Borovo, 21 April 1934.  Ibid.  Borovo, 5 April 1935.  Ibid.  Borovo, 16 December 1932.  Hrvatski državni arhiv (Croatian State Archive Zagreb, further HDA), f. SB, 119 – 848, Molba za odobrenje podizanja škole, 12 August 1933.  AJ, 65 – 1347– 626, Cjelokupno postrojenje Bata Borovo, 5 January 1935.  Borovo, 5 May 1934.  AJ, 65 – 1347– 626, Cjelokupno postrojenje Bata Borovo, 5 January 1935.  Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 425.  Borovo, 21 July 1934.  Ibid.

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where they had swings and a slide. Already in 1935, ninety-five children were in the kindergarten, and at the same time in the primary school were another one hundred and thirty children.⁵⁴ The development of Borovo can be best illustrated with the following two tables: Table 8.2: Factory and auxiliary buildings in 1945.⁵⁵ Building number⁵⁶

Purpose

  a b   

Leather workshop Leather workshop Cement workshop Textiles bonding Old power station Old machine room The old warehouse for spare parts and machines (it was burned down during WWII) Garage (later Stolin workshop) Foundry Joinery Stolin Paper mill Warehouse of iron and wood Warehouse for wood New power plant Administrative building Shoe factory Tires workshop and rubber regeneration Rubber workshop Central warehouse Gatehouse Fire warehouse

a     n      

Overall

Surface in m , ,    , ,   , , , ,  , , , , ,   , m

 Borovo, 31 May 1935.  AJ, 17– 103 – 103, Izvještaj o pregledu koncerna Bata 1945, 79.  Every Bata factory in the world had the same system for numbering the buildings, starting with 11 (author remark).

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Table 8.3: Residential and public buildings in Borovo and their surface in 1945.⁵⁷ Type of building Quadruple flat house Double flat house type  Double flat house extended type  Double flat house type  Double flat house (Holland type) Single flat house type  Single flat house type  Single flat house type  Single flat house type  (rebuilt) Single flat house type  Flat of physician Ambulance Director villa Gardener’s house Eight flat house Ten flat house Boarding school of the first colony Boarding house for bachelors Community House House of Culture Elementary School Post office Bakery Well Transformer Garage Public toilet

Unit size in m

Number of buildings

Surface in m

        . .    .     ,      

                          

,        .     .      ,        



, m

Overall

Ideal Man, Ideal Women and Family Providing excellent living conditions for their workers was just one dimension of the Bata system. The other part of it was the creation of the ideal worker and ideal man, which would be a perfect fit for working in the modern industrial process. For that reason, the Bata Company in Borovo hired mostly younger people, men and women from sixteen to thirty years of age. Those workers made up

 AJ, 17– 103 – 103, Izvještaj o pregledu koncerna Bata 1945, 80.

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almost 80 % of the workforce in Borovo.⁵⁸ These employees, recruited mainly from the unskilled rural population, could be trained in order to better serve the interests of the Company.⁵⁹ Loyalty of the urban proletariat, from the Bata point of view, was always questionable, and that was the reason for the focus on employing the younger rural population. Bata did not prefer employment of the urban proletariat as he suspected them to be already influenced by communist and socialist ideas, and therefore could not shape them under his preferences for an ideal worker. Additional factors which affected these policies were that urban workers had usually already conducted workers’ training in other factories/workshops, so they needed to be re-trained in order to work in the Bata system. Last but not least, the proletariat were often members of different unions, and the firm did not allow membership in or activities of the unions, except those organised by the enterprise itself. The workers in Yugoslavia, except a small minority which hoped to find employment in the Bata system, were mostly against Bata’s expansion in the country. This can be seen for example in a proclamation of the Union of workers in the leather industry, from the summer of 1931, in which they stated that: “The Bata Company is developing a system of so-called industrial feudalism, in which the firm is not just master of all the needs of its workers, but also landlord and it is isolating its employees from relations with other workers”.⁶⁰ As everywhere else in the Bata world system, employees in the factory were not called workers, but “associates,” on the one hand to create a sense of belonging to a common work and, on the other hand, to present a better impression to the public, to which significant propaganda activities were channeled. Besides young men, the Bata Company also employed many younger women, usually paid around 50 – 60 % of men’s wages.⁶¹ Women were expected to leave the job after marriage and to devote themselves to their family. With employment of women, the Bata company significantly reduced their costs of production, allowing higher revenues as well as saving money for further investments. In Bata’s production facilities, under the system established in Zlín, the workers participated both in profits and in losses of the company. In the case of good results for the Company, they were awarded with premiums, but also in the event of losses were punished by deductions from wages. As the workers enjoyed much better living conditions and wages than the average in Yugoslavia,

   

Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 415. Ibid., 86. See more on this issue in Balaban, Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii, 59 – 60. Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 86.

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Figure 8.3: Entrance to the Factory area, 1933. Source: SOkA Zlin, sbirka_fotografii_zlin, obalka č. 15138, sign. 932_17, poř. č. 34.

they were motivated to keep their jobs and to work hard for the possible premiums. During the mid-1930s the average daily salary of worker in the leather and footwear industry in Yugoslavia was around twenty dinars per day,⁶² and wages at Bata were on a much higher level, with a mean fifty-two to fifty-eight dinars for male workers per day and thirty to thirty-one dinars for women workers.⁶³ Nevertheless, according to the illegal journal, Associate, which was published in Borovo, these kind of salaries were mostly the product of overtime work, which in some cases exceeded twelve to fifteen hours per day.⁶⁴ Without

 Mari Žanin-Čalič, Socijalna istorija Srbije 1815 – 1941 (Beograd: Clio, 2004), 307.  Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 419.  Hrelja and Kaminski, Borovo, 144. The illegal journal Associate (translated from Serbian: Saradnik) was published during 1934– 1935 by communist party activists in Borovo, who were led by the well-known communist Josip Cazi. After the Second World War and the establishment of socialist rule in Yugoslavia, J. Cazi held several important positions in the new system, and he also served as Minister for light industry in the Yugoslav Government during 1949 – 1950. The journal

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Figure 8.4: Workers in Borovo, 1933. Source: SOkA Zlin, sbirka_fotografii_zlin, obalka č. 1280, poř. č. 1.

overtime work, wages were beneath the average salaries in other enterprises in the leather and footwear industry. These practices of overtime work were clearly in breach of the legally mandated eight hour working day in Yugoslavia. Panegyrics⁶⁵ as well sharp social criticism⁶⁶ were written about the terms of work in Borovo. While for admirers the factory in Borovo was the best example of care for workers and their families, others criticised the company for exploitation of workers, who were completely under the control of their employer and were in constant fear of losing their job. The Bata Company fought with critics, with law-

which he published in Borovo criticised the Bata system as inhuman and exploitative, with constant overtime work and frequent employee fluctuations. Unfortunately, we do not have enough data, because of the previously mentioned destruction of the company archive in Borovo, to confirm the accuracy of these claims.  SOkA Zlín, f. Baťa, II/6, kart. 1288, i. č. 210, Abdulah Š. Alijagić: Šta sam vidio u Borovu, Derventa, 1936.  SOkA Zlin, F. Bata, I/4, kart. 125, i. 4. 408, f. 39, Hugo von Haan: Die Arbeitsbedingungen in der rationalisierten Schuhfabrik Baťa in Borovo, Jugoslawien. Genf 1938.

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Figure 8.5: Factory restaurant in Borovo, 1933. Source: SOkA Zlin, sbirka_fotografii_zlin, obalka č. 1282, poř. č. 1.

suits and with the dismissal of workers who protested against their conditions. To shape workers under their vision, Bata invested significant resources into their training. Before the training school opened in Borovo, boys between thirteen and sixteen years of age were sent to Zlin, on a three year long course of training, which was supposed to create the perfect worker to further elevate the production process in Borovo. After a few years, the government in 1936 approved the opening of the Vocational Apprentice School Bata Borovo,⁶⁷ which later, in 1940, transformed into a boarding school, Bata School of Work.⁶⁸ The omnipresent cult of work clearly did not affect the entire working population of Borovo. This can be clearly seen from the writings of the factory journal Borovo,⁶⁹ which criticised some workers for not taking the spring competition  AJ, 65 – 1752– 2846, Dozvola za otvaranje zanatske škole Bata-Borovo, 11 October 1936.  Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 424.  Borovo was the first factory journal in the country and its circulation, which at its peak had more then 20,000 imprints at the end of the 1930s, was widely used for propagation of the Bata company ideals and policies in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

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Figure 8.6: Company town in Borovo, 1935. Source: SOkA Zlin, sbirka_fotografii_zlin, obalka č. 15138, sign. 932_3, poř. č. 6.

seriously⁷⁰ and working only as much they had to, and not as much as they could for the increased benefit of the factory and themselves.⁷¹ Motivational speeches in the spirit of George Orwell’s “newspeak,” about the formation of the ideal and perfect man for the new industrial age apparently did not change workers’ attitudes, as they perceived the work as a means of helping to fulfill their life goals and not as the very purpose of their lives.⁷² Rationalisation in Borovo aimed to fully reduce the time that was lost during the workday, and maximise efficiency.⁷³ Due to loss of time, the company suggested to workers that instead of going home for lunch they should eat in the

 Every spring Bata organised a competition between different workshops in productivity, in which the winners were granted different prizes and benefits.  Borovo, 24 March 1934.  Balaban, Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii, 108.  AJ, 65 – 1347– 626, Cjelokupno postrojenje Bata Borovo, 5 January 1935.

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factory restaurant.⁷⁴ On these same lines, the company introduced telephones in every workshop in order to stop workers walking from one workshop to the other, which led to a constant loss of time.⁷⁵ The Bata Company did not allow any other form of worker organisation, except those directed by the factory,⁷⁶ and only in 1941 did the firm allow workers to join an official union, organised by the Croatian Workers Alliance. Under a collective contract signed on 27 February 1941, an eight-hour work and a forty-eight hour work week was instituted.⁷⁷ This collective contract determined a 50 % increase of salary for overtime, and forbade work on Sundays and holidays. In the contract also was an annex which stipulated that only people from Borovo and the neighboring region could be employed in the factory.⁷⁸ The Bata Company not only wanted to create the ideal worker who would be loyal to the company that gave him the opportunity for employment and higher living standards, but also wanted to create an ideal man: clean, hardworking and healthy.⁷⁹ The greatest obstacle, against which the firm led a permanent campaign, was alcohol, always considered a roadblock on the highway to the New Man.⁸⁰ Alcohol was the destroyer of families and the company urged drinking milk as a healthy alternative.⁸¹ It is unclear how seriously workers took this advice. Not just alcohol, but smoking tobacco was also condemned by the company as unhealthy and a bad habit.⁸² In addition to alcohol and tobacco, Bata

 Borovo, 20 October 1933.  Borovo, 23 June 1933.  Borovo, 28 October 1933.  Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 414.  Balaban, Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii, 110. By the end of the 1930s the Bata Company relented, in some countries, on its policy of not allowing unions. Already in 1937, after a one day strike, Bata allowed a union to organise in their Polish factories. A similar scenario played out in 1938 after a strike in East Tilbury in England. After a one day warning strike in January 1941, and almost a month of negotiations between workers and company management in Borovo, the firm allowed workers to join an official union, under the terms of a new collective contract. The overall situation in Europe, approaching the eruption of hostilities in World War II, probably played a significant role in this remission of company policies, since this global disruption worried the firm more than the question of unions. This was the only strike in Borovo during the interwar period, and a rare occasion when workers openly showed their disagreements with factory managament. Nevertheless, workers’ overall positive approach toward living and working in Borovo can be inferred through the accepted request that only people from the Borovo region could be employed in the factory.  Borovo, 16 December 1932.  Borovo, 27 May 1933.  Borovo, 28 February 1933.  Borovo, 21 April 1934.

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also warned against gambling, another major vice that threatened to prevent stable family life and productive workers.⁸³ In addition to the promotion of healthy lifestyles, Bata also propagated a happy family life.⁸⁴ Women were expected to maintain a clean, tidy house and garden, while the husband was distinguished as the breadwinner.⁸⁵ To women who became pregnant, employment was interrupted.⁸⁶ Unmarried girls, who worked in the factory and came far from Borovo, or did not have a family, were housed in two boarding schools for girls. Part of the boarding school, which was seen as a kind of school for marriage, was to educate women on how to adapt to modern conditions of life. They were given tips on how to best organise the cooking in the house, cleaning, a family budget, etc.⁸⁷ In those boarding schools, which were built already in 1932, were housed around seventy unmarried girls. Life in them was not easier than in the boarding school for boys. Women rose at 5.30 a.m. and after a morning hygiene, exercise and breakfast went off to work in the factory.⁸⁸ After work there, and afternoon exercise, there was time set aside in the evening for discussions and education.⁸⁹ Yet despite layoffs of women after they became pregnant, the factory in June 1934 introduced a new social programme of detour of newborns of Bata workers, which was carried out by the Head of the Social Department, Marija Popović. She gave advice to new mothers on how to care for newborns and also brought small gifts from the factory.⁹⁰ In addition to these concerns, the factory directed managers of individual departments to take care not only of production, but also of their subordinates and of their private lives and living conditions.⁹¹ In addition to teaching what kind of modern woman female workers should be, the factory or Borovo, 28 January 1933.  Borovo, 16 September 1933.  Borovo, 11 November 1933.  Balaban, Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii, 112.  Borovo, 10 March 1934.  Borovo, 14 July 1934.  Ibid.  Borovo, 16 June 1934.  Borovo, 31 May 1935. Thus, for example, Director Toma Maksimović, pointed to the position of the mother of five children, Lj. Z., who fourteen days after the fifth delivery was again at work, while her husband was unemployed at home. According to the Company ideals, he was supposed to work and provide for his family, while women were to be at home to care for the family and create an ideal home. This was a place where the man would feel satisfied after work and the children would have a happy and fulfilled childhood. The case of Lj. Z. totally stood out from this ideal, and therefore Maksimović asked the managers to take care of their associates, their family status and the problems they faced in life, and to report to him about similar cases in order to find most suitable solutions for solving such cases.

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ganised mandatory lectures on sexually transmitted diseases, to which men and women went separately, and where they were taught about the problems they might encounter.⁹²

Social and Cultural Life The Bata Company paid great attention to sport, so it set up and supported the establishment of various clubs in the company town, and encouraged workers’ participation in sports competitions. Of course, this was necessary infrastructure and cultivated a benevolent attitude toward employees who, through sport, promoted the Company. The attitude of Bata toward sport may best be seen from the slogan which they propagated: “Sport is a movement – movement is life – life is sport!”⁹³ Sport was promoted as an activity supposed to “awake [workers] from dormancy and out of mental lethargy, develop high sports consciousness and sports idealism,”⁹⁴ and as such was aided by the factory administration, which encouraged membership in various sports sections.⁹⁵ In subsequent years, due to the increased interest of workers for participation in sports activities, football, handball, moto-club, tennis, volleyball, archery, aero-club, table tennis, swimming, rowing and boxing sections were founded. In 1933 a football stadium was built, followed in 1934 by courts for handball and tennis. The greatest worker interest was in football, and along with the representative blue team a white team and junior team were also formed. Blue team (SK Bata) was, in the interwar period, twice the champions of the Osijek Football Sub-federation, in 1934 and 1939, and thus gained the right to compete in the allYugoslav Championship. The potential of sport was exploited for advertising, and the Company organised in the second part of the 1930s visits to Borovo by some of the most important European clubs, such as Bohemians from Prague, Austria from Vienna or AS Rome, while they also played matches against SK Bata.⁹⁶ For children, an ice rink was provided in 1933.⁹⁷ The following year the company built a swimming pool on the Danube, which the factory financed.⁹⁸ In ad-

      

Borovo, 9 December 1933. Borovo, 29 April 1933. Borovo, 14 October 1933. Ibid. Borovo, 22 June 1935. Borovo, 23 December 1933. AJ, 65 – 1347– 626, Celokupno postrojenje Bata-Borovo, 5 January 1935.

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dition to a capacious swimming pool for adults, two small children’s pools were developed, as well as two wading pools for non-swimmers with shallow depths of 1.4 and 1.6 metres respectively. Additionally, the company built fifty private cabins for changing clothes on the banks of the Danube next to the main pool. The total area of the pool was sixty by twenty metres.⁹⁹ As in other Bata company towns, an orchestra was founded in Borovo and the first rehearsal was conducted on Sunday, 3 June 1934.¹⁰⁰ The factory orchestra had two sections, string and brass, and practiced twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays.¹⁰¹ In addition to the orchestra, at the beginning of 1935 a choral section was also established, which in March of that year had more than sixty members.¹⁰² A library was founded in the village, for which the company donated the first two hundred books, and encouraged the other workers and residents of the village to donate their books.¹⁰³ In the movie theatre, which opened in April 1935 at the community centre, movies were regularly screened four times a week.¹⁰⁴ The popularity of films as a pastime of the workers can be illustrated by the fact that in September 1936 alone 4,922 people visited the movie theatre.¹⁰⁵ Besides social events such as sports games, concerts and movies, there were additional dimensions of life in the public sphere, for example different mass gatherings in Borovo. The most grandiose ones were the annual celebrations of Labor Day, celebrated not on 1 May, but on 6 May. International Labor Day was not celebrated because of its connections with communism and socialism, and as an alternative a national holiday, the Day of Saint George, was chosen by the company.¹⁰⁶ At those celebrations, which tens of thousands of people usually attended, panegyric speeches were organised alongside sports matches, the Sokol’s exercises, air-shows, concerts and free movie screenings for visitors.¹⁰⁷ The Borovo section of “Falcon” (Sokol), which was formed in July 1933 and stood firmly behind the idea of pan-Slavism and loyalty to the Karađorđević dynasty, had an important role in supporting the ideology of integral Yugoslavia in the company town. In 1935, this organisation already boasted more than five

 AJ, 65 – 1347– 626, Celokupno postrojenje Bata-Borovo, 5 January 1935.  Borovo, 9 June 1934.  Borovo, 9 March 1935.  Ibid.  Borovo, 8 September 1934.  Borovo, 12 January 1935.  Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 426.  Borovo, 10 May 1935.  Ibid.

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hundred members.¹⁰⁸ Membership of Falcon had grown rapidly, but it is likely that not just ideology was behind its increasing numbers; quite a big role in its popularity can be attributed to the variety of tangible benefits for its members, such as subsidised vacations on the sea coast and others.¹⁰⁹ Another organisation that worked on similar ideological premises was the “Yugoslav-Czechoslovak league”,¹¹⁰ which established its subsidiary in Borovo in December 1933.¹¹¹ From 1935 onward they led their members, workers at Bata, every year on vacation to the resort of the Adriatic Guard¹¹² in Split.¹¹³ From March 1935, the factory workers had tea parties every Sunday and Saturday in the premises of the Falcon gym, which were accompanied by the factory orchestra.¹¹⁴ In Borovo various theatres in Yugoslavia also held performances on a regular basis.¹¹⁵ With the development of Borovo in a conservative environment, the company dedicated great attention to respecting the religious customs of the country. This was a significant departure from its normal, largely ambivalent policy toward religion, which the company held in its much more secular Czech homeland. Apart from Orthodox traditions, the company also respected Catholic holidays and, with an increasing number of Muslim workers in the second half of the 1930s, Muslim traditions were accorded recognition by the company as well. For religious holidays, the factory typically gave gifts to children and the elderly in the form of clothing and footwear.¹¹⁶ The occupation of Yugoslavia in April 1941 and the establishment of the fascist puppet independent state of Croatia brought a sudden end to the rich and developing social life in the company town. Layoffs of Serbian and Jewish work Hrelja and Kaminski, Borovo, 195.  One example was a six-day sea vacation in Crikvenica, after the large Sokol jamboree in Zagreb, costing one hundred and fifty-eight dinars for exercising members, while for the non-exercising members, the cost was two hundred and seventy-nine, and for non-members of Falcon, three hundred and sixty-nine dinars. Borovo, 21 July 1934.  The Yugoslav-Czechoslovak league was founded in 1921 as an organisation for promotion of Czechoslovak-Yugoslav friendship and cooperation. See more on this issue in Arnošt Skoupý, Československo-jihoslovanská liga a Svaz jihoslovansko-československých lig v období mezi dvěma světovými válkami (Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého 1971).  Borovo, 9 December 1933.  The Adriatic Guard was a patriotic youth organisation, founded in 1922 in Split, with the goal of protecting and promoting the Adriatic Sea and national values. After occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, this organisation ceased operations.  Borovo, 17 August 1935.  Borovo, 1 March 1935.  Jemelka and Ševeček, Tovární města Baťova koncernu, 426.  Borovo, 12 January 1935.

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ers, their persecution, shortages and the subsequent Allied bombing of factories made life very difficult in the settlement. Additionally, there was no wartime or postwar continuity with pre-war development. For these reasons, this article deals with the everyday life in Borovo only until the outbreak of Second World War.

Conclusion The Bata Company started its expansion from the small Moravian city of Zlin at the end of the nineteenth century and became one of the world’s largest shoe producers by the end of the twentieth century. Nowadays, the company is slowly fading from relevance because of a failure to adapt to contemporary production and marketing trends, but the history of the firm during the twentieth century remains a success story. The founding of a company town in Borovo, one of the chapters in this timeline, became the most significant and successful investment of the Bata Company during the interwar period. From green fields and the poor rural village of Borovo, development into a flourishing modern town took less than a decade. Bata’s Borovo production facility nearly monopolised the entire shoe market in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, employed thousands of people and built a modern settlement next to its factory. In that company town, thousands of workers and their families found state-of-the-art accommodations, with a standard of living well above the average worker’s housing in Southeastern Europe. Modern houses were built with electricity, hot water and flushing toilets. These standards and wages were much higher than in other companies in the shoe and leather industry of Borovo. On top of that, Bata offered better benefits than the majority of workers in Yugoslavia had. These material amenities were, however, just one side of the Bata experience. The Company wanted to create a new ideal man, a hardworking, healthy and clean individual who would be loyal to the firm that gave him this happier, more modern life. The paternalistic company sought to forge worker in its own image. For that reason, life in the company town, as well as the process of work in the factory, were under the strong control of the Bata firm. Most of the urban proletariat nevertheless were not attracted to the Bata model for several reasons, from the ban on unions to the paternalistic attitudes and practices of the company management, which too often turned into patronising, overbearing regulations and strict scrutiny of private life. Bata’s ultimate goal was to reduce losses in productivity and time inefficiencies by training skilled workers with stable family lives and clockwork reliability. Another dimension of Bata’s care for its workers were its efforts to develop the social and cultural life of employees, to ultimately enrich the lives of

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workers and their families. In turn, grateful workers and happy families burnished the international image of Bata as a leading company in the Fordist model of mid-twentieth century capitalism’s political and social order. Their strict regime oversaw the planned settlement and expected an equally high degree of uniformity from the inhabitants, all of whom had roles to play and tasks to perform in Bata’s only model society in Yugoslavia.

Sources Arhiv Jugoslavije (Archive of Yugoslavia, Belgrade). Hrvatski državni arhiv (Croatian State Archive, Zagreb). Státní okresní archiv Zlín (State District Archive, Zlín).

Newsletters Borovo, December 1932 – August 1935.

Bibliography Balaban, Milan. Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii. Zlín: Univerzita Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně, 2018. Borges, Marcelo J., and Susan B. Torres, eds. Company Towns: Labor, Space, and Power Relations across Time and Continents. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Crawford, Margaret. Building the workingman’s paradise: the design of American company towns. London: Verso, 1995. Dinius, Oliver J., and Angela Vergara. Company towns in the Americas: landscape, power, and working-class communities. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Hrelja, Kemal, and Martin Kaminski. Borovo. Jugoslovenski kombinat gume i obuće. Slavonski Brod: Historijski institut Slavonije, 1971. Jemelka, Martin, and Ondřej Ševeček, eds. Company Town of the Bata Concern. History – Cases – Architecture. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2013. Jemelka, Martin. Tovární města Baťova koncernu. Evropská kapitola globální expanze. Prague: Academia, 2016. Karać, Zlatko. “Osnovna analiza urbanističko-arhitektonskog razvoja Vukovara; Kompendij dosadašnjih istraživanja”. Prostor 2, no. 1 – 2 (5 – 6) (January 1994): 77 – 96. Karać, Zlatko. “Satelitski industrijski grad koncerna Bata / Satellite Industrial Town of Bata Concern”. In Moderna arhitektura u Hrvatskoj 1930ih / Modern Architecture in Croatia 1930s, edited by Darja Radović-Mahečić, 205 – 208. Zagreb: Institut za povijest umjetnosti, 2007. Karać, Zlatko. Bata-Ville/Borovo, Urbani razvoj i spomenički značaj industrijskog grada europske vrijednosti. Vukovar: Gradska knjižnica, 2008.

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Karlson, Linda. Company towns of the Pacific Northwest. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Lehár, Bohumil. Dějiny Baťova koncernu (1894 – 1945). Prague: Státní nakladatelství politické literatury, 1960. Ljubljanac, Svetlana. “Početak rada fabrike Bata u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji”. Zapisi 4 (2015): 168 – 178. Miletić, Aleksandar. “Deglobalization in the Periphery, Tariff Protectionism in Southeast and East-Central Europe 1914 – 1928”. Tokovi istorije 3 (2014): 69 – 89. Perutka, Lukáš, Milan Balaban and Jan Herman. “The presence of the Baťa Shoe Company in Central America and the Caribbean in the Interwar period (1920 – 1930)”. América Latina en la Historia Económica (ALHE) 25, no. 2 (2018): 47 – 48. Pokluda, Zdeněk. Ze Zlína do světa. Zlín: Nadace Tomáše Bati, 2015. Pokluda, Zdeněk. Baťa, inspirace pro Československo. Zlín: Nadace Tomáše Bati, 2018. Skoupý, Arnošt. Československo-jihoslovanská liga a Svaz jihoslovansko-československých lig v období mezi dvěma světovými válkami. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého 1971. Žanin-Čalič, Mari. Socijalna istorija Srbije 1815 – 1941. Beograd: Clio, 2004. Žebec, Ivana. “Utjecaj češkoga kapitala na razvoj Vukovara u razdoblju između dva svjetska rata”. Društvena istraživanja 17 (2008): 101 – 124.

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Chapter 9 Marking the Political, Cultural and Spatial Boundary Lines of the Working-class in Interwar Period: the Neighbourhood of Peristeri, Athens Abstract: Class polarisation is one of the social aspects of a generalized European war, beginning in 1914 and ending in 1945. World War II was a major breakthrough and led to the culmination of this European social war. The Athenian settlement of Peristeri was mainly inhabited by Minor Asia refugees, but the proportion of internal migrants increased during the interwar period. The majority of these refugees were totally pauper and along with internal migrants were a kind of sub-proletariat, whose ideological and emotional character is perfectly expressed in the rebetiko song of the period (1922 – 1940). They were considered to be the dangerous classes. Even though armed violence was noticed in the area, it was restricted to domestic and private issues and did not acquire political character. The Communist Party endorsed a new combative model of collective action, transforming individual anger into a joint fight against the government and the riot police. The foundation of Lanaras factory and, to a lesser degree, the lignite mine were undoubtedly watersheds in the industrial history of Peristeri. Young people, and predominantly young women, formed a new labour force that enjoyed far more stable and better paid jobs compared to the preceding generation of the working poor. Several number of “sub-proletarians” therefore evolved to “proletarians”. Τhe new labour period of rebetiko song constitutes the representative of the working class, legitimately expressing demands for more freedom against industrial coercion. Axis Occupation seems to have liberated existing dynamics, while the spatial boundaries have already become more intense.

Introduction According to Erzo Traverso, class polarisation is one of the social aspects of a great European war, beginning in 1914 and ending in 1945. Especially, a state of more or less open civil strife was spread amongst Mediterranean countries from the 1930s to the 1940s – from Greece and Yugoslavia to Italy, France and https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-012

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Spain. In addition, his approach to the manifestations of violence and fear was based not only on social and political life but also on music, arts, literature and movies of the time.¹ In the same direction, Iassonas Chandrinos argues that during the interwar time demarcation lines were located and established within European cities enlarged by Axis occupation during World War II. Athens is not an exception, but part of this rule.² According to Lila Leontidou, during this process the role of the city becomes central in relation to capitalist development. To be more precise, a new semi-proletarian fringe with the core refugee population from Asia Minor was formed around the centres of the old cities, and especially that of Athens. As she argues, “at the outskirts of Athens and Piraeus, spontaneous settlements were for some time magnets and greenhouses of an alternative culture that was developed, suppressed, and dampened, until it exploded in the 1940s, but then again was silenced, or rather defeated. In Kesariani, Kokkinia and Peristeri we will find the main nuclei of national resistance against the Axis Occupation in 1941– 44 with the exception of mountainous Greece, where the proletariat of the cities of silence resided”.³ In my perspective, the neighbourhood of Peristeri is a typical case of this phenomenon. The war period is determined by the Axis Occupation of the country, the left-wing resistance movement against the Axis troops and Greek collaborations, the December 1944 riot of the people of Athens after the liberation and the following battles between British troops, Greek government and partisan army. During these years, national liberation acquired an intense class dimension which evolved into an open civil war. The majority of Peristeri people participated actively in the resistance movement taking sides with EAM (National Liberation Front), EEAM (Labour National Liberation Front) and ELAS (National Liberation Army). Choosing the focus in interwar period, this chapter will attempt to highlight those political, ideological and mainly cultural conditions which demarcated the inner borders between the bourgeois center of Athens and the proletarian area of Peristeri and created the conditions and prerequisites for such an ending. The inceptive idea of this chapter’s methodological approach originated from Pamela Swett’s study on interwar Kreuzberg, when the German bourgeoisie faced the danger of a social revolution. According to her approach, individual radicalisation at a cultural level is a prerequisite for political radicalisation  Enzo Traverso, Fire and Blood. The European Civil War, 1914 – 1945 (New York: Verso, 2016).  Iassonas Chandrinos, Πόλεις σε Πόλεμο, ευρωπαϊκά αστικά κέντρα υπό γερμανική κατοχή (Athens: Μωβ Σκίουρος, 2018), 239, 355.  Lila Leontidou, Πόλεις της Σιωπής, Εργατικός εποικισμός της Αθήνας και του Πειραιά, 1909 – 1940 (Athens: ΠΙΟΠ, 2001), 7.

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and collective action. For example, she inextricably links Kreuzberg’s pub culture with the area’s controversial character. In particular, modern Communist ideas reinforced the tendencies of women and young people emancipating in a period of family crisis and generational divisions upsetting and shaking Berlin society during the great economic crisis. As far as the author is concerned, political radicalisation was primarily a local response to the erosion of cultural rules and power structures. Thus, violence as a local strategy evolved into an acceptable tool for social change. This proximity of society to political violence during the last years of the Weimar Republic predicted the expansion and institutionalisation of brutality after January 1933.⁴ At the same period in Greece, liberal democracy was undergoing a constant crisis, obviously unable to manage the acute social issues, causing almost hysterical fear to the middle-class. Communism emerged as either an imaginary or a real danger. So, my basic working hypothesis is that, during the interwar period, cultural individual defiance was being increasingly politically and ideologically colored in Peristeri. Individual radicalisation evolved into collective radicalisation and was identified with emancipatory visions. Violent practices already included in the residents’ everyday life became more political. Specifically, since the mid-1930s, the culture of Rebetikο song, tavern and feasting practices acquire a new proletarian character, gradually progressing towards a political direction, which seems to become clearer during the Axis Occupation. In order to explore this process, this chapter uses a combination of some basic theoretical tools, such as popular culture, working class pole, sub-proletariat, composition of the working class, and the making of the working class. According to Stathis Damianakos, popular culture constitutes a series of everyday practices that are homogenised and normalised by crystallising a class cultural pole distinct from erudite culture that is identified with bourgeoisie and national ideology.⁵ Based on the tradition of the history of everyday life and, especially for the Greek case, on historical anthropology, neighbourhood, work, manhood and femininity, entertainment and alcohol or honour bring out elements of workingclass popular culture, especially in relation to the urban folk songs, represented mainly by the genre of rebetiko.⁶ The concept of class pole is used as the decisive

 Swett Pamela, “Rebellion at home and in the community”, in Neighbors and enemies: the culture of radicalism in Berlin, 1929 – 1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).  Stathis Damianakos, Παράδοση ανταρσίας και λαϊκός πολιτισμός (Athens: Πλέθρον, 1999), 107– 130.  Stathis Damianakos, Κοινωνιολογία του ρεμπέτικου (Athens: Πλέθρον, 2001); Stathis Damianakos, Ηθική και πολιτισμός των επικίνδυνων τάξεων στην Ελλάδα (Athens: Πλέθρον, 2005); Stathis Damianakos, Παράδοση ανταρσίας; Yiannis Zaimakis, Καταγώγια ακμάζοντα, παρέκκλιση και

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factor for the emergence of a strong working class, the formation of a distinct class both in terms of form and culture.⁷ From that perspective, this study is based on the international historiography following the Edward P. Thompson paradigm⁸ and forms part especially of the broader debate on the making of the working class in Greece beginning in 1995 and ongoing to the present day. According to Greek historiography, male skilled artisans and poor plebs without label contributed decisively to the formation of class poles and to the radicalisation of the workers at the beginning of the century and in the interwar period.⁹ As we will see, these labour stratus constituted the population of the Peristeri area until a new proletarian shift emerged, based mainly on female textile workforce and secondarily on male mining workforce. While it is acknowledged that the feminisation of the tobacco workers’ occupation has intensified the radicalisation of the working class in Thessaloniki as a whole,¹⁰ on the other hand, in the case of the interwar textile industry, the relations of gender inequality and hierarchy that transcend factories, in conjunction with bourgeoisie hegemony, appear to limit the workers’ collective action.¹¹ So, following the example of Karl Heinz Roth on the German working class, the emergence of a new industrial shift seems to indicate that the crucial factor in radicalisation was the change of

πολιτισμική δημιουργία στον Λάκκο Ηρακλείου (1900 – 1940) (Athens: Πλέθρον, 1999); Yiannis Zaimakis, “‘Forbidden Fruits’ and the Communist Paradise: Marxist Thinking on Greekness and Class in Rebetika”, Music and politics IV, no. 1 (Winter 2010); Yiannis Zaimakis, “‘Bawdy Songs and Virtuous Politics’: Ambivalence and Controversy in the Discourse of the Greek Left on rebetiko”, History and Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2009): 15 – 36; Efi Avdela, Δια λόγους τιμής: Βία, συναισθήματα και αξίες στη μετεμφυλιακή Ελλάδα (Athens: Νεφέλη 2002); John K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage, A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); Thomas W. Gallant, “Honor, masculinity and Ritual Knife Fighting in Nineteenth Century Greece”, The American Historical Review 105, no. 2 (2000): 359 – 382.  Nikos Potamianos, Οι νοικοκυραίοι, Μαγαζάτορες και βιοτέχνες στην Αθήνα 1880 – 1925 (Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2015).  Edward P. Thomson, The making of the English working class (London: Penguin Books 1991); Ira Katznelson and Aristide Zolberg (eds.), Working-Class Formation, Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).  Antonis Liakos, Εργασία και πολιτική στην Ελλάδα του μεσοπολέμου, Το Διεθνές Γραφείο Εργασίας και η ανάδυση των κοινωνικών θεσμών (Athens: Ίδρυμα Έρευνας και Παιδείας Εμπορικής Τράπεζας της Ελλάδος, 1993); Kostas Fountanopoulos, Εργασία και εργατικό κίνημα στη Θεσσαλονίκη (1908 – 1936), Ηθική οικονοµία και συλλογική δράση στο Μεσοπόλεµο (Athens: Νεφέλη 2005); Leda Papastefanaki, Εργασία, Τεχνολογία και φύλο στην Ελληνική βιομηχανία, Η κλωστοϋφαντουργία του Πειραιά, 1870 – 1940 (Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2009), 411.  Fountanopoulos, Εργασία και εργατικό κίνημα.  Papastefanaki, Εργασία, Τεχνολογία και φύλο.

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the composition of the working class. The new mass worker differs from the artisan worker in that he has the characteristics of a mob, unpredictable, aggressive, prone to violence and apolitical which could not be tackled by either the weapons of criminal repression or the laws against socialism and eventually developed into a protagonist of proletarian self-organization.¹² This author’s suggestion is that focusing on the interaction between workspace and workingclass living space¹³ may direct research to different conclusions, closer to Karl Heinz Roth paradigm. This is because the new industrial shift had its roots in pro-industrial poor plebeian people of Peristeri and its popular culture. The structure of this chapter follows a form of synthesis of the interwar period conditions forming the borders that lead to the Peristeri of resistance during the Occupation. Initially, the process of creating a marginalised neighbourhood as a consequence of the state’s attempt to resolve the refugee issue is examined. Simultaneously, it is attempted to determine the social character of the local population by adopting the designation as sub-proletariat. Subsequently, the refugee character of the neighbourhood is linked to the popular culture of entertainment and the culture of revolt, while the importance of honour in relation to the emergence of armed violence is examined. Subsequently, two major breakthroughs are identified. The first concerns the emergence of collective action and social struggles to assert various demands in the area. The second concerns the proletarianisation of the refugee neighbourhood and the changes in attitudes and culture it has brought about. Finally, to sum up, it is noted that all of the above cultural elements define the class boundary between the center and the neighbourhood, while the breakthrough of resistance leads to the composition of all of them. Therefore, this author’s own research is based on the combination of evidence drawn from published sources, novels, rebetiko songs, some websites or local history books written about Peristeri and particularly newspapers: “small news” and chronicles of everyday life in Athens, providing rich information about district residents. These sources identify several representations of the neighbourhood identity. Unfortunately, the area factory records have been lost.

 Karl Heinz Roth, Die “andere” Arbeiterbewegung und die Entwicklung der kapitalistischen Repression von 1880 bis zur Gegenwart (Taschenbuch, 1974).  Görkem Akgöz και Nicola Pizzolato, “Factory Level Analysis: A Methodological Exploration”, Call for Papers (ELHN Factory History Working Group, 2015).

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The Refugee Issue: Sub-proletariat and Marginalised Neighbourhood Following the great military defeat in the Greek-Turkish war of 1922, Greece was forced to accept more than one million Greek-Orthodox minority members from Asia, in the context of population exchange. Areas around large urban centers were selected to accommodate the new refugees. So, suburbs like Peristeri suddenly came to life. In 1925, the first wooden shack was built, gradually creating a slum in the west of downtown Athens. The Kifissos River was an important geographical boundary determining the region’s physiognomy. At the end of the decade, the settlement was substantially transformed, with a total of 7,268 inhabitants registered in 1928. However, the initial composition of the population changes and the population of the area increases, as a large proportion of the population came from internal migration. In 1928, when the settlement of refugees in Greece was completed, Peristeri was inhabited by 4,163 refugees and 3,287 non-refugees. During the twelve years between 1928 and 1940, although there was no new influx of refugees, the district’s population tripled. It is therefore safe to assume that the proportion of refugees decreased.¹⁴ Certainly, the internal migrants’ presence had a significant impact on the area, but the refugee imprint had a catalyst effect on the suburb’s identity. All these years, infrastructure problems remained high. The Athenian press very often depicts the image of the neighbourhood. In 1929, the area was described as the “bustling district of Athens” and should therefore not be called Peristeri (it means Dove), but Korakiada (it means Crow-Town).¹⁵ The journalists’ gaze captures the sense of the gap between the civilised center and “a hotchpotch of shacks” that “form two lousy African villages plagued by flies, plunged into dirt, suffering by typhoid and paratyphoid”.¹⁶ Indeed, the residents were at the mercy of nature. In 1928 – 1930, tornadoes blew roofs off wooden houses four times,¹⁷ 1929 – 1932 fires completely destroyed houses and shops,¹⁸ while floods often destroyed booths.¹⁹ The residents used to live in a constant “refugee” situation as they soon acquired the designation of flood or fire victims, and the

 Anastasia Triantafillopoulou, Περιστέρι, η ανάπτυξη της πόλης, η δομή και ο ρόλος της τοπικής αυτοδιοίκησης (Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2006), 81– 125.  Εμπρός, April 1, 1929.  Εμπρός, August 17, 1929.  Ελεύθερον Βήμα, January 15, 1928, February 16, 1929 and February 8, 1930.  Ελεύθερον Βήμα, August 29, 1929, May 31, 1930, October 20, 1930, June 2, 1932.  Ελεύθερον Βήμα, February 23, 1930.

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conditions of daily life were extremely difficult, e. g. poor water and power supply.²⁰ Varied diseases along with poverty and malnutrition, and even death, especially in 1931, the year of the beginning of the economic crisis for Greece, are the inseparable companions of the inhabitants.²¹ The refugees found in Greece an economy dominated by small production units. Hence, despite all efforts, until the early 1930s no considerable industrial growth capable of absorbing the abundant labour force took place. On the contrary, the Greek economy simply grew quantitatively retaining its characteristic qualities. Underemployment, extensive self-employment, small-scale trade and “odd jobs” remained the principal forms of employment for the refugees generating a huge poverty-stricken population.²² The majority of refugees that inhabited Peristeri were totally pauper, without substantial means of living or skills and education to earn a living. That was the main difference from other refugee settlements.²³ Concerning Peristeri, no specific provision had been made by the state in order to build manufactures, workshops or factories providing jobs for the refugees, as had other west-side suburbs, i. e. Kokkinia, Drapetsona, Keratsini. Therefore, most of them were forced to seek jobs in Athens. Most new internal migrants were probably added in the existing labour market. Generally, the Peristeri inhabitants were vendors or other professionals working “in the street” like water sellers, greengrocers, carriers; they were occasionally employed as shoemakers, builders, bakers or restaurant employees.²⁴ These people belong, according to Liakos and Pizanias, to “a category without name” and “poor people”,²⁵ i. e. to “the labouring poor who did not suit the usual definition of the working class, as they were not ‘proper’ wage-workers but changed occupation frequently and sought employment equally in wage and in independent jobs, while their households as a rule drew income from multiple resources”.²⁶ Leontidou describes the same social strata as “the floating popula-

 Theodosiou, Περιστέρι, 121– 122.  Theodosiou, Περιστέρι, 108; Rizospastis, 13 March 1931.  Christos Hadziiossif, “Το προσφυγικό σοκ, οι σταθερές και οι μεταβολές της ελληνικής οικονομίας”, in Christos Hadziiossif (ed.), Ιστορία της Ελλάδας του 20ου αιώνα. Μεσοπόλεμος Β1 (Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2003), 9 – 57.  Lila Leontidou, Working class and land allocation, the urban history of Athens, 1880 – 1980 (London: The London School of Economics, 1981), 134– 140.  Nikos Sfakianakis, Το Περιστέρι στην Αντίσταση 1941 – 1944 (Athens, 1993), 20.  Liakos, Εργασία και πολιτική στην Ελλάδα, and Petros Pizanias, Οι φτωχοί των πόλεων.Η τεχνογνωσία της επιβίωσης στην Ελλάδα το μεσοπόλεμο (Athens: Θεμέλιο, 1993).  Nikos Potamianos, “‘Οι πλάνητες υιοί του Ερμού’: πλανόδιοι έμποροι στους δρόμους της Αθήνας 1890 – 1930”, in Maria Christina Chatziioannou (ed.), Ιστορίες λιανικού εμπορίου 19ος – 21ος αιώνας (Athens: Εθνικό Ίδρυμα Ερευνών, 2018), 111– 145.

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tions of the informal sector” in the underdeveloped countries.²⁷ According to Stathis Damianakos, modern pauperisation is a sub-product of the industrial civilisation and the main source of the sub-proletariat. In particular, the latter includes at least three large categories. The first, lumpen-proletariat, is formed by the strictly delineated criminal underworld. The second comprises the mass of the idle and wandering lumpen proletarians who live in chronic squalor dropped out of society. The third concerns “broad layers of sub-proletarians made up of unemployed, seasonal workers or manual labourers whose exhausting work, insecurity and abject poverty stand as obstacles to their sufficient integration into the working class, and former farmers, victims of over-urbanization […] who can possibly at any time, depending on the socioeconomic conjuncture, be re-integrated into the proletariat”.²⁸ In every respect up to 1934 the world of Peristeri corresponds to the two last broad categories described. This approach differs from the traditional Marxian aspect where the sub-proletariat is a derivative of proletariat.²⁹ These populations left outside the legalised labour market became the “dangerous class” not coming from the “respectable” worker position, but from other pro-capitalistic respectable strata (farmers, artisans, shopkeepers). They lost their social prestige due to the nationalisation of the Ottoman Empire (refugees) or the urbanisation of rural population in Greece (internal migrants). For them, the proletarianisation was just an open possible path to acquire again an honourable position, that is to say, to be integrated in the national society. So, the sociogenesis and/or reproduction of Peristeri profile is associated precisely with the sub-proletarian character of the neighbourhood.

Refugee Neighbourhood, Popular Culture and Rebellion Damianakos regards working-class suburbs as a determining factor of popular culture with particular traits radically distinct from the middle-class and upper-class. Neighbourhood, as social articulation between households and people, as cohabitation, constitutes a fundamental form of quotidian life. It defines the public space where habits, values, mores, norms of coexistence, modes of entertainment, gender and age roles take shape. It frames collective memory,

 Leontidou, Working class and land allocation, 50 – 53, 65.  Damianakos, Παράδοση ανταρσίας, 111– 112, 131.  Karl Marx, “Class Struggles in France”, in Marx and Engels, Collected Works 10 (Moscow: Progress, 1978), 62.

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cultural and vocational identity, political and class consciousness. It represents a mechanism of solidarity and collective management of poverty and, ultimately, of any kind of hardship.³⁰ In practice, in neighbourhood there is a kind of extension of family to what we should conceive as a fluid boundary between private and public spheres. Nikos Theodosiou gives an articulate account of this relation: “In Peristeri, poverty does not isolate people from one another as usual. […] People always stand by the side of their neighbours in need”.³¹ In Peristeri, the ideological and emotional character of sub-proletariat originated under-employment conditions that are so perfectly expressed in the rebetiko song of the period (1922– 1940): “A world of lost hope, endless sadness and failure, agony, fleeing to dream, anathema against fate”, combined with feelings of pride.³² Rebetiko was a musical genre with great popularity among the lower urban strata. It emerged in the hashish dens and prisons expressing the underworld population. A second period of classic rebetiko started with the arrival of the Asia Minor refugees in 1922 and ended approximately in 1940.³³ In rebetiko songs of this era, absent is any reference to the world of labour or social consciousness, while there is praise of the virtues of the stoner, the “patron” and the “free woman”.³⁴ The region of Peristeri is at the heart of this ideology. A typical example is a song, written in 1932, by Panagiotis Tountas, about a “dude” trying to impress “a ‘belle’ from Peristeri” who “is looking for a man, a trickster and a vagabond”. Through flirting, the “belle” self-defines herself as a womantrophy and motivates him to claim her by advocating a manhood clearly defined by the capacity for quarrels and bragging for them. In other words, the pattern is not the breadwinner man, but the warrior guy who will impress the “belle” with the brutality. Coffeeshop, barbershop, tavern and hash-house are male-oriented sociality spaces for conversation and political debate. In 1930, a chronicler describes an afternoon meeting at a folksy tavern in Peristeri. Using heavy slang, he depicts the bunch consisting of a butcher, a little barber and a coalman. The bunch drinks, treats, but also “discusses the Greek-Turkish friendship wrecked by the red wine”.³⁵ The Peristeri refugees face the crucial issue that concerns them, namely the Greek-Turkish Friendship Pact in 1930, within their own cultural context. In another similar story, bouzouki (string instrument) and ammanes (Greek-

     

Damianakos, Κοινωνιολογία του ρεμπέτικου, 107– 109. Nikos Theodosiou, Περιστέρι: Γνωρίζω την πόλη μου (Peristeri, 2004). Damianakos, Παράδοση ανταρσίας, 113. Damianakos, Κοινωνιολογία του ρεμπέτικου, 109 – 167. Damianakos, Κοινωνιολογία του ρεμπέτικου, 121– 125. Εμπρός, November 6, 1930.

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Ottoman song) of a bunch of individuals attract refugees, from “all over Peristeri area”. But when the police arrive to arrest them the story sees them “receiving a few smacks as a treat” and running way, with the remaining “bros” drinking two barrels of wine and the feast lasting until the early morning hours.³⁶ Victory belongs to a neighbourhood in which state repression does not appear to have the power to impose the necessary discipline on the grassroots. This narrative encompasses all the ideological shapes of the marginalised world: feasting practices, bravery and ridiculing policemen. What is remarkable, however, is that in the centre of the rebellion the real protagonist is the whole Peristeri. However, in another situation the feast led to violence, such as in 1925 when “fun-drinkers injured each other using chairs, tables, bars” and “ended up at the police station, under custody”. In this story, the state manages to dominate the divided, however, inhabitants of Peristeri.³⁷ According to Vergopoulos, rebetiko “did not directly challenge the power relationships but their manifestations in everyday reality and, in this sense, it constituted a ‘secondary’ resistance in the wider terrain of the struggle against ruling class hegemony”.³⁸ In the rapidly growing Peristeri, “sub-proletarians” carrying rebetiko culture “presented the potential threat of the ‘masses’ to the dominant classes”.³⁹

Neighbourhood, Honour and Armed Violence Armed violence is observed in the area of Peristeri and is an element of ordinary people culture during the interwar period. However, it is confined to domestic and private issues and does not acquire political character. The neighbourhood sets the rules which the people ought to obey. Abiding by these rules brought honour. Honour, Efi Avdela argues, is the recognition of one’s esteem first in their own eyes and above all in the eyes of the others. The identification of the individual with their family, the immediate impact of the attitude of one family member on the honour of the other, the familial dimension of honour and prestige mean that the offence committed by one family member can bring dishonour to all and the head of family in particular. Disreputable behaviour of family females is experienced traumatically by men.⁴⁰ As John Camp    

Εμπρός, October 17, 1930. Εμπρός, March 4, 1925. Zaimakis, “‘Bawdy Songs and Virtuous Politics’”, 16, 20 – 1. Leontidou, Working class and land allocation, 123. Avdela, Δια λόγους τιμής, 113, 125.

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bell demonstrates in his study of mountain livestock communities, honour relies for men on “manliness” and for women on “shame”.⁴¹ Shame is that what leads to catharsis, to what Efi Avdela defines as “intimate violence”, that is the violence in private, personal or family affairs.⁴² Attitudes considered as pre-modern and characteristic of rural regions or under-world are not only preserved but also reproduced in the new urban context, like Peristeri. The internal migrant’s presence affects this direction. For example, in 1928 two men from Mani, a place famous for vendetta culture, are involved in revenge killings.⁴³ In Peristeri, typical situations of intimate violence are identified. In 1931, a tailor coming back home drunk threatened to kill his wife and daughters and set fire to their shack. Neighbours will intervene, extinguish the fire and hand over the culprit to the police. The reason of the attack was the “downfall” of tailor’s daughter that compromised the family’s and father’s honour. The conditions in the neighbourhoods did not have the strictness of the closed structures of the villages in the province. The fluidity between the family and the neighbourhood has allowed family members, especially women, to move freely and safely within the boundaries of the neighbourhood. This must have been the reason that fostered the general representation in the non-refugee population of women in the refugee settlements being keen on a kind of “libertinage”.⁴⁴ In any case, this freedom tested the man’s control over the rest of the family and created an ongoing crisis of masculinity. Yet this newly acquired liberty put male supremacy within family under trial up to the point of overturning violent roles between the sexes in some cases. A refugee was beaten by both his wife and mother-in-law. Α shack dweller had alcohol poured over him by his ex-wife and was set on fire. Α wine merchant was shot with a gun by a twenty-five-year-old “abandoned” woman.⁴⁵ This incident was regarded as remarkable from the Athinaika Nea reporter since women who were perpetrators of honour crimes usually attacked with vitriol and not with a pistol, which was considered a “male” weapon. So, it seems that in the world of the sub-proletariat, the family takes a contradictory position to that of the rural world. The patriarchal ideal was under threat and the reason was underemployment. For instance, a man who committed an honour crime by injuring his wife was working as wandering gramophone

 Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage, 192.  Avdela, Δια λόγους τιμής, 113, 125.  Ελεύθερον Βήμα, August 23, 1929.  Menelaos Haralampidis, “Πρόσφυγες και γηγενείς στη μεσοπολεμική Αθήνα”, in Η ιστορία της Μικράς Ασίας”, vol. 7 (Athens: Κυριακάτικη Ελευθεροτυπία, 2011), 27– 28.  Ελεύθερον Βήμα, September 22, 1943.

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disc jockey, clearly an indication of a downgraded social status.⁴⁶ In other case, a twenty-eight-year-old bus collector killed his fiancé because her mother failed to promise a marriage when he was fired. His inability to meet the expected financial status made the bride’s mother-in-law look to other grooms.⁴⁷ This crisis could be possibly reflected on the intra-familial male hierarchy: a fifty-five-yearold father stabbed his thirty-year-old son when the son reprimanded the father for speaking rudely to his mother.⁴⁸ Many times, gender-based intimate violence was financially motivated.⁴⁹ It can also be assumed that in this marginalised area illegal activities and relationships with abusers, smugglers, or pimps are promoted, as the relevant literature generally mentions for all these neighbourhoods.⁵⁰ However, it doesn’t impress the delinquency, but the ability of its residents and especially the shopkeepers to defend themselves armed. In 1929, of the dozens of burglaries of a gang, only in the case of the Peristeri burglary were they perceived by the shopkeeper who chased them and exchanged shots with them.⁵¹ In 1927, “for insubstantial reason”, two groups of refugees in an admittedly merry mood engaged in a brawl that turned the whole settlement into a field of battle, with twenty bullets in total shot.⁵² In 1933, a resident disturbs the entire settlement by hurling obscenities and firing gunshots to intimidate a drunkard sitting on his doorstep.⁵³ One year later, newspapers described a bloody nocturnal clash between two coffee countermen shooting inside the neighbourhood and injuring a thirty-five-year-old woman, owner of a nearby restaurant; the reason was the competition between the two cafes for the table seats area.⁵⁴ All these examples indicate that general underemployment and polymorphous constant threats trigger a kind of male violent radicalisation. However, this male radicalisation is rather different from its rural counterpart, although it has similarities and common roots, as neighbourhood conditions themselves on the one hand defined patriarchal ideals and on the other hand restricted men to carry and live by them and offered more opportunities for women and young members to resist. Still, the widespread use of guns in Peristeri is notice-

        

Ελεύθερον Βήμα, May 11, 1936. Theodosiou, Περιστέρι, 215. Ibid., 219. Αθηναϊκά Νέα, December 21, 1935. Damianakos, Παράδοση ανταρσίας, 113. Ελεύθερον Βήμα, September 24, 1929. Η Ελληνική, July 17, 1927. Theodosiou, Περιστέρι, 219. Εμπρός, July 28 – 29, 1928.

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able, as almost everyone seems to own or easily acquire a revolver, and in general residents seem familiar with armed violence and the use of guns until the death of an opponent. After all, death itself is very familiar to refugee populations. In other words, in the interwar period the people in Peristeri were immersed with the possibility of armed defense of their individual honour and existence. However, this option was not linked to any universal collective demands and remained a personalised choice. However, as we will see, in the 1940s this familiarisation with armed violence will acquire more political characteristics and will be linked to collective action and the broader resistance movement.

Collective Action and Social Struggles According to Leontidou, “labour consciousness is actually born in the city”. The very concentration of large numbers of workers “makes their common conditions seen”.⁵⁵ Until the early 1930s, refugees were, in their majority, affiliated with the Liberal Party of Eleftherios Venizelos through strong hierarchical “patron-client” relations and refugee associations.⁵⁶ In 1929, the Liberal Political Union was established in Peristeri, while in 1926 it had already founded a youth branch of the Party; soon many unions would be established.⁵⁷ At the same period, residents mainly expressed their protests and demands during the rallies of the candidates, as well as in newspaper correspondences. Gradually, they began to protest in a more intense fighting spirit. A decisive breakthrough was the frustration with the Liberal Party after the signing of the Greek-Turkish Friendship Pact in 1930. In the same year, the first organisation of the Communist Party of Greece (ΚΚΕ) was formed and soon it succeeded in taking over the administration of the largest refugee union. The presence of the Communist Party divided the neighbourhood by polarising the refugees into two large groups, the Communists and the Anti-Communists.⁵⁸ KKE endorsed a new combative model of collective action, transforming individual anger into a joint fight against the government and the riot police. The emergence of the left, therefore, reinforced the tendencies to transcend sectarian perceptions by expanding “solidarity” to more universal and class-based perceptions of the neighbourhood. Struggle Committees and People’s Assemblies were  Leontidou, Working class and land allocation, 59.  George Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922 – 1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).  Ακρόπολις, April 29, 1929.  Ριζοσπάστης, July 21, 1931.

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set up to tackle day-to-day problems and new Unions by introducing new repertoires of political action. Hence, concerning a problem over which Peristeri residents had frequently fought each other in the past, the dire scarcity of water, the KKE, instead of in-fighting, urged “the working people and poor commoners to reinforce the struggle committee and to mobilize it towards their demands for water, roads and electric lights”.⁵⁹ These radical practices caused state violence. Instigated by the Communists, refugees, victims of wildfires, tried to occupy vacant built houses not rented yet. However, their plans were foiled by the police and guards were installed in time.⁶⁰ This kind of movement had an ephemeral nature, as Leontidou argues,⁶¹ but formed a radical tradition in the area. The presence of Communist youth became intense in the area, and all cultural and political events were held at the “Bijoux” dancing hall, the predominant place for socialising and entertaining the youth. This juvenile radicalisation caused a number of new gender, generational and political rifts in traditional hierarchies. For example, a girl from Peristeri abandoned her family in a conflict with her father who forbade her from being a member of a communist organisation. In the press, the abandonment of family house due to political disagreements was commented upon as a new and incomprehensible phenomenon, because until then the usual issue of disagreement was love.⁶² In 1933, a Peristeri resident denounced his brother as a ratter and communist murderer, and also accused him of violent behavior against him.⁶³ In this case, the common feeling of hostility against the police acquired a political character. In other words, the traditional male honour also attracted a new political-moral dimension. Communist action activated both the state and the conservative circles. Specifically, a letter from residents in a newspaper highlights, among other demands, the strengthening of the police to counter communism. During most of the electoral campaigns KKE representatives and candidates received threats from the Liberals, the mayor’s men and suffered police discrimination and suppression.⁶⁴ In September of 1932 KKE members violently attempted to hold back the establishment of a rival “struggle committee” in upper Peristeri.⁶⁵ During the same period, clashes between Communists and members of the newly founded fascist organ-

      

Ριζοσπάστης, April 12, 1933. Theodosiou, Περιστέρι, 120. Leontidou, Working class and land allocation, 59. Αθηναϊκά Νέα, August 19, 1932. Ριζοσπάστης, April 2, 1933. Ριζοσπάστης, March 13, 1932. Ριζοσπάστης, August 4, 1932.

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isation Sidira Irini (Iron Peace) took place.⁶⁶ Finally, the youth culture flourishing around “Bijoux” dancing hall moved towards a completely different direction from that of the rebetiko climate, which was negatively valued by the Communists and linked to the lumpen character of the far-right.⁶⁷ The far-right radicalisation is also reflected in Peristeri. The majority of its representatives were probably natives, but it also consisted of refugees, frustrated by all parties. In the 1936 elections in Peristeri, a 51 % alliance of venizelist parties prevailed, but the second party was the far-right General Radical Union with 20.12 %, third was the People’s Party with 15.16 % and fourth was the People Front (KKE) with 9.55 %, less than its Pan-Hellenic percentage. However, in the 1935 elections, from which the Liberals abstained, their votes were channeled to the KKE, which came locally second after the People’s Party.⁶⁸ Τhe term “venizellocommunism”, used by the interwar press, describes the common political tank between the KKE and the Venizelism camp. It also shows signs of a greater impact of Communist radicalism on society compared to what the election results reflect.⁶⁹ The influence of the People’s Party, a party with anti-refugee ideology, is mainly associated in Peristeri with the strong core of native people, who, in the 1934 municipal elections, were able to elect a native mayor because of the split of the Liberals into six ballots. The new mayor and his surroundings fed a great deal of hatred for the refugees and expressed it in every way. Soon there was a large wave of indignation against the mayor, dominated by complaints in the press and protests which arrived in violent attacks against municipal officials – they were native from Mani – who swore at refugees.⁷⁰ In other words, a major inter-war conflict between refugees following the Liberals and natives following the People’s Party has become rife in local society. However, in the case of Peristeri we do not encounter only the typical conflict between old and new residents. We also encounter a conflict between several different groups of new residents.

    

Ριζοσπάστης, April 19, 1932. Ριζοσπάστης, June 1, 1933. Leontidou, Working class and land allocation, 164. Triantafilopoulou, Περιστέρι, η ανάπτυξη της πόλης. Fountanopoulos, Εργασία και εργατικό κίνημα. Theodosiou, Περιστέρι, 172– 174.

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The Proletarianisation of the Refugee Neighbourhood According to Leontidou, the connection of industry and the city was reversed in the case of industrialisation in underdeveloped countries. The location of factories was so crucial that it could centralise or decentralise the settlement network.⁷¹ From 1932 onwards an “unwanted industrial growth” started taking place insofar as agricultural protectionist policies favoured the emergence of large industrial units in the urban centres. The refugee suburbs of Athens and Piraeus came forth as the hotbed of this boom,⁷² particularly after the 1929 crash, when industrial activity was kept alive mainly thanks to the expansion of the textile, cotton and wool processing industries. The extreme cheapness of labour force, women’s labour above all,⁷³ certainly proved highly favourable to this development. These favourable conditions for industrial investment after 1932 brought the Lanaras brothers, industrialists from Naoussa in Northern Greece, to Peristeri where ample women’s labour force existed. They were to set up in 1933 their first textile plant which would become one of the largest in the Balkans. The products were originally mainly textiles for the army. In 1938 the factory extended its line to produce new products intended for the free market and, very soon, for export. At its initial stage, in 1934, the plant employed 1,800 workers, women and residents, a total that would later reach 2,500 workers in the late 1930s.⁷⁴ The factory owners argued that the plant’s installation would permanently solve the problem of underemployment in the area. According to the press, “this dead part of Athens has taken on a whole new life, and the neighbouring refugee settlement of Peristeri blesses the erection. Thousands of workers from this settlement offer their work and thousands of families survive and thank the founders. It is touching to see the whole of this working world disciplined, willing and modest to go to work in the morning and merry to leave in the evening […]”.⁷⁵ In 1939, the plant emerged as a pioneer in protecting the health of workers, creating large luminous spaces, using dehumidifiers, dust absorbers and radiators, but mainly in free feeding.⁷⁶ However, labour press presents an-

     

Leontidou, Working class and land allocation, 43. Hadziiossif, “Το προσφυγικό σοκ”. Papastefanaki, Εργασία, Τεχνολογία και φύλο. Οικονομικός Ταχυδρόμος, December 16, 1934; Sfakianakis, Το Περιστέρι στην Αντίσταση, 53. Οικονομικός Ταχυδρόμος, December 16, 1934. Οικονομικός Ταχυδρόμος, August 31, 1945.

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other aspect of working life. In contrast, the difficulty of adapting to mechanical discipline and fatigue, such as stopping for a cigarette, often resulted in fines that cumulatively reduced workers’ wages. Protests of the Athens Labour Center and the workers are numerous and portray life inside the factory as a “hell”. The indignation against the supervisors and responsible departments and engineers was intense. The monthly income was seven hundred to nine hundred drachmas for women, eight hundred to one thousand drachmas for men. After the end of the shift, workers were subjected to a shameful search for stolen fabrics.⁷⁷ Beyond the upswing in industrialisation, the Great Depression forced Greece into self-sufficiency in raw material resources. This tendency compelled the installation of numerous lignite mines to supply thermal power stations with the necessary fuel. In the wider area of Peristeri rich reserves of lignite had been discovered. For the 1935 – 1936 mining of lignite started by Lignite Mines of Attica, Inc., the company employed three hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty workers. In 1941, the mine produced 4,000 tons per month.⁷⁸ An indication of the cultural characteristics of this male youth worker population is seen with a 1940 news report that two miners, a twenty-year-old and a twenty-five-yearold, removed 1,500 drachmas from their colleague’s clothes.⁷⁹ It seems that elements of the sub-proletariat’s pre-existing male culture in Peristeri are reproduced in this working strata. The foundation of Lanaras factory and, to a lesser degree, the lignite mine were undoubtedly watersheds in the industrial history of Peristeri. In the late 1930s, 2,500 out of the 3,500 industrial workers in Peristeri (71.42 %) were employed in the Lanaras factory, one fifth of the whole population in a town of 20,000 people. Thus, we can easily imagine that the fate of almost every family in the suburb was somehow related to the factory. Despite the intensity of the exploitation, injuries and occupational diseases, hygiene conditions were relatively good. Young people, and predominantly young women, form a new labour force that enjoys far more stable and better paid jobs compared to the preceding generation of the working poor. More specifically, the considerably improved living standards of young women cause remarkable turnabouts with regard to gender roles: young girls can have now much higher income as industrial workers than the male members of their families or the underemployed and underpaid men of the old generation of the working poor (parents, siblings, relatives, neighbours), causing, as we will show, overturns of existing patriarchal rela Ριζοσπάστης, September 6, 1933, October 7, 1933, November 6, 1933, November 18, 1933, June 6, 1934, June 18, 1934, August 1, 1935, March 1, 1936, March 4, 1936.  Sfakianakis, Το Περιστέρι στην Αντίσταση, 20.  Αθηναϊκά Νέα, March 16, 1940.

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tions. At the same time, a stable male labour force is formed around the lignite plant. So, several number of “sub-proletarians” evolved to “proletarians”, following a different course in relation to the Marxian model. Proletarianisation became for them the path to reestablish an honourable position as “respectable” industrial workers. That was a way to be integrated in the national society, especially during the Metaxas fascist dictatorship (1936 – 1940), as it constituted a nationalist approach of worker identity.⁸⁰ To sum up, in Peristeri a new, more proletarian, working-class composition is formed, affecting, as we see, the overall culture of the region.

The New Proletarian Culture: Labour Songs and Neighbourhood Industrialisation is a motor force of modernisation in all aspects of social and quotidian life. New forms of cultural communication among the new workingclass generation arise. The ballrooms, like “Bijoux” dancing hall, emerge as a modern scene of cultural expression influenced by western music and mores.⁸¹ However, a new character of rebetiko song gradually emerged during the late 1930s. The new songs “tend to fit into the working-class ideology”, as they are characterised by the denial of the lumpen and miserable life of the sub-proletariat. These are replaced by hope and constant struggle for a better future.⁸² Composers and singers become famous and the new entertainment centre is the club, a modern version of the tavern.⁸³ Towards the end of the 1930s, many outsiders would regularly visit the famous clubs of Peristeri.⁸⁴ As a whole, this prevailing shift from tavern to club corresponds to a transforming popular culture in industrial suburbs like Peristeri. The interrelation of industry and suburban life forges a new twofold identity for Peristeri as a working-class hometown. It seems that the predominance of feminised labour leads to a feminisation of Peristeri’s identity. More specifically, the Peristeri woman (Peristeriotissa) is, at the same time, conceived as Lanaras

 Christos Souroulis, “Ο εθνικός λόγος της 4ης Αυγούστου 1936”, MA Thesis, University of Crete, Rethymno, 2001.  Theodosiou, Περιστέρι, 145 – 147.  Damianakos, Παράδοση ανταρσίας, 112, 115.  Zaimakis, “Bawdy Songs and Virtuous Politics”, 27– 28.  Ελεύθερον Βήμα, June 6, 1940.

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woman (Lanariotissa) in the popular imagination. In 1939, Panagiotis Tountas wrote a song titled A Young Girl from Peristeri which eventually came to be known under the title Lanaras Woman: A lass from Peristeri works in Lanaras All day long at the winter, the evening she’s back to me She puts on make up; puts on lipstick and we go out We start hitting the bottle at the tavern And when the young lass has one too many, she will cry out ‘Oh my! My mind is swirling like a winder and spinning like a loom’ Then we head back home and amid the street Like a magnet she draws me to her and gives me her kisses Next morning distressed and down in the dumps She gets back to her loom and Lanaras

In this song Lanariotissa is presented with a double identity. At night she is depicted as a liberated working woman, who seeks to fulfil her right to live her own life, at least during her leisure time. By morning she is the opposite, as she loses her power and therefore goes disciplined to the factory to work. Consequently, the representation of the new working woman, that is to say, the independent woman of the working class, has come a long way from the standards of the victimised woman in the patriarchal society. However, at the same time she remains subordinate to factory discipline. In Theodosiou’s novel, women of the neighbourhood and workers at Lanaras are thrilled to hear the song’s lyrics for the first time.⁸⁵ New rebetiko songs no longer express the pain of the sub-proletariat, but the cadence of the working class for its lost freedom. The neighbourhood is now defined as the opposing pole of the factory, the space of freedom over the field of discipline. Thus, this kind of lyrics is connected to new forms of workingclass consciousness and self-awareness. This is the third phase of the rebetiko, and is called by Damianakos “the labour phase”, lasting from 1940 to 1953.⁸⁶ However, the song Lanariotissa shows that it had begun a little earlier. It also seems that the rebetiko evolution is following the working people’s evolution from sub-proletariat to proletariat formation. Rebetiko does not keep challenging “directly the power relationships”, as Vergopoulos suggested, but now the manifestation of everyday reality and the “‘secondary’ resistance in the wider terrain of the struggle against ruling class hegemony” change and acquire a new proletarian content.⁸⁷

 Theodosiou, Περιστέρι.  Damianakos, Κοινωνιολογία του ρεμπέτικου, 109 – 167.  Zaimakis, “Bawdy Songs and Virtuous Politics”, 20.

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As long as the new working-class generation and, particularly, the working girls in the Lanaras factory become increasingly autonomous or seek energetically their autonomy, inevitable fissures run up to the whole of established gender and family hierarchies. For instance, a wall painter attempted to kill his sister because “he suspected that Maria had a lover and on top of that she met up with him after exiting the Lanaras textile mill”. The reason was that he simply did not find her outside the factory when she finished work.⁸⁸ The freedom of movement between home and factory obviously allowed the young industrial worker to escape the stranglehold of male control, to feel autonomous. The brother practiced one of the most notoriously unstable craft professions, and his aggressive action was linked to the wider concerns of male artisans in the face of the threat of industrialisation and overall opposition to modernism, particularly with regard to the liberation of women.⁸⁹ In fact, the exit of Lanaras was part of a meeting of the two sexes and, therefore, a place of free flirtation. In a novel by Nikos Theodosiou, the bride met the groom at the factory where he worked as an engineer. The meeting took place after the clock out. However, she had previously seen him at the “Bijoux” dancing hall for the first time.⁹⁰ In Rizospastis, there is a discourse of moral panic against women’s work at Lanaras that may reflect the broader climate. Specifically, a worker signs a response in which, in addition to “hunger strikes, daily crippling”, “Lanaras paradise” is compounded with “the corruption of our girls and our brothers”.⁹¹ In communist moral rhetoric, members of the bourgeoisie, such as the “Lanarades”, i. e. Lanaras family, appear as the main representatives of the degenerate bourgeois society that threatens the honour of the workers and is rescued by honest male workers. On 13 April 1935, KKE organised an anti-fascist demonstration of six hundred solidarity protesters from the student movement outside the factory gates.⁹² In March 1936, a response to the Rizospastis newspaper, signed by “many male and female workers”, targeted the department chiefs and called for the organisation of committees.⁹³ An important element in the presence of the KKE in the factory is the equal participation of women with that of male workers, while the morality approach is no longer present in the Rizospastis responses.

 Ελεύθερον Βήμα, June 9, 1935.  Ava Baron, “Masculinity, the embodied male worker, and the historian’s gaze”, International Labor and Working-Class History (2006), 144– 145.  Theodosiou, Περιστέρι.  Ριζοσπάστης, October 7, 1933.  “Документы советской эпохи” [Document of the Soviet era], http://sovdoc.rusarchives.ru/ (accessed November 18, 2019).  Ριζοσπάστης, March 1, 1936; June 19, 1936.

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The leftist practices of collective resistance and action had been immersed in the new working environment. On 19 June 1936, one month after the great workers’ revolt in Thessaloniki and a few weeks before the coup of the fascist Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas, the KKE organised a factory assembly with the participation of seven hundred men and women workers.⁹⁴ In any case, with the operation of the Lanaras factory, a new ideological dipole is being formed with, on the one hand, the paternalistic rhetoric of Lanaras’ industrialists, and on the other its challenge by radicalised workers. The first seems to be in total connection to the dictatorial regime of Ioannis Metaxas, which was imposed on 4 August 1936. The fascist dictator himself believed that the trade union state had a rural and labour basis, while the dictatorial government implemented a modern social policy.⁹⁵ Peristeri was at the centre of these changes as the operation of the Social Insurance Institution branch on 1 December 1937 was promoted by the regime.⁹⁶ The anniversary of the coup was also celebrated in Peristeri with great brilliance and wide participation.⁹⁷ Moreover, a branch of the fascist National Youth Organisation was active in the area. So, a large part of the population was certainly inspired by the dictatorial regime. However, it appears that the left continued to intervene illegally in the area and inside Lanaras.⁹⁸ Singing new rebetiko songs, the left workers could probably express their resistance simultaneously against the dictatorship of Metaxas and/or Lanaras. In the late 1930s, and just before the outbreak of World War II, the situation in Peristeri seems to have changed. Fascist dictatorship has succeeded in resolving important aspects of the social question by providing the area with social peace and the working class with measurable material benefits. In addition, there was a state ideology which embodied the workers into the nation. At the same time, the disappearance of all bourgeois parties and the targeting of the KKE allows communism to emerge as the only political opposition against the regime, even in a defeated and disorganised situation, as it had managed to control the Communist Party itself and to obtain many arrests of its members.⁹⁹ Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that the new rebetiko song constitutes the representative of the working class by legitimately expressing demands for more freedom against industrial coercion. It seems that during the last years

     

Ριζοσπάστης, June 19, 1936. Souroulis, “Ο εθνικός λόγος της 4ης Αυγούστου”. Ελεύθερον Βήμα, October 8, 1938. Αθηναϊκά Νέα, July 29, 1938, July 27, 1940. Ελεύθερον Βήμα, April 12, 1939. David H. Close, The Origins of the Greek Civil War (New York: Longman, 1995), 35 – 40.

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of the dictatorship social polarisation has been expressed more than ever before through cultural means.

Borders have been Drawn: the Breakthrough of Resistance Axis Occupation seems to have liberated existing dynamics, while the spatial boundaries have already become more intense. Resistance, identified with the National Liberation Front (EAM) which has prevailed in the neighbourhood, has, along with the program of national liberation and people’s democracy, reinforced the tendencies of extending solidarity to more universal, class and nation perceptions against an external enemy and his collaborators. Every point of social gathering is used as a place of resistance. The “Bijoux” dancing hall became a breadline place and a place for action, while the neighbourhood itself is a haven. The Lanaras plant continued to operate with a staff of approximately 3,500, with another seven hundred employed at the Lignite Mine. Both evolved into the base of EAM’s resistance action, giving it a sense of a proletarian uprising. Mine workers systematically organised sabotage. The intensity of terrorism and the pressure to increase production led to a general strike in early 1943 which bent the administration. Initially, approximately fifteen EAM organisations had been set, which later became forty, under the guidance of a strong KKE organisation that reached seventy members in 1944. Similarly, in Lanaras, since February 1942, a KKE organisation had been set up, when the first successful strike was organised demanding increase of raisins and bread.¹⁰⁰ At the end of the war and during the liberation, EAM took over the management of the plant. The natural border of the Kifissos River offered a great advantage to EAM and its military arm, ELAS (National Liberation Army), as the occupation forces could not easily cross. There was essentially a de facto free zone in which military material was collected, the guerrillas were easy to move and there was a base for raids against occupied military targets.¹⁰¹ The flourishing phenomenon of political violence characterising the era of resistance is now linked to the world of the tavern. It is a common place where people were influenced by the struggle of EAM and ELAS, sang of the guerrilla fight and talked through their songs about the common people’s neighbourhoods during Axis Occupation, the blocks and the militants. Eugenios Pa Sfakianakis, ibid., 37.  Sfakianakis, ibid., 47– 53.

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pachristopoulos, a miner and member of the EAM, narrates a story that took place in 1944 in a tavern at Peristeri that later became a song by Grigoris Bithikotsis, a singer who later became famous and was affiliated with the EAM movement. Papachristopoulos entered with his guns and came face to face with the Germans of the coal mine who were seated at a tavern table. The Germans recognised him and not only did not attack, but joked with his machine gun. The next day Papachristopoulos received in the mine a reprimand and was simply fired. The dialogues, as well as the relatively “mild” reaction, are impressive, because the Germans showed respect or even fear.¹⁰² It seems that the link between rebetiko people and political violence was clearly defined by the EAM uprising. In 1942, the Athinaika Nea newspaper published a satirical poem under the title Peristeri, stigmatising the fervour of violence that swept the suburb: “Peristeri [dove in Greek] settlement should change its name / let it be named Hyena settlement”. This illustrates the perception of Peristeri by external observers as something inherently different, a “den of debauchery and violence”, emphasising the divide between the Athens centre bourgeoisie and the people in Peristeri. Moreover, residents themselves define their own world as different. They are the “west side” of the city, the settlements where “the poor toilers of lower classes” reside, all those who in contrast with the “east side” are underprivileged.¹⁰³ While residents understood the radicalism of violence as an integral part of the moral code that regulated communal life, the external observer, the petit bourgeois journalist, interpreted all this as disorder and misery. Popular culture not only remains antagonistic towards the “bourgeois”, but now determines, geographically and from a class standpoint, a whole separate world. This division came to the surface violently, firstly in the German army and their collaborators’ invasion of the area in June 1944, and, mainly, during the December 1944 uprising against the British army and the national government. The defeat of the resistance movement set the limits of class conflict and geographical polarisation.

Sources Conversation with Evgenios Papahristopoulos, interview with I. Handrinos (Private Archive of I. Handrinos. 2008).

 Conversation with Evgenios Papahristopoulos, interview to I. Handrinos (Private Archive of I. Handrinos, 2008).  Αθηναϊκά Νέα, 14 October 1942.

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“Документы советской эпохи” [Document of the Soviet era]. http://sovdoc.rusarchives.ru/. Accessed November 18, 2019.

Newspapers Akropolis, 1929. Athinaika Nea, 1932 – 1935, 1940, 1942. Elefthero Vima, 1928 – 1946. Elliniki, 1927. Empros, 1928 – 1930. Oikonomikos Tahydromos, 1934, 1945. Rizospastis, 1931 – 1936.

Bibliography Akgöz, Görkem, and Pizzolato Nicola. “Factory Level Analysis: A Methodological Exploration”. Call for Papers (ELHN Factory History Working Group, 2015). Avdela, Efi. Δια λόγους τιμής: Βία, συναισθήματα και αξίες στη μετεμφυλιακή Ελλάδα. Athens: Νεφέλη, 2002. Baron, Ava. “Masculinity, the embodied male worker, and the historian’s gaze”. International Labor and Working-Class History (2006), 144 – 145. Campbell, John K. Honour, Family and Patronage, A Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. Chandrinos, Iassonas. Πόλεις σε Πόλεμο, ευρωπαϊκά αστικά κέντρα υπό γερμανική Κατοχή. Athens: Μωβ Σκίουρος, 2018. Close, David H. The Origins of the Greek Civil War. New York: Longman, 1995. Damianakos, Stathis. Παράδοση ανταρσίας και λαϊκός πολιτισμός. Athens: Πλέθρον, 1999. Damianakos, Stathis. Κοινωνιολογία του ρεμπέτικου. Athens: Πλέθρον, 2001. Damianakos, Stathis. Ηθική και πολιτισμός των επικίνδυνων τάξεων στην Ελλάδα. Athens: Πλέθρον, 2005. Fountanopoulos, Kostas. Εργασία και εργατικό κίνημα στη Θεσσαλονίκη (1908 – 1936), Ηθική οικονοµία και συλλογική δράση στο Μεσοπόλεµο. Athens: Νεφέλη, 2005. Gallant, Thomas W. “Honor, masculinity and Ritual Knife Fighting in Nineteenth Century Greece”. The American Historical Review 105, no. 2 (2000): 359 – 382. Hadziiossif, Christos. “Το προσφυγικό σοκ, οι σταθερές και οι μεταβολές της ελληνικής οικονομίας”. In Ιστορία της Ελλάδας του 20ου αιώνα. Μεσοπόλεμος Β1, edited by Hadziiossif Christos, 9 – 57. Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2003. Haralampidis, Menelaos. “Πρόσφυγες και γηγενείς στη μεσοπολεμική Αθήνα”. In Η ιστορία της Μικράς Ασίας”, vol. 7. Athens: Κυριακάτικη Ελευθεροτυπία, 2011. Katznelson, Ira, and Aristide Zolberg, eds. Working-Class Formation, Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

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Leontidou, Lila. Working class and land allocation, the urban history of Athens, 1880 – 1980. London: The London School of Economics, 1981. Leontidou, Lila. Πόλεις της Σιωπής, Εργατικός εποικισμός της Αθήνας και του Πειραιά, 1909 – 1940. Athens: ΠΙΟΠ, 2001. Liakos, Antonis. Εργασία και πολιτική στην Ελλάδα του μεσοπολέμου, Το Διεθνές Γραφείο Εργασίας και η ανάδυση των κοινωνικών θεσμών. Athens: Ίδρυμα Έρευνας και Παιδείας Εμπορικής Τράπεζας της Ελλάδος, 1993. Marx, Karl. “Class Struggles in France”. In Marx and Engels, Collected Works 10. Moscow: Progress, 1978. Mavrogordatos, George. Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922 – 1936. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Papastefanaki, Leda. Εργασία, Τεχνολογία και φύλο στην Ελληνική βιομηχανία, Η κλωστοϋφαντουργία του Πειραιά, 1870 – 1940. Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2009. Pizanias, Petros. Οι φτωχοί των πόλεων. Η τεχνογνωσία της επιβίωσης στην Ελλάδα το μεσοπόλεμο. Athens: Θεμέλιο, 1993. Potamianos, Nikos. Οι νοικοκυραίοι, Μαγαζάτορες και βιοτέχνες στην Αθήνα 1880 – 1925. Heraklion: Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2015. Potamianos, Nikos. “‘Οι πλάνητες υιοί του Ερμού’: πλανόδιοι έμποροι στους δρόμους της Αθήνας 1890 – 1930”. In Ιστορίες λιανικού εμπορίου 19ος-21ος αιώνας, edited by Maria Christina Chatziioannou, 111 – 145. Athens: Εθνικό Ίδρυμα Ερευνών, 2018. Roth, Karl Heinz. Die “andere” Arbeiterbewegung und die Entwicklung der kapitalistischen Repression von 1880 bis zur Gegenwart. Taschenbuch, 1974. Sfakianakis, Nikos. Το Περιστέρι στην Αντίσταση 1941 – 1944. Athens, 1993. Souroulis, Christos. Ο εθνικός λόγος της 4ης Αυγούστου 1936. Rethymno: Diploma Thesis, University of Crete, 2001. Swett, Pamela. “Rebellion at home and in the community”. In Neighbors and enemies: the culture of radicalism in Berlin, 1929 – 1933. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Theodosiou, Nikos. Περιστέρι: Γνωρίζω την πόλη μου. Peristeri, 2004. Thomson, Edward P. The making of the English working class. London: Penguin Books 1991. Traverso, Enzo. Fire and Blood. The European Civil War, 1914 – 1945. New York: Verso, 2016. Triantafillopoulou, Anastasia. Περιστέρι, η ανάπτυξη της πόλης, η δομή και ο ρόλος της τοπικής αυτοδιοίκησης. Athens: Βιβλιόραμα, 2006. Zaimakis, Yiannis. Καταγώγια ακμάζοντα, παρέκκλιση και πολιτισμική δημιουργία στον Λάκκο Ηρακλείου (1900 – 1940). Athens: Πλέθρον, 1999. Zaimakis, Yiannis. “‘Bawdy Songs and Virtuous Politics’: Ambivalence and Controversy in the Discourse of the Greek Left on rebetiko”. History and Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2009): 15 – 36. Zaimakis, Yiannis. “‘Forbidden Fruits’ and the Communist Paradise: Marxist Thinking on Greekness and Class in Rebetika”. Music and politics IV, no. 1 (Winter 2010).

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Chapter 10 Labour Conflicts: The Case of Labour Arbitration in Italy during the Early Twentieth Century Abstract: The aim of this chapter is to analyse the issue of labour arbitration as a form of regulating and settling individual labour conflicts in Italy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Labour arbitration involved large numbers of workers, above all in the most industrialised area. The paper contemplates two diversely representative contexts for the Italian case: Florence, considered “the most artisan of Italian cities”, and Milan, the most industrially advanced city in the country. Individual conflicts were caused by dissent of an economic nature, but also by cultural clashes that concerned the identities of workers and entrepreneurs in their patterns of behaviour and power relations, involving symbolic elements and rituals structuring relations within the working environment. This complex topic is investigated through a few examples, chosen around some key themes, those that occur most often in disputes, but also those that reveal interesting matters, difficult to find from other sources, such as: gender issues; the “bad character” of the workers; strikes and politics; job insecurity and labour mobility, and the situation of women in the workplace. The disputes appear in this light as a significant social space for the actual determination of the scope and limits of the masters’ authority. These cases, however isolated, through recognition or sanction by a judicial institution, appear to us to have a paradigmatic value: they act as patterns that reinforce specific behaviour and contribute to building a common sense in which new relationships and new limits of entrepreneurial authority were realised.

Introduction The aim of this paper is to analyse the issue of labour arbitration as a form of regulating and settling individual labour conflicts in Italy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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This theme, unlike collective conflicts, was hardly considered by labour historians in the past.¹ Issues such as the actions of trade unions, agitations and strikes generally attracted the attention of contemporary public opinion and of the historians of today. The case of individual conflicts and labour arbitration has never been dealt with. This gap might be due to two different reasons: the first is that in Italy the establishment of labour arbitration colleges was considerably delayed compared to the major European nations, in particular France,² England³ and Germany. These were the countries to which the Italian legislators

 For the Italian case, see Giulio Monteleone, “Una magistratura del lavoro: i collegi dei probiviri nell’industria. 1883 – 1911,” Studi storici 2 (1977): 89 – 90; Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi, Grande industria e legislazione sociale in età giolittiana (Turin: Paravia Scriptorium, 2000); Paolo Passaniti, La questione del contratto di lavoro nell’Italia liberale (Milan: Giuffrè, 2006); Stefano Musso, “Agli albori del diritto del lavoro. I collegi dei Probiviri in Italia (1893 – 1928),” in Per continuare il dialogo. Gli amici ad Angelo Varni, ed. Alberto Malfitano et al. (Bologne: Bononia University Press, 2014), 347– 360; more generally for an overview of the history of work in Italy, cf. Stefano Musso, Le regole e l’elusione: il governo del mercato del lavoro nell’industrializzazione italiana (1888 – 2003) (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 2015).  The development of the probiviri in France is a paradigmatic case, not only for its precocity (the establishment of the first college of probiviri dates back to 1806) but also for the relationship with the Revolution, which poses the problem of the coexistence of the Liberals and liberalists principles applied to the world of work (with very harsh measures such as the “Le Chapelier” law), and the need to preserve certain forms of labour protection previously entrusted to the corporate system. This is a theme that runs throughout the history of the labour and trade union movement in the contemporary age, as the studies of Alain Cottereau have clarified: the councils of the probiviri, in their ambit, constitute an original and complex solution, which operates in the public space and according to general laws, therefore according to republican principles, but with an organisational model that shows strong proximity to corporative models: Alain Cottereau, “La désincorporation des métiers et leur transformation en publics intermédiaires: Lyon et Elbeuf, 1790 – 1815,” in Steven L. Kaplan and Philippe Minard, La France, malade du corporatisme? XVIIIe – XIXe siècle (Paris: Belin, 2004), 97– 145. Alain Cottereau was the first to pose the question in a broad and systematic way, editing Les prud’hommes XIXe – XXe siècle, special issue of Le Mouvement social 141 (1987); in France, studies also developed on the occasion of the bicentenary of 2006, when a major conference entitled, “Histoire d’une juridiction d’exception: les prud’hommes (XIXe – XXe siècles)” was organised in Lyon (March 16 – 17 2006). In those years, other important studies were published by scholars such as Hélène Michel, Laurent Willemez, Claire Lemercier and Jean-Christophe Balois-Proyart.  The English case is particularly interesting because the Italian legislation was inspired by the voluntary character of the institution of industrial tribunals in England. On the origins of industrial arbitration in England, cf. James A. Jaffe, “Industrial Arbitration, Equity, and Authority in England, 1800 – 1850”, Law & History Review 18 (2000): 525 – 558, which shows that the practice of arbitration was widespread in many industrial sectors even well before 1850; cf., on a longer term, James A. Jaffe, Striking a Bargain: Work and Industrial Relations in England, 1815 – 1865 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).

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looked for this and other social reforms, especially after 1882. The law was finally passed in 1893, after a decade of parliamentary discussions, and eventually created the judiciary of arbitrators on a voluntary basis.⁴ For this reason the colleges of “labour arbitration” gradually spread in a very different way on the national territory, that is with a clear privilege for the industrialised regions of the Centre-North and with a very low incidence in the predominantly agricultural regions of the Centre-South. Secondly, in Italy the phenomenon of industrial tribunals was opposed not only by some entrepreneurs, but also by the trade unions and the major political parties of the left, which preferred actions of collective claim. This is because in this period (1896 – 1914) of “industrial take off” in Italy there was a strong employment growth, such as to be able to claim collective wage increases.⁵ Labour arbitration is however a singular phenomenon, which, in a surreptitious way, but persistent at the time and widespread even in small productive entities, involved large numbers of workers, above all in the most industrialised region, the “Italian industrial triangle” (Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria), and also in Tuscany, characterised by a strong presence of small industry and craftsmanship (cf. fig. 1).

 The law provided for rather complex procedures from the bureaucratic point of view. The industrial arbitration was established only on a voluntary basis, that is, either on the initiative of the Ministry (but on the advice or initiative of the Chamber of Commerce, the Municipality and workers’ societies), or on the initiative of these same local subjects, approved by the Ministry.  On the “take off” of Italian industry, cf. Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962); Giorgio Fuà (ed.), Lo sviluppo economico in Italia. Storia dell’economia italiana negli ultimi cento anni, vol. III (Milan: Angeli, 1977); Ruggero Romano, ed., Storia dell’economia italiana, v. III: L’ età contemporanea: un paese nuovo (Turin: Einaudi, 1991).

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Figure .: The colleges of “probiviri” in Italy, .⁶

Overall, in the period between 1896 and 1911, the number of disputes presented annually grew from 14 in 1896 to 6,428 in 1911, for a total of 54,363 disputes in the entire fifteen years. Of these, 30,161 ended with conciliation and 24,202 were settled through jury trials.⁷ The phenomenon is interesting not only from a quantitative point of view. The probiviri rulings allow us to enter the ateliers to investigate the real functioning of power relationships and analyse the forms of everyday conflict between workers and entrepreneurs. In the probiviri arbitrations, the argumentation strategies and evidence from witnesses simulated those of the courtroom by virtue of the physical presence and direct confrontation of the parties. These cases are a particularly useful source not only for identifying the regulatory mechanisms that govern labour relations, but also for understanding the identities and social characteristics of the workers, their arguments, conceptions, models of behaviour and their professional and personal self-identification. The law approved in 1893 contained many limitations. In the first place it applied only to manufacturing enterprises, hence excluding sectors such as com-

 Our data processing from: Giovanni Montemartini, Sui collegi dei probiviri nel periodo 1904 – 1912. Relazione presentata alla Commissione di Statistica e Legislazione presso il Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia nella sessione del luglio 1913 (Rome, 1914).  As for the subject of the disputes, most of them concerned: wages (35.3 %); dismissal or change of the worker’s duties (33.2 %); indemnities for the termination of the employment or internship contracts (10.5 %). Cf. Montemartini, Sui collegi dei probiviri, 52– 53.

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merce, agriculture, transport and all industrial plants and construction sites managed by the state. In the second place it privileged only certain categories of worker, revealing its inadequacies on both the juridical and social levels. Finally, it came rather late, that is, at the time when Italian industrial capitalism, after the years of the Great Depression, was developing rapidly, causing ever more obvious tension between labour and capital, while the working class were reinforcing their own organisations of struggle and tutelage.⁸

The Contexts of Florence and Milan I have chosen to consider two diversely representative contexts for the Italian case: Florence, considered “the most artisan of Italian cities”, and Milan, the most industrially advanced city in the country. As the previous graph shows, they are the capitals of the two regions where the institution of probiviri was more widespread, as well as of two very different environments from the point of view of industrial development. The city of Florence was characterised by the presence of small artisan companies that produced for a local market and an international clientele. These activities were traditionally carried out in a “workshop” where the master craftsman carried out both the technical and the productive and commercial functions of a business. This created a characteristic Florentine artisan culture, and the location of the productive activities in the urban space also shaped in some way the social and economic situation. The historical period examined is that of the transition from forms of small-scale production to a mass industrial one. In this period Florentine craftsmen transformed themselves and adapted to the new conditions of the market. Production became more large-scale and more standardised, but it always maintained its characteristic quality and prestige. Florence relied heavily on “industrial arts” and became one of the most representative centres of these in Europe. Milan, however, was substantially different. Milan was the industrial capital of the country, not only because it was characterised by a greater concentration of medium sized industries, but also because it boasted a rich associative and cultural fabric which supported industrial initiatives with training and welfare

 On the history of labour in Italy see, in general, Stefano Musso, Storia del lavoro in Italia dall’Unità ad oggi (Venezia: Marsilio, 2002); Germano Maifreda, La disciplina del lavoro: operai, macchine e fabbriche nella storia italiana (Milan: Mondadori, 2007).

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organisations for workers. For this reason, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the city became a point of reference for reformist socialism, as well as the Italian trade union movement.⁹ In 1911, at the time of the first Italian industrial census, the distance between the two cities clearly appeared. Florence, compared with other industrial cities in the central north, such as Milan, Turin and Bologna, was the city with the largest number of industrial workers in very small companies (with a number of workers not exceeding ten). Milan, instead, was the city with the lowest number of workers in very small companies, with 20 %, while Florence had almost 40 %.¹⁰ In the first years of the century, through national professional federations and local Chambers of Labour, the trade unions succeeded in Italy in establishing an organisational structure that was able to cover both the more industrially developed areas and the areas where there were only a few small industries and artisanal enterprises. Trade union action therefore was necessary and crucial in disputes of a collective nature; however, a whole range of individual micro-conflicts persisted, which were very important both in themselves and because they allow us to analyse how the working cultures in this period were transforming and renewing themselves. This transformation is evident in the labour arbitration judgements. While sources of collective conflicts are usually examined to assess the opposing “interests”, conciliation mechanisms mainly concerning the economic aspects, in the judgments of labour arbitration it was the cultural aspects that emerged. Individual conflicts are caused by dissent of an economic nature, but also by cultural clashes that concern the identities of workers and entrepreneurs in their patterns of behaviour, power relations and symbolic elements and rituals structuring relations within the working environment. In this area, as we shall see, there are more analogies than disparities between Florence and Milan. This is a fascinating and complex topic that I will deal with through a few examples, chosen around some key themes, those

 In those years Milan was the capital of reformist socialism in Italy as a result of the presence of certain individuals such as Filippo Turati, Claudio Treves and Anna Kuliscioff, and institutions such as the Humanitarian Society. In the city a social conglomeration was formed, similar to the one that Topalov defined, for the French case, as a “reformist galaxy,” open to the themes of modernisation of the country.  Our data processing in: MAIC, Direzione generale della statistica, Censimento degli opifici e delle imprese industriali al 10 giugno 1911, vol. 2, Dati analitici concernenti il numero, il personale e la forza motrice delle imprese censite, che occupavano non più di dieci persone oltre il padrone o direttore (Rome: Tipografia nazionale G. Bertero, 1914), Tav. 2; Cf. also Anna Pellegrino, La città più artigiana d’Italia: Firenze 1861 – 1929 (Milan: Angeli, 2012).

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that occur most often in disputes, but also those that reveal interesting matters, difficult to find from other sources, such as gender issues, the “bad character” of the workers, strikes and politics, job insecurity and labour mobility, and the situation of women in the workplace.¹¹

Irritable and Disrespectful. On the Bad Character of Workers The first aspect is that of the extreme touchiness, the poor predisposition of workers to accept the authority of the entrepreneur if it appears arbitrary or detrimental to their dignity and honour. Angiolo Lattughini, a sculptor worker, reacted abruptly to an unjustified demand of his employer. The dispute was caused by the fact that the entrepreneur Mr. Vannetti found his workman doing a different job from that entrusted to him. Angiolo said that, in the absence of the proprietor and of the eldest son, the new job had been assigned to him by a minor child of Vannetti and by a senior employee. Vannetti ordered him to suspend the new work immediately, “warning that in the future he would have to be given job assignments only by him or his son.” According to the narrative of the ruling, which was not contradicted in the dispute by the worker, the employer had issued such an injunction “in a calm and correct manner.” Despite this, “the easy irritability of the worker provoked in him reactions of protest with blasphemous and non-threatening, but violent acts.” At that point the eldest son of the employer intervened, directing an injurious epithet (crook!) at the worker, causing the situation to deteriorate. Lattughini attempted to come to blows with the owner’s son, which resulted in his immediate dismissal.¹² Even though the worker was clearly in the wrong, having used violence, the arbitrators recognised that the employer’s authority

 For the Florence situation the rulings analysed are those published, from 1904 to 1908, in the Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze (from now on BACCFi). For Milan, the rulings examined come from the archive of the Camera di Commercio di Milano (Chamber of Commerce of Milan), Probiviri, Section II, Internal Commerce.  “Ruling in the case of Angiolo Lattughini domiciled in Florence, at Via Pisana 99, representing himself, against Cesiano Vannetti, domiciled in Florence, at Piazzale Michelangiolo no. 27,” in BACCFi, a. 1904 (Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1905).

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had been exercised contradictorily. The judges accepted a contest of liability and granted the worker compensation and a half share of the costs of judgment. The rebellious character of Florentine workers emerges on other occasions. The typographer Armando Cipriani worked for thirteeen months in a company, undertaking technically qualified work. Despite this, the director Francesco Ciabattini, unhappy with the “irreverent and arrogant” attitude of his worker, decided to dismiss him. The worker denied such a claim. This case is interesting because it is centred on the problem of “conduct.” The board had to resort to testimonials. It emerged from the witness statements that the worker had actually expressed an attitude towards the director which was not respectful, with frequent “lively responses” as well as specific acts, such as refusing to submit a medical certificate for absence due to illness. The dismissal was therefore considered legitimate and no compensation was due. At this point, Cipriani noted that for all thirteen months of his employment he had been undertaking the maintenance of the three electric motors of the plant, a task very difficult technically, which was above and beyond his duties. The director himself admitted the workman’s technical abilities and the satisfactory way he worked. The board then awarded the full amount of compensation. It is clear that in this judgment the object of the dispute was not the professional ability of the worker, but, more generally, his attitude towards his employer,¹³ his refusal to submit to an unjustified affront to his personal and professional dignity.

Timewasters and Subversives. Politics and Strikes Florence was already at that time a “subversive” city.¹⁴ Immediately after the Unification of Italy, it was the headquarters of the most important republican association in Italy, the Artisan Brotherhood, an organisation that had long sought to take the vanguard in the Italian workers’ movement against more moderate ele “Ruling in the case of Armando Cipriani, resident in Florence at Via della Mattonaia no. 10, representing himself, versus Francesco Ciabattini, Manager of the firm A. Montarfano and G. Valcarenghi, resident in Florence at Borgo degli Albizi no. 21,” in BACCFi, a. 1906 (Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1907).  Cf. on the “subversivism” of florentine workers, Stefano Caretti and Maurizio Degl’Innocenti, Il socialismo in Firenze e provincia (1871 – 1961) (Pisa: Nistri Lischi, 1987); Giorgio Sacchetti, Sovversivi in Toscana (Todi: Altre Edizioni, 1983). Cf. also Luigi Tomassini, Associazionismo operaio a Firenze fra ’800 e ’900 (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1984).

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ments based in Piedmont. The city was also an important centre for the dissemination of internationalist and anarchist ideas, and undoubtedly, at the turn of the century, it was one of the cities with the strongest and most active cells of hard line and revolutionary socialism. Despite this, the rulings concerning the political dimension both in Florence and Milan were present, but only to a lesser extent. The simplest explanation for this is that the law on probiviri dealt with individual disputes and not collective ones, such as those concerning strikes. Also influencing this relative scarcity, probably, was the urban context and organisation of production in the two cities. In fact, even though in Milan there was a significant presence of medium-scale industries, also widespread in the Lombard capital were small and very small businesses. Small-scale businesses and the still semi-artisanal structures of production shaped labour relations in such a way as to influence the expression of conflict. This tended to lead to radicalisation in some situations, but also to a shift on to the political level outside the workplace, or to take the form of an assertion of dignity and pride at an absolutely individual level, definable as such in psychological terms (the “bad character” we have previously mentioned). It is apparent from the judgements that the jurisprudence of the labour courts formally recognised the right to collective claim but did not protect the worker as an individual. Such is the case of the mason Gustavo Romei, dismissed without a valid reason by the “master bricklayer” Giuseppe Dini. The documents show that the dismissal was a retaliation, because Romei had participated in the bricklayers’ strike in May 1906, a strike that involved all small and large construction firms. Romei had been the only one to be fired because, unlike his striking comrades, he had not “presented himself to the master the day before.” The worker had returned to work after the strike without performing that symbolic act of acknowledgment of the authority of the “master” which all the others had done, that is, to present himself personally to the master after the strike to inform him that he wanted to return to work. For these reasons, the master had refused his return to the yard. The “labour arbitrators”, in this case, ruled that the master was wrong. But the actual protection of the worker was minimal. The board acknowledged, in fact, that “the worker Romei could not be dismissed when he returned to work, because no objection had been affixed to the door of the yard nor communicated to the individual workers who had abandoned the building for acts of solidarity with their striking comrades.” In addition, Romei should not be punished for having participated in the strike “because striking was recognised as one of the means permitted in the struggles between capital and labour.” Despite

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all this, the only sanction imposed on the master was the payment of eleven days of wages, only three more than the eight days normally recognised.¹⁵ Another case is that of the frame-maker Tullio Magni, fired abruptly by Luigi Giannini and without any justified reason. At the hearing of 13 August 1905, it was learned that the reasons for the dismissal were “politics.” Indeed, as Giannini explained, he had been forced to “release Magni from his employment because instead of working, he wasted time having political discussions, and so as well as wasting his own time he was wasting other workers’ time, thus causing the company some damage.” What Magni was rebuked for was not so much the colour of his ideas, but the fact that his propagation of them ended up disturbing the company’s working practices. The employer, in fact, had no reason to complain about the professional qualities of the worker, so much so that he had declared before the competent authorities that he was “willing to let him work from home.” The Conciliation Office believed the wrongs were on both sides, and “proposed to the Company’s representative that they resume Magni’s employment in the shop, requesting that the worker himself adopt and maintain a more appropriate attitude to the systems and integrity of other workers.” The employer, unmoved, did not accept this kind of conciliation and preferred to go to court. If, on the one hand, the worker received a negative ruling, on the other hand, he received a complementary acknowledgment: the employer had to “give and pay to the worker Tullio Magni the sum of lire forty-five for fifteen days of wages, as compensation for dismissal without prior notice”.¹⁶ Ensuring social harmony at the factory by dismissing the subversive worker therefore had a cost, but a limited cost. Indeed, the compensation was nowhere near the maximum laid down by the rules for dismissal without notice, which could be set at one hundred and twenty lire. In some ways, therefore, the worker was recognised as having co-responsibility. Striking could, however, have had another aspect, which also emerges from the ruling, in relation to more vulnerable workers, such as women and minors. An interesting case is that of the young Ernesta Pellanda from Arnate, near Milan. Ernesta was in fact a minor, who was more a victim than a protagonist of a strike. She was employed by the Pasquinelli company (a textile manufactur-

 “Ruling in the case of Gustavo Romei, worker resident in Florence, at Via Ripoli no. 128, representing himself, against the firm Dini Giuseppe of Florence at Viale Principe Umberto no. 33, present,” in BACCFi, a. 1906 (Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1907).  “Ruling in the case of Tullio Magni, worker representing himself, domiciled in S. Donnino Comune di Brozzi against the firm Luigi Giannini and brothers operating in Florence at Via Castellani no. 16,” in BACCFi, a. 1905, (Firenze: Carnesecchi e figli, 1906).

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er) when a strike broke out which went on for several weeks. Actually, Ernesta had not taken part in the strike, but given the temporary suspension of work, with the dispute prolonged, she sought and found work at another firm. For this reason, she returned to Pasquinelli to recover her deposit of ten lire, which all casual workers were obliged to pay when taken on. The company refused to return her deposit on the grounds that Ernesta had not given the prescribed notice period of fifteen days before resigning. In this case the tribunal declared decisively in favour of the minor, maintaining that “the prolongation of the strike for as long as three weeks was a justified cause obliging the worker to look for work elsewhere so as not to go without a means of support”.¹⁷ More than the judgement of the tribunal, also interesting in this case are certain contextual elements. In the first place, the fact that the company required a deposit from a minor on entering factory employment: a deposit that may seem small (ten lire) but was in reality equivalent to fifteen days’ wages, and thus, considering the saving possibilities of working class families, was anything but minimal. In the second place, it should be noted that Ernesta was a minor, who was cared for by her mother, who it was ascertained had not participated in the strike (the tribunal panel noted that “in special cases a minor may not be held responsible for actions independent of their own volition”), and this notwithstanding the company insisted on withholding the deposit, and rejected the agreement proposed by the conciliation board, demonstrating an unyielding attitude of tutelage with regard to the prerogatives of employers, even in the face of particular circumstances which might have led to a conciliatory solution.

Is the Worker Mobile? The Just Cause of Dismissal However, the most prevalent typology of conflicts was not those we have seen in previous cases, but those relating to the labour market. In an industrial actuality such as in Italy at that time, where there was a considerable over-supply of available labour (these were the years of the great migrations) and almost no form of protection against unemployment, mobility within the labour market was very high. There was a minimum of legislation, however, to regulate this structurally

 “Ruling in the dispute on 26 July 1902, bailiff Stefano Mazzini between Ernesta Pellanda, worker from Arnate, claimant, and the firm Pasquinelli & Co, of Arnate Industriale,” in the Chamber of Commerce of Milan – Section II Internal Commerce, Rulings of the board of probiviri, 1902, file. 122, doc. 10.

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very precarious situation of the employment of industrial labour. The entrepreneur was naturally free to dismiss their own dependents, but was obliged to provide compensation in the case of unfair dismissal, or non-conformity to customs and traditions, or “untimely” or rather sudden or unexpected dismissal not preceded by appropriate notice. The probiviri tribunals dedicated a large part of their activities to deal with the application of the existing legislation which sought to limit the almost unchallenged prerogative of bosses – so absolute in certain cases as to appear to those involved as completely arbitrary – to decide on dismissals. Even though at the time labour mobility was extremely prevalent, habitual and fully congruent with other forms of social mobility (for example, the frequency of moving house), dismissal was experienced not only as an economic loss and a loss of position, but also as more widely damaging, involving the very identity of the worker.

Casual Workers and Permanent Workers What emerges from the rulings is a different treatment for casual workers (structurally mobile), those who were often but not necessarily young workers undergoing training. In fact, it frequently happened that even expert workers were taken on as casual workers, and in such cases they were able to earn higher wages than permanent workers (evidently in compensation for the lack of continuity). This was the case of Tommaso Giambuzzi, a worker in the workshop of Marino Coppedè.¹⁸ Giambuzzi had “joined Coppedè’s workshop as a provisional worker with a wage of 3.50 lire a day.” This was pay considerably higher than the average.¹⁹ The temporary employment had become protracted and “after about a month was designated as permanent, the wage thus reduced to 3.30 lire a day.” The employment on a permanent basis thus implied a reduction in salary and the worker had accepted this on condition that his contract would be permanent; he made provision for it by asking for a guarantee from the employer. As the ruling reads: “such agreement Giambuzzi declares that he had accepted after  The Coppedé family were very well known in Florence for various architectural enterprises and for their luxury furniture factory.  The daily wage of unskilled workers was at the time around Lire 2,00 and 2,50. Cf. Camera di Commercio ed Arti di Firenze, Statistica Industriale: notizie sulle condizioni industriali della provincia di Firenze, Anno 1911 (Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1911), passim.

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it had been guaranteed by Mr Coppedè that in the case of dismissal he would be compensated with the perceived difference in wages, with the transition from casual worker to permanent employment.” It was supposed to be common practice. In fact, when Coppedè found himself in a situation of dismissal, he took exception to the reasoning of his employee and “declared himself having conformed to the truth as far as Giambuzzi had revealed it” and agreed on the fact that “the worker’s conduct […] had been, in every circumstance, commendable, and that he had been compelled to dismiss him for lack of work.” Coppedè’s apparently redundant benevolence in reality had a precise motive. Declaring himself fully satisfied with his employee and excluding any other cause but the lack of work, the employer evaded the requirement to provide compensation for dismissal without justified reason, amounting to two hundred lire. The tribunal recognised for this reason compensation for damages due to dismissal of fifty lire, that is, a not very significant sum, corresponding to two weeks’ wages; the compensation amounted to the normal fortnight’s wages recognised as compensation for a worker in the case of sudden dismissal.²⁰ This case concerns a worker with “demonstrable ability and intelligence”; for younger workers or apprentices the judgement could have been different. Arduino Saccenti, employee of Richard Ginori in Doccia, in a hearing on 30 April 1907, cited his employer, requesting the customary two hundred lire for unfair dismissal. He was a young worker who “after having taken part in the school of decoration within the Richard Ginori plant in Doccia was taken on as a casual worker in the plant itself, in the decoration department.” After a period of work in that department, the management proposed to Saccenti that he change department: “at first he accepted the change of work, but subsequently he rejected it when he came to know that in this new post he would earn less.” Faced with such behaviour, the tribunal was extremely severe; it in fact reaffirmed “the right of the management to change employment especially with regard to casual workers and young persons”; on this basis it interpreted the actions of the management not as a dismissal but as the taking of action in response to an abandoning of his post on the part of Saccenti, “determining that the management did not dismiss Saccenti but it was he who by rejecting the new work offered to him put himself in the

 “Ruling in the case brought by Tommaso Giambuzzi, resident in Florence at via del Ponte alle Mosse no. 88, worker representing himself against Prof. Mariano Coppedè, resident in Florence at Lung’Arno Guicciardini no. 7, industrialist representing himself,” in BACCFi, a. 1905 (Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1906).

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position of having to leave the plant.” The tribunal, in this case, totally rejected Saccenti’s claim.²¹

Without a Contract Conflicts in small businesses often arose almost naturally out of the cyclical movements of the market, which amounted to conditions of the almost total precariousness of labour. The forms of protection then in existence were widely circumvented in work practice within small businesses, which in any case constituted the vast majority and the real tissue of the Italian “industrial base”²² formed between the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. One of the many cases in which such a situation emerges is that of the worker Battista Colnaghi from Milan, employed by the firm of Virgilio Corniamenti in Milan. Battista was a glass applicator, a rather qualified worker, as his daily wage of 3,20 lire testifies. However, in a period when work was scarce his “boss” proposed a reduction in his wage, requiring a response within eight days. The employee asked in the first place to have some free time off work (two hours) as was customary, to look for another job, but this was denied; he rejected the cut, and ended up being dismissed. At this point Battista asked the probiviri tribunal for the compensation prescribed by the laws against unfair dismissal, or two hundred lire (a considerable figure for the time, equivalent in this specific case to about two and a half months’ pay). The tribunal however adopted (as was always the norm in such cases) an extremely formal and restrictive criterion, ruling that the norms as codified concerned labour contracts effectively and formally signed by the two parties. Since Battista, like most workers in small businesses, had never signed a contract, and the idea itself of the applicability erga omnes of collective contracts was still a long way off, he had no right to compensation. The tribunal however was not able not to recognise the worker’s reasoning, made all the more evident by the refusal of the company to concede to him the two hours a day to look for another job. Thus the ruling provided for compensation for the worker, but made reference to the traditional “practice” of the time and in the sector: the company was required to pay court costs and to pay the worker an amount of 19.20 lire, equivalent in practice to a week’s  “Ruling in the case of Arduino Saccenti residing in Sesto Fiorentino, at Via Mazzini, no. 69, claimant, against the Richard Ginori company represented by the plant manager in Doccia, summoned to appear,” in BACCFi, a. 1907 (Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1908).  Luciano Cafagna, “L ’industrializzazione italiana. La formazione di una ‘base industriale’, fra il 1896 e il 1914,” Studi storici 3 – 4 (1961): 690 – 724.

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work. The ruling clarified that the argument of the employer regarding the fact that the company had used dismissal as a weapon to impose a wage cut associated with a period when orders were scarce could not be taken into consideration.²³ In this way the Milan tribunal reaffirmed its basic attitude in this type of individual conflict: it sought in other words to protect the worker only from the most obvious and unjustified abuses of power on the part of entrepreneurs; in all the issues in which there was a margin of discretion or of possible uncertainty regarding the norms and the criteria to adopt, it always came down on the side of the bosses, awarding only minimal or purely symbolic compensation to the workers.

The Obligation to give Notice The attitude of entrepreneurs with regard to female employees seems to have been particularly harsh, especially in the textile sector (where the workforce were predominantly female and unskilled). In Gallarate, near Milan, a textile mill refused to pay the regular last fifteen days of work to three women who had resigned (as has been noted, female employment was often temporary also because female workers wanted it that way), maintaining that the notice of resignation had been made on Monday rather than Saturday as was common practice. In this case too, the tribunal acknowledged the workers’ case, noting the almost specious arguments of the company, given that the delay had been extremely minor, and not such as to “damage in substance the reason and necessity for which it had become a bilateral obligation, the fifteen-day notice period being admitted and accepted by the generality of industrialists and workers.”²⁴ The reasons for “sudden dismissal” are numerous according to the Milan tribunal, which always broadly recognised the criterion of fifteen days’ notice, in relation to which, however, there could have been numerous circumstances that gave rise to interpretative conflicts.

 “Ruling in the dispute before the board of conciliation brought on 30 December 1902, bailiff Battista Nicolini Colnaghi of Via Porta Vigentina no. 33 in person, against the firm Corniamenti Virgilio,” in the Chamber of Commerce of Milan – Section II Internal Commerce, Rulings of the probiviri board, 1902, file. 122, doc. 10.  “Ruling in the dispute of 28 July 1902, bailiff Stefano Mazzini brought by Giuseppina Mazzucchelli, Innocenta Ponti, Angela Pinciroli, and Elena Pinciroli, workers from Samarate, claimants, against Tito Introcini, industrialist from Gallarate,” in the Chamber of Commerce of Milan – Section II, Internal Commerce, Rulings of the probiviri board, 1902, file 122, doc. 10.

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In the case of Florence, where the nature of artisanal production saw figures and conditions often outside of traditional norms, the case law is even more complex. For example, Carlo Biagiarelli, a sculptor, was taken on by the firm of Zulimo Marucelli, with the task of creating some sculptures in alabaster, a sector in which the firm was not yet active, with the promise of some months of work; but after having completed four works on a “piece work” basis, he was given a termination, not because of any lack of technical expertise, but because the employer maintained that he had to suspend this productive experiment because there was no market, promising, however, to take Biagiarelli on again when conditions changed. In fact, the employer had entrusted the work to another worker, less skilled, which is what prompted the case. The interesting thing in this case is that the tribunal appeared to be prepared to support the cause of the worker (usually the qualification of the trade was given great consideration), but was not able to do so because all the contractual arrangements had been made informally, were vague, and without precise agreements, for which reason the tribunal finally decided, with Biagiarelli being unable to produce sufficient proof (he maintained he had turned down another job because of Marucelli’s promises), to reject his request.²⁵ The precariousness of labour was thus not only an economic reality, but also a normative and contractual one, and these rulings also allow us to appreciate the rather confused, elaborate and complex state of this particular labour market.

Gender Issues. Unmarried Women, Unavoidable Dismissal The scarce protection experienced by workers in general, and in particular by casual and young workers, was superseded only by the still scarcer consideration of the rights of women workers. In this case employer authority amounted to the same thing as patriarchal authority, or at least the convention of female oppression, and there was no lack of its manifestation before the probiviri tribunals. An example is the case brought by a worker in the clothing and tailoring sector, the machine seamstress Amelia Falconi Crespi against her employer:

 “Ruling in the case of Carlo Biagiarelli, worker resident in Florence at via del Pratellino representing himself, claimant, against Marucelli Zulimo, industrialist resident in Florence at Via Orcagna no. 15 representing himself,” in BACCFi, a. 1905 (Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1906).

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Raoul Schwob, proprietor of the Ville de Lyon plant, and Eugenio Endler, tailoring manager in the same firm. Falconi, who had been working for the company for seven years without any problem, complained that she had been dismissed without reason from her job as seamstress (but not from the plant) and to have been made “available to the proprietor from 15 July to 15 August 1905, the day of her dismissal.” What had happened? For some unknown reason, the manager of the plant was no longer satisfied with Falconi’s work and had removed her from the machine sewing department. The proprietor, for his part, had sought to mediate, offering her the possibility to transfer to another department less specialised, but on the same wage. Falconi stood her ground and rejected this solution, claiming her rights. She summoned to testify before the tribunal her work companions (who defied the boss by testifying in favour of their dismissed colleague) and requested compensation for unfair dismissal of one hundred and fifty lire. At this point the proprietor denied the act itself of dismissal, not only affirming “that he had never dismissed her, that not satisfying the tailoring manager he offered her a transfer to another department where she would have worked on the same wage, that having accepted this offer she would not have incurred any damage”, but still seeking to annihilate the right to the recognition of the worker’s qualification, thus establishing the wage as the only parameter. Up to this point the treatment is no different from that encountered in analοgous cases by male workers. The employer in addition made it known that the dismissal had occurred “when the season was over and with the idea that the worker may or may not be taken on again the following season.” This was a dismissal due to expiry of contract and thus “without the obligation of prior notice.” The entrepreneur however put forward further considerations which give an idea of how he understood the exercise of his own authority in the factory in relation to the female workforce: he remarked before the tribunal that “according to the rules of his Establishment female workers are taken on on a daily basis and do not have the right to compensation in the case of dismissal.” Finally, in any event, and as a reason for precondition for settlement, he denied that Falconi had the right to take him to court, because she was a woman: “Mr Schwob deduced that Falconi was not in conformity with judicial procedures because she was without the assistance of her husband”.²⁶ The judges declared themselves decisively in favour of the  “Ruling in the case of Amelia Falconi nei Crespi resident in Firenze dei Tre Re no. 2, claimant appearing in person, against Schwob,” in BACCFi, a. 1905 (Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1906). The institution of marital authorisation had been officially introduced into the juridical order with the entry into law of the Napoleonic Code on 21 March 1804. After the fall of Napoleon (1815), it was reintroduced by the Italian legislature and inserted into the Civil Code in 1865.

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woman: they in fact maintained that the prejudicial stance taken by the proprietor regarding “the incapacity of the complainant to engage in judicial process without the assistance of a husband” was not justified “since the procedure before the “probiviri tribunal” is not truly of a judicial nature” but was “rather in the field of equity than that of the law.” In addition, other similar situations existed which allowed the rights of women to be established: “besides Law 34 provides for the case of minors and recognises their right to go to court.” Thus, by analogy, such an acknowledgement could be applied also to married women. Despite the tribunal’s full and reasoned acceptance of Falconi’s argument, the proprietor was required to pay compensation of sixty lire, somewhat less than what the worker had sued for, further testimony to the fact that it was with difficulty that the jurisprudence of the probiviri tribunals was fully favourable to workers, even in the most egregious cases.²⁷

On Morality The rulings of the probiviri tribunals give us a way of observing not only the situations of conflict between worker and employer, but they also provide us with some information about the work environment and relationships between employees themselves. An interesting case is that of Faustino Pinciroli. He was a boy only fourteen years of age, working in Torley, a textile factory in Saronno, which produced twists and ribbons of silk and wool.²⁸ The boy, working in an

The abrogation of marital authorisation occurred as a result of law 19 July 1919 no. 1176. The law provided that the woman should request the head of the family for authorisation to appear before court and for the accomplishment of laws regarding disposal of patrimony; see on the subject Nicole Arnaud-Duc, “Le contraddizioni del diritto,” in Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, Storia delle donne in occidente, L’Ottocento, ed. Geneviève Fraisse and Michelle Perrot (Bari: Laterza, 1991), 69 – 70; Maria Vittoria Ballestero, “La protezione concessa e l’eguaglianza negata: il lavoro femminile nella legislazione italiana,” in Il lavoro delle donne, ed. Angela Groppi (Bari: Laterza,1996), 445 – 470.  On the unequal treatment of women at work and in their private lives at the time, see Alessandra Pescarolo, “Il lavoro e le risorse delle donne in età contemporanea,” in Il lavoro delle donne, ed. Angela Groppi, 299 – 344; see also on the argument Jacques Rancière e Patrick Vauday, “En allant à l’expo: l’ouvrier, sa femme et les machines,” Les révoltes logiques 1 (1976): 5 – 22; see also Willibald Steinmetz, ed., Private Law and Social Inequality in the Industrial Age. Comparing Legal Cultures in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States (Oxford: German Historical Institute, 2000), 123 – 136.  This was the firm C. Torley & C, established in Saronno in 1889 as a branch of C. Torley and Frank. Over the years it underwent various proprietary modifications, becoming S. Menning and

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environment with a predominantly female workforce, “was guilty in the first instance of improper acts with a female worker employed in the plant” and subsequently, despite having been cautioned, “was guilty of similar acts again.” The boy, accompanied in this case by his father, did not refute his dismissal, but requested compensation for dismissal without notice, equivalent to six lire, return of his deposit, equal to six lire (equivalent to his wage for his first two weeks of work), and finally thirteen lire, the amount payable for work carried out but not paid. The tribunal took a position in the end partially in favour of the boy. The interesting thing is that no consideration was given either on the part of the firm, or on the part of the boy’s family for the moral hurt suffered by the worker. In the conciliation hearing the company in fact declared itself willing to accept the other requests, but insisted that it categorically denied any possibility of an agreement to a payment for lack of notice, “attesting that it was not able to accede to the demand on grounds of morality, and for the order itself of the plant, where for reasons of the work, the sexes are promiscuous”; it was a stand that led to the failure of conciliation. In fact, evidently for his part, the boy and his father considered the dismissal justified, because of the act committed, but considered that it should not have consequences on the payment for work undertaken, as if it was an involuntary or accidental fact. Indeed, the father requested a certification of the good service performed by his son, as if this concerned only the technical part of the work. The tribunal did not distance itself from this line of argument, awarding the boy compensation on the financial level for the work carried out, making no mention of the moral damage caused to the woman, but justifying the dismissal for immoral acts “when the worker himself was a recidivist of such acts, bringing disorder to a place where order is a guarantee of safe procedure”, thus taking into consideration especially concerns relating to good order and work procedures in the factory.

Conclusions How do the documents of labour arbitrators help us to understand the relationships of power, the forms and the ways in which authority was exercised in the relationships between employers and workers at the time? It is my opinion that

C. Torley, then revised again to “Trecce e Pizzi di Saronno di Giani & Friedmann” (http://www. museomils.it/index.php?it/120/menning-torley).

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they can help us, in different ways. First, being judicial sources, they reflect the words, language, and life stories of the protagonists; they illuminate daily behaviour and reveal conflicts. The rulings are therefore able to reveal the many forms of power relationships within the workplace. At the same time, the judgements of the labour arbitrators assumed the function of restricting the dominant authority, otherwise unquestioned and almost absolute. By contrast, and speculatively with regard to this limitation on the right of the industrialist to represent himself as a “master in his own house”, the labour arbitrators affirmed a number of workers’ rights in the physical and social space of their employment relationships. These rights were linked both to the social figure of the worker and of the citizen; that is to say the provisions of the new labour legislation and the rules of common law. The disputes appear in this light as a significant social space for the actual determination of the scope and limits of the masters’ authority. They appeared to the interested eyes of the various parties involved not so much as culturally predetermined content, but rather as an unpredictable environment of varying situations to be judged on a case by case basis. These isolated cases, through recognition or sanction by a judicial institution, however, appear to us to have a paradigmatic value: they act as examples that reinforce specific behaviour and contribute to building a common sense in which new relationships and new limits of authority were accepted.

Bibliography Official Publications Camera di Commercio ed Arti di Firenze. Statistica Industriale: notizie sulle condizioni industriali della provincia di Firenze, Anno 1911. Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1911. Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze. Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1904 – 1908. Ministero Agricoltura Industria e Commercio (MAIC), Direzione generale della statistica. Censimento degli opifici e delle imprese industriali al 10 giugno 1911, Dati analitici concernenti il numero, il personale e la forza motrice delle imprese censite, che occupavano non più di dieci persone oltre il padrone o direttore, vol. 2, Tav. 2. Rome: Tipografia nazionale G. Bertero, 1914. “Ruling in the case of Angiolo Lattughini domiciled in Florence, at Via Pisana 99, representing himself, against Cesiano Vannetti, domiciled in Florence, at Piazzale Michelangiolo no. 27.” Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze 1904. Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1905. “Ruling in the case of Tullio Magni, worker representing himself, domiciled in S. Donnino Comune di Brozzi against the firm Luigi Giannini and brothers operating in Florence at

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Via Castellani no. 16.” Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze 1905. Firenze: Carnesecchi e figli, 1906. “Ruling in the case of Carlo Biagiarelli, worker resident in Florence at via del Pratellino representing himself, claimant, against Marucelli Zulimo, industrialist resident in Florence at Via Orcagna no. 15 representing himself.” Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze 1905. Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1906. “Ruling in the case of Amelia Falconi nei Crespi resident in Firenze dei Tre Re no. 2, claimant appearing in person, against Schwob.” Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze 1905. Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1906. “Ruling in the case brought by Tommaso Giambuzzi, resident in Florence at via del Ponte alle Mosse no. 88, worker representing himself against Prof. Mariano Coppedè, resident in Florence at Lung’Arno Guicciardini no. 7, industrialist representing himself.” Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze 1905. Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1906. “Ruling in the case of Armando Cipriani, resident in Florence at Via della Mattonaia no. 10, representing himself, versus Francesco Ciabattini, Manager of the firm A. Montarfano and G. Valcarenghi, resident in Florence at Borgo degli Albizi no. 2.” Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze 1906. Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1907. “Ruling in the case of Gustavo Romei, worker resident in Florence, at Via Ripoli no. 128, representing himself, against the firm Dini Giuseppe of Florence at Viale Principe Umberto no. 33, present.” Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze 1906. Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1907. “Ruling in the case of Arduino Saccenti resident in Sesto Fiorentino, at Via Mazzini, no. 69, claimant, against the Richard Ginori company represented by the plant manager in Doccia, summoned to appear.” Bollettino degli Atti della Camera di Commercio ed arti di Firenze 1907. Florence: Carnesecchi e figli, 1908.

Unpublished Sources Archivio della Camera di Commercio di Milano (Chamber of Commerce of Milan). “Probiviri, Sectio II, Internal Commerce”. Archivio della Camera di Commercio di Milano (Chamber of Commerce of Milan). “Ruling in the dispute on 26 July 1902, bailiff Stefano Mazzini between Ernesta Pellanda, worker from Arnate, claimant, and the firm Pasquinelli & Co, of Arnate Industriale.” Chamber of Commerce of Milan – Section II Internal Commerce. Rulings of the probiviri board 1902: file 122, doc. 10. Archivio della Camera di Commercio di Milano (Chamber of Commerce of Milan). “Ruling in the dispute before the board of conciliation brought on 30 December 1902, bailiff Battista Nicolini Colnaghi of Via Porta Vigentina no. 33 in person, against the firm Corniamenti Virgilio.” Chamber of Commerce of Milan – Section II Internal Commerce. Rulings of the probiviri board 1902: file 122, doc. 10. Archivio della Camera di Commercio di Milano (Chamber of Commerce of Milan). “Ruling in the dispute of 28 July 1902, bailiff Stefano Mazzini brought by Giuseppina Mazzucchelli, Innocenta Ponti, Angela Pinciroli, and Elena Pinciroli, workers from Samarate, claimants,

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against Tito Introcini, industrialist from Gallarate.” Chamber of Commerce of Milan – Section II, Internal Commerce. Rulings of the probiviri board 1902: file 122, doc. 10.

Bibliography Arnaud-Duc, Nicole. “Le contraddizioni del diritto.” In Duby Georges and Perrot Michelle, Storia delle donne in occidente, L’Ottocento, edited by Geneviève Fraisse and Michelle Perrot, 51 – 88. Bari: Laterza, 1991. Ballestero, Maria Vittoria. “La protezione concessa e l’eguaglianza negata: il lavoro femminile nella legislazione italiana.” In Il lavoro delle donne, edited by Angela Groppi, 445 – 470. Bari: Laterza, 1996. Cafagna, Luciano. “L’industrializzazione italiana. La formazione di una ‘base industriale’, fra il 1896 e il 1914.” Studi storici 3 – 4 (1961): 690 – 724. Caretti, Stefano, and Degl’Innocenti, Maurizio. Il socialismo in Firenze e provincia (1871 – 1961). Pisa: Nistri Lischi, 1987. Cottereau, Alain. “La désincorporation des métiers et leur transformation en publics intermédiaires: Lyon et Elbeuf, 1790 – 1815.” In Steven L. Kaplan and Philippe Minard, La France, malade du corporatisme? XVIIIe – XIXe siècle, 97 – 145. Paris: Belin, 2004. Cottereau, Alain, ed. Les prud’hommes XIXe – XXe siècle. Special issue of Le Mouvement social 141 (1987). Fuà, Giorgio, ed. Lo sviluppo economico in Italia. Storia dell’economia italiana negli ultimi cento anni, vol. III. Milan: Angeli, 1977. Gerschenkron, Alexander. Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962. Jaffe, James A. “Industrial Arbitration, Equity, and Authority in England, 1800 – 1850.” Law & History Review 18 (2000): 525 – 558. Jaffe, James A. Striking a Bargain: Work and Industrial Relations in England, 1815 – 1865. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Maifreda, Germano. La disciplina del lavoro: operai, macchine e fabbriche nella storia italiana. Milan: Mondadori, 2007. Monteleone, Giulio. “Una magistratura del lavoro: i collegi dei probiviri nell’industria. 1883 – 1911.” Studi storici 2 (1977): 87 – 123. Montemartini, Giovanni. Sui collegi dei probiviri nel periodo 1904 – 1912. Relazione presentata alla Commissione di Statistica e Legislazione presso il Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia nella sessione del luglio 1913. Rome, 1914. Musso, Stefano. “Agli albori del diritto del lavoro. I collegi dei Probiviri in Italia (1893 – 1928).” In Per continuare il dialogo. Gli amici ad Angelo Varni, edited by Alberto Malfitano et al., 347 – 360. Bologne: Bononia University Press, 2014. Musso, Stefano. Le regole e l’elusione: il governo del mercato del lavoro nell’industrializzazione italiana (1888 – 2003). Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 2015. Musso, Stefano. Storia del lavoro in Italia dall’Unità ad oggi. Venezia: Marsilio, 2002. Osti Guerrazzi, Amedeo. Grande industria e legislazione sociale in età giolittiana. Turin: Paravia Scriptorium, 2000. Passaniti, Paolo. La questione del contratto di lavoro nell’Italia liberale. Milan: Giuffrè, 2006. Pellegrino, Anna. La città più artigiana d’Italia: Firenze 1861 – 1929. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012.

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Pescarolo, Alessandra. “Il lavoro e le risorse delle donne in età contemporanea.” In Il lavoro delle donne, edited by Angela Groppi, 299 – 344. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1996. Rancière, Jacques, and Patrick Vauday. “En allant à l’expo: l’ouvrier, sa femme et les machines.” Les révoltes logiques 1 (1976): 5 – 22. Romano, Ruggero, ed. Storia dell’economia italiana, v. III. L’ età contemporanea: un paese nuovo. Turin: Einaudi, 1991. Sacchetti, Giorgio. Sovversivi in Toscana. Todi: Altre Edizioni, 1983. Steinmetz, Willibald, ed. Private Law and Social Inequality in the Industrial Age. Comparing Legal Cultures in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. Oxford: German Historical Institute, 2000. Tomassini, Luigi. Associazionismo operaio a Firenze fra ’800 e ’900. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1984.

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Chapter 11 Corporate Welfare Facilities in Italy: An Historical Perspective and Quantitative Approach Abstract: Little attention has been paid by the Italian historiography to retracing with accuracy which and how many facilities Italian firms made available for the welfare of workers and how they evolved over time. Such an inadequate consideration is certainly due to the difficulties in elaborating the different censuses on the corporate welfare that were made during the twentieth century by the Italian public administration and the association of industrial employers. The chapter aims to reconstruct the evolution of various facilities of corporate welfare in Italy from the 1920s to 1950s, focusing on their territorial and sectoral distribution and trying to verify whether there has been a link between the spread of care facilities and charities and different industrial relations patterns. For example, it is likely that the increase of sport and leisure services for workers, observed in the 1930s of the twentieth century, was one of the consequences of labour relations imposed by the fascist regime, that, in exchange for the wage compression and the ban of strike, provided organised forms of cheap recreation not reachable to the industrial workforce previously. The historical sources used for this study are three surveys on corporate welfare institutions made in 1923, 1931– 33 and 1954– 55 (the first carried out by the State inspectorate of industry and labor, the second by Fascist association of Italian industrialists and the third by the Parliamentary inquiry committee into working conditions).

Introduction Sociological and political literature in the last sixty years illustrate a number of agents that provide protection from social risks encountered in the course of people’s lives (illness, injury, poverty, senility, etc). The welfare of families and individuals may be assured by the State through public authority services by means of subsidies or tax benefits, services through private associations and through companies providing insurance and voluntary contributions including

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specific fringe benefits.¹ This latter form of welfare may be described under several formulae such as occupational welfare, industrial welfare, corporate welfare or welfare capitalism. Welfare capitalism means social and economic structures, outside of contractual and legal obligations, that companies make available for their employees’ well-being, e. g. housing, dining halls, kindergartens, community centres, health care services, etc.² Historical analysis of corporate welfare has a long tradition in Italy and, in fact, since the end of the 1970s, Italian scholars have examined single case studies in-depth, such as textile producers in the Venetian Region and Lombardy, Alfa Romeo and Pirelli in Milan, Ansaldo in Genoa, and so on.³ Attempts were made to outline the diverse patterns of assistance and charity that large corporations or rich entrepreneurs created for their workers from the last decades of the nineteenth century through to the mid-twentieth.⁴ Some historians referred to the so-called “paternalismo organicistico” [systematic paternalism] to describe attempts to constrain employees not only through “opere so-

 Richard M. Titmuss, Essays on the Welfare State (London: Allen and Unwin, 1958); Maurizio Ferrera, Modelli di solidarietà. Politica e riforme sociali nelle democrazie (Bologna: il Mulino, 1993); Bent Greve, Occupational Welfare. Winners and Losers (Cheltenham: Elgar, 2007); Felix Behling, Welfare Beyond the Welfare State. The Employment Relationship in Britain and Germany (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).  This paper adopts a very broad definition of welfare capitalism, including charity, social security, educational and recreational practices, whether voluntarily granted by companies or obtained through worker bargaining, whether free or partly employee paid. For a closer examination of these issues, see Howard M. Gitelman, “Welfare Capitalism Reconsidered”, Labor History 33 (1992): 5 – 31.  Augusta Molinari, “L’organizzazione delle maestranze e le istituzioni assistenziali”, in Storia dell’Ansaldo, vol. 6, Dall’Iri alla guerra 1930 – 1945, ed. Gabriele De Rosa (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1999), 171– 190; Giovanni Luigi Fontana, “Schio, “Nuova Schio” e il Lanificio Rossi: costruzione e riuso di un caso esemplare”, Annali di storia dell’impresa 13 (2002): 153 – 187; Giorgio Roverato, “Valdagno e la “Città sociale” di Gaetano Marzotto Jr: tra utopia conservatrice e moderno welfare aziendale”, Annali di storia dell’impresa 13 (2002): 133 – 151; Silvia A. Conca Messina, “Tra azienda e comunità locali: opere e provvidenze sociali dei cotonieri lombardi nel XIX secolo”, in Comunità di lavoro. Le opere sociali delle imprese e degli imprenditori tra Ottocento e Novecento, ed. Luigi Trezzi and Valerio Varini (Milan: Guerini & Associati, 2012), 79 – 96; Nicola Martinelli, “Dipendenti, direzione aziendale e opere sociali all’Alfa Romeo: la Fondazione XXV aprile (1946 – 1991)”, in Comunità di lavoro, 143 – 176; Valerio Varini, “Costruire un’impresa: il welfare alla Pirelli tra Otto e Novecento” in Comunità di lavoro, 115 – 141.  Duccio Bigazzi, “Le permanenze del paternalismo: le politiche sociali degli imprenditori in Italia tra Ottocento e Novecento”, in Ricerche di storia in onore di Franco Della Peruta, ed. Maria Luisa Betri and Duccio Bigazzi, vol. 2, Economia e società (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1996), 36 – 63.

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ciali” [social works], but also through a value system based on the concept of the owner as “un buon padre” [a good father].⁵ Systematic paternalism was particularly marked in textile entrepreneurs from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth. On the other hand, during the Fascist regime, the “fabbrica totale” [total factory] indicated the close control that many large companies exerted on the workforces through a pervasive network of recreational, educational and welfare services.⁶ Little attention was paid to accurately retracing which facilities Italian firms made available for the well-being of workers, how many there were and how they evolved over time. One exception was Luigi Trezzi’s study on social works by industrial companies in Lombardy from the 1930s to the 1950s.⁷ What is still missing today is an historical quantitative overview of welfare capitalism in Italy. Its lack is certainly due to the absence of specific surveys on the issue in the nineteenth century and the difficulties in analysing data from different censuses on corporate welfare that were conducted during the twentieth century by the Italian public administration and the Italian industrialists association (Confindustria). Here I will survey corporate welfare facilities in Italy in the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s, using three distinct sources: the 1923 survey by the State inspectorate of industry and labour (Ispettorato dell’industria e del lavoro), the 1931 to 1933 survey by the Fascist association of Italian industrialists (Confederazione fascista degli industriali italiani) and the 1954 to 1955 findings in the proceedings of the Parliamentary inquiry committee into working conditions (Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori). Although data from these three sources cannot really be compared as they were collected using very different standards and methods,⁸ it is useful to present an analysis that provides a

 Luigi Guiotto, La fabbrica totale. Paternalismo industriale e città sociali in Italia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979); Elisabetta Benenati, “Cento anni di paternalismo aziendale”, Annali della Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli 33 (1997): 45 – 62.  Victoria De Grazia, Consenso e cultura di massa nell’Italia fascista. L’organizzazione del dopolavoro (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1981); Bigazzi, “Le permanenze del paternalismo”, 47– 57; Benenati, “Cento anni di paternalismo aziendale”, 63 – 69.  Luigi Trezzi, “La questione delle opere sociali integrative delle imprese in Lombardia tra primo e secondo dopoguerra” in Opere sociali e responsabilità d’impresa. Casi e temi nel Novecento, ed. Aldo Carera (Milan: Vita & Pensiero, 2009), 53 – 93; Luigi Trezzi, “La Confindustria e le opere sociali delle imprese nel secondo dopoguerra (1953 – 1970)”, Bollettino dell’Archivio per la storia del movimento sociale cattolico in Italia 48 (2013): 75 – 102.  The survey by the State inspectorate of industry and labour (Ispettorato dell’industria e del lavoro) was published in Bollettino del Lavoro e della Previdenza sociale 40, no 5 (November 1923). It examined eight hundred and seventy-five factories with over one hundred employees,

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partial, approximate image of how corporate welfare evolved in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century. The present chapter therefore aims at determining whether the spread of corporate care facilities and charities, the different patterns of industrial relations and the welfare state were linked in Italy in that time frame. Data from the three surveys will be analysed separately, focusing on the type of assistance, charities and leisure services that firms provided and on their bearing, in percentage terms, on company welfare facilities as a whole.⁹ In a short concluding paragraph, I will try to draw up some general guidelines on how corporate welfare structures in Italy developed, their impact in the time frame under examination and the relationship of these structures with the meagre welfare state of the period.

Welfare Capitalism at the end of Liberalism As far as the 1923 survey by the State inspectorate of industry and labour (Ispettorato dell’industria e del lavoro) is concerned, the reference sample represented only a small part of the large and medium-sized Italian industrial companies. The survey was conducted by sending questionnaires to 2,660 workplaces with over one hundred workers, but only eight hundred and seventy-five question-

targeting eight categories of corporate welfare: healthcare, paid holidays, sanitation facilities, food services, economic and social assistance, child care, education and leisure. The survey by the Fascist association of Italian industrialists (Confederazione fascista degli industriali) was published in two volumes in 1933 and 1936. It examined four hundred and sixty-seven big, medium and small sized companies, defined as such according to the number of employees, in the industrial and tertiary sectors. Its information and data can be grouped into eight categories: child care, sanitation and health facilities, food services, housing for employees, economic and social assistance, education, leisure, support for local communities. Finally, the survey by the Parliamentary inquiry committee into workers’ conditions (Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori) was published in the Committee proceedings in 1959. It examined one hundred and ninety-five big, medium and small industrial firms, divided into five sectors (mining, metallurgical, mechanical, chemical and textile). Its information and data are grouped into fourteen categories: housing for employees, food services, financial services, consumption services, health facilities, education, leisure, childcare, mobility service, profit sharing, awards and bonuses, insurance services, social security and other forms of assistance.  I will not review each single facility. I will consider only the most representative because percentages indicated they were more common.

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naires were filled out and returned¹⁰; under one-third of Italy’s major factories certified they had facilities in place for staff welfare. At first glance, the survey data presented a quite positive picture of corporate welfare in the last years of liberal Italy, considering that after the First World War industrialisation was still not as advanced as in some other Western countries. In 1921 just 22.5 % of Italy’s working population was employed in industry while in France this figure was 29.3 %, 33.2 % in the USA in 1920, 40.1 % in Germany in 1925 and 46.5 % in the United Kingdom in 1924.¹¹ 86.63 % of the responding workplaces had one or more toilet facilities, 76.91 % had at least one healthcare facility, 72.11 % provided some kind of financial and social assistance to employees, 59.77 % granted workers paid leave (when collective bargaining, then still in its early stages, did not provide for this benefit) and 48.8 % had dining halls or subsidised canteens for employees. Factories were rather more inadequate with regard to leisure facilities¹² (only 16.34 % of the sample), education and training¹³ (9.71 %) and childcare structures¹⁴ (8.46 %). If we look in more detail at the break down of items, however, the situation emerges as less rosy than it initially appeared. As Table 1 shows, most industrial plants had an emergency room and a factory doctor, but under two-fifths supplied male nurses, and only a minority could boast of an infirmary or medical services at the workers’ homes. Italian plants were severely lacking in sanitation facilities, since less than a fifth had toilets, showers and a dedicated locker room for employees. Under half of the factories had a dining hall and only 15.66 % a subsidised canteen, which was managed by the firm in 41.61 % of cases, by the workers in 28.47 %, and by others in 13.87 %.¹⁵ As far as financial and social assistance was concerned, the picture was uninspiring. Half of the factories had company houses for their workers, accommodating only 9,540 families. Just over one-third had a mutual benefit fund, and 47.84 % of employees of firms with mutual aid societies were enrolled as mem-

 Ispettorato dell’industria e del lavoro, “Le istituzioni sociali e di benessere istituite in Italia a favore dei lavoratori delle industrie”Bollettino del Lavoro e della Previdenza sociale 40, no. 5 (November 1923): 3.  Renato Giannetti and Michelangelo Vasta, Storia dell’impresa italiana (Bologna: il Mulino, 2012)2 39.  Such as rest and break rooms, gyms, show rooms, marching bands.  Such as general knowledge schools, vocational schools, reading rooms, libraries.  Such as nursery schools.  Twenty-two out of one hundred and thirty-seven factories that had stated they had a subsidised canteen did not say who managed them.

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Table 11.1: Main welfare facilities in Italy in 1923, as provided by eight hundred and seventy-five industries with over one hundred employees. Facility

Percentage of sample plants

Emergency room Factory doctor Male nurses Clinic Medical care at home at the firm’s expense Infirmary Dressing rooms Workers’ locker room Toilets or showers Dining hall Subsidised canteen Company houses Mutual benefit fund Free transport to the workplace Special retirement benefits Consumers’ cooperatives Sports ground Breastfeeding room Employees day trips

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Note: facilities that were available in under 5 % of firms are not displayed in the table. Source: calculations based on State inspectorate of industry and labour (Ispettorato dell’industria e del lavoro) 1923, 4 – 19.

bers. A small minority offered workers savings funds, special retirement benefits, consumers’ cooperatives or free transport to the workplace. The 1923 survey, therefore, presents the image of an industrial sector which was still overall only slightly interested in supplying its workers with extensive, comprehensive welfare services. The existence of some facilities such as dining halls, corporate housing and emergency rooms was due to nineteenth century paternalism that was by then rooted in certain sectors such as textiles and shipbuilding (in the former, for example, 84.78 % of plants had company houses and 72.39 % had a factory doctor).¹⁶ Paternalism was designed to attract, stabilise and create loyalty in a workforce that had previously been scattered throughout

 Data in the 1923 survey were not categorised by geographical region or factory size, but by production sectors.

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the country.¹⁷ On the other hand, facilities were also the outcome of a sort of ante litteram bargaining in some sectors with a unionised workforce. Workers’ representatives perceived the welfare facilities as a fundamental means of supplementing low wages, and the employers were willing to act as a partial substitute for the State in supplying social services.¹⁸ According to the 1923 survey, in sectors with strong trade unions like the printing industry and transport,¹⁹ 70.37 % and 79.31 % respectively of workplaces had a mutual benefit fund, and 65.94 % and 80.62 % respectively of employees were registered as members. Consequently, corporate welfare in Italy was extremely fragile, depending on the balance of power between workers and factory owners. It was in the latter’s interest to use the welfare facilities or lack of them as a tool for industrial relations, so as to keep unrest and staff turnover low and productivity high.²⁰ That is why in the early 1920s corporate welfare showed up in patchy fragments in Italy.

Authoritarian Welfare Capitalism In 1933 and 1936 the Fascist association of Italian industrialists (Confederazione fascista degli industriali italiani) published bulk information on corporate welfare in two volumes. The company, not the factory, was the unit of analysis and the not entirely accurate data referred to four hundred and sixty-seven different sized firms, operating in diverse sectors that had implemented at least one welfare facility. They ranged from corporations with over 1,000 employees to  Augusto Ciuffetti, Casa e lavoro. Dal paternalismo aziendale alle “comunità globali”: villaggi e quartieri operai in Italia tra Otto e Novecento (Perugia: Crace, 2004); Conca Messina, “Tra azienda e comunità locali”; Giulio Mellinato, “Come isole sul continente: imprese e comunità nei centri navalmeccanici della Venezia Giulia (1891– 1920)”, in Comunità di lavoro, 53 – 77; Andreina De Clementi, “Operai e operaie nel primo cinquantennio del capitalismo italiano”, in Storia del lavoro in Italia. Il Novecento, ed. Stefano Musso, vol. 1, 1896 – 1945. Il lavoro nell’età industriale (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2015), 31– 32; Silvia A. Conca Messina, “Alle origini del welfare aziendale. Industria, manodopera e opere sociali degli imprenditori nell’Italia dell’Ottocento”, in Il welfare aziendale in Italia fra identità e immagine pubblica dell’impresa. Una prospettiva storica, ed. Patrizia Battilani, Silvia A. Conca Messina and Valerio Varini (Bologna: il Mulino, 2017), 37– 95.  Gianni Silei, Lo Stato Sociale in Italia. Storia e Documenti, vol. 1, Dall’Unità al fascismo (1861 – 1943) (Manduria: Lacaita Editore, 2003); Nicola Martinelli, “Le opere sociali d’impresa in Italia dal fascismo agli anni Ottanta del Novecento”, in Il welfare aziendale in Italia fra identità e immagine pubblica dell’impresa, 97– 129.  Stefano Musso, Storia del lavoro in Italia dall’Unità a oggi (Venice: Marsilio, 2002), 106.  Gitelman, “Welfare Capitalism Reconsidered”; Nikki Mandell, The Corporation as Family. The Gendering of Corporate Welfare, 1890 – 1930 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

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companies with a few dozen workers, from industrial enterprises to banks and insurance companies. About two-thirds of firms were located in Northern Italy. Despite the objective difficulty in obtaining a consistent picture from such heterogeneous data, one can discern some underlying characteristics of corporate welfare in the early 1930s that partly complied with, and partly differed from, what had been detected ten years previously. Overall, Table 2 seems to show that welfare facilities were not widespread in Italian companies, even in the first half of the 1930s. Nevertheless, they were more often found in large firms. For example, 20.47 % of companies with over 500 employees had an emergency room and an infirmary, compared with 6.64 % of all companies. In 17.32 % of large companies, several education courses had been activated, compared with 9.85 % of the small. This big-small dichotomy, however, overshadows the fact that many small-sized companies assembled consortia to find resources to make some social services available for their employees. The Biella workers’ assistance board (Ente biellese di assistenza agli operai), for example, was founded in 1925 to provide medical care to all industrial workers in the province of Biella, Piedmont, and to arrange summer camps for their children. In 1933, 42,145 manufacturing workers and 1,350 office workers (employed in firms of every size) enjoyed its services, and in 1932 1,134 children had spent a few weeks in the Board’s camps over the summer.²¹ In 1926 the Industrial supply board in Pavia (Ente industriale approvvigionamenti di Pavia) was founded with the purpose of supplying the workers of seventeen factories of every size in the province of Pavia, Lombardy, with basic necessities at reduced prices.²² Table 2 data, therefore, underestimate the spread of welfare services among small and medium-sized firms. Other interesting features emerged from the census of corporate welfare, as carried out by the Fascist association of Italian industrialists. The long, comprehensive list of helpful, recreational, educational and social activities that companies made available for their employees was a sign that business had developed its supply of social services, compared with a decade earlier, although they had not covered the country’s productive landscape evenly. In the absence of significant resources to be allocated to welfare, smaller firms decided not to establish any permanent social benefits such as housing, schools, dining halls, leisure clubs, etc. They focused on providing some temporary benefits in the form of  Confederazione fascista degli industriali italiani, L’Italia nelle sue opere assistenziali, vol. 2 (Milan: Società Nazionale Editrice Propaganda, 1936), 199 – 210.  Confederazione fascista degli industriali italiani, L’Italia nelle sue opere assistenziali, vol. 1 (Milan: Società Nazionale Editrice Propaganda, 1933), 642– 644.

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Table 11.2: Main welfare facilities in Italy in 1931 – 1933, as provided by four hundred and sixtyseven companies of every size, in the industrial and tertiary sectors. Facility

Percentage of sample companies All companies

Nursery school Breastfeeding rooms Summer camps for employees’ children Factory doctor Clinic Emergency room and infirmary Sanitation facilities Dining hall Industrial canteen Staff shop Consumers’ cooperatives Company houses and workers’ villages Dormitories or boarding houses Company health insurance Supplementary retirement benefits Loan fund Productivity, birth or marriage bonus Extra subsidies fund Schools General knowledge courses, professional training or home economics Recreational organisation (leisure time) Library Leisure and restrooms Sport structures Sport or leisure teams Grants to hospitals, schools, libraries, etc. Subsidies for unemployment

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Companies with over  employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

Note: facilities that were available in under 5 % of companies are not displayed in the table. Source: calculations based on Fascist association of Italian industrialists (Confederazione fascista degli industriali italiani) 1933 – 1936.

birth or marriage bonuses, extra subsidies and charitable contributions to local communities. All these facilities were detected more frequently in small firms than in large ones. In other words, despite what might appear in Table 2, corporate welfare in Italy was no longer confined to only large companies.

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Finally, the Fascist regime’s industrial relations policy facilitated the emergence and substantial presence of specific structures, compared with what was observed in the 1923 survey. Staff factory shops were the employers’ response to Mussolini’s request for compensation in some way for the wage cuts that had been dictated by law and through the national collective bargaining after the 1926 appreciation of lira.²³ Company health insurance, as Fascist laws designed it, was explicit in national collective bargaining from 1927 onwards. It was the outcome of business opposition to the creation of a national public health service.²⁴ Even though closely controlled by employers, corporate recreational organisations were the extension of the Fascist National leisure time organisation (Opera nazionale dopolavoro, Ond). Flanking the Fascist Party, the Ond aimed at achieving consensus among the working masses by involving them in free or cheap sports and recreational activities.²⁵ The National leisure time organisation had quickly penetrated private companies, especially industrial enterprises. In the years between 1926 and 1930 it increased its presence in workplaces, rising from 260 to 2,139 firms, with the number of industrial employees enrolled in it rising from 92,858 to 609,655.²⁶ Even the custom of sending employees’ children to summer camps established a foothold thanks to Fascism, that looked kindly upon the physical care of children and young people in order to shape a new breed of Italians in terms of health, strength, moral discipline and obedience.²⁷ To put it simply, Italian corporate welfare in the 1930s, and its progress compared with a decade earlier, was deeply influenced by the authoritarian political regime under which business was working. Furthermore, because national and local public bodies favoured certain categories at the expense of others (i.e. shopkeepers rather than industrial workers, civil servants rather than peasants), thus causing the fragmentation of social protection services of Mussolini’s government, occupational welfare held an important role within the Fascist power system aiming to maintain the consensus of the popular masses.²⁸

 Vera Zamagni, “La dinamica dei salari nel settore industriale”, in L’economia italiana nel periodo fascista, ed. Pierluigi Ciocca and Gianni Toniolo (Bologna: il Mulino, 1976), 329 – 378; Roberto Romano, “L’economia degli spacci aziendali”, in Storia d’Italia. Annali, vol. 6, Economia naturale, economia monetaria, ed. Ruggiero Romano and Ugo Tucci (Turin: Einaudi, 1983), 738 – 740.  Silei, Lo Stato Sociale in Italia, vol. 1, 347– 350.  De Grazia, Consenso e cultura di massa nell’Italia fascista.  Bollettino del Lavoro e della Previdenza sociale 56 (1– 2) (July-August 1931): 178 – 179.  Emilio Gentile, “L’“uomo nuovo” del fascismo. Riflessioni su un esperimento totalitario di rivoluzione antropologica”, in idem, Fascismo. Storia e interpretazione (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2005)2 235 – 264; Augusto Ciuffetti, “Le colonie marine dallo stato sociale fascista al “miracolo economico””, Patrimonio industriale 9 – 10 (2012): 14– 19.  Maurizio Ferrera, Valeria Fargion and Matteo Jessoula, Alle radici del welfare all’italiana. Origini e futuro di un modello sociale squilibrato (Venice: Marsilio, 2012), 29 – 78; Gianni Silei, “Dal

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Welfare Capitalism in the Italian Republic The 1954– 55 survey by the Parliamentary inquiry committee into working conditions (Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori) also took the firm as a reference unit. With a smaller sample than found in the survey by the Fascist association of Italian industrialists (Confederazione fascista degli industriali italiani), it was limited to five industrial sectors, mining, metallurgical, mechanical, chemical and textiles, but took different sized companies into account²⁹, and analysed a very similar, though more extensive, range of social works as the two previous surveys. Of the one hundred and ninety-five firms (56.41 % of which were located in Northern Italy), twenty-one had no welfare service from 1954 to 1955. Table 3 indicates what the other one hundred and seventy-four provided. The first impression of the data reported by the Parliamentary inquiry committee into working conditions (Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori) confirms that the companies provided a wide range of social services, although some sectors had invested more decisively than others in corporate welfare. Just after the Second World War, the metallurgical and chemical industries, in particular, underwent powerful processes of technological and organisational modernisation, as influenced by the American Marshall plan.³⁰ Compared with more traditional sectors like textiles and mining, provision of facilities such as loans to employees, industrial canteens, company houses, company health insurances, recreational organisations and so on was much more widespread. It is likely that the greater the technological and organisational effort to cut down manpower and increase productivity during the 1950s, the greater the investment in welfare facilities so as to compensate the workforce for the sacrifices demanded of it.³¹

luogo di lavoro allo Stato e ritorno. Le dinamiche del Welfare aziendale e contrattuale” in Welfare, donne e giovani in Italia e in Europa nei secoli XIX – XX, ed. Michela Minesso (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2015), 222– 223.  Companies from fifty-one to one hundred employees, companies from one hundred and one to five hundred employees, and companies with over five hundred employees.  Franco Amatori, “La grande impresa”, in Storia d’Italia. Annali, vol. 15, L’industria, ed. Franco Amatori et al. (Turin: Einaudi, 1999), 721– 732; Pier Angelo Toninelli and Renato Giannetti, “L’impresa italiana fra illusioni e realtà”, in Storia del lavoro in Italia. Il Novecento, ed. Stefano Musso, vol. 2, 1945 – 2000. La ricostruzione, il miracolo economico, la globalizzazione (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2015), 175 – 176.  Elisabetta Benenati, “Anni cinquanta: comunità o famiglia aziendale?”, Parolechiave 1 (1993): 131– 148.

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Table 11.3: Main welfare facilities in Italy in 1954 – 1955, as provided by one hundred and seventy-four small, medium and large industrial companies, differentiated by production sector (values in percentage). Facility

Mining Metallurgical Mechanical Chemical Textile All companies

Loans to employees Free transport to the workplace Industrial canteens Dining hall Staff shops Summer camps for employees’ children Nursery school Breastfeeding room Company health insurance Male nurses Infirmary Company houses Supplementary pension Extra subsidies fund Old-age bonus Birth or marriage bonus Care packages Factory social assistance Schools Scholarships for employees’ children Recreational organisation (Cral) Employees day trips

. .

. .

. .

. .

. –

. .

. – . .

. – . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. – . . . . . . . . – . . .

. – . . . . . . . – . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . – . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Note: the table does not display facilities that were made available by under 5 % of companies. Source: calculations based on the Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori in Italia, Relazioni, vol. 14, Rapporti umani e provvidenze sussidiarie e integrative (Rome: Segretariati generali della Camera dei deputati e del Senato della Repubblica, 1959), 156 – 222.

Another major point emerging from Table 3 is that some services that were widespread in the 1930s were downsized while others grew in the 1950s. For example, dining halls and staff shops were far less common than industrial canteens. This was due, on the one hand, to their diminishing importance in ensuring workers’ nutrition as they had done during the war years and, on the other,

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to the trade unions’ struggle to maintain them as wage suppplements.³² This was a side effect of the trade unions’ newly found freedom as they tended to reappropriate the task of distributing basic commodities through consumer cooperatives as they had done before Fascism. Some case studies like Lombardy or the city of Terni showed how much the firms’ social benefits became the subject of genuine bargaining with union representations after the Second World War.³³ During the 1950s corporate welfare facilities definitively changed from being a means of controlling employees in the workplace to becoming objects for bargaining over, like wages, working hours, etc. Other social initiatives such as health and care services or housing dropped in importance among companies because of progress in setting up the Italian welfare state. For example, the National institute for sickness assistance (Istituto nazionale per l’assistenza alla malattia, Inam)³⁴ and public housing boards³⁵ sought to make assistance for the working classes more concrete and less sporadic.³⁶ Some features of corporate welfare that had existed in the 1930s were preserved into the 1950s. Birth and marriage bonuses, though smaller, were still distributed by industrial firms. The custom of sending employees’ children to summer camps even strengthened. Italy was still a relatively poor country in the 1950s,³⁷ and both public authorities and private bodies viewed the provision

 Giuliana Bertagnoni, “Cibo e lavoro. Una storia della ristorazione aziendale in Italia”, Storia e Futuro 13 (2007): 9 – 24.  Luigi Trezzi, “Operai, commissioni interne e opere sociali integrative degli imprenditori e delle imprese in Lombardia tra gli anni Trenta e Cinquanta del Novecento”, in Comunità di lavoro, 235 – 262; Paolo Raspadori, “Nascita, successi e declino del welfare aziendale a Terni (1886 – 1975)”, Ricerche Storiche 47 (2017): 129 – 136.  Inam was established in 1943 to provide medical, hospital and pharmacological care to all workers in industry, agriculture and trade. The Second World War, the post-war reconstruction and opposition by industrialists (and also partly trade unions) to relinquishing their sickness fund autonomy prevented the Institute from working properly until the end of the 1950s.  Between the 1930s and the 1950s some public agencies were set up in Italy. The autonomous Institutes for social housing and for the construction of cheap, social houses (Istituto autonomo per le case popolari, Istituto per l’edilizia economica popolare, Ina-Casa) were designed to fund, in collaboration of the Italian State with large private companies, the construction of public housing for rent at reasonable prices to families of factory and office workers.  Gianni Silei, Lo Stato Sociale in Italia. Storia e Documenti, vol. 2, Dalla caduta del fascismo ad oggi (1943 – 2004) (Manduria: Lacaita Editore, 2004), 27– 157; Martinelli, “Le opere sociali d’impresa in Italia dal fascismo agli anni Ottanta del Novecento”.  In 1950, purchasing power adjusted per capita income in Italy was 36.6 (where 100 is the value for the United States), Germany 40.6, France 55.1, Belgium 57.1 and the United Kingdom 72.2. Emanuele Felice, Divari regionali e intervento pubblico. Per una rilettura dello sviluppo in Italia (Bologna: il Mulino, 2007), 130.

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of social services as the coverage of basic needs rather than a means to free the resources of the lower classes for consumption.³⁸ Social initiatives continued to be more frequent among large companies than medium or small enterprises. Supplementary pensions, for example, were adopted by 11.32 % of companies with over 500 employees compared with 5.17 % of all companies in the sample. Free transport to the workplace was offered by 24.53 % of large companies compared with 10.92 % overall, while nursery schools were present in 26.41 % of large companies compared with 10.92 % overall. Scholarships for employees’ children were awarded by 37.74 % of large companies compared with 14.37 % of the total sample. What emerged from the survey by the Parliamentary inquiry committee into working conditions (Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori) was that corporate welfare had by then stabilised in Italy. Compared with Fascist times, some of its features had changed, due to strengthening the welfare state and re-starting free labour relationships. Corporate welfare was more visible in some sectors than in others, and in large firms rather than in small ones. Its aims of supplementing low wages and encouraging growth of productivity, seemed, however, to be confirmed once again in the 1950s.

Conclusions What can be inferred from the evolution of Italian corporate welfare, as indicated by survey data from the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s? Some general considerations emerge, bearing in mind the limitations and the differences of the sources that were pointed out in the Section Introduction of this paper. First of all, it is safe to assume that welfare services spread and were enhanced in Italian companies from 1923 to 1955. Looking at Tables 1, 2, and 3, we notice that although many more facilities were made available to workers, very few were found in the majority of businesses in the three survey samples. Corporate welfare, however, was found more often in the North of Italy than in the Centre and the South,³⁹ and in larger firms and in certain sectors, which

 Patrizia Battilani and Corrado Benassi, “Introduzione”, in Consumare il welfare. L’esperienza italiana del secondo Novecento, ed. Patrizia Battilani and Corrado Benassi (Bologna: il Mulino, 2013), 14.  This feature is quite understandable. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Northern regions in Italy have been the most industrialised (and thus have more firms and workers, in manufacturing or other) and the wealthiest for per capita income. See Albert Carreras, “Un ritrat-

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were usually those with a more entrenched paternalistic tradition or those that were most involved in technological and organisational transformations. Moreover, focusing on changes in facilities, we can understand how corporate welfare arrangements were affected both by the development of the Welfare State, and the prevailing patterns of industrial relations. In the 1920s and 1930s, for example, health services and housing were the most frequent facilities that companies provided for their employees, in the face of the substantial lack of public sector involvement in those fields. In the 1950s, on the other hand, with the spread of the welfare state into health care and housing, firms began to withdraw these social policies. In the 1920s and 1950s corporate welfare involvement in leisure and sport activities was, on the whole, minimal, because bargaining about social amenities focused rather on issues such as food, housing and medical care. In the 1930s the prohibition of strikes and the unique Fascist union led employers to strongly support Ond initiatives, in order to maintain control over their manpower and motivate productivity. At the same time, wage cuts prompted businesses to strengthen facilities like staff shops that were designed to supplement the workers’ income. Finally, the entire business community has probably always interpreted corporate welfare as playing an essential role in personnel management, since welfare services were present, throughout the time period under consideration, even in small and medium-sized companies, and mills, albeit to a lesser extent than in large firms. It is interesting to highlight, in this regard, some similarities between the current arrangement of welfare facilities in Italian companies and those existing over half a century ago. In 2012 the Polytechnic university in the Marches and the Institute of economic and social research carried out a survey on a sample of 318 large firms (with at least five hundred employees) which showed that 95.2 % were providing at least one welfare service. The main social initiatives were supplementary pension schemes (87.5 % of companies), complementary health insurance (60.6 %), soft loans (39.0 %), and the opportunity of extra discharges (27.6 %). Little was assigned to corporate housing and care of employees’ children. Welfare facilities were found more often, and were more widespread in the companies in the North and Centre of Italy than in the South, and in the most advanced sectors (as far as technology and organisation was concerned) of the Italian economic system, e. g. chemical production, power

to quantitativo dell’industria italiana”, in Storia d’Italia. Annali, vol. 15, L’industria, 263 – 267; Felice Divari regionali e intervento pubblico, 120 – 127.

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generation, financial services, transport and Telecommunications.⁴⁰ It can be concluded that corporate welfare is one of the channels through which Italian citizens have had, and have today, access to protection from the greater social risks. Its uneven, irregular spread in terms of geography, sector and dimension is consistent with the segmented and particular nature that distinguishes the whole system of both public and private welfare provision in Italy.⁴¹ Further research is, however, needed to establish whether corporate welfare’s role in personnel management was mainly aimed at limiting wage claims, neutralising industrial unrest, increasing the employees’ loyalty and productivity or a mix of all these reasons. Data analysis of the surveys carried out by State inspectorate of industry and labour (Ispettorato dell’industria e del lavoro), the Fascist association of Italian industrialists (Confederazione fascista degli industriali italiani) and findings in the proceedings of the Parliamentary inquiry committee into working conditions (Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori) is an unavoidable starting point for understanding how corporate welfare in Italy developed in the first half of the twentieth century.

Bibliography Amatori, Franco. “La grande impresa”. In Storia d’Italia. Annali, vol. 15, L’industria, edited by Franco Amatori et al., 689 – 753. Turin: Einaudi, 1999. Battilani, Patrizia, and Corrado Benassi. “Introduzione”. In Consumare il welfare. L’esperienza italiana del secondo Novecento, edited by Patrizia Battilani and Corrado Benassi, 7 – 16. Bologna: il Mulino, 2013. Behling, Felix. Welfare Beyond the Welfare State. The Employment Relationship in Britain and Germany. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Benenati, Elisabetta. “Anni cinquanta: comunità o famiglia aziendale?” Parolechiave 1 (1993): 131 – 148.

 Emmanuele Pavolini and Francesca Carrera, “I tratti del welfare occupazionale a partire dalle indagini quantitative”, in Tempi moderni. Il welfare nelle aziende in Italia, ed. Emmanuele Pavolini, Ugo Ascoli and Maria Luisa Mirabile (Bologna: il Mulino, 2013), 177– 193.  The Italian welfare system has shown many distortions and imbalances such as greater generosity in some regions, inequality in retirement benefits, imbalances in healthcare for the safeguard of families, young people and the unemployed, and was used as a consensus collection tool. See Silei, Lo Stato Sociale in Italia, vol. 1 and vol. 2; Ferrera, Fargion and Jessoula, Alle radici del welfare all’italiana; Battilani and Benassi, “Introduzione”; Emmanuele Pavolini, Ugo Ascoli and Maria Luisa Mirabile, “Gli ambivalenti processi di trasformazione del welfare in Italia fra Stato, imprese e sindacato”, in Tempi moderni, 9 – 49.

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Mellinato, Giulio. “Come isole sul continente: imprese e comunità nei centri navalmeccanici della Venezia Giulia (1891 – 1920)”. In Comunità di lavoro. Le opere sociali delle imprese e degli imprenditori tra Ottocento e Novecento, edited by Luigi Trezzi and Valerio Varini, 53 – 77. Milan: Guerini & Associati, 2012. Messina, Silvia A. Conca. “Tra azienda e comunità locali: opere e provvidenze sociali dei cotonieri lombardi nel XIX secolo”. In Comunità di lavoro. Le opere sociali delle imprese e degli imprenditori tra Ottocento e Novecento, edited by Luigi Trezzi and Valerio Varini, 79 – 96. Milan: Guerini & Associati, 2012. Messina, Silvia A. Conca. “Alle origini del welfare aziendale. Industria, manodopera e opere sociali degli imprenditori nell’Italia dell’Ottocento”. In Il welfare aziendale in Italia fra identità e immagine pubblica dell’impresa. Una prospettiva storica, edited by Patrizia Battilani, Silvia A. Conca Messina and Valerio Varini, 37 – 95. Bologna: il Mulino, 2017. Molinari, Augusta. “L’organizzazione delle maestranze e le istituzioni assistenziali”. In Storia dell’Ansaldo, vol. 6, Dall’Iri alla guerra 1930 – 1945, edited by Gabriele De Rosa, 171 – 190. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1999. Musso, Steffano. Storia del lavoro in Italia dall’Unità a oggi. Venice: Marsilio, 2002. Pavolini, Emmanuele, Ugo Ascoli and Maria Luisa Mirabile. “Gli ambivalenti processi di trasformazione del welfare in Italia fra Stato, imprese e sindacato”. In Tempi moderni. Il welfare nelle aziende in Italia, edited by Emmanuele Pavolini, Ugo Ascoli and Maria Luisa Mirabile, 9 – 49. Bologna: il Mulino, 2013. Pavolini, Emmanuele, and Francesca Carrera. “I tratti del welfare occupazionale a partire dalle indagini quantitative”. In Tempi moderni. Il welfare nelle aziende in Italia, edited by Emmanuele Pavolini, Ugo Ascoli and Maria Luisa Mirabile, 149 – 202. Bologna: il Mulino, 2013. Raspadori, Paolo. “Nascita, successi e declino del welfare aziendale a Terni (1886 – 1975)”. Ricerche Storiche 47 (2017): 111 – 138. Romano, Roberto. “L’economia degli spacci aziendali”. In Storia d’Italia. Annali, vol. 6, Economia naturale, economia monetaria, edited by Ruggiero Romano and Ugo Tucci, 703 – 742. Turin: Einaudi, 1983. Roverato, Giorgio. “Valdagno e la “Città sociale” di Gaetano Marzotto Jr: tra utopia conservatrice e moderno welfare aziendale”. Annali di storia dell’impresa 13 (2002): 133 – 151. Silei, Gianni. Lo Stato Sociale in Italia. Storia e Documenti, vol. 1, Dall’Unità al fascismo (1861 – 1943). Manduria: Lacaita Editore, 2003. Silei, Gianni. Lo Stato Sociale in Italia. Storia e Documenti, vol. 2, Dalla caduta del fascismo ad oggi (1943 – 2004). Manduria: Lacaita Editore, 2004. Silei, Gianni. “Dal luogo di lavoro allo Stato e ritorno. Le dinamiche del Welfare aziendale e contrattuale”. In Welfare, donne e giovani in Italia e in Europa nei secoli XIX – XX, edited by Michela Minesso, 217 – 232. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2015. Titmuss, Richard M. Essays on the Welfare State. London: Allen and Unwin, 1958. Toninelli, Pier Angelo, and Renato Giannetti. “L’impresa italiana fra illusioni e realtà”. In Storia del lavoro in Italia. Il Novecento, edited by Stefano Musso, vol. 2, 1945 – 2000. La ricostruzione, il miracolo economico, la globalizzazione, 170 – 203. Rome: Castelvecchi, 2015.

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Trezzi, Luigi. “La questione delle opere sociali integrative delle imprese in Lombardia tra primo e secondo dopoguerra”. In Opere sociali e responsabilità d’impresa. Casi e temi nel Novecento, edited by Aldo Carera, 53 – 93. Milan: Vita & Pensiero, 2009. Trezzi, Luigi. “Operai, commissioni interne e opere sociali integrative degli imprenditori e delle imprese in Lombardia tra gli anni Trenta e Cinquanta del Novecento”. In Comunità di lavoro. Le opere sociali delle imprese e degli imprenditori tra Ottocento e Novecento, edited by Luigi Trezzi and Valerio Varini, 235 – 262. Milan: Guerini & Associati, 2012. Trezzi, Luigi. “La Confindustria e le opere sociali delle imprese nel secondo dopoguerra (1953 – 1970)”. Bollettino dell’Archivio per la storia del movimento sociale cattolico in Italia 48 (2013): 75 – 102. Varini, Valerio. “Costruire un’impresa: il welfare alla Pirelli tra Otto e Novecento”. In Comunità di lavoro. Le opere sociali delle imprese e degli imprenditori tra Ottocento e Novecento, edited by Luigi Trezzi and Valerio Varini, 115 – 141. Milan: Guerini & Associati, 2012. Zamagni, Vera. “La dinamica dei salari nel settore industriale”. In L’economia italiana nel periodo fascista, edited by Pierluigi Ciocca and Gianni Toniolo, 329 – 378. Bologna: il Mulino, 1976.

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Chapter 12 In Search of Unanimity: Human Relations at the Falck Steelworks, 1948 – 1962 Abstract: In the decade and a half after World War II, the Unione Cristiana Imprenditori Dirigenti, a catholic inspired employers’ association in Milan, shaped an intellectual framework bringing together autonomous sociological scholarship and scientific management transferred to Europe by the Economic Cooperation Administration. This reflection mainly aimed to contain labour conflict and raise productivity of privately-owned enterprises in order to make them compete on an equal base with public holding companies and face the beginning of the European economic integration. After analysing the context in which this construction was elaborated, this chapter focuses on its organisational outcomes at the Falck Steelworks. Deploying both repression and communication strategies and corporate welfare policies, the Falck management effectively replaced communist and socialist oriented political activities with the only legitimate patterns of identification, enforcing the company organisation. Dialectic between regimentation of the workplace and “negative integration” of the Italian society into the Centrist political formula was interrupted by the shifting of the overall political framework at the end of the 1950s.

Introduction La Notte (1961) is the second film of Michelangelo Antonioni’s trilogy centred around the relationships between modernity and discontent. One of its central sequences features a conversation between protagonist Giovanni Pontano, a distinguished Milanese novelist, and Mr. Gherardini, a successful businessman, who offers Pontano the task of writing a company history addressed to the firm’s workers. Gherardini intends to use Pontano’s distinguished reputation as an author to assure the history’s credibility in the eyes of his audience. This scene exemplifies the implications of the innovative cultural policies developed by Italian industrialists during the 1950s, as Antonioni considers the unstable position of the intellectual in a new social order which threatens to jeopardise his independence. The unprecedented cultural relevance of industrial companies instilled a sense of loss in the psyche of writers and artists, who perceived the risk of becoming “hidden persuaders”, subservient to economic pohttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-015

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tentates. As such, the film’s narrative sheds light on the connections between the will of management to contain the dissent of workers and the adoption of elaborate communication strategies. Despite the relevance of this link, which was clearly understood by the new cadre of intellectual functionaries supervising companies’ house organs editing, the Italian business and labour historiography has not directed adequate attention to concerns about organisation and communication deeply embedded in the managerial culture elaborated within industrialists’ milieus, especially after the deployment of the Marshall Plan. According to a rooted interpretive paradigm, the Italian industrial system proved to be hostile to the assimilation of the methods of scientific management which originated in the United States. It would have retained its prior organisational culture and diluted the insistence of the Economic Cooperation Administration’s campaigns on a more efficient model of labour organisation in its intrinsic vocation to paternalism. Although this view has been convincingly rejected by more recent scholarship¹, its long-lasting fortune appears indicative of a widespread penchant to consider firms’ social practices merely as a consequence of the features of the Italian economic development and, in particular, of the tumultuous transition from the rural order to the late industrialisation occurring in the 1880s. In this perspective, reappearances of employers’ welfare schemes in subsequent periods have been seen as a residual manifestation of the backwardness of the Italian industrialism. This was perpetually identified with the notion of “ragamuffin capitalism” ², and as such, prevented from pursuing the road to bureaucratisation by its distance from the centres of European industrial development. In Italian historiography, attention to industrialists’ paternalistic practices was firstly devoted, in the 1970s, by the scholarship influenced by operaismo, which had contributed to make factory organisation a crucial field of study. Breaking with the ethico-political paradigm dominant in the history of the labour movement, which examined the development of the working class by focusing primarily on the structure of trade unions and their leaders’ ideas and strategies, the operaist-inspired perspective stressed the analysis of class in its making and emphasised the role of the productive process in shaping workers’ political attitudes. These especially consisted in the “objective, organised devel-

 Hybrid solutions and partial acquisitions prevailing in the adjustment of the European industry to this managerial culture have been emphasised by Jonathan Zeitlin: “Introduction”, in Americanization and Its Limits: Reworking US Technology and Management in Postwar Europe and Japan, ed. Gary Herrigel and Jonathan Zeitlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1– 50.  Giulio Sapelli, L’analisi economica dei comunisti italiani durante il fascismo (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976).

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opment of a political consciousness [which] contrasts the system and antagonistically grows and matures within it”.³ Asserting the inevitability of conflict on the shop-floor, this view resulted in analysis of industrial paternalism which underlined political concerns at its base.⁴ Employers sought to adopt strategies of control and repression of their workers with the aim of preventing the strengthening of class consciousness. The most coherent attempts to found conservative orders of labour relations on these strategies of governmentality, as in the paradigmatic case of the Lanificio Rossi in Schio, would have succeeded in stifling conflict. They would have established normative spaces where traditional, rurally connoted social fabrics were artificially maintained by industrialists, which saw in the construction of these pockets of backwardness a tool for dividing and weakening the labour force⁵. Both this interpretive paradigm and the one emerging from the opposite need to redeem corporate welfare practices from the stigma of control fail to consider the social policies of the firms as related to their properly economic objectives, whose elaborations could not ignore the impact of conjunctures and political contingencies. All-embracing conceptions of industrial paternalism risk, therefore, to overstress elements of continuity within a tradition being dramatically altered by the overall frameworks into which it had to integrate. Corporate welfare policies were firstly developed in the first industrialisation in order to attract, conserve and train workforce, and, at the same time, to legitimise the role of the employer in the industrial organisation. Nevertheless, after the growth of state interventions in the socio-economic sphere occurring in the second half of the nineteenth century, they also acquired the purpose of preventing legal interventions aimed at regulating working conditions in the private context of the factory.⁶ Moreover, during the interwar period, European reception of the principles and methods of scientific management emphasised the importance of the socalled “human factor” in the production process. Thus, the implementation of corporate welfare policies was increasingly perceived as a means of raising

 Stefano Merli, Proletariato di fabbrica e capitalismo industriale. Il caso italiano 1880 – 1900, vol. 1 (Florence: La nuova Italia, 1972), 10.  Stefano Musso, “Introduzione. Gli operai nella storiografia contemporanea. Rapporti di lavoro e relazioni sociali”, in Tra fabbrica e società, ed. Stefano Musso, Annali XXXIII, Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1997), XIV-XVI.  The Foucauldian background of this approach is evident in Luigi Guiotto, La fabbrica totale. Paternalismo industriale e città sociali in Italia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979).  Sandrine Kott, “Enjeux et significations d’une politique sociale : la Société industrielle de Mulhouse (1827– 1870)”, Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine 34 (1987): 640 – 59.

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work outputs and achieving the productivist purposes rooted in this industrial culture.⁷ In the 1950s, corporate welfare policies mainly aimed to contain labour conflict after the intense political mobilisation of the post-war period and to assimilate workforce in the factory organisation. This chapter aims to demonstrate these objectives, by focusing on the social construction promoted by the management of the Falck Steelworks in Sesto San Giovanni. In its attempt to conceptualise cultural constructions and managerial practices as deeply interrelated, this essay deals especially with the Weberian scholarship inaugurated by Reinhard Bendix.⁸ The ideology of corporate order developed within the Lombard entrepreneurial milieus will be investigated as a blueprint for the elaboration and adoption of organisational techniques aiming to remove workers’ inclinations to oppose the factory hierarchy. Enlacing the examination of communication strategies and of welfare and leisure measures adopted at the Falck Steelworks since the 1930s appears to be essential to reconstruct the social culture of the management in all its complexity. Although recent Italian scholarship has frequently restricted its perspective to practices of corporate welfare, an encompassing analysis should not overlook the knot of “aspirations, ideology, industrial groups’ power”⁹ which constitute its background. Studying this intellectual framework permits the distinguishing of the turning points arising from interactions between factory and society from the seeming continuity of practical implementations of industrial welfare.

In the Arena of Reconstruction At the end of World War II, the Falck Steelworks maintained their productive potential unaltered, in stark contrast with the overall Italian iron and steel industry, which was seriously damaged by the devastations of the conflict¹⁰. The techno-

 Elisabetta Benenati, La scelta del paternalismo. Un’azienda dell’abbigliamento tra fascismo e anni ’50 (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1994).  For a selection of the copious literature elaborated on Work and Authority in Industry (New York: Wiley, 1956), see Mauro F. Guillén, Models of Management: Work, Authority, and Organization in a Comparative Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 6.  Elisabetta Benenati, “Cento anni di paternalismo aziendale”, in Tra fabbrica e società, 49.  The metallurgical industry was one of the most affected by the war: in 1945, the production of iron collapsed to one fifth of the 1938 levels, while the annual cast iron production capacity fell from 1,850,000 to 600,000 tons, and that of steel from 4,600,000 to 3,270,000 tons. See Francesca Fauri, Il piano Marshall e l’Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), 98 – 9.

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logical structure of industrial steel production in Sesto was based on the conservative system of its management, constructed whilst defining its industrial strategy in the 1930s. Avoiding “venturing into imposing fulfilments”,¹¹ it had opted to focus on primary and semi-finished steel making processes. This resulted in the abundant productivity demonstrated during the immediate post-war period. Because of German destruction of the state-owned factories in Piombino and Portoferraio and the dismantlement of the plants in Cornigliano, the Falck Steelworks’ share of the overall steel production constantly increased; the effectiveness of the management’s tactics was also acknowledged by its rivals in staterun enterprises advocating a radical reconfiguration of the Italian steel supply chain¹². Nevertheless, the retention of this position was made less and less feasible by the spreading agreement about the opportunity to immediately realise the long-debated transition to integrated steel production, which was particularly supported by managers of the enterprises owned by the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, Iri).¹³ In 1933, Oscar Sinigaglia had formulated the most coherent plan to enlarge the narrowminded technological and productive perspective of the scrap-based steel production. Before and after being nominated president of the Finsider¹⁴ in 1945, he made a continuous effort to denounce the strategy followed by the state-controlled Ilva during the late Fascist period, when the development of a national steel supply chain was prevented by a sequence of agreements with the industrialists of the Po Valley. However, this contrast was initially restricted by the need to await the flow of more consistent economic resources to finance industrial reconstruction. Only at the beginning of the implementation of the European Recovery Program (Erp), the Falck management’s standpoints regarding allocations of the American aids revealed the dichotomy dividing private industrialists from Sinigaglia. Wait-and-see attitudes that it had maintained until 1948, relying on its position of strength on the internal market, were abandoned in favour of the attempt to earmark a part of the requests of industrial products made available to Italy by the Marshall Plan to establish an integrated steel supply chain. As the president Giovanni Falck declared to the Erp Committee of the Confindustria

 Martino Pozzobon, “La siderurgia milanese nella Ricostruzione (1945 – 1952). Ristrutturazioni produttive, imprenditori, classe operaia”, Ricerche storiche 8 (1978): 297.  Oscar Sinigaglia, Situazione e prospettive della siderurgia italiana (Rome: Tip. Poliglotta Cuor di Maria, 1949), 22.  Established in 1933 by the Fascist regime, the Iri was the main Italian public holding company.  Created in 1937, the Finsider was the holding of the Iri operating in the steel sector.

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– the Italian employers’ federation – in June 1948, this eventuality threatened to exacerbate the main difficulty with which privately held corporations had to deal, namely the shortage of outlets. In fact, the asphyxia of the domestic market forced his firm to accumulate more than a third of its current outcomes. In his views, a durable solution to the negative conjuncture the Italian industry was facing would have required reduction of production costs and increase of external outlets.¹⁵ However, the opposite arrangement invoked by Sinigaglia was increasing its fascination for the government. Its consonance with the overall political situation, and especially with the social compromise on which the Christian Democracy (Dc) had been basing its dominance since 1947, represented the most relevant factor in its success. Sinigaglia’s promises of durable containment of unrest in factories and restoration of the industrial managements’ authority, to be realised by a rapid decision on guidelines for economic development and allowing of mass layoffs, significantly reproduced the main feature of the “capitalist stabilisation”¹⁶ of the Italian society attempted by the centrist party. The solution prospected by the president of the Finsider would suit the government’s purpose of incrementing production, as advocated by the administration of the Marshall Plan, and, simultaneously, to corrode the social bases of the communist political mobilisation, which had its stronghold in the industrial workforce. Thus, the Finsider management was able to overcome, through the government’s support, the American authorities’ initial reluctance to fund state-owned enterprises, ensuring that resources for the acquisition of American and European capital goods would be concentrated on its own steel plans.¹⁷ Despite Giovanni Falck’s alarm in reaction to this outline,¹⁸ privately owned steel corporations did not envisage a complete failure, and they could take advantage, on the contrary, of the unprecedented role played by the state in supporting their expansion. This continuity, in addition, did not take the form of undue interferences in the delineation of their productive objectives. Besides obtaining a reduction of the fiscal burden weighing on the corporation’s financial

 Carlo Spagnolo, La stabilizzazione incompiuta. Il piano Marshall in Italia (1947 – 1952) (Roma: Carocci, 2001), 179.  Ibid., 165.  Francesca Fauri, Il piano Marshall e l’Italia, 204.  The reasons of his discontent were vividly summarised in ʻLa polemica siderurgica. Una lettera di Angelo Costaʼ, Il Mondo 1, no. 17 (June 11, 1949): “To understand Mr. Falck’s state of mind, we should imagine two cyclists racing on a hill: after outdistancing his rival, the one finds himself being overtaken by the other, towed by a powerful American car”.

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statements,¹⁹ the Falck management succeeded in acquiring a conspicuous share of the Marshall Plan funds (5,840,300,000 liras) and could fulfil a “profound technological transformation”,²⁰ albeit without overturning its rooted industrial strategy. Despite remaining tied to their traditional production sector, the electrometallurgy of iron and steel, the Falck Steelworks underwent an ambitious multiyear investment plan aiming to preserve their primacy in secondary steelmaking and compete with the Finsider on terms as equal as possible. The most evident inconvenience the management was compelled to face was the obsolescence of the plans, which made an immediate modernisation of the productive structure necessary. This obsolescence was largely attributable to the isolation of the corporation first in the pre-war autarchic period and then during the conflict. The management found a first opportunity in the availability of the Eximbank loans, thanks to which the Falck management applied to the government for the purchase of a rolling mill. The strengthening of the rolling process would also be based on the procurement of two “trains” to be supplied by the steel foundry, which, in turn, would be renovated through the installation of new electric furnaces.²¹ After the Schuman Declaration of May 1950, the transformation and the expansion of the manufacturing process would aim to drive a powerful impulse for increased productivity alongside reduced costs – conditions made necessary by the imminent integration of the European national steel supply chains. Although this event represented a positive turning point for the Falck management, which had been claiming an enlargement of the narrow borders of the Italian market, it compelled the corporation to maintain fair competition with foreign producers.²² As far as the composition of the workforce was concerned, the Falck Steelworks were characterised by a certain turnover, which, nonetheless, did not reached the impressive proportions of the “savage restructuration”²³ taking

 Paolo Tedeschi, “Gli industriali lombardi e il Piano Marshall: verso un “nuovo sistema d’impresa””, in Il dilemma dell’integrazione. L’inserimento dell’economia italiana nel sistema occidentale (1945 – 1957), ed Alberto Cova (Milan: Angeli, 2008), 435.  Valerio Varini, “Industria e ricostruzione. L’uso delle risorse “americane” e le scelte delle imprese: alcuni casi di studio”, in Il dilemma dell’integrazione, 551.  Ibid., 558.  Paolo Tedeschi, “Un aspetto dell’integrazione europea: Enrico Falck e la Lece (1948 – 53)”, in L’Italia alla metà del XX secolo. Conflitto sociale, Resistenza, costruzione di una democrazia, ed Luigi Ganapini (Milan: Guerini, 2005), 399 – 423.  Gabriella Bonvini and Gianfranco Petrillo, “I metalmeccanici milanesi 1945 – 1972. Le lotte, l’organizzazione”, in Un minuto più del padrone: i metalmeccanici milanesi dal dopoguerra agli anni Settanta, ed Gianfranco Bertolo (Milan: Vangelista, 1977), 21.

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place at the nearby Breda plants. From 1945 to 1948, the employment levels were substantially kept uniform, and the freeing of layoffs did not significantly alter a situation appearing, however, changed from the pre-war period. During the conflict, in fact, the steelworks had been affected by massive alteration of the workforce constitution: in 1942 only, recruitments and dismissals amounted to 33.5 % and 26.4 % of the total number of the employees respectively. Most of the workforce in the Reconstruction years was, therefore, composed of manpower recruited in wartime. This element did not compromise, in any case, the existence of a hard core of older and differently skilled workers, who were less hit by the interwar dismissals, which mainly regarded mobilized soldiers.²⁴ Besides maintaining strained relations with recently recruited employees, this group was attached to professional identifications built on an ensemble of know-hows which derived from the previous productive structure, largely modified by the post-war reconfiguration. The discontent of this segment, responsible for its large participation in trade union action and socialist and communist political militancy, was increasingly identified by the management as a menace to the most essential value impressed by the climate of the Marshall Plan on the Italian industrial culture, the emphasis on productivity.

A Culture Geared for Industrial Stability The nexus between attention to human factors of production and stabilisation of the factory was ingrained in the industrial culture of the two presidents managing the steelworks in the post-war years. After Giorgio Enrico Falck’s resignation in 1945, the factory was managed by his sons Enrico and Giovanni, who assumed the position after Enrico was elected senator in the Dc list in 1948. The proximity of the two industrialists to the Unione Cristiana Imprenditori Dirigenti (Ucid) – an employers’ association established by important members of the laity of the Archdiocese of Milan in 1945 – had an essential part in enhancing their attention to organisational aspects of management. The diverse composition of the association was reflected by the plurality of orientations which characterised its intellectual background. Within the association’s circles, in fact, the legacy of the

 Martino Pozzobon and Roberto Mari, “Le Acciaierie e ferriere lombarde Falck (1945 – 1948)”, in La ricostruzione nella grande industria. Strategia padronale e organismi di fabbrica nel triangolo, 1945 – 1948, ed. Luigi Ganapini et al. (Bari: De Donato, 1978), 96 – 7.

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“new catholic discourse on economy and enterprise”²⁵ developed by some professors of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart – in particular by Agostino Gemelli, Amintore Fanfani, Giulio Pastore and Francesco Vito – after Pope Pius XII’s 1942 Christmas Address pressured to manage political tensions occurring in the factories. The association was essential in promoting the notion of the necessity of governing the Reconstruction process : the Ucid focused heavily on the social and even cultural necessity of containing the potential for the workers’ unrest. Stress placed on the growth of the industrial production directed the Ucid’s agenda towards a technocratic approach – this was considered to be an element necessary for “giving a decisive contribution to the remaking of the society and erasing the inglorious period when the Fascist regime had imposed inefficiencies, corruption and privileges”.²⁶ Moreover, influences of the school of work psychology animated by Gemelli and reception of the American scientific management which had taken place in the inter-war period encouraged these Catholic-inspired intellectuals and employers to reflect on possible solutions for the aporias of Taylorism and to place a high priority on dialogue with the trade union representations not calling into question the factory hierarchies. This tendency resulted in the support given in 1946, to the hypothesis that workers’ representatives were included in the corporate managements,²⁷ by Remo Vigorelli, the general manager of La Rinascente, and Francesco Mauro, pioneer of the assimilation of the innovative organisational methods in the Italian industrial culture.²⁸ The debate on integration of works councils reinforced the attitudes of industrialists who, at the opposite end, saw in the adoption of new organisational strategies a means to re-establish their complete authority on production choices and remove mediation with workers’ representations, made necessary by postwar unrest, which had transformed the factories into “political and union arenas”.²⁹ Enrico and Giovanni Falck may be connected to this alignment. Enrico

 Ada Ferrari, “Una religione feriale: aspetti e momenti del cattolicesimo ambrosiano dall’Unità agli anni Settanta”, in Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi. La Lombardia, ed. Duccio Bigazzi and Marco Meriggi (Turin: Einaudi, 2001), 433 – 77.  Duccio Bigazzi, “”L’ora dei tecnici”: aspirazioni e progetti tra guerra e ricostruzione”, in Pensare l’Italia nuova: la cultura economica milanese tra corporativismo e ricostruzione, ed Giuseppe De Luca (Milan: Angeli, 1997), 379 – 80.  Claudia Finetti, “La responsabilità sociale dell’imprenditore negli ambienti cattolici lombardi dagli anni Trenta alla Ricostruzione”, PhD Thesis, University of Bologna, 2007– 2008.  Paolo Viani, “Progettare l’impresa: Francesco Mauro e il dibattito europeo tra le due guerre”, in Storie di imprenditori, ed. Duccio Bigazzi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 235 – 93.  Giuseppe Berta, L’Italia delle fabbriche. Genealogie ed esperienze dell’industrialismo nel Novecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), 143.

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Falck’s managerial thought was particularly exercised by the Elton Mayo who conducted experiments aimed towards expanding managements’ interventions from the productive process, to the entire network of social relations in which workers were embedded. Therefore, they could appear to be appealing to an employer in search of a blueprint for isolating his factory from a densely politicised external context and limiting in this way the impact of the workforce’s mobilisation on the industrial organisation. While Mayo focused on the part played by engineers in delineating more effective forms of management, Falck’s omissions of this aspect indicated his effort to highlight the central role that employers were able to maintain in the guidance of this process. Reaffirmation of the leading position of corporate presidents especially aimed at disputing criticism of family capitalism spreading within the Italian industrial culture, recently imbued with James Burnham’s suggestions for separating ownership and control in corporate organisations and making managers the cornerstone of the future economic development. According to Falck, on the contrary, the retention of a familist approach in management might facilitate attempts to coordinate industrial communities, making them social systems fully unconnected to external conditions. As he pointed out at the First Ucid’s International Congress in Genoa in 1947, American scientific management researches shed light on the effects that the implementation of more integrative organisational methods had on the efficiency of workers, who, by “not feel[ing] anymore like the mechanism of a machine, but like a homogeneous group, find stability”.³⁰ Falck believed that corporate social practices might be adapted to serve this purpose. However, it was imperative that they would be able to avoid politically connoted accusations of paternalism, which would only exacerbate tensions between employers and workers. To achieve this target, it was essential that welfare policies appeared to be unrelated to the contemporary political situation and, instead, expression of the “spontaneous convergence”³¹ of the management’s emphasis on productivity growth and the consensus on the critical objective of corporation’s development embedded in the workers’ code of values. By the definition of the firm in organicist terms, Falck intended to underline that the belonging of the workforce to the factory community and its political militancy were ultimately incompatible. Mayo’s stress on usefulness of corporate social policies to overcome anomies raised by industrial employment was ultimately interpreted not so

 Enrico Falck, “Elementi umani del costo di produzione”, in idem, Saggi politici e sociali (Milan: Ambrosianeum, 1955), 70 – 1.  Ibid., 75.

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much as a suggestion for softening Taylorism’s harshness, but as “an antidote suitable to neutralize class struggle”.³² This attitude, inspired by the search of a social solution for workers’ opposition to the restructuring of the production process, was made more common by the spread of human relations after the implementation of the Marshall Plan in 1948. This panoply of organisational techniques derived from the industrialists’ attempts to bring the “crux of the modernizing mission of the Erp”³³ in the social terrain of factories. As Luciano Gallino has underlined, since the end of the 1940s, “the multiplication of ʻexpertsʼ in human relations – at times almost unfamiliar with social sciences –, institutes devoted to their practical teaching, and publications of all levels and periodicity on this argument gave the impression that a sort of new doctrine was pervading Italian corporations”.³⁴ This culture generally resulted in a confused agglomeration of welfare practices aiming to reach similarly ambiguous productive purposes, according to a tendency of which the same initiators of work psychology in Italy³⁵ heavily disapproved. Nonetheless, milieus related to the Ucid interpreted, at least in some cases, the connection between productivism and social organisation of factories in a more complex and conscious manner. From this point of view, the choice of the theme “Cooperation in firms” for the Sixth National Congress of the Ucid (1954) can be considered to be remarkable, as can the active part that singular members of the association had in organising an international convention on the human factor of production (1955). The reflection articulated in these occasions derived from an attentive reworking of Georges Friedmann’s paradigm of the ongoing “third industrial revolution”. This conception had reached Italy through Gemelli’s thesis on opportunities for social palingenesis arising from the automatisation of production processes occurring in large scale industries. Continuous reduction of alienation deriving from work fatigue³⁶ would allow employees to increasingly perceive themselves to already be an active component of corporations, without making their inclusion in decision-making necessary. Despite the paucity of automatisa-

 Ada Ferrari, Una religione feriale, 455.  David Ellwood, “Il piano Marshall e il processo di modernizzazione in Italia”, in Il Piano Marshall e l’Europa, ed Elena Aga Rossi (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1983), 160.  Luciano Gallino, “Oggetto e funzione della sociologia dell’industria”, in idem, L’industria e i sociologi (Milan: Comunità, 1962), 48.  Agostino Gemelli, “I problemi sociali del lavoro nella valutazione della psicotecnica”, Produttività 2 (1951): 62– 4.  On the centrality of social consequences of work fatigue in Gemelli’s thought, see Agostino Gemelli, L’operaio nella industria moderna (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1945).

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tion processes effectively implemented in the Italian factories³⁷ during the 1950s, these suggestions held out the possibility of a “functional solidarism”³⁸ being established in productive plans and industrial unrest being eradicated. Moreover, deep links between political conflict and technological transformations were also activated by the opposite evaluation of alterations in production processes elaborated within the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (Cgil), continuing to function as a “transmission belt” for communist and socialist political mobilisation in the industrial plans. Its Milanese analysts identified technological renovations with a means by which the exploitation of workers was increased.³⁹ This intensified the conviction of the Ucid that union activism was a serious obstacle to industrial modernisation, especially because political affiliations provoked the employees’ psychological detachment from the factory. There existed, on the contrary, the need for the corporation to be perceived as an exclusive social field; it had to ban alternative forms of identification capable of damaging production activities. The discontent of skilled workers mostly affected by the industrial restructuring of the late 1940s, in particular, fostered silent sentiments becoming powerful forces above all when they are opposed, and changing into rules and symbols of group living, being up to seriously upsetting work outcomes. These rules and sentiments find their most common expression in a code of professional solidarity which really shapes, in opposition to the management’s assessment, the authentic efficiency of the team.⁴⁰

These dynamics, which were considered especially dangerous when they assumed a political characterisation, were rooted – according to the Ucid’s members – in the erosion of previous professional specialisations. Industrial reshaping had aggravated the anomie of workers in the short term and enticed them to “move their psychological interests and search for the meaning of their activity […] away from the group to which they belong[ed]”. Nonetheless, their inclination to find “means of balancing” a sense of decreasing qualification “in ideologies” might be reversed by making the factory the cornerstone of a social con-

 Aldo Carera, “Progresso tecnico e organizzazione del lavoro nell’industria italiana”, Annali della Fondazione Giulio Pastore 22 (1993), 29 – 63.  Vittorio Vaccari, “Caratteristiche e problemi della evoluzione tecnologica e sociale”, in I fattori umani dello sviluppo economico. Dalla zappa alla automazione, ed Vittorio Vaccari et al. (Rome: Ucid, 1958), 50.  Claudia Magnanini, Studiare il lavoro. L’Ufficio economico della Camera del Lavoro di Milano (1948 – 1966) (Sesto San Giovanni: Archivio del Lavoro, 2001).  Giuseppe Macchi, “La formazione alla collaborazione”, in La collaborazione nella impresa. Atti del VI Congresso nazionale della Ucid (Genoa: Ucid, 1954), 38.

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struction aiming to satisfy employees’ “human needs for security [and] belonging”.⁴¹ Although disciplinary actions might represent a preliminary element in the removal of unrest, employers’ strategy could not be limited to that: “the fulfilment of this ideal makes necessary […] to bring into play unity and collaboration, which cannot be reduced to the elimination of the opposite group but have to establish forces and systems capable to replace those that have been erased”.⁴² Communication, in particular, had to perform a critical function in this attempt to create a “consciousness community”⁴³ and delineate a “ʻcorporate idealʼ provided with the force of an ideology, being able to harmoniously move the spirit and the will of the individuals composing the corporate community towards a common purpose”.⁴⁴ The firm, on its turn, was turned into a “living being who evolves, regresses, flourishes, dreams, struggles, asks for devotion and love”.⁴⁵ Emphasis on the organicist features of the corporation, which reached its rhetorical acme in these formulations, must be considered as far more than a solely discursive element. Corporate managements in search of solutions to labour conflict, in fact, had the opportunity to recognise in the “mechanism of psychological co-optation”⁴⁶ that these organisational strategies seemed to facilitate the most efficient and scientifically legitimate means to stabilise the industrial plans and pursue their productivity goals.

Mythopoesis of the Corporate Identity The intellectual construction delineated by entrepreneurial milieus connected to the Ucid had one of its most systematic implementations at the Falck Steelworks. Besides maintaining crucial links with the Italian Catholic-inspired industrialists’ networks, the management distinguished itself for its support of the efficiency policies designed by the Italian administration of the Erp, in particular by the Comitato Nazionale per la Produttività (National Committee for Productivity).⁴⁷  Ibid., 35 – 6.  Ibid., 42.  Ibid., 19.  Umberto Baldini, “Morale ed organizzazione”, in Human relations in Italia. Atti del Convegno internazionale sull’organizzazione umana nell’economia industriale, ed. Edoardo Abbele et al. (Milan: Consulente delle aziende, 1956), 40.  Riccardo Bianchedi, “Gli strumenti della collaborazione”, in La collaborazione nelle impresa, 82.  Giuseppe Berta, L’Italia delle fabbriche, 141.  Established in 1951 under the authority of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, it was composed by representatives of employers’ organisations, members of Free Trade Unions, and

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According to Giovanni Falck’s conception of corporate relationships, the adoption of innovative organisational methods aimed to restore order in a context where both the harsh containment of antagonistic political aggregations and alterations of the productive processes had weakened internal cohesion. Repression of socialist and communist militancy continued to play a relevant part in the marginalisation of “breeding grounds of complaints, rivalries and claims”⁴⁸ originally incited by the layoffs of 1948 and the restoration of more rigid factory hierarchies. Disciplinary measures limited the freedom of movements of members of the works councils, who were prevented from leaving their department, and the distribution of political and union publications was banned in workplaces. Especially after 1952, “the overall climate of the years of frozen freedom”⁴⁹ began to be distinctly perceived by the most politicised workers at the steelworks. As numerous memoirs recount,⁵⁰ restrictions imposed on factory life increasingly appeared as ordinary administrative practices, whose discriminatory intents became evident in the grant of productivity bonus payments, contingent upon workers’ acceptance of the commitment not to participate in strikes,⁵¹ and the creation of “confinement departments”,⁵² where union activists were relegated. The adoption of these measures revealed itself to be dramatically effective in producing a dropout crisis within labour organisations. In 1953, the factory branch of the Italian Communist Party noticed how the collapse of previous social structures was due to a reversal of the balance of power in the plans: workers strike to a very limited extent. […] At the moment, the works councils are without the support of the masses and do not perform the function they are suited for. Generally speaking, the workers at the Falck Steelworks believe that struggling against Falck is impossible: they consider the master to be too forceful. They are convinced that they do not have the power and the capability to face Falck.⁵³

technicians; it had the purpose of training managers and coordinating the campaigns for industrial efficiency.  Giorgio Manzini, Una vita operaia (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), 55.  Guido Crainz, Storia del miracolo italiano. Cultura, identità, trasformazioni fra anni cinquanta e sessanta (Rome: Donzelli, 1996), 33.  Particularly important are, in this respect, the oral sources of the Archivio del Lavoro in Sesto San Giovanni, which recorded the voice of almost four hundred militants and cadres of the Milanese union confederations.  “”State buoni e tranquilli per qualche mese e forse Falck vi darà in gennaio un bel premio“”, L’Unità, November 24, 1955.  “I “campi di concentramento”: una vergogna per la democrazia”, L’Unità, January 11, 1956.  Fondazione Isec, Fondo Pci di Sesto San Giovanni Sezione di fabbrica Falck Fratelli Picardi, b. 1, f. 13, Circular of August 5, 1953.

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Persistent emphasis on repression and the parallel disarticulation of union organisations represent the most peculiar trait of the worker-memoirists’ testimonies on the 1950s. It has induced a relevant part of the period’s historiography, and especially analysis of the paradigm of paternalism, to consider this period as merely characterised by the managements’ attitude to transform the factory hierarchy in a dispositive of domination and social control. This analytical tendency, also weakened by its long-lasting indifference to entrepreneurial cultures, has impeded the clear recognition of the fact that strategies of containment of the union militancy might only have represented a preliminary phase of an overall project for effective integration of the workers in corporate organisations. Particularly at the Falck Steelworks, attention to the workers’ enduring claims and exigencies resulted in a noteworthy reinforcement of the welfare practices introduced in the 1930s, both in consolidated and original spheres of intervention. The intent of the management to expand housing initiatives pursued the double purpose of soothing the housing emergency of the post-war period, perceived by the Ucid to be a “cause of grave inconveniences and moral and material disorders”,⁵⁴ and reducing workers’ mobility. Besides translating into the construction of two model villages – Villaggio Falck, established during the 1920s, and Villaggio Diaz, this purpose cooperated with public programs: the Falck management financially sustained the Fanfani Plan and the housing initiatives of the municipalities of Milan and Sesto San Giovanni.⁵⁵ The establishment of elementary schools and summer camps for employees’ children and other leisure and sport activities received an analogous boost. Similarly, the social works most immediately linked to industrial production were strengthened by the deployment of training courses focusing on accident prevention. They aimed to deal with precarious work conditions provoked by the widespread neglect of security measures insistently denounced by trade unions.⁵⁶ The persistence, both within and outside workplaces, of structured political resistance menaced, nevertheless, to compromise the management’s attempts to make these social policies an efficient means of attaining the agreement of workers. Although communist and socialist militants were unceasingly overseen by floor managers and supervisors, and the circulation of political press was limited, certain components of the workforce preserved cultures and forms of aggre-

 Archivio Mario Romani, Fondo Ucid, b. 8, f. 11, “Esposizione programmatica del 22 aprile 1948”.  Valerio Varini, Impresa, enti locali, welfare company in Lombardia. Intervento municipale e iniziativa privata tra XIX e XX secolo (Milan: Angeli, 2012), 168.  Fiom provinciale di Milano, 15 morti e 54,637 feriti in 3 anni alla Falck: difendiamo la vita dei lavoratori (Milan: Grafica artigiana, 1956).

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gation antithetical to those promoted by the management, as was shown by the publication, between 1952 and 1960, of the workers’ periodical Il Siderurgico. The endurance of these marginalised voices of opposition, and their condemnation of the corporate social works, made welfare a discursive terrain of the struggle opposing competing conceptions of the factory structure. Further, the initial marginalisation of these individuals was accused of being an instrument by which the management aimed to conceal the exploitation of the workforce, to whom they appealed in their publications. The target of the communication effort to which the management was committed was the legitimisation of social policies in the eyes of the workers and, thus, the obtention of employees’ agreement on an ideal of the industrial organisation in which work hierarchies played a pivotal role not only within factory but also in the management of free time. After its establishment in 1952, the employee magazine La Ferriera became the main instrument of this strategy attempting to make the workers’ complete identification with the firm the key to reaching a unanimous consensus on the management’s centrality in the decision-making process. Distinguishing itself from other house organs published in Italy in the 1950s, the auto-representation of the firm established by La Ferriera aimed less to affect the external intellectual framework than to delineate a unilateral view of the factory addressed to the workers, “cement[ing] relations between the employee and the company”,⁵⁷ as affirmed by the opening editorial of its first issue. Printed on a monthly basis under the supervision of Armando Frumento, member of the Italian Liberal Party and director of the Falck Study Centre, by the end of the 1950s, the magazine had reached a circulation of 16,000 copies, delivered to employees’ families. Characterised by a well-finished layout, issues mainly held photographic reportages on work conditions at the factory and corporate welfare practices, accompanied by explanatory and opinion pieces. The editors’ intention of involving employees in the drafting process did not attain the initially desired results: despite reiterated pleas for collaboration, letters sent by readers remained rare and mainly focused on the cultural and technical columns. Representations of the factory as an organic and autonomous social framework formed the central constitutive feature of the cultural construction delineated by La Ferriera. It attempted to corroborate identification of the firm with a “small homeland which has its enlightened rulers and faithful subjects, its glorious history, and its values being imparted unalterably from generation to generation”⁵⁸. Coherent characterisations of both productive activities and social re-

 “Il perché di questo giornale”, La Ferriera 1, no. 1, January 1952.  Giorgio Manzini, Una vita operaia, 136.

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sponsibility of the corporate organisation were embedded in the communication strategy developed by the management, attempting to reduce the anomic impact of workers’ precarious integration in the industrial social order. Labour ideologies had to represent the main link between the workers’ values with productivism rooted in the management’s industrial culture. Recovering the rhetorical patrimony of the “attempted theology of technology”⁵⁹ delineated by Italian Catholic milieus in the Thirties, La Ferriera uniformly tended to emphasise the organicist element of the productive processes. The factory was identified with an organisation devoted to the humanisation of the matter, where “everything move[d], act[ed], work[ed] with perfect synchrony, and everything function[ed] with the scrupulous and notable precision of a minuscule mechanism”.⁶⁰ The establishment of a diffuse sense of belonging to the imagined community of the corporation was pursued by a deep connection between internal communication and rituals of identification aiming to lay the groundwork for a process of small-scale nationalisation. After the constitution, in 1952, of the Associazione Giorgio Enrico Falck, in which the “Anziani del Lavoro” (Seniors of Work) – the workers employed at the factory for more than twenty years – were gathered, the annual ceremonies of the association became the major occasion for the management’s praise of ethical refrains which gave expression to the corporate social construction. Loyalty to the company was declared by Giovanni Falck to be “a fact of nature, […] everyday making us members of the process of social creation and tying us to the firm such as it intertwines the firm with us”.⁶¹ The president’s speeches intended to attribute significance to rituals in which the ideal of belonging to the corporation manifested itself in the deployment of an impressive panoply of banners and symbols. Insistence on emotional reactions prevailing during these ceremonies constantly characterised the reports of La Ferriera, which paid a special attention to “enthusiastic applause” and “eyes where tears shine from intense emotion”.⁶²

 Renato Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica (1929 – 1937) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979), 434.  “Dal rottame al lingotto. Nell’Acciaieria Elettrica dell’Unione”, La Ferriera 6, no. 9, September 1957.  “Il saluto inaugurale dell’Associazione Nazionale Lavoratori Anziani e la solenne cerimonia della premiazione”, La Ferriera 1, no. 6, June 1952.  Ibid.

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Liberty and Unanimity The social construction delineated at the Falck Steelworks proved to be effective in attaining the purposes towards which it strove. Antagonistic political militancy was substantially restrained, and union organisations integrated in the management’s plan of industrial order – above all, the factory sections of the Catholic-inspired, anti-Communist Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori (Cisl) – substantially increased their relevance within work councils⁶³. The social practices adopted by the management were often able, as even the most politicised worker-memoirists acknowledged, to fracture the mutual solidarity of the socialist and communist militants and erode the basis of the adverse workers’ identifications⁶⁴. Assisted by the stable composition of the workforce,⁶⁵ the management’s attempts to isolate the factory from the external political context were largely successful in making the productive plans impenetrable to union activism. Active and original elaborations of the American organisational culture transferred to Italy during the Erp years provided the Falck management with innovative tools for containing the waves of unrest of the post-war period. Moreover, they delineated the intellectual framework within which the Italian employers’ enduring tendencies to refuse bargaining and mediations with workers, continuing after the end of the Fascist regime and its emphasis on corporatism, could find an expression suitable to a radically transformed political condition. Through an assimilation of the approach of the American managerial practices,

 The number of employees at the “Unione” plan of the Falck Steelworks enrolled in the Federazione Italiana Operai Metallurgici – the metalworkers’ union being part of the Cgil – decreased between 1952 and 1958 from 2,009 to 966 (i. e. from 43.9 % to 19.9 % of the employees). See Giuliana Carabelli, “Falck Unione”, in Lotte operaie e sindacato in Italia (1968 – 1972), vol. 5, Dalmine, Falck, Redaelli (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1975), 188 – 9.  Manifestations of contrasts emerging even within socialist and communist workers’ families after the establishment of the “Anziani del Lavoro” association are mentioned in Giorgio Manzini, Una vita operaia, 153: “His son had tried to convince him for days: after suffering the factory life for more than thirty years, […] did he go to pay homage to the master? But Tone Granelli dug his heels in: the golden medal was a recognition and he deserved it, and it [was] not about the master”. For an analysis of the effectiveness of corporate “game[s] that provides distinctive rewards to the players […] in providing for the conditions of its reproduction”, see Michael Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 85.  Despite a certain employment increasing, the number of workers employed at the “Unione” plan was not dramatically altered, passing, between 1952 and 1958, from 3,926 to 4,411. See Giuliana Carabelli, “Falck Unione”, 187.

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this renovated ideology resulted in an extraordinary emphasis on corporate communication. This purpose did not annihilate the influence of other economic and social concerns motivating welfare and training practices. However, it was made crucial by the apprehensions toward intrusions in workplaces of political affiliations and loyalties raised by the Cold War, which threatened to compromise the stability of the production dynamics in a phase of intense restructuring of the Italian steel industry. This project for restraint of union mobilisation, nonetheless, rested on the overall Italian political situation in the 1950s and represented an extension of the industrial organisation of the model of “negative integration”⁶⁶ on which the Dc based its attempt to isolate the workers’ political and union organisations in order to pursue the final objective of rapid economic development in the presence of widespread social conflicts. The recovery of union mobilisation occurring in Milan after 1958 played a pivotal role in the erosion of the legitimacy of the internal organisation imposed by the Falck management, especially forcing the Cisl sections at the factory, after protracted refusals, to accept collaborative bargaining with the Cgil. Therefore, when changes in the political climate shifted the balance in labour relations between “liberty” and “unanimity” – according to the dichotomy suggested by Piero Gobetti⁶⁷ – to the detriment of the latter, the industrial order imagined by the Falck management was finally undermined by the fading of the institutional circumstances which had made its conception and construction possible. At the end of the 1950s, the first signs of the decline of Centrism provoked a violent interference of external concerns in the workplace, dramatically weakening the social centrality of employers in the political regimentation of workers. That dealt a crucial blow to the industrialists’ project to prevent alternative political actors – both trade unions and the State – from challenging the ideologies and practices of corporate privatism.

Sources Unpublished Sources Archivio Mario Romani, Fondo Ucid, b. 8. Fondazione Isec, Fondo Pci di Sesto San Giovanni Sezione di fabbrica Falck Fratelli Picardi, b. 1.

 Carlo Spagnolo, La stabilizzazione incompiuta, 23.  Piero Gobetti, La rivoluzione liberale. Saggio sulla lotta politica in Italia (Turin: Einaudi, 1983), 9.

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Published Sources “Dal rottame al lingotto. Nell’Acciaieria Elettrica dell’Unione”. La Ferriera 6, no. 9 (September 1957). Falck, Enrico. Saggi politici e sociali. Milan: Ambrosianeum, 1955. Fiom provinciale di Milano. 15 morti e 54,637 feriti in 3 anni alla Falck: difendiamo la vita dei lavoratori. Milan: Grafica artigiana, 1956. Gallino. “Oggetto e funzione della sociologia dell’industria”. In idem, L’industria e i sociologi. Milan: Comunità, 1962. Gemelli, Agostino. L’operaio nella industria moderna. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1945. Gemelli, Agostino. “I problemi sociali del lavoro nella valutazione della psicotecnica”. Produttività 2 (1951). Human relations in Italia. Atti del Convegno internazionale sull’organizzazione umana nell’economia industriale, edited by Edoardo Abbele et al. Milan: Consulente delle aziende, 1956. “I “campi di concentramento”: una vergogna per la democrazia”. L’Unità. January 11, 1956. “Il perché di questo giornale”. La Ferriera 1, no. 1 (January 1952). “Il saluto inaugurale dell’Associazione Nazionale Lavoratori Anziani e la solenne cerimonia della premiazione”. La Ferriera 1, no. 6 (June 1952). I fattori umani dello sviluppo economico. Dalla zappa alla automazione. Edited by Vittorio Vaccari et al. Rome: Ucid, 1958. La collaborazione nella impresa. Atti del VI Congresso nazionale della Ucid. Genoa: Ucid, 1954. “La polemica siderurgica. Una lettera di Angelo Costa”. Il Mondo 1, no. 17 (June 11, 1949). Manzini, Giorgio. Una vita operaia. Turin: Einaudi, 1976. Sinigaglia, Oscar. Situazione e prospettive della siderurgia italiana. Rome: Tip. Poliglotta Cuor di Maria, 1949. “State buoni e tranquilli per qualche mese e forse Falck vi darà in gennaio un bel premio”. L’Unità. November 24, 1955.

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Carabelli, Giuliana. “Falck Unione”. In Lotte operaie e sindacato in Italia (1968 – 1972), vol. 5, Dalmine, Falck, Redaelli. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1975. Carera, Aldo. “Progresso tecnico e organizzazione del lavoro nell’industria italiana”. Annali della Fondazione Giulio Pastore 22 (1993). Ellwood, David. “Il piano Marshall e il processo di modernizzazione in Italia”. In Il Piano Marshall e l’Europa, edited by Elena Aga Rossi. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1983. Fauri, Francesca. Il piano Marshall e l’Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010. Ferrari, Ada. “Una religione feriale: aspetti e momenti del cattolicesimo ambrosiano dall’Unità agli anni Settanta”. In Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi. La Lombardia, edited by Duccio Bigazzi and Marco Meriggi. Turin: Einaudi, 2001. Finetti, Claudia. “La responsabilità sociale dell’imprenditore negli ambienti cattolici lombardi dagli anni Trenta alla Ricostruzione”. PhD Thesis. University of Bologna. 2007 – 2008. Gobetti, Piero. La rivoluzione liberale. Saggio sulla lotta politica in Italia. Turin: Einaudi, 1983. Guillén, Mauro F. Models of Management: Work, Authority, and Organization in a Comparative Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Guiotto, Luigi. La fabbrica totale. Paternalismo industriale e città sociali in Italia. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1979. Kott, Sandrine. “Enjeux et significations d’une politique sociale: la Société industrielle de Mulhouse (1827 – 1870)”. Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine 34 (1987). Magnanini, Claudia. Studiare il lavoro. L’Ufficio economico della Camera del Lavoro di Milano (1948 – 1966). Sesto San Giovanni: Archivio del Lavoro, 2001. Merli, Stefano. Proletariato di fabbrica e capitalismo industriale. Il caso italiano 1880 – 1900, vol. 1. Florence: La nuova Italia, 1972. Moro, Renato. La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica (1929 – 1937). Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979. Musso, Stefano. “Introduzione. Gli operai nella storiografia contemporanea. Rapporti di lavoro e relazioni sociali”. In Tra fabbrica e società, edited by Stefano Musso, Annali XXXIII, Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1997. Pozzobon, Martino. “La siderurgia milanese nella Ricostruzione (1945 – 1952). Ristrutturazioni produttive, imprenditori, classe operaia”. Ricerche storiche 8 (1978). Pozzobon, Martino, and Roberto Mari. “Le Acciaierie e ferriere lombarde Falck (1945 – 1948)”. In La ricostruzione nella grande industria. Strategia padronale e organismi di fabbrica nel triangolo, 1945 – 1948, edited by Luigi Ganapini et al. Bari: De Donato, 1978. Sapelli, Giulio. L’analisi economica dei comunisti italiani durante il fascismo. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976. Spagnolo, Carlo. La stabilizzazione incompiuta. Il piano Marshall in Italia (1947 – 1952). Roma: Carocci, 2001. Tedeschi, Paolo. “Un aspetto dell’integrazione europea: Enrico Falck e la Lece (1948 – 53)”. In L’Italia alla metà del XX secolo. Conflitto sociale, Resistenza, costruzione di una democrazia, edited by Luigi Ganapini. Milan: Guerini, 2005. Tedeschi, Paolo. “Gli industriali lombardi e il Piano Marshall: verso un “nuovo sistema d’impresa””. In Il dilemma dell’integrazione. L’inserimento dell’economia italiana nel sistema occidentale (1945 – 1957), edited by Alberto Cova. Milan: Angeli, 2008.

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Part IV Shipyards and Maritime Labour in the Mediterranean

Enric Garcia-Domingo

Chapter 13 The Long Road to Recognition: the Profession of Ship Engineer in the Spanish Merchant Marine, 1877 – 1980 Abstract: The profession of Maquinista Naval [ship engineer] was born with the introduction of steam ships in the Spanish merchant marine. These new professionals, with no tradition, were essential on board, and during the first decades of their existence were scarce and well paid. In Spain, steam navigation began around 1834 but the profession was not officially recognized as such until 1877. Its acceptation from the social and academic point of view was slow, both on board and ashore. At first there was a long period of non-acceptance by deck officers and their maritime traditions. After that, a second moment of rejection and resistance began, caused by a general prejudice from academic institutions and naval authorities. As a consequence, this profession was considered only a technical career and not a scientific one until 1980. Only then it did achieve recognition as university-level career. Thus, social and academic recognition of this profession was a long and winding road.

Introduction: Research Focus, Objectives and Sources The study of maritime-sector professions has produced a scant bibliography; moreover, while shipmasters, mates and mariners have been the subjects of a certain degree of attention,¹ ship engineer officers have barely been the focus

Note: This research was part of the Project I+D+I, MINECO-HAR2014 – 57187-P, by the research group TIG [Work, Institutions and Gender], Universidad de Barcelona. I would like to thank the members of the Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de la Marina Mercante for their help and comments in different interviews, and particularly thanks to Antonio Castillo, Laureano García, Amable Esparza, Santiago Ordás, Juan Zamora and Manuel Pita. I also owe thanks to Dr. Brendan von Briesen for the English version. Of course, any mistake is my fault, not his.  For example: Victoria C. Burton, “The Making of a Nineteenth-Century Profession: Shipmasters and the British Shipping Industry”, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-016

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of investigation.² In this article, the focus of study is on the Spanish maquinista naval or ship engineers in the second-half of the twentieth century. This work deals with professionals who, even when they obtained full recognition as Chiefs [Jefes] and Officers [Oficiales] on board vessels and professional respect ashore, never achieved the same social value as shipmasters and deck officers. It was always an unknown profession in Spain, with a lower social prestige, and barely recognised by the general population. To counter these dynamics, different activities were undertaken with limited success in the last decades of the twentieth century. It is well known that the trades of deck officers and maquinistas navales were quite different; in the case of ship engineers, the profession dealt more with technology than with sea and the navigation, far from any sort of romanticism linked to maritime literature or the great adventures of the past. The background was also different: in general, deck officers came from middle or uppermiddle class families, with the economic resources to finance their secondary studies, whereas the maquinista naval generally came from lower social strata and their passage through workshops and factories tied them to that work experience. As is fundamental to this study, their respective professional destinies were different once they abandoned the sea. The core of the problem deals with the place that maquinistas held in the labour market once they gave up ships permanently. It should be noted that, in the Anglo-Saxon world, the term “Ship Engineer” had always been used to refer to this profession, and did not merit discussion. In Spain, things are not so clear. The traditional term maquinista was defined in the de la Societé historique du Canada 1, no. 1 (1990): 109 – 110; C. H. Dixon, “Seamen and the Law: An Examination of the Impact of Legislation on the British Merchant Seaman’s Lot, 1588 – 1918” (PhD diss. University College London, 1981); H. Doe, “Power, Authority and Communications: The Role of the Master and the Managing Owner in Nineteenth-Century British Merchant Shipping”, International Journal of Maritime History XXV, no. 1 (2013): 103 – 125; Enric Garcia-Domingo, “Losing professional identity? Deck officers in the Spanish merchant marine, 1868 – 1914”, International Journal of Maritime History 26, no. 3 (2014): 451– 470.  The main references on British marine engineers are the works of Alston Kennerley: “Engineers in British merchant ships, 1850 – 1870: Origins and careers”, Proceedings of The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, Part B, num. B10, London (2006): 3 – 13; “An Exercise in Social Conditioning? The Joint Education and Training of Engineer and Navigator Cadets for Careers and Officers in British Merchant Ships, in the 1960’s”, The Northern Mariner / Le Marin du Nord XVI, no. 4 (October 2006): 49 – 67; “British merchant Marine engineer licensing, 1865 – 1925”, in R. Gorski (ed.), Maritime Labour. Contributions to the History of Work at Sea, 1500 – 2000 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007). See also R. G. Milburn, “The emergence of the engineer in the British merchant shipping industry, 1812– 1863”, International Journal of Maritime History 28, no. 3 (2016): 559 – 575.

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Diccionario de la Real Academia de la Lengua Española with two accepted usages: the first, as the inventor or maker of machines; and the second, referring to the person that directs or governs them. On the contrary, engineer [ingeniero] is defined as a person who works in engineering or any of its branches; “engineering” [ingeniería] appears as the study and application, by specialists, of the diverse fields of technology. This terminology caused confusion, as we will see throughout this chapter. The issue is, then, the Spanish merchant marine.³ The chronology of the study falls basically between 1960 and 2000, so it requires the clear establishment of the antecedents of the problem. The sources used have been, mainly, legislation, journals of the professional associations and the scarce bibliography dealing with the topic. Along with these tools, the use of oral sources has been very important. Through informal conversations and interviews, some of them registered in the collection of oral history preserved in the Museu Marítim de Barcelona, around twenty maquinistas navales, representing different graduating classes and ages, have transmitted their experiences and perceptions of the central issue of this paper, the social recognition of their profession. Social recognition can be presumed through different clues. For example, while “captain” is a term that everyone knows and values, and links with categories as command, leadership, high social level, even big income, it is difficult to find common people who can situate a maquinista in the hierarchy of a ship, and even more difficult to find those who identify it with command or high level professional. In general, the distinction between maquinista and mechanic is nebulous for most of the population. On another level, you can find a shipmaster as the main character in a novel or a film, but rarely a ship engineer. For passengers in a cruisership, a captain or a deck officer (say purser, first mate, etc.) is someone to respect or even admire, but engine room officers are invisible and unknown. That said, it is difficult to measure social recognition beyond a sum of indications. The use of pejorative nicknames referring to the engine room workers (officers and ratings) was common and oral sources provide plenty of examples of this treatment, but it would be difficult to document it with other sources. Regarding the activity of trade unions, it must be said that it was always difficult to obtain the union between deck and engine room officer except in

 On Spanish Navy naval marine engineers, see Antonio de la Vega Blasco, El Cuerpo de Maquinistas Navales de la Armada, 1850 – 1950 (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa – Instituto de Historia y Cultura Marítima, 2009).

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cases of common interest.⁴ On the other hand, this is not the case only in Spain. The British case is quite similar, although social class segregation is not so strong in the Spanish society.⁵ Moreover, this situation had a parallel in the process to obtain recognition that ship engineers undertook in the Spanish Navy, again similarly to what happened in Great Britain.⁶

The Profession of Maquinista Naval as a Professional Trajectory Steam-powered navigation in Spain formally began in 1817 with the Real Fernando, a small, locally built vessel with an English engine, which covered the Seville-Sanlúcar de Barrameda line during a short period. But this first experience did not generate changes in the Spanish merchant marine structure. The implantation of new technology and its development basically occurred in Catalonia in the subsequent decades. In 1834, a Catalan company, the “Compañía Catalana de Buques de Vapor” [the Catalan Steam Ship Company] imported from Great Britain a steamship baptised as the Balear, which inaugurated the first regular line between Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca. This service opened the process of technological change in the national marine and opened the doors to new professional categories tied to the new propulsion system for ships. This shipping company, based in Barcelona and later renamed the “Sociedad de Navegación e Industria”, was the first to maintain a regular steam line in Spain. And it also established, through a subsidiary firm, the “Sociedad Talleres Nuevo Vulcano”, a metallurgy workshop for the needs of the maritime sector. In this establishment (from at least 1844) the first classes of autochthonous maquinistas were trained. Many workers started as apprentices in the workshop and followed as maquinistas on board the ships of the mother company. It is here that the dawn of the profession of maquinista in the Spanish merchant marine can be situated, even though the majority of its first ship engineers were British then. During the first decades, the profession of maquinista was unregulated; it was not recognised by law as a trade in the judicial framework. This point of in-

 A history of the workers’ movements in the Spanish merchant marine and the dynamics between officers in Juan Zamora Terrés, Notas para una historia del movimiento obrero en la Marina mercante (Barcelona: Museu Marítim de Barcelona, 2003).  See the works by Alston Kennerley, cited on footnote 4.  See Antonio de la Vega Blasco, El Cuerpo de Maquinistas Navales de la Armada, 1850 – 1950 (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa – Instituto de Historia y Cultura Marítima, 2009).

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flection was marked by the publication of a royal decree of 23 January 1877, which established the hiring conditions, and was the first official measure to regulate the situation of these professionals. This decree meant the official birth of the profession of maquinista in Spain. According to the preamble of the decree, the reason for the promulgation of the law was basically aimed at safety concerns, as the majority of maritime accidents were caused by engine problems and by the mistakes and negligence on the part of the maquinistas navales, or so claimed the legislator. For this reason, the authorities had to regulate the suitable features of the maquinistas navales and provide assurances that a sufficient minimum number of properly trained ones were aboard Spanish steamers. Among other things, the decree regulated the number and category of the maquinistas navales who should be on board Spanish steamships, depending on the type of vessel and the power of the engine. It also established the necessary conditions for being named Maquinista Second Class, the first official title that could be obtained at the time of the formal regulation of the profession. To fix the previous experience achieved in the profession, the corresponding certificates were provided by the naval authorities or by the workshops in which they had completed their practice. Sufficiency for obtaining the title of Maquinista Second Class was established through an exam. To reach the superior level, Maquinista First Class, men had to have at least one year of experience as a Maquinista Second Class and have passed an additional, and more complete exam. The exams were taken in the Naval Departmental seats (Ferrol, Cadiz, and Cartagena), or in the naval Posts (Apostaderos, command posts in distant areas), and always before the naval authorities. Those who had already worked as a maquinista naval prior to the publication of the regulation or who had positions in the navy could apply for a certificate of ability.⁷ The first maquinista naval exam was celebrated on 17 July 1877 in the Arsenal of La Carraca, in Cadiz; and first in the graduating class with the title of Maquinista Second Class was the Catalonian Antonio Genescá Corominas (1849 – 1927), who a little over a year later gained the title of Maquinista First Class. Genescá is the central figure in the “mythology” of the profession: as the first titled maquinista in Spain, he symbolically represents the consolidation of the profession,

 A synthesis of this process in Enric Garcia-Domingo, “Engine drivers or engineers: ship’s engineers in the Spanish merchant navy (1834– 1893)”, Journal of Mediterranean Studies 19, no. 2 (2010): 249 – 27. The issue is more developed in Enric Garcia-Domingo, El mundo del trabajo en la marina mercante española (1834 – 1914) (Barcelona: Ediciones Icaria, 2017).

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because for nearly forty years before him, the maquinistas had enjoyed neither formal recognition, nor rights covering their profession in Spain.⁸ The first years of the profession were closely linked to its consolidation from the point of view of training, conflicts with captains and deck officers (common in all of the world mercantile marines) and, above all, to the struggle to reserve maquinista job positions for the Spanish, expelling the British who occupied the more influential positions. From the social viewpoint, it is worthwhile to keep in mind that while a nautical career was commonly taken up by youths from the middle classes who entered school at a young age, the maquinistas generally hailed from the lower ranks and went through an apprenticeship in the workshops prior to entering the profession. As such, there were differences in age and social class between the two careers, which marked different social behaviour and a differentiated social recognition. Engineers entered in the profession in a very different way than the deck officers. As Kennerly pointed out, unlike mates and masters who had almost invariably gone to sea direct from school (at between 14 and 16 years of age), ships’ engineers worked ashore during those formative years, probably near where they were born (…) It was possible for engineers to complete an apprenticeship in their twenty-first year, but often they were well into their twenties before going to sea, and clearly at least a year older when they first attempted the Second Class engineer examination. Then they were likely to spend some two years accumulating the requisite sea time (…). Thus it took at least twelve years to produce a fully qualified merchant Ship Engineer.

As far as the author of this chapter is aware, this affirmation is perfectly applicable to the Spanish case.⁹ On the other hand, as access to an engineering field was prohibitive due to the high education cost, access to the career of maquinista was a possible path to jump into a technical liberal profession. It could represent a mechanism for social ascent within some invisible limitations, as shall be shown. Because of a decree of 28 May 1915, there was an important reorganisation of the nautical studies. For the first time the studies for obtaining the title of Maquinista Naval were established beyond a basic overview of subjects upon which the aspirant would be tested. From that point on, deck officers and

 His father was the train operator of the first locomotive in service in the Spanish peninsula in 1848, running between Barcelona and Mataró.  Alston Kennerly, “British merchant Marine engineer licensing, 1865 – 1925” in Richard Gorski (ed.), Maritime Labour. Contributions to the History of Work at Sea, 1500 – 2000 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 203 – 204.

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ship engineers would run parallel paths for regulation and in the struggle for the recognition of the benefits of obtaining a title, with few formal differences. Even so, a distance was always maintained between them in areas such as social recognition, the presence of leadership positions aboard vessels and participation in professional associationism. It should also be kept in mind that the evolution of the needs of professional training was always more accentuated in the engine rooms than that of on deck, as the continuous technological evolution in propulsion was exponential and required continuous technically updated training of the responsible workers at a faster rhythm than was required for nautical officers. A royal decree of 6 June 1924 again reorganised the nautical schools in Spain, modifying the career of maquinista to the point that it was incorporated into the curricula of official schools, and not just accepted or allowed. Moreover, shortly thereafter, on 2 November 1925, a new regulation for Maquinistas Navales was approved, which regulated in detail the profession and established the following professional categories: Maquinista First Class; Maquinista Second Class, Maquinista Student; Mechanic First Class (homologised as a Maquinista Naval Second Class); and Mechanic Second Class. There were no great changes in this until 6 February 1953 with the approbation of a new regulation, Reglamento de Maquinistas y Mecánicos Navales, for attaining the title of Maquinista Naval and Naval Mechanic, with the following categories: Maquinista Naval First Class (no limits); Maquinista Naval Second Class (for steam ships with less than 1,000 horsepower of effective power); Naval Mechanic Major (to head boats of up to 600 horsepower); Naval Mechanic First Class (to head boats of up to 350 horsepower); and Naval Mechanic Second Class (to head boats of up to 100 horsepower). The new rules updated the legal situation of the maquinistas navales at a time when the Diesel motor was well established, but when the Spanish merchant marine (punished in the Spanish Civil War 1936 – 1939 and the immediate post-war period) still had a great number of steamers. According to Pérez del Río (an author to whom we will refer later), it was at this time that the mistake was made to maintain the name “maquinista”, pejorative and insufficient¹⁰ in his own words, but the burden of tradition was still determinant in 1953. Pérez del Rio considered that the term “maquinista” was used in a pejorative way for some people in the maritime world as opposed to the more valued “ingeniero”, and was insufficient in the way

 Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de la Marina Mercante. Recopilación de artículos y trabajos sobre Pérez del Río, a set of articles compiled by Amable Esparza in 2016. Thanks must be given to him for access to the original.

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that it linked the word with old technologies such as steam engines when at that moment Diesel engines and turbines were common enough for these professionals. The Law 144/1961, of 23 December 1961, regarding the reorganisation of nautical and fishing teaching, qualified the teaching undertaken in the Official Nautical Schools as mid-level technical teaching, placing them in the general education framework then-regulated by the Law of 20 July 1957.¹¹ Prior to this date, the titles obtained upon completion of study in the Nautical Schools were professional titles with academic effects. The titles obtained thereafter were equal to those of a mid-level university degree, an unfair situation. For instance, to obtain a title of Captain, it was necessary to complete three years of education, a complete course for the title of First Mate, and an additional course for the title of Captain. In total, this meant five years of schooling, to which was added a long period of practice at sea, which amounted to an additional four or five years for those who wanted the title of Captain. That is to say, an educational period of nine to ten years at the least was needed. The ship engineer career was somewhat shorter, and the different lengths of study helped accentuate the social and professional differences with deck officers who felt themselves, to a degree, to have a superior level of training compared to the engine trades. Differences aside, the future chiefs and officers had to study more years than any university degree, yet without obtaining the same recognition. This was one of the main obstacles facing the men of the merchant marine in the quest for equality.¹² The decree 3353 of 24 July 1964 developed a new study plan (implemented during the 1966 – 1967 academic year) and marked a progression, for it required a previous High School diploma,¹³ so the level of cadets should be higher, at least in theory. It was, in any case, another small step towards the equalisation of nautical careers with university studies, which was their desired goal.

 Although the programme of studies was common for all the Spanish Nautical Schools, there were different levels of demand. The most demanding was Barcelona, followed by Cadis; the third place was La Coruña and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Therefore, the place where you obtained your degree was significant in your curriculum.  The context of the Spanish merchant marine during general Franco’s dictatorship (1936 – 1975) in Juan Zamora Terrés, op. cit. 201ss.  Ricardo Arroyo-Zorilla, Apunte para una historia de la enseñanza de la náutica en España (Madrid: Centro de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Transportes, Turismo y Comunicaciones, 1989), 189.

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Figure 13.1: Engine room officers and cadets posing for a picture. Compañia Trastlántica, c. 1910. Source: Museu Marítim de Barcelona.

Figure 13.2: First Engineer at work, 1963. Source: Museu Marítim de Barcelona.

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From Vocational Training to Higher Studies After the elaboration of a White Paper on the situation of education in Spain, on 12 September 1969 a Bill for a General Education Law was presented. Although it was aimed at objectives at the general level, it offered a great opportunity for deck officers, engine room staff and radio operators in their expectations of attaining university recognition. The maquinistas certainly perceived that this was a magnificent opportunity. The text of the journalistic reporting of Eliseo Bayo (published in 1970) summarises the general collective thoughts at the time: The importance of the maquinistas of today lies precisely in the fact that, with the greater complexity of the engines, there is a correspondingly greater responsibility on the part of the men who know how to manage them […] The time is now, and they have just received their historic opportunity […] Conscious of their role, the maquinistas have launched a new proposal for their profession and demand a change in the disciplines of study and the resulting modification of their titles. That of Engineer responds fully to the meaning of the studies which they have completed to reach the height of technological development and would resolve two fundamental problems faced today: it would attract a sufficient number of applicants in quantity and quality, and it would allow these men to return ashore when the years, desire, or family obligations incline them to do so. Now, for inherited irrationality, for the inertia of the old, and for the inability to meet modern demands, when they are overtaken by the necessity to abandon the ship they find themselves with difficulties to do so […].¹⁴

In the face of this opportunity, the body of chiefs and officers, grouped in the Union of Officers of the Merchant Marine [Unión de Oficiales de la Marina Mercante, UOMM], an apolitical professional association in the merchant marine,¹⁵ prepared a proposal to integrate nautical teaching at the maximum university level as a “merchant marine career”. The UOMM, which in the midst of the Francoist dictatorship was the only professional association permitted and approved by the regime, carried out a twenty-two question survey among its membership, institutions, companies, international organizations, etc. and they studied the educational plans of thirteen countries. About 11,200 questionnaires were sent  Eliseo Bayo, “La hora de los maquinistas” (quoted in Ética y técnica, 119 – 122).  A brief story of the Unión de Oficiales de la Marina Mercante in Juan Zamora, “Historia de la Unión de Oficiales de la Marina Mercante Española”, Drassana, revista del Museu Marítim de Barcelona 18 (2010): 120 – 135. The UOMM was a professional organisation that did not intervene in labour bargaining. It must be stressed that during the Francoist period (1936 – 1975) there were no authorised trade unions, but some were organised by the regime, such as the Sindicato Nacional de la Marina Mercante, founded in 1975. Again, this trade union did not intervene specifically in labour bargaining, but rather the general defence of seamen as a whole.

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out, of which almost one-half went to the membership comprised of 5,000 chiefs and officers. Based on the results, the association presented its own Plan for the Career of Merchant Marine on 22 June 1970.¹⁶ This document shows interesting information, apart from the triumphant tone in which the UOMM claimed all the credit for the advances in the consolidation of the professional career, although, in reality, behind all of this was the discreet work of professionals and some professors from the nautical schools. The starting point was clear: in the questionnaires carried out, 94.9 % of the members of the UOMM assured that they were satisfied with the general idea of the General Education Law, and 91.7 % demonstrated confidence in the proposed improvements. By the same measure, 81.5 % thought that the study plans in effect at that time were insufficient. To overcome this deficiency, the UOMM set forth a detailed organisational proposal for study in three fields: deck, engine room and radio. From the point of view of the maquinistas navales, we can highlight that they proposed a changing of the name of the titles, in line with what had been the main battle of the profession. With these denominations, they sought a clearly visible equality with the superior university degrees and, above all, a homologation with traditional engineering degrees in Spain.¹⁷ The bill proposal established a plan of studies and practical training in the following terms and proposed degrees. Table 13.1: Proposed degrees for ship engineers. First Academic Term + one month at sea + Second Academic Term + Third Academic Term + One year at sea

Ingeniero Técnico de Máquinas (Bachelor)

Fourth Academic Term + two years at sea + two written projects + Fifth Academic Term

Ingeniero de Máquinas (Master)

Specialisation + Doctoral Dissertation

Doctor Ingeniero de Máquinas (Doctorate)

The proposal developed a complete series of topics that included mathematics, physics, turbines, thermodynamics, English and many more. It attempted to maintain a training level generally considered as good; Spanish seafarers had  UOMM, Revista de la Unión de Oficiales de la Marina Mercante, vol. 72– 73, April-May 1970.  The professions that had, at that time, the category of “engineering” in Spain were as follows: Arquitectura e Ingeniería Técnica, Ingeniería Aeronáutica, Ingeniería Agrónoma, Ingeniería de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Ingeniería Industrial, Ingeniería de Minas, Ingeniería de Montes and Ingeniería Naval e Ingeniería de Telecomunicaciones.

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a good reputation abroad, and precisely in these years there was massive emigration to foreign companies where they were welcomed and better paid. Even so, the answers of the questionnaires returned by the maritime firm and companies consulted placed the focus on some of the concrete deficiencies: null training in automation (in those years ships were incorporating automation and information technologies); little attention paid to special transports (gas tankers, petroleum tankers, refrigerated ships); the need to implement mandatory workshop experience; and the widening of studies of thermodynamics, Diesel motors, or naval architecture, among other topics. By this time the Ingenieros Navales (naval architects) followed a plan of studies regulated by the Law of 29 April 1964. The only place to do this career was at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Navales, at Madrid, through the following terms and proposed degrees. Table 13.2: Ingenieros Navales plan of studies.  Academic terms + a written project

Ingeniero Naval in two possible branches: Naval Architecture and Marine Engines (Degree)

 Specialisation terms + Doctoral Dissertation

Doctor Ingeniero Naval (Doctorate)

To obtain this degree the students had to complete a series of topics that included, for example: algebra, infinitesimal calculus, physics, chemistry, drawing, equations, cinematics and dynamics, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, economics and organisation of naval factories, marine engines, nuclear propulsion, vibrations, structure calculations, naval architecture theory, etc. Comparing the complete list of topics it is clear that the career of Ingeniero Naval was quite different, aimed at the design and building of ships and engines, more in the line of shipbuilding and naval industry than navigations. On the other hand, the level of studies and the requirements of the topics to be mastered were quite superior.¹⁸ The objectives of the new bill regarding the ship engineers were to form the mind in scientific methods, directed with a concrete application to maritime life, as well as towards possible applications on land. This was probably the key to everything: the need to guarantee the future of the professionals once they left the sea, in a social and economic level on par with other fields of engineering.  One can find more details in José María Sánchez Carrión, “La evolución de los planes de estudios necesarios para la obtención de las distintas titulaciones de Ingeniero Naval desde la titulación de Ingeniero de Marina hasta la de Ingeniero Naval y Oceánico”, Ingeniería Naval, (November 1999): 91– 99 (special issue celebrating the 70th aniversary of the journal).

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Careers at sea were short in general, maybe ten to twenty years or less, so deck or engine room officers used to seek a second professional life ashore. In this sense, an important conclusion was that they requested formal recognition of the dual function of the career, with its purely maritime basis on the sea-going ships on one hand, and with a view towards the land-based maritime world and other sectors related to any other field of the profession on the other. It did not explicitly address non-maritime industries, but many maquinistas navales found professional opportunities far from maritime areas, and it was precisely in these grey areas that they entered into conflict with other engineering fields, with their relative position always weaker. Despite optimism and hope, the process was, without doubt, slow in its approval and implementation. The professional titles of Capitán and Chief Maquinista Naval would not obtain the corresponding superior academic qualification until 1975. The Presidential decree 1439/75, of 26 June 1975, covering the qualification of the teaching of the nautical career, established that the Superior Nautical Education would be the equivalent of the second level of university education (bachelor), with Superior Nautical Education understood as that undertaken in the Official Nautical Schools for the complete training for Merchant Marine Captain, Chief Maquinista Naval, and Merchant Marine Radio-electric Service Officer First Class positions, and also qualified at University School level (master) with complete training for First Mate Second Class, Ship Officers Second Class and Merchant Marine Radio-electric Service Officer Second Class positions. The study plans were approved by the Order of 18 October 1977.¹⁹ The scattered information shows that, progressively, wages of shipmasters and ship engineers seemed to be growing in parallel. In 1936, just before the outbreak of the Spanish civil war, wages were balanced in seven hundred and seventy-five pesetas proposed for common companies and 1,200 in subsidised firms.²⁰ In 1947 we find differences between wages of masters and chief engineers: 2,000 pesetas for the shipmaster and 1,950 pesetas for the Chief. That is, in the first level the shipmaster still earns slightly more than the Chief Engineer, only fifty pesetas but still a difference. At the second level the First Officer and the Second Ship Engineer are balanced with 1,500 pesetas. Again, when it

 Before that, the Ley General de Educación de 1970 had required students to access the university after they did the Curso de Orientación Universitaria or COU (Year for University Orientation). In order that the students of deck and engineer could be comparable with that, the decree 1772/72 of 30 June 1972 was published, in which the COU was required. More details can be seen in Ricardo Arroyo-Zorilla, Apunte, 200 – 201.  Nuevas Bases de Trabajo aprobadas por acuerdo de los Ministros de Trabajo, Sanidad, y Previsión y de Comunicaciones y de Marina Mercante. Gaceta de Madrid, no. 128, 7 May 1936.

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comes to the fleet inspectors, the Shipmaster Surveyor received 2,500 pesetas, but the Engineer Surveyor received only 2,300 pesetas.²¹ In the late 1970s and early 1980s the differences were still very clear. We can see some examples (always in pesetas). Table 13.3: Collective bargaining for Naviera Vizcaína S. A. Bilbao, 1974. Collective Bargaining for Naviera Vizcaína S. A. Bilbao, 

Shipmaster Chief Ship Engineer

Monthly wage + maximum embarkation complement

Overtime

Extraordinary bonus

Holiday complement

, ,

 

, ,

 

Source: Convenio colectivo de la Naviera Vizcaína S. A. Bilbao, 1974.

Table 13.4: Collective bargaining for CAMPSA, 1980. Collective Bargaining for CAMPSA 

Deck Surveyor Engine Surveyor Shipmaster Chief Ship Engineer

Monthly wage

Seniority Overtime supplement

Complement Persian Gulf Route

Complement American Route

, , , ,

, , , ,

 

 

, ,

Source: Convenio de Flota CAMPSA 1980. Sindicato de Marina Mercante. ITF-UGT.

One last sample, in this case from the Compañía Transmediterránea, the subsidised firm that ruled services between the Iberian peninsula, the archipelagos and the Spanish African ports, shows the monthly wage for Shipmasters was 233,607 pesetas and for Chief Ship Engineer was 219,406, a bit less. Regarding the complements, they both received the same amount (39,600 for ordinary embarkation and 67,250 for embarkation in Jet Foil vessels).²² These figures could be

 Normas sobre clasificación y régimen económico del personal de la Marina Mercante. Aprobadas por Orden Ministerial de 1º de mayo de 1947. (Madrid: Editado por la Revista Rutas, órgano del Sindicato Nacional de Transportes y Comunicaciones, 1947).  Convenio colectivo de la Compañía Transmediterránea. Personal de flota, Resolución de 14 de septiembre de 1989, Boletín Oficial del Estado, no. 252, 1989.

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incomplete if we don’t consider other possibilities. Sometimes the ship engineers earned a lot more money than deck officers due to overtime. Frequent damages in the propulsion equipment forced people in the engine room to work long working hours, so the final amount could become highly valuable. As has been advanced, the need to obtain titles equivalent to those of other university degrees had a direct relationship to professional life once a maquinista disembarked, with effects on their placement in the labour market, and on competition with professionals from other fields. The key to the market value of the maquinistas was the combination of abilities that made the maquinistas navales highly valued professionals and capable workers: solid theoretical formation; experience in workshops and aboard vessels; and special skills of the specific profession (ability to improvise, decision-making, organisation of work-teams, selfsufficiency, adaptation to adverse working conditions, and with the ability to easily adapt to watches, night and holiday work, etc.). The maquinistas navales had many possibilities for finding employment on land in areas linked to the maintenance in factories, hospitals, industrial complexes, power plants, electrical plants, etc., as well as in the port-maritime world, as certification agencies (Bureau Veritas, Lloyd’s, etc.), in shipbuilding or in the emerging sector of petroleum drilling platforms. With the arrival of the construction of nuclear power plants, theirs was a highly sought and valued professional profile. Even so, in almost all of these fields there was a glass ceiling that impeded their advancement; reaching a certain point in the career ladder, the highest positions were always occupied by naval engineers. This was, for example, the case of the Certification Companies (the position of Inspector was generally the terminal position), or in shipbuilding (where responsibility of Chief of Projects was the limit). Hence, there was a constant struggle to achieve de jure and de facto equivalency with that of the engineers. Only in the case of establishing a company on their own could the maquinistas ascend limitlessly. In the Spain of the 60s and 70s, in rapid industrialisation and growth, many maquinistas took advantage of their knowledge and experience to create industrial supply or repair companies, at the service of an expanding secondary sector.

Complete Integration in the University and the “Disappearance” of the Maquinistas Navales as “Profession” The following milestone in the normalisation of nautical studies, including the issue of Maquinista, came with the royal decree 2841/1980 of 4 December

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1980. It established new academic titles at the university level for Diplomado and Licenciado. It also regulated access to the final academic level, which is to say a doctorate. This was one of the most noteworthy aspects of the integration of the nautical career into the university context, something that had previously not existed in nautical studies, and which opened the door to research and knowledge generation beyond that produced practically in professional experience. This represented the entry into the academic world and the same scientific recognition as any field in Science and Technology.²³ In the words of Pérez del Río, professor of the Nautical School of Barcelona: There are no longer naval maquinistas, they are figures of the past those titles and those men that, for the values, works, and sufferings, must be venerated by us. There are no longer “maquinistas navales” there are only Licenciados [Higher Education] and Doctors in Science, on one hand, and Officers and Chief Engineers [as a position or job on board, not as a degree] on the other hand.²⁴

About this time another remarkable thing happened: the incorporation of women to the engine room. They could not arrive to the profession until the approval of the democratic constitution of 1978, but even with the legal capacity to join nautical schools theirs was a late arrival. The first to obtain the certification in Spain was Maria Cardona and the first to be chief engineer on board was Belen Crespo in 2001. The last great reform has been the adaptation to the Bologna Plan of 1999 and that of the European Higher Education Area, with a new scheme of education organised in three levels: Grado, Master, and Doctorate, detailed in decree 1393 of 29 October 2007. It proposed, for the professional path of Marine Engineer Officer a Bachelor in Marine Engineering, and then a University Master’s in Marine Engineering. But as regards the term “engineer”, currently, we can speak of an open conflict with the Ingenieros Navales.²⁵ It must be noted that also here we have a terminological problem: in English this profession is generally known as Naval Architects, so the word Engineers is absent and the confusion is avoided. As always, on the surface there is a theoretical question, but underneath there is a practical question: there is little employment at sea, and this situation leads

 The first Doctor in Nautical Sciences in a Spanish University was Dr. José Pérez del Río, in 1983.  Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de la Marina Mercante. Recopilación de artículos y trabajos sobre Pérez del Río (unpublished work).  Vicente García and Luís Capote, “La atribución de competencias profesionales en la arquitectura e ingenierías: estudio particular de la profesión de Ingeniero Naval y Oceánico”, Ingeniería Naval, Revista del sector marítimo, vol. 950 (September 2016), and vol. 951 (October 2016).

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the marine engineers to look for other trajectories on land related to industry and in companies in a number of areas. But if the word “engineer” does not appear in the diploma, they do not pass the hiring processes, although they even could have better preparation that any other similar professional. In this sense, the naval engineers are seen as direct rivals in a moment in which there is no movement in the shipbuilding industry either. The College of Naval and Oceanic Engineers recently presented before the Spanish courts a legal complaint to impede the new degrees of the nautical schools to use the term “engineer”. Although previously the Supreme Tribunal had ruled in favour of the Faculties of Nautical Studies, in a second instance the Supreme Tribunal, in sentence 2420 on 11 November 2016, ruled now in favour of the complaint against the denomination of “University Master’s in Nautical Engineering and Maritime Transportation” and “University Master’s in Marine Engineering” as they enable and/or are linked to professions regulated by the Chief Mechanic of the Merchant Marine and Captain of the Merchant Marine, in which the term “engineer” causes error or confusion about their professional effects as they do not grant access to any regulated profession of engineering. When this happened and the word “ingeniería” disappeared from the name of the studies, Nautical Schools felt the impact in the number of new students. A solution was to call the career Grado en Tecnologías Marinas (Marine Engineering). You will notice the clarification in parentheses,²⁶ a nod to the students to be. In any case, we see that this dimension of the problem, linked to the landbased work trajectory and competition in the labour market, persists to this day.

The Struggle for the Dignity of the Profession Up to now, we have seen the development of the profession from a normative perspective. As regards the equality of titles and their homologation with other university titles, deck officer and engine room officer (as well as radio officer) followed parallel paths in the last decades of the twentieth century, despite the fact that in the day-to-day activities at sea and on land, the traditional conflict between nautical officers and maquinistas was present and the traditional saying that “water and oil don’t mix” remained valid. We will now look at aspects connected to the struggle for the dignity of the profession. In the building

 The first acceptance of the name in discord was accepted in Santander, and later by mistake in La Coruña, so at present you could find in Spain a surprising and deplorable variety of names for the Diplomas.

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of a class consciousness of the profession there were two men who, with many years separating them, played decisive roles. Their lives and works reflect two moments of a single struggle and, as such, constitute references for their peers, Chiefs and Ship Engineer Officials of the Merchant Marine. The first was Antonio Genescá. At the age of sixteen, he entered the “La Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima” of Barcelona, one of the largest naval shipbuilding facilities of its day. His first job was copying plans; he advanced later to other different positions, and completed his trajectory as a “practicón”, a disrespectful term for workers who began as apprentices and became maquinistas navales after training in workshops and business in the lowest levels.²⁷ During this process, he had acquired a very complete knowledge and crucial abilities. He went on board as a second-class maquinista on the steamship Extremadura and fared the seas for twelve years. During that time he also translated English texts that helped to improve the training of the new classes of maquinista navales. As already said, he took his exam on 17 July 1877 and was the first to be named Maquinista Second Class; a little over a year later, he was able to reach the category of Maquinista First Class.²⁸ Once permanently disembarked, he returned to “La Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima” and carried out important roles, becoming the equivalent to a technical director of the factory. He was a militant activist in the defence of his profession against the presence of foreign ship engineers, and was the editor of the journal Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Maquinistas Navales. ²⁹ He also led intensive organisational work, and led campaigns in favour of the inclusion of maquinista naval studies in the nautical schools, which were achieved in 1915. Genescá died in 1927, and according to Asencio Menchuca, then-President of the

 Antonio de la Vega, “De la vela al vapor”, in La España marítima del siglo XIX. núm. 3. Cuadernos Monográficos del Instituto de Historia y Cultura Marítima (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 1989), 74.  Pedro Robles, Vicisitudes históricas de nuestra profesión (Barcelona: Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de la Marina Mercante, 1993), 28 and 40 – 55.  To defend the interests of the maquinistas, the Asociación de Maquinistas Navales was founded in Barcelona in 1877. It was the first known professional association in the Spanish merchant navy, long before shipmasters and deck officers established theirs. In 1891 the Asociación de Maquinistas Navales de Bilbao was established, and in 1912 both associations both associations joined with other minor groups to form the Sociedad Española de Maquinistas Navales. In 1939, at the end of the Civil War, trade unions and professional associations were banned. In 1967, during General Franco’s dictatorships, some Asociación Profesional de Maquinistas Navales was reborn, but only as an association of ex alumni because political action was restricted. Today it is still in action as Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de la Marina Mercante.

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Asociación General de Maquinistas Navales de Bilbao, “a man of his condition should constitute a symbol for the Class […] with his society [organizational] morals and his uncommon culture he has done great services for the Class”.³⁰ The next who played a fundamental role in Spain in defending the dignity and in the forging of self-esteem of the maquinista profession, and promoting awareness of the authentic value of the trade from the scientific and technological point of view, was José Pérez del Río (Barcelona, 1909 – 1994). After serving as an officer for some years and earning a Licenciatura in Exact Sciences, he was professor of the Nautical School of Barcelona for thirty-eight years, and wrote the eight-volume Tratado general de máquinas marinas (published between 1958 and 1969), a leading work in its field. One of the objectives of this work was to contribute to improving the low training level in areas of Mathematics and Physics of which the students attending the schools had suffered. He was able to gather around himself a number of graduating classes of maquinistas who found in him a teacher and near-myth.³¹ Through his pedagogical activities, he helped build a class consciousness among maquinistas which had previously not existed. A journalist who interviewed him in 1970 defined him in the following manner: “Don José […] is the man in whom hundreds of professionals trust, not only for the correctness of his behaviour, incorruptible, but also for the pugnacity of his opinions. Don José is one of those strange and very rare beings who live only for their profession and who have done with this a sort of lay priesthood”.³² The question of the naming of the profession was always one of his main battlefields since 1945. In his opinion “maquinista” was an inappropriate name as it meant simply an operator of machines, an inferior profession, and refers exclusively to a position, not to any sort of scientific or technical training, and as such is not applicable to any profession; contrastingly, the term “engineer”, as in saying “applying scientific understandings”, establishes that it is the work of application which supposes the previous possession of scientific under-

 Biographical details in Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Maquinistas Navales, vol. 132, 1 May 1926.  Along this research the author of this article has met a large number of his disciples and has noticed personally the mythification and fascination that this personality exerted on them. There is still the conviction that his was a crucial legacy to the theoretical foundation of the class consciousness of the maquinistas. There is also awareness of their value, as well as of his professional and personal ethics. Of course, the author has also collected the opinion of a short number of strong detractors.  Eliseo Bayo, “La hora de los maquinistas”, quoted in Ética y Técnica. Escritos de José Pérez del Río (Barcelona, 2005): 119 – 122.

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standing to which it alludes.³³ Two years later he formally proposed the establishment of an Institute of Engineers of the Merchant Marine, a professional association, but the proposal was rejected by the authorities with the argument that “there exists in Spain the title of Naval Engineer extended by the Ministry of Public Instruction and it seems that it should hold the prerogative of the word Engineer, not extendible to other distinct titles”.³⁴ Nevertheless the professor insisted that with a new denomination many worthy young people could be attracted to the profession, who would otherwise tend towards a profession with better social considerations.³⁵ He retired in 1979, after training over thirty graduating classes of maritime engineers. As has been put forth previously, he was the first person to obtain the title of Doctor of Nautical Sciences in Spain, with the dissertation “In Defence of the Steam Engine”, defended in 1983, in which he demonstrated that the elimination of steam engines prior to reaching their maximum development had been a technological error. In some ways, it was a scientific challenge loaded with symbolism. In his funeral service, one of his disciples, Pedro Robles, highlighted his role in the “struggle to transform the empirical knowledge with which men had dominated to sea -through iron, noise, and fire- in a rational school of gentlemen”.³⁶ Other outstanding personalities in the vindication of the profession were Ernesto Verdera (disciple of Pérez del Río, professor and activist in the hard times of Francoism) Francisco Valle Collantes (author of different works of teaching), Pedro Anatael Meneses (who stood out in the business sector, as well as in teaching) or Juan Vera Padilla (the first maquinista naval to obtain the appointment as a director of a nautical school in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1980), among others. In a quite different way, Manuel del Blanco González left a mark as editor of the works of Pérez de Río in the book Ética y Estética and above all as a writer. Although interesting figures, they have not reached a special place in the “mythology” of the profession.

 Blanco, Ética y Técnica, 169.  Blanco, Ética y técnica, 47– 48.  Blanco, Ética y técnica, 170.  Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de la Marina Mercante. Recopilación de artículos y trabajos sobre Pérez del Río (unpublished work).

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Conclusions The profession of maquinista was born in Spain with a royal decree on 23 January 1877. The different regulations that oversaw the profession until 1975 maintained its character as a mid-level teaching, without the recognition of superior levels like Medicine, Architecture, or Engineering. This lack of recognition as a highlevel field was shared with the studies that trained captains and deck officers. But besides official titles, and even once they had achieved full recognition as Chiefs and Officers on board vessels and professional respect on land, the maquinistas never achieved the same social recognition as was enjoyed by captains and deck officers. It was never a profession recognised by the great majority of the population, and it barely exists in literature or film.³⁷ In this sense, the essential roles played by two of them have been recalled here: those of Antonio Genescá and José Pérez del Río. In both cases, their personal and professional trajectories turned them into references by their peers and constitute the “pantheon” of heroes of the profession. Another object of analysis has been the place held by maquinistas in the labour market once they had returned to land. In the first decades of their existence, they competed with industrial engineers, and from the first decades of the twentieth century they fought over land-based jobs with naval engineers, principally. Their position ashore and the boundaries of their attributions, in competition with other professions, have constituted the bulk of their problems. When they had to compete with other engineering fields, the maquinistas always faced limitations, invisible barriers. In closing, we should end by calling attention to the contradiction of having to use the term “maquinista” to refer to a collection of professionals, when the maintenance of this name is the source of a large part of the problems of that group. But despite the problems that denomination has provoked throughout the history of the profession, a great part of the group (especially the most veteran) still use the term “maquinista” themselves, with pride and sense of ownership, a sort of useless but unwavering noble title.

 There is not a Joseph Conrad for the maritime engineers. Maybe the closest we can find is the British novelist William McFee (1881-1966).

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Sources Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Maquinistas Navales, vol. 132 (May 1, 1926). Convenio colectivo de la Compañía Transmediterránea. Personal de flota, Resolución de 14 de septiembre de 1989, Boletín Oficial del Estado, no. 252 (1989). Normas sobre clasificación y régimen económico del personal de la Marina Mercante. Aprobadas por Orden Ministerial de 1º de mayo de 1947. Madrid: Editado por la Revista Rutas, órgano del Sindicato Nacional de Transportes y Comunicaciones, 1947. Nuevas Bases de Trabajo aprobadas por acuerdo de los Ministros de Trabajo, Sanidad, y Previsión y de Comunicaciones y de Marina Mercante. Gaceta de Madrid, no. 128 (May 7, 1936). Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de la Marina Mercante. Recopilación de artículos y trabajos sobre Pérez del Río (unpublished work compiled by Amable Esparza in 2016). UOMM, Revista de la Unión de Oficiales de la Marina Mercante, vol. 72 – 73 (April-May 1970).

Bibliography Arroyo-Zorilla, Ricardo. Apunte para una historia de la enseñanza de la náutica en España. Madrid: Centro de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Transportes, Turismo y Comunicaciones, 1989. Blanco, Manuel del. Ética y Técnica. Escritos de José Pérez del Río. Barcelona: Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de España, 2005. Burton, Victoria C. “The Making of a Nineteenth-Century Profession: Shipmasters and the British Shipping Industry”. Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Societé historique du Canada 1, no. 1 (1990): 97 – 118. Dixon, C. H. “Seamen and the Law: An Examination of the Impact of Legislation on the British Merchant Seaman’s Lot, 1588 – 1918”. PhD diss. University College London, 1981. Doe, H. “Power, Authority and Communications: The Role of the Master and the Managing Owner in Nineteenth-Century British Merchant Shipping”. International Journal of Maritime History XXV, no. 1 (2013): 103 – 125. García, Vicente and Capote, Luís. “La atribución de competencias profesionales en la arquitectura e ingenierías: estudio particular de la profesión de Ingeniero Naval y Oceánico”. Ingeniería Naval, Revista del sector marítimo 950 (September 2016) and 951 (October 2016). Garcia-Domingo, Enric. “Engine drivers or engineers: ship’s engineers in the Spanish merchant navy (1834 – 1893)”. Journal of Mediterranean Studies 19, no. 2 (2010): 249 – 27. Garcia-Domingo, Enric. “Losing professional identity? Deck officers in the Spanish merchant marine, 1868 – 1914”. International Journal of Maritime History 26, no. 3 (2014): 451 – 470. Garcia-Domingo, Enric. El mundo del trabajo en la marina mercante española (1834 – 1914). Barcelona: Ediciones Icaria, 2017.

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Kennerley, Alston. “Engineers in British merchant ships, 1850 – 1870: Origins and careers”. Proceedings of The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, Part B, num. B10, 3 – 13. London, 2006. Kennerley, Alston. “An Exercise in Social Conditioning? The Joint Education and Training of Engineer and Navigator Cadets for Careers and Officers in British Merchant Ships, in the 1960’s”. The Northern Mariner / Le Marin du Nord XVI, no. 4 (October 2006): 49 – 67. Kennerley, Alston. “British merchant Marine engineer licensing, 1865 – 1925”. In Maritime Labour. Contributions to the History of Work at Sea, 1500 – 2000, edited by R. Gorski. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007. Milburn, R. G. “The emergence of the engineer in the British merchant shipping industry, 1812 – 1863”. International Journal of Maritime History 28, no. 3 (2016): 559 – 575. Robles, Pedro. Vicisitudes históricas de nuestra profesión. Barcelona: Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de la Marina Mercante, 1993. Sánchez Carrión, José María. “La evolución de los planes de estudios necesarios para la obtención de las distintas titulaciones de Ingeniero Naval desde la titulación de Ingeniero de Marina hasta la de Ingeniero Naval y Oceánico”. Ingeniería Naval (November 1999): 91 – 99 (special issue celebrating the 70th anniversary of the journal). Vega Blasco, Antonio de la. “De la vela al vapor”. In La España marítima del siglo XIX. núm. 3. Cuadernos Monográficos del Instituto de Historia y Cultura Marítima. Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 1989), 61 – 80. Vega Blasco. El Cuerpo de Maquinistas Navales de la Armada, 1850 – 1950. Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa – Instituto de Historia y Cultura Marítima, 2009. Zamora Terrés, Juan. Notas para una historia del movimiento obrero en la Marina mercante. Barcelona: Museu Marítim de Barcelona, 2003. Zamora Terrés. “Historia de la Unión de Oficiales de la Marina Mercante Española”. Drassana, revista del Museu Marítim de Barcelona 18 (2010): 120 – 135.

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Chapter 14 Cantieristi. A History of Labour in Palermo Shipyard from 1945 to 1970 Abstract: Between 1945 and 1970, Palermo shipyard was the largest privately owned shipbuilding and ship repair centre in Italy, as well as one of the major industrial plants in Southern Italy. This chapter examines the shipyard’s working conditions (wages, pay forms, recruitment systems, working hours, safety at work) over that period, highlighting similarities and differences with other European shipyards’ labour history. In particular, it argues that the geographical position of the shipyard – in a sparsely industrialised region of Southern Italy – resulted in lower labour costs and in a more severe exploitation of the workforce than in the other Italian shipyards, as a consequence of both institutional factors (such as “wage cages”) and market factors (such as the low demand for skilled labour in the region). The chapter also sketches out the trade union activity of Palermo workers – the cantieristi, as they were called in local newspapers – and their struggles to improve their labour conditions.

Introduction Located in the heart of the Mediterranean sea, Palermo shipyard was for a long time one of the main industrial plants in Southern Italy. Established in 1898 and still in activity, it lived its golden age after WWII when, thanks to its strategic position, it became one of the major centres in the Mediterranean for the reparation of oil tankers coming from Suez.¹ Until its nationalisation in 1970, the shipyard was also the largest privately owned shipbuilding and ship-repair centre in Italy, managed by the most important private company in the country – the Cantieri Navali Riuniti (CNR), owned by the Genoese Piaggio family. Despite its relevance for the Italian shipbuilding industry, Palermo shipyard was neglected by business and labour historians, who have only recently started

 The shipyard is today a ship-repair centre owned by the public company Fincantieri. See Roberto Galisi, Dai Salvataggi alla competizione globale. La Fincantieri dal 1959 al 2009 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2011). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-017

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to study its past socioeconomic role.² This chapter is aimed at examining the working life and conditions that prevailed at Palermo shipyard in its phase of greatest development, which approximately coincides with the twenty-five years preceding the nationalisation of the plant in 1970. The existing historical literature has highlighted some shared features in labour conditions among European shipyards. In particular, the need to quickly adapt the dimensions of the workforce to the considerable fluctuations (cyclical and non-cyclical) of the workload, typical of the shipbuilding sector, has resulted almost everywhere in the spread of measures to enhance labour flexibility. On the other hand, the centrality of skilled labour – in a sector that, after WWII, was still struggling to implement systems of standardised production – favoured the bargaining power of workers, especially in areas with high demand for trained metalworkers. This resulted, in many cases, in a high rate of unionisation and participation in economic struggles.³ In many ways, the history of labour in Palermo shipyard is similar to that of other shipyards in the Mediterranean. However, there are some specifics that visibly differentiate its case from the experience of the other Italian shipyards, at least in certain respects. These specific features are mostly linked to the plant’s geographical location in the southernmost region of the country, Sicily. Being positioned in Sicily was doubly advantageous for the shipyard’s owners, which benefited both from its central position with respect to the Mediterranean oil trade routes and from the low costs of industrial labour in the island. After WWII, in fact, legal minimum wages for industrial workers were lower in

 Luca Stanchieri, “Il cantiere navale di Palermo: dalla nascita alle prime agitazioni operaie”, Mediterranea ricerche storiche 1 (2004): 75 – 120; Aurora Iannello, “Il cantiere navale di Palermo. Dalla ricostruzione post-bellica all’espansione (1945 – 1956)”, Proposte e ricerche 76 (2016): 163 – 178.  Edward H. Lorenz, “The employment strategies of British and French shipbuilders, 1890 – 1970”, International Contributions to Labour Studies 2 (1992): 99 – 118; Johanna Wolf, “Bremer Vulkan. A case study of the West German shipbuilding industry and its narratives in the second half of the twentieth century”, in Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World. Case Studies 1950 – 2010, ed. Raquel Varela, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 117– 142; Giulia Strippoli, Davide Tabor and Luciano Villani, “Always on the verge of sinking. Labour and production in the Sestri Ponente shipyard, Genoa (Italy), 1950 – 2014”, in Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World, 249 – 279. This obviously did not apply to dictatorial regimes that prevented workers’ struggles (such as Spain and Portugal), although even in these cases forms of clandestine organisation and protest were experienced; see José Gómez Alén, “Work, workers, and labour conflicts in the shipyard Bazán/Navantia-Ferrol, Galicia (Spain), 1950 – 2014”, in Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World, 281– 303.

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Sicily than in the northern area of the country, where most of the other large shipyards were located. The shipyard’s location in a scarcely industrialised region (so much so that it was, until the mid-sixties, the largest industrial plant in Sicily) also contributed to lower its labour costs. In fact, it has been shown that wages and working conditions are usually better off in shipyards located in highly industrialised areas, characterised by the proximity of other metalworking industries, due to the higher competition among industrial employers for skilled metalworkers.⁴ Palermo shipyard confirms this rule: its industrial isolation resulted in an extremely weak bargaining position for its workers, who as a consequence suffered the worst working conditions in the entire national shipbuilding industry. Finally, the Sicilian socioeconomic fabric included – as is well known – the presence of a strong faction of organised crime, the mafia, which operated at the shipyard precisely in the management of the workforce and of workers’ facilities. Beyond the phenomena that are specifically connected to the mafia, moreover, the high level of corruption of the Sicilian local authorities allowed the diffusion in Palermo of systems of illegal exploitation of the workforce, in a more evident way than in other Italian shipyards. This essay examines working conditions at Palermo shipyard (wages, pay forms, recruitment systems, working hours, safety at work), highlighting some of the aspects shared with other European shipyards and those specific to the case of Palermo. It also sketches out the trade union activity of Palermo workers – the cantieristi, as they were called in local newspapers – and their struggles to improve their labour conditions. It is based on archival research, mainly carried out on the shipyard’s business records, kept at the Fincantieri Archive in Palermo (AFP); the archive, located in one of the shipyard’s mechanical workshops, is still not inventoried and is closed to the public. The official business documentation of the CNR is kept in Genoa, at the archive of the Chamber of Commerce (GCC). In addition, I used trade union sources (from the archive of the Gramsci Institute in Palermo, IGS) and the prefecture documents kept in the State Archives of Palermo (ASP).⁵

 Lorenz, “The employment strategies of British and French shipbuilders”.  This chapter reports some of the results of a research carried out in 2015 as part of the author’s unpublished master’s thesis (Aurora Iannello, “Il cantiere navale di Palermo. Storia dell’industria e storia del lavoro di un grande stabilimento siciliano (1945 – 1970)”, MA Thesis, University of Bologna, 2015); to request it, the author can be contacted at the following email address: [email protected]). The research benefited from the advice of professor Augusto De Benedetti; a special thanks is due to Antonino Castello and the Fondazione Fincantieri.

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Shipbuilding and Ship Repair at Palermo Shipyard Founded in 1898 by the heir of the most important Sicilian entrepreneurial family, Ignazio Florio junior,⁶ in 1906 the ownership of the shipyard passed to the Genoese company CNR, controlled by the Genoese Piaggio family since 1912.⁷ In the 1930s, 90 % of Italian shipbuilding was nationalised as a result of the global crisis, which had severely affected Italian shipyards.⁸ The CNR was among the few companies to survive the wave of nationalisations. The Piaggio group became the most important private group in the sector, managing three shipyards: Palermo and Ancona through the CNR company, and Riva Trigoso (near Genoa) through the Cantieri del Tirreno company (CdT).⁹ The Piaggio family owned the three shipyards until 1970, when a prolonged crisis forced them to liquidate the companies¹⁰; within three years, all the former Piaggio shipyards became part of the Fincantieri state company. Over the period considered in this essay, Palermo shipyard was the largest private shipyard in Italy. At the time of its greatest development, it employed up to six thousand workers (about half of them on a permanent basis).¹¹ The shipyard was active in both construction and ship repair activities; in addition,

 Majority shareholder of the Navigazione Generale Italiana, the main Italian shipping company, and owner of a multitude of other industrial, financial and commercial activities in Sicily.  At the beginning of the twentieth century the Piaggio family’s activities spread from the banking sector to the chemical, paper and sugar industries; their core business was however the shipbuilding and shipping activities (especially with the shipping company Lloyd Italiano). This Piaggio family should not be confused with another famous Genoese Piaggio family, owner of the car company Piaggio in Pontedera. See Roberto Giulianelli, I Piaggio: la parabola di un grande gruppo armatoriale e cantieristico italiano (1875 – 1972) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012); Roberto Giulianelli, “Trasporti marittimi e navalmeccanica nel Novecento”, in Maria Canella and Giuliano Maifreda (eds.), L’Italia dei Piaggio (Milan: Nexo, 2012), 141– 181.  Paolo Fragiacomo, L’industria come continuazione della politica: la cantieristica italiana 1861 – 2011 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012).  Giulianelli, I Piaggio; Giulianelli, “Trasporti marittimi e navalmeccanica nel Novecento”.  In 1956, the CNR and the CdT became property of a non-profit foundation in the hands of the Piaggio family, the Fondazione Maria Piaggio Casarsa. In 1966, both merged into a new company called Cantieri navali del Tirreno e riuniti; see Roberto Giulianelli, “Dalla Terni all’Iri. I cantieri navali riuniti fra stato e mercato (1906 – 1984)”, Imprese e Storia 38 (2009): 35 – 77.  Archivio Fincantieri di Palermo (AFP), Affari Generali (AG), Data sent from the shipyard administration to the Employment Office, 1945 – 1970.

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it housed mechanical workshops for the construction of agricultural and industrial machinery, and locomotives, commissioned by the State.¹² The decades following WWII were a period of profound transformation for the world shipbuilding industry. On the impulse of Japanese shipyards and of the most dynamic European shipyards (first and foremost the Swedish ones), the industry gradually lost its craft character. The new construction methods were based on the pre-fabrication of large pieces of the hull on the ground, which were then welded together on the slipways using powerful cranes. These innovations were combined with the standardisation of production and the increasing specialisation of the plants.¹³ Italian shipyards struggled to adapt to the new standards. The standardisation and specialisation of production would have required a profound restructuring of the sector, characterised by an excess of production capacity and manpower, which was opposed by governments for political reasons (mainly to avoid massive layoffs). Moreover, being usually located within cities, Italian shipyards had little chance of expanding inland, as they would not have been able to gain the space necessary for starting a rationally ordered prefabrication activity. As a consequence, most of them were cut off from international competition. In an attempt to revive the national shipbuilding industry, the State started a policy of subsidies and incentives for shipowners.¹⁴ Until the end of the 1960s, when a serious restructuring of the sector was initiated, the Italian shipbuilding industry survived mainly thanks to state orders and subsidies.¹⁵ Palermo shipyard suffered from the same limitations as the national industry. Working techniques gradually changed, with welding replaced by riveting, the progressive abandonment of wooden models and the purchase of large cranes for the pre-fabrication of some parts of the hull. However, the shipyard remained a factotum shipyard, accepting all available orders without ever attempting to specialise and rationalise production.¹⁶ Given the uncompetitive

 AFP, AG, Letter from CNR central office to Palermo shipyard, May 1952; Genoa Chamber of Commerce (GCC), Tribunale di Genova (Tge), Archivio Società Cessate (Asc), folder 5103 “Cantieri Navali Riuniti”, “Verbale assemblea ordinaria”, April 1952. These non-core activities are not unusual in shipbuilding, where they serve to keep skilled workers employed at times of falling workloads (see Lorenz, “The employment strategies of British and French shipbuilders”).  Daniel Todd, The World Shipbuilding Industry (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985).  Through the Saragat law (1949), the Cappa law (1952) and the Tambroni law (1954).  Giulio Mellinato, “From Craftsmanship to Post-Fordism. Shipbuilding in the United Kingdom and Italy after WWII”, in Reappraising State-owned Enterprise. A comparison of the UK and Italy, ed. Franco Amatori, Robert Millward and Pier Angelo Toninelli (New York: Routledge, 2011); Fragiacomo, L’industria come continuazione della politica.  GCC, Tge, Asc, folder 5103, “Verbale assemblea ordinaria”, various issues, 1950 – 1969.

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costs on the international market, construction orders were scarce and almost always came from the State (which subsidised twelve of the thirteen ships built in Palermo between 1950 and 1956).¹⁷ The success of the shipyard after WWII was mainly due to the ship repair activity, which in the following years became more and more the core business of the plant. The exponential increase in oil traffic through the Suez Canal placed the shipyard in a strategic position, exactly on the return routes of oil tankers, whose ordinary and extraordinary maintenance became the main activity of the shipyard. During the 1950s, the demand for ship repairs was such that the shipyard often had to refuse new orders.¹⁸ At the end of the decade, however, competition in the Mediterranean increased, mainly as a result of the reconstruction of the Bailey’s shipyard in Malta and the Stavros Niarchos’ in Skaramangas.¹⁹ At the same time, in the shipbuilding branch, public orders decreased. The second closure of the Suez Canal in 1967 coincided with a moment of deep crisis for Palermo shipyard and the CNR, whose liquidation and nationalisation process started, at the height of the crisis, three years later.

Labour at Palermo Shipyard The size of the workforce employed at Palermo shipyard varied considerably over the period considered: it can be estimated that the overall number of workers fluctuated between 2,000 and 2,500 in the immediate post-war period, between 4,000 and 6,000 from 1950 to 1965, and between 3,000 and 5,000 in the 1960s. Of these, from one half to two-thirds were permanent employees (see Table 1); the rest were workers on fixed-term contracts and workers employed through subcontractors.²⁰ The workforce was divided into a large number of specialisations, most of which were – as in many European shipyards of the time – still traditional and almost craft in nature: metal carpenters, riveters, tracers, caulkers, smelters, blacksmiths, pattern-makers, boiler-makers, forgers, galvanizers and welders.²¹

 AFP, AG, List of ships built at Palermo shipyard, 1956.  GCC, Tge, Asc, folder 5103, “Verbale assemblea ordinaria”, April 1955.  AFP, AG, Letter from the management of Palermo shipyard to CNR, 1959. AFP, AG, Report on the activity of Palermo dry docks in 1962, 1962.  AFP, AG, Data sent from the management of Palermo shipyard to the local Employment Office, 1945 – 1970.  AFP, AG, Description of Palermo shipyard workshops, 1946.

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Figure 14.1: Aerial view of the Palermo shipyard, 1966. Source: Archivio storico Fondazione Fincantieri.

The minimum wage and normative legal standards for Italian shipyards’ workers were established by the national collective bargaining agreement (Contratto Collettivo Nazionale di Lavoro, or CCNL) for the metalworkers’ sector, bargained at the national level by the Italian Confindustria (the private employers’ national association) and the main national trade unions. The wage conditions established by the CCNL penalised Palermo workers because of the geographical position of the shipyard: in Italy, in fact, during the 1950s and 1960s, workers of different geographical areas were entitled to different minimum wages. This inequality (sperequazione salariale) had been introduced in 1951²² and made more significant in 1954,²³ when the so-called “wage cages” (gabbie salariali) were created: the country was divided into thirteen areas with different minimum wages (from area 0, with the highest levels, to area XII; the northern provinces were mostly included in the first areas, the

 Accordo interconfederale 21 marzo 1951, 21 March 1951.  Accordo interconfederale per il conglobamento e il riassetto zonale delle retribuzioni per i settori industriali, 12 June 1954.

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southern in the last). In 1955, a skilled metalworker’s minimum daily retribution was 1,154 lira in Palermo (area VII) and 1,324 lira in Genoa (area 0).²⁴ This system was officially designed to reflect the difference in the cost of living among different Italian provinces; however, it has been shown that there were no appreciable differences in the cost of living between the urban areas of Palermo and Genoa.²⁵ Wage cages were only abolished in 1969. In the factories in Northern Italy, minimum wages set by the CCNL were usually increased (even doubled) by wage subsidies bargained at the company level.²⁶ In a largely industrialised context, characterised by a demand for skilled labour often higher than supply, the additional advantages established through company-level agreements served to attract qualified workers to the plants, taking them away from competing industries. This was not the case in Palermo, where, due to the scarce industrialisation, competition between companies for skilled labour was much less pressing. As a consequence, company-level wage subsidies were considerably lower and accounted for a smaller share of wages than in northern shipyards.²⁷ This contributed to aggravating the discrepancy between the wage conditions of Palermo workers and those of other national shipyards. The CCNL established different minimum wages depending on workers’ qualification level; in Palermo, however, skilled workers were often registered and paid as unskilled, with the complicity of the local employment office. This illegal ploy, which was repeatedly and needlessly denounced by the shipyard’s workers, guaranteed the company a considerable gain – the hourly pay of a skilled worker could be from twenty to forty lira (from 0.30 Euro to 0.60 Euro cents at 2018 prices) higher than that of an unskilled worker. A significant figure is that, while the metal carpentry shop in Riva Trigoso employed fifty skilled workers and only six unskilled workers, in Palermo, in the same workshop, only twenty-eight workers out of one hundred and thirty-two were officially recognised as skilled.²⁸

 Corresponding, respectively, to circa eighteen and twenty-one Euro per day at 2019 constant prices; Francesco Renda, La Sicilia degli anni ’50 (Naples: Guida Editori, 1987).  Nicola Amendola, Giovanni Vecchi and Bilal al Kiswani, “Il costo della vita dal Nord al Sud Italia, dal dopoguerra ad oggi. Stime di prima generazione”, Rivista di Politica Economica 70 (2009): 3 – 34.  Renda, La Sicilia degli anni ’50.  AFP, AG, Letter from the local Employment Office to the management of Palermo shipyard, 1958.  Istituto Gramsci Siciliano (IGS), collection “Marcello Cimino”, folder 26.4, Report on the shipyard, 1957.

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The CCNL left the decision on the payment system to be adopted – either a time-rate or a piecework system – to the company-level bargaining. The piecework system required each worker to comply with precise time schedules for each type of work, producing at least a certain level of output per hour; workers who achieved the set standards earned a piecework allowance (indennità di cottimo) in addition to the fixed minimum hourly wage.²⁹ The remuneration system officially adopted in Palermo was the time rate; despite this, however, in 1952, the management of the shipyard introduced in each workshop the same monitoring systems used in Riva Trigoso, where a piecework payment system was adopted in order to control production times and increase productivity levels. Consequently, every worker in Palermo was provided with a time schedule for his job, and compelled to observe it under constant supervision, but did not receive any piecework allowance.³⁰ This illicit system, called the “missed-piecework system” (mancato cottimo), allowed the management to achieve a remarkable increase in productivity without increasing the cost of labour.³¹ Regarding the regulatory conditions (in particular, working hours and workplace safety), the provisions of the law and the CCNL were often violated. The normal working day in the shipbuilding industry was eight hours a day (six days a week), to which could be added up to two hours a day of overtime. Due to the special nature of shipbuilding work, the limit for overtime could be extended to four hours a day for four months a year, limited to outdoor work.³² In 1955, Palermo shipyard – which worked in a continuous cycle, with three shifts of eight hours a day – was the focus of a journalistic investigation into the abuse of overtime, after a young worker died in an accident at work after an eighteen-hour shift. The investigation ascertained that this was not an isolated case, and that several workers regularly worked fifteen-hour shifts.³³ The mobilisation of the local press forced the President of the Sicilian region, Giuseppe Alessi, a member of the Christian Democratic party, to set up a committee to investigate the abuse of overtime at the shipyard. However, the Piaggios’ political connections were developed enough to render this effort useless: a letter from the central offices of the CNR in Genoa reassured the shipyard’s man-

 Myriam Bergamaschi, Emilio Zanette and Ernesto Martini, Salari contrattuali e piattaforme rivendicative dei metalmeccanici, 1948 – 1979 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1980).  “Scandalosi profitti realizzati da Piaggio a Palermo attraverso la mancata retribuzione del cottimo”, L’Unità (Palermo edition), 29 December 1960.  GCC, Tge, Asc, folder 5103, “Verbale assemblea ordinaria”, 1961.  Royal Decree 692/1923.  AFP, AG, Letter from the management of Palermo shipyard to CNR, 26 August 1955.

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agement, ensuring that the chairman of the committee in charge of the investigation – the deputy of the Sicilian Assembly and a member of the Christian democratic party, Vincenzo Carollo – was “a friend of the company, who already promised to write a report in favour of the shipyard”.³⁴ During the 1950s, an average of four workers a year died from work accidents at the shipyard. This figure, which only takes into account accidents involving workers regularly employed by the shipyard management, and therefore excluding sub-contract workers, together with the large number of charges filed against the management of the shipyard, suggests that many of the safety rules were neglected. The most common types of accidents were intoxications in tanks due to noxious fumes, shocks due to substandard electrical systems and falls from unsafe workplaces.³⁵ The frequency of occupational diseases was also very high, especially for lung and stomach diseases.³⁶ It has been mentioned that about half of the workers working at the shipyard were hired in a precarious form, through sub-contracting companies or fixedterm contracts. The use of sub-contract workers is a common phenomenon in shipbuilding, being one of the most common tools for increasing the flexibility of the workforce, enabling the management to quickly adapt the number of employees to the current workload. In many of the cases examined in the historical literature, sub-contracting companies did not manage their own specific activity – that is, they did not manage the performance of a certain specialised job at the shipyard with their own working tools – but were simply a means of providing temporary labour to the shipyard, saving managers the “burdens” of direct employment.³⁷ This practice was illegal in Italy, where it corresponded to the crime of mediazione abusiva (“abusive mediation”), later prestazione abusiva di manodopera (“abusive labour supply”); however, it is documented not only for Palermo, but also for the shipyards of Sestri Ponente and Ancona.³⁸ There were about ten “ghost” companies in Palermo, used by the management for the provision of labour, the largest of which came to provide up to

 My translation; AFP, AG, Letter from CNR to the management of Palermo shipyard, 12 March 1956.  IGS, collection “Marcello Cimino”, folder 26.4, Report on the shipyard, 1957.  IGS, collection “Marcello Cimino”, folder 26.4, Report on the shipyard, 1969.  Roberto Lucioli, Il martello e la prua: lotte operaie al cantiere navale di Ancona dalla liberazione al passaggio all’IRI (1944 – 1970) (Ancona: Il Lavoro Editoriale, 2000); Tobias Karlsson, “From boom to bust. Kockums, Malmö (Sweden), 1950 – 1986”, in Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World, ed. Raquel Varela, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden, 143 – 164; Vega García, “Against market rules”.  Strippoli et al., “Always on the verge of sinking”; Lucioli, Il martello e la prua.

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six hundred workers.³⁹ In the context of such a common phenomenon, the specificity of Palermo lies in the existing link between these sub-contracting companies and the Palermo mafia; in particular, the largest of the companies operating at the shipyard was managed by Accomando Alessio, a mafia member and business partner of Tommaso Buscetta (the mafia boss who, in the 1990s, testified on the relationship between the mafia and Italian politics). The company was in the headlines when, in 1964, an internal “settling of scores” was passed off as an work accident; the autopsy revealed that the victim, a chief worker employed by the company, who had apparently fallen from an unsafe position in the shipyard, had actually been stabbed.⁴⁰ The interference of the mafia in Palermo was not limited to the sub-contracting companies: in 1947, the gang of the boss Nicola D’Alessandro was used to quell the workers’ unrest within the shipyard.⁴¹ Furthermore, the workers’ canteen was for a long time managed by Michele Cavataio, another local mafia boss.⁴² Workers hired from sub-contracting companies received lower wages than employees hired by the shipyard (not being entitled to the wage subsidies contracted at the company level), as well as having fewer employment guarantees. Unlike temporary workers, they were frequently skilled workers.⁴³ Usually, their hiring by sub-contracting companies happened in an illicit way: employment offices were bypassed and workers were individually chosen from the crowd of unemployed who gathered at the gates of the shipyard in the morning. This allowed the shipyard management to avoid hiring individuals considered subversive.⁴⁴ In the 1960s, the number of sub-contract workers employed at the shipyard decreased (probably also due to the introduction of a new law, in 1960, which tightened penalties for the supply of labour).⁴⁵ At the same time, the number of temporary workers (workers hired directly by the CNR, but with a fixedterm contract), increased.⁴⁶ Article 2097 of the Italian Civil Code recognised the legitimacy of fixed-term contracts, specifying, however, their exceptional nature and forbidding their use  IGS, collection “Marcello Cimino”, folder 26.4, Report on the shipyard, 1958.  “Ucciso uno della mafia degli appalti”, L’Unità (Palermo edition), 30 January 1964.  Archivio di Stato di Palermo (ASP), Gabinetto di Prefettura 1946 – 1965, folder 184bis, Minutes of the Carabinieri Command, 17 January 1947.  “Ucciso uno della mafia degli appalti”, L’Unità (Palermo edition), 30 January 1964.  “Come avviene il collocamento al caniere navale di Palermo”, L’Ora, 3 August 1955.  IGS, collection “Marcello Cimino”, folder 26.4, Fiom-Cgil report on working conditions at Palermo shipyard, 1958.  Law 1369/1960, art. 1.  ASP, Gabinetto di Prefettura 1946 – 1965, folder 1068, Letter from Fiom to Palermo Employment Office, 29 November 1957.

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if aimed at circumventing links to permanent contracts; furthermore, fixed-term contracts were supposed to be automatically converted into permanent contracts after the first renewal. At the shipyard, around one-quarter of the workforce was employed with fixed-term contracts; the law requiring them to be converted into open-ended contracts was easily circumvented by renewing the contracts a few days after they expired. Temporary workers were often day labourers, usually with low skill levels, hired the very same day in front of the shipyard gates.⁴⁷

Figure 14.2: Ship repair work at Palermo shipyard, 1954. Source: Archivio storico Fondazione Fincantieri.

Trade Unionism at the Shipyard On the whole, the wage and working conditions of Palermo shipyard workers were worse than those prevailing in the Italian shipbuilding industry at the time. This resulted in a situation of intense labour conflict – over the twenty-

 AFP, AG, Letter from the management of Palermo shipyard to CNR central offices, 13 September 1960.

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Table 14.1: Number of permanent employees at Palermo shipyard (sub-contract and fixed-term workers not included),1951-1970. Year

Managers Office em- Workers’ High-skilled ployees Supervisors workersa)

Medium-skilled workersb)

Low-skilled workersc)

Total

                   

               – – – – –

              – – – – – –

              – – – – – –

                   

               – – – – –

              – – – – – –

              – – – – – –

Source: AFP, AG, Annual statistics sent from the shipyard to National Statistical Office (ISTAT), 1951 – 1970. a) Corresponding to the Italian operai specializzati and operai qualificati. b) Corresponding to the Italian manovali specializzati and manovali qualificati. c) Corresponding to the Italian apprendisti.

five years considered, the number of strikes was higher than at the other Piaggio shipyards.⁴⁸ Most of the shipyard workers were members of the FIOM (Federazione Impiegati Operai Metalmeccanici), the metalworkers’ section of the national trade union CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro), linked to the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The other main metalworkers’ trade unions, the FIMCISL (Federazione Italiana Metalmeccanici – Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori) and the UILM (Unione Italiana Lavoratori Metallurgici), linked respec-

 GCC, Tge, Asc, folder 5103, “Verbale assemblea ordinaria”, 1969.

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tively to the Christian Democrat and the Socialist Party, were also present, but with fewer members. At the company level, workers in Italian factories were represented – since 1943 – by a yearly elected Internal Commission, with collective bargaining powers. Throughout the period considered, Palermo shipyard’s Internal Commission mostly consisted of FIOM-CGIL delegates (see Table 2).⁴⁹ Starting from May 1954, the shipyard workers began to publish a monthly newspaper, “La Voce del Cantiere” (“The Voice of the Shipyard”), which was probably the first Sicilian factory newspaper. It basically reflected the CGIL guidelines, denouncing the shipyard working conditions and encouraging workers to join the economic struggles.⁵⁰ Moreover, a significant proportion of the shipyard workers were members of the Communist Party. The cantieristi (“shipbuilders”) were indeed famous in Sicily for their extreme leftist political views. One episode in particular is quite significant: in 1947, the shipyard’s mechanical shop received an order to convert thirty US tanks into tractors; immediately after, however, the local police station wrote to the prefect, asking him to remove the tanks from the shipyard, since “Most of the shipyards’ workers are communist. Some of them belong to the Orcel communist section, where last Sunday were carried out military exercises with shovels and hammers; others belong to the Garibaldi Brigade, and are considered by the Communist leaders as the most daring fighters”.⁵¹ As overstated as this fear could have been, it reflected the reputation of the shipyard workforce outside of the plant. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, the struggles of the cantieristi focused on the defence of employment. The wartime damages to the shipyard had in fact led to a temporary suspension of shipbuilding activity, which was only resumed in 1950; the management, therefore, implemented a series of individual lay-offs, and forcibly imposed a reduction in working hours. In 1948, the announcement of the dismissal of sixty-eight workers triggered the first series of strikes. After a month of protests, the management declared it was willing to reduce the number of dismissals to twenty-seven, a compromise that the trade union delegates of the Internal Committee were ready to accept. The workers, however, did not stop the strike, and instead came to occupy the plant – against the unions’ will – in May 1948. The occupation and self-management of the shipyard lasted for thirty-five days, during which the workers completed the repair work on the  AFP, AG, Members of Internal Commissions, 1954– 1970.  IGS, collection “Marcello Cimino”, folder 3.3, “La Voce del Cantiere”, 1 May 1954.  My translation; ASP, Pref. Gab. 1946 – 1965, folder 814bis, Report to the prefect, December 1947.

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British merchant ship, Bangor Bay.⁵² In the end, however, the exhausted shipbuilders had to succumb to the irremovability of the management, which finally fired the sixty-eight workers.⁵³ In the following years, the claims of the cantieristi focused on the gap that separated the wage and working conditions of Palermo workers from those of the other Piaggio employees of Riva Trigoso and Ancona. Starting from the mid1950s (after seven years of increasing productivity, without any corresponding adjustment of wages), the workers drew up a platform of demands claiming wage increases (in particular, an “extra-zone” allowance to compensate for the effect of the wage cages), indemnities for heavy and dangerous work, the correct recognition of qualifications and compliance with safety measures at work.⁵⁴ The protests culminated in 1958 in a series of violent clashes with the police.⁵⁵ In 1959, the management granted the extra-zone allowance in exchange for “the end of all claims for indemnities for heavy and dangerous work and for the provision of the second course in the canteen”.⁵⁶ The request to add a second course in the worker’s canteen (which was supplied in the other Piaggio shipyards) took more than fifteen years of claims in Palermo to be fulfilled. The beginning of the 1960s was marked by the struggles for the recognition of the piecework allowance (and, therefore, for the end of the “missed piecework” system), obtained in 1961, but followed by long disputes for the negotiation of its amount.⁵⁷ The 1968 – 1969 round of struggles (in the context of the Italian autunno caldo) was also centred on the request to adjust the shipyard’s wages to that of Riva Trigoso; in addition, the workers fought for the permanent hiring of temporary workers.⁵⁸ Palermo shipyard workers always showed solidarity in their claims, without creating barriers between permanent, sub-contract and temporary workers. Despite the economic weakness of the last two categories, the shipyard management rarely succeeded in recruiting them to contrast strikes. In March 1961, for example, during the struggles for the introduction of the piecework system, all the daily workers hired to break the strikes joined the protesting workers, imme-

      

ASP, Pref. Gab. 1946 – 1965, folder 814bis, Prefecture notes, May 1948. AFP, AG, Letter from the management of Palermo shipyard to CNR, 16 June 1948. AFP, AG, Agenda of the Internal Committee, 7 October 1955. “Scontri tra la polizia e gli operai del cantiere”, L’Ora, 3 April 1958. My translation; ASP, Pref. Gab. 1946 – 1965, folder 1208, Agreement report, 24 March 1959. GCC, Tge, Asc, folder 5103, “Verbale assemblea ordinaria”, 1961. “Gli operai attuano lo sciopero bianco”, L’Unità (Palermo edition), 9 June 1968.

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diately being fired as a consequence.⁵⁹ In this, the geographical homogeneity of the workforce (almost entirely from Sicily) and the absence of extra-regional immigrant components in Palermo almost certainly played a role; in Northern Italy, as in all areas of strong immigration (internal or external), this unity was rarer.⁶⁰ Because of the intensity of their struggles, the cantieristi gained a reputation of being the hammerhead of the Sicilian workers’ movement. The results of their trade union activity, however, were relatively limited. The struggles of the cantieristi led to some wage improvements over the years, but this never resulted in a bridging of the wage gap between Palermo and the other Piaggio shipyards. Even united, skilled and unskilled, permanent and temporary workers found themselves in a situation of objective bargaining weakness. On the other hand, there was no concrete attempt – apart from a few simultaneous strikes for the renewal of national collective agreements – to unite the struggles of the workers of Riva Trigoso, Ancona and Palermo. Demonstrations of solidarity between the three shipyards were rare and quite formal. In this way, the workers wasted a potential contractual leverage against their common employers. Moreover, in many occasions the shipyard management succeeded in exploiting workers’ struggles to the advantage of the CNR. Normally, the adaptation of the number of employees to the workload was achieved by cutting off contracts with sub-contractors, or by not renewing fixed-term contracts. When the shipyard did not receive enough state orders or subsidies, instead, the management announced blatantly the dismissal of a part of the workforce, ensuring the attention of the local press, and blaming the scarcity of orders for the measure taken; this triggered the reaction of the unions, which organised strikes and demonstrations against lay-offs. The local public authorities, frightened by the perspective of public unrest and worried about the electoral consequences, pressed for the shipyard to be assigned new orders. A similar mechanism was used in the mid-1970s in the Bremen shipyard, where trade unions addressed their pressure directly to the state, circumventing employers.⁶¹

Conclusion Labour in Palermo shipyard reflected many structural characteristics of the shipbuilding sector. For this reason, like many other European shipyards of the time,

 “Ancora in sciopero gli operai del cantiere”, L’Ora, 17 March 1961.  Karlsson, “From boom to bust”; Strippoli et al., “Always on the verge of sinking”.  Wolf, “Bremer Vulkan”.

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Table 14.2: The composition of the shipyard Internal Commissions from 1954 to 1969. Year

CGIL

CISL

UIL

CISNAL

SI

TOT

     –     

    –    

    –    

    –    

    –    

    –    

    –    

Note: The CISNAL (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Nazionali Lavoratori) was the trade union linked to the far-right party Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI); the SI was the Sindacato Indipendente, an independent trade union created at Palermo shipyard, whose positions were always very close to the management’s interest. The table does not include years when the Commission was automatically renewed, therefore keeping the same composition of the previous year. Data from 1960 to 1964 are not available.

Palermo had a highly skilled, very unionised, and very flexible (divided almost halfway between permanent and precarious workers) workforce, which often worked in insecure and unhealthy workstations, being subjected to very long shifts, and often mobilised as an instrument of political pressure. Due to its geographical position, and to some specific characteristics of the region in which it is located, Sicily, Palermo also lived some peculiar experiences compared to other shipyards. In these conclusions, I again dwell on the two main ones mentioned in this essay, suggesting some possible future insights. Labour at Palermo shipyard was characterised, first and foremost, by the workers’ experience of receiving lower wages and worse working conditions than other national shipyards. The word that most frequently recurred in the protests and claims of the cantieristi was “inequality”. Palermo workers could easily compare their own working conditions with those of other northern shipyards (especially with their Riva Trigoso colleagues in Genoa, who performed the same tasks for the same employers) and realise how penalising it was for them to work in the South. In part, these inequalities were legally stated (for example, with the wage cage system). However, it was mainly the lower bargaining power of southern metalworkers that caused this gap. Unlike their Northern colleagues, Palermo’s metalworkers had little choice about what companies to sell their skilled labour force to (unless they chose to emigrate). The traditional bargaining advantage of skilled workers (scarcer, and therefore able to aspire to bet-

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ter working conditions) was lost in Palermo – so much so that the management could even resort to the illegal method of registering skilled workers as unskilled. Some oral testimonies from former Palermo shipyard workers mentioned an improvement in working conditions after the plant’s nationalisation, which was completed in 1973. Many workers linked to the Pci or the Cgil were ideologically in favour of state property, which could distort the objectivity of such an account. However, it would be interesting to investigate whether the opening of the Fiat metalworking plant at Termini Imerese in 1970 (just forty kilometres from the shipyard), and the consequent increase in demand for skilled metalworkers on the local market, had an impact on the shipyard’s working conditions as well.⁶² The second aspect has to do with the presence of the mafia, and with its interference in the management of labour in Palermo. The present chapter makes only a few references to this important issue; the presence of the mafia emerges in simple substitution of other speculative actors present in other contexts (in the case of external companies, for example, the mafia limits itself to exploiting a possibility of illegal profit, which in other shipyards was exploited by others). But the mafia’s ties with the shipyard were hardly limited to these aspects (which were, all in all, minor), and more careful research in this direction is called for. Finally, this work would certainly benefit from further comparative research, especially on the labour policies implemented in the main ship-repairing competitors of Palermo shipyard in the Mediterranean, namely Malta and Skaramangas.

Bibliography Amendola, Nicola, Giovanni Vecchi and Bilal al Kiswani. “Il costo della vita dal Nord al Sud Italia, dal dopoguerra ad oggi. Stime di prima generazione”. Rivista di Politica Economica 70 (2009): 3 – 34. Bergamaschi, Myriam, Emilio Zanette and Ernesto Martini. Salari contrattuali e piattaforme rivendicative dei metalmeccanici, 1948 – 1979. Milan: Franco Angeli, 1980. Fragiacomo, Paolo. L’industria come continuazione della politica: la cantieristica italiana 1861 – 2011. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012. Galisi, Roberto. Dai Salvataggi alla competizione globale. La Fincantieri dal 1959 al 2009. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2011.

 Similarly, it would be interesting to compare working conditions at Palermo with those prevailing in the same period at Malta shipyard, which was even more isolated from an industrial point of view.

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Giulianelli, Roberto. “Dalla Terni all’Iri. I cantieri navali riuniti fra stato e mercato (1906 – 1984)”. Imprese e Storia 38 (2009): 35 – 77. Giulianelli, Roberto. I Piaggio: la parabola di un grande gruppo armatoriale e cantieristico italiano (1875 – 1972). Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012. Giulianelli, Roberto. “Trasporti marittimi e navalmeccanica nel Novecento”. In L’Italia dei Piaggio, edited by Maria Canella and Giuliano Maifreda, 141 – 181. Milan: Nexo, 2012. Gómez Alén, José. “Work, workers, and labour conflicts in the shipyard Bazán/Navantia-Ferrol, Galicia (Spain), 1950 – 2014”. In Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World. Case Studies 1950 – 2010, edited by Raquel Varela, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden, 281 – 303. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. Iannello, Aurora. “Il cantiere navale di Palermo. Storia dell’industria e storia del lavoro di un grande stabilimento siciliano (1945 – 1970)”. Master’s thesis. University of Bologna, 2015. Iannello, Aurora. “Il cantiere navale di Palermo. Dalla ricostruzione post-bellica all’espansione (1945 – 1956)”. Proposte e ricerche 76 (2016): 163 – 178. Karlsson, Tobias. “From boom to bust. Kockums, Malmö (Sweden), 1950 – 1986”. In Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World. Case Studies 1950 – 2010, edited by Raquel Varela, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden, 143 – 164. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. Lorenz, Edward H. “The employment strategies of British and French shipbuilders, 1890 – 1970”. International Contributions to Labour Studies 2 (1992): 99 – 118. Lucioli, Roberto. Il martello e la prua: lotte operaie al cantiere navale di Ancona dalla liberazione al passaggio all’IRI (1944 – 1970). Ancona: Il Lavoro Editoriale, 2000. Mellinato, Giulio. “From Craftsmanship to Post-Fordism. Shipbuilding in the United Kingdom and Italy after WWII’”. In Reappraising State-owned Enterprise. A comparison of the UK and Italy, edited by Franco Amatori, Robert Millward and Pier Angelo Toninelli. New York: Routledge, 2011. Renda, Francesco. La Sicilia degli anni ’50. Naples: Guida Editori, 1987. Stanchieri, Luca. “Il cantiere navale di Palermo: dalla nascita alle prime agitazioni operaie”. Mediterranea ricerche storiche 1 (2004): 75 – 120. Strippoli, Giulia, Davide Tabor and Luciano Villani. “Always on the verge of sinking. Labour and production in the Sestri Ponente shipyard, Genoa (Italy), 1950 – 2014”. In Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World. Case Studies 1950 – 2010, edited by Raquel Varela, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden, 249 – 279. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. Todd, Daniel. The World Shipbuilding Industry. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985. van der Linden, Marcel, Hugh Murphy and Raquel Varela. “Introduction”. In Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World. Case Studies 1950 – 2010, edited by Raquel Varela, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden, 15 – 43. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. Vega García, Rubén. “Against market rules. A Spanish shipyard nobody wanted (except workers)”. In Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World. Case Studies 1950 – 2010, edited by Raquel Varela, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden, 305 – 317. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017.

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Wolf, Johanna. “Bremer Vulkan. A case study of the West German shipbuilding industry and its narratives in the second half of the twentieth century”. In Shipbuilding and Ship Repair Workers around the World. Case Studies 1950 – 2010, edited by Raquel Varela, Hugh Murphy and Marcel van der Linden, 117 – 142. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017.

List of contributors Daniel Alves is Assistant Professor in the Department of History and researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, both at NOVA-FCSH, New University of Lisbon. He holds a Master’s degree in nineteenth century History and a PhD in Contemporary Economic and Social History. His areas of interest are Economic and Social History, Urban History and Digital Humanities. He has published several books and articles in national and international scientific journals, especially in Economic and Social History. He was guest editor on the special issue “Digital Methods and Tools for Historical Research” of the International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing and on the special issue “The History of Retailing on the Iberian Peninsula” of the journal History of Retailing and Consumption. Milan Balaban was born on July 3, 1981, in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He finished his bachelor studies at University of Banja Luka and completed his master and doctoral studies at the Masaryk University in Czech Republic. He worked at the Department of History in Banja Luka University and since 2015 has worked as scientific researcher at the Bata Information Centre at Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Czech Republic. His main research areas are the history of the Bata Company and Czechoslovak-Yugoslav economic relations. Milan is author of numerous articles published in Czech and international academic journals and recently published a monograph on the Bata Company in Yugoslavia (Podnikání firmy Baťa v Jugoslávii, Zlín, 2018). Enric Garcia Domingo (Barcelona, Spain, 1962) is a researcher interested in Maritime History in a broad scope, especially in maritime labour. He has a degree in History and Doctorate in Contemporary History (both at the Universitat de Barcelona), and has published several books and articles as well as participated in national and international meetings. He is currently Head of the Department of Collections and Research at the Museu Marítim de Barcelona, while also a member of the research group TIG Treball, Institucions i Génere (Labour, Institutions and Gender) of the Universitat de Barcelona. Vincent Gouzi (Moissac, France, 1947) studied Political Science at Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (1968). He worked as a teacher at the Centre de Formation Administrative of Constantine (Algeria, 1971 – 1973) before working in the Suez Group and UIC from 1974, in financing industrial and real estate activities, especially towards Small Businesses Enterprises, until he retired in 2008. He graduated from Institut National des Langues Orientales in 2012 and also holds a PhD in Economic History from INALCO on “L’industrie Grecque de la Reconstruction à la Crise, 1950 – 2014” (2017). His publications include “Répartition spatiale de l’industrie grecque” (Cahiers Balkaniques 43 (2015)); “L’industrie en Méditerranée” (special issue edited by Vincent Gouzi in Cahiers Balkaniques 45 (2018)); and “Nomenclatures industrielles en Grèce. Variations du champ du secteur secondaire et limites de comparabilité” (Cahiers Balkaniques 45 (2018)). Andrea Umberto Gritti is a PhD student at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. A former student at the Scuola Normale Superiore, where he was admitted in 2014, he graduated in History and International Studies at the University of Pisa. His project of dissertation,

366

List of contributors

titled “Leaving the Emporium: Ottoman Jewish Elites in the Mirror of the First Globalisation, 1830 – 1930”, aims to analyse the remaking of economic and social conditions of the Francos, former Tuscan and then Italian subjects based in Ottoman territories, during the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. Svetla Ianeva graduated from the Faculty of History at Sofia University with a specialisation in Balkan and Ottoman history. She holds a PhD in History and Civilization from the European University Institute in Florence. She was Research Associate at the Institute of History of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and was awarded a research scholarship at the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies in Cambridge. She is now Associate Professor at the Department of History at New Bulgarian University in Sofia as well as a member of the editorial board of Turkish Historical Review. Her main area of research is Ottoman economic and social history in the nineteenth century. Aurora Iannello is a PhD candidate in Law and Economics at the University of Turin. She holds a master’s degree in History from the University of Bologna, where she completed a thesis on the business and labour history of Palermo shipyard from 1945 to 1970. Her doctoral dissertation investigates the economic impact of rent control policies in twentieth-century Italy. Her current research interests include economic history, urban history, labour history and cliometrics. Anna Pina Paladini is currently a secondary school teacher, while she has also been a research fellow in nineteenth and twentieth century history at the University of Salento (Italy) for ten years. Her three monographs are about public economic bodies (ENAPI, 2017) and the associations of small businesses and artisans (Confartigianato, the most important Italian artisan association, 2016 and 2018). She has also published essays and articles on the First World War and on abortion in Puglia (Southern Italy) in Italian collective books and historical journals. Kostas Paloukis is Head of the Historical Archive Office of Thessaloniki Port Authority SA (2018). He completed his PhD (2016) and MSc (2005) thesis in Modern History at the University of Crete, supported by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (2006). His academic interests include social and cultural history, history of labour and craftsmen movement, war disabled and communist organisations, history of cities and ports. He has participated in conferences and had articles published in journals and collective volumes in Greece and abroad. Among his publications are a monograph on Archiomarxist Trotskyist organization in Greek and English (Αρχειομαρξιστές: οι άλλοι κομμουνιστές του μεσοπολέμου, Asini Publication, 2020; Archiomarxists: The “Other” Communists” in interwar Greece, Brill-Haymarket Books, forthcoming) and a book on the contemporary craftsmen movement (Η ΓΣΕΒΕΕ στον 21ο αιώνα, GSEVEE, 2020). Leda Papastefanaki was born in Athens, Greece in 1967. She is Associate Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Ioannina and also Collaborating Faculty Member at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies – FORTH. Her monographs in Greek include research on labour and technology in the Greek textile industry and in the mines (Εργασία, τεχνολογία και φύλο στην ελληνική βιομηχανία. Η κλωστοϋφαντουργία του Πειραιά (1870 – 1940) (Crete University Press, 2009); Η φλέβα της γης. Τα μεταλλεία της Ελλάδας, 19ος-20ός

List of contributors

367

αιώνας (Vivliorama, 2017)). She is co-editor with M. Erdem Kabadayı of the volume Working in Greece and Turkey: A Comparative Labour History from Empires to Nation States, 1840 – 1940, International Studies in Social History (New York: Berghahn, 2020); and with Dimitra Lampropoulou and Nikos Potamianos of the special issue of Historein 19/1 (2020) on Global Labour History. Her research interests focus on the social and economic history of industrialisation and labour in the Mediterranean context, social history of technology, gender history, urban history and Jewish history. She is Board Member of the Greek Economic History Association, founding member of the Greek Network for the history of labour and labour movement, member of the European Labour History Network and co-coordinator in the “Feminist Labour History” and “Labour in Mining” Working Groups of the ELHN. Maria Papathanassiou is Associate Professor of Modern European History at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research/academic interests lie in the history of work, children, youth, family, gender, the rural world, artisans, migration, material culture and colonialism, with an emphasis on Central and German-speaking Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Her publications include research books on child work, rural childhood and on tramping artisans. Anna Pellegrino is Professor in Contemporary History at Bologna University. She is associate researcher at the Laboratoire ICT/Paris Diderot 7. She has been interested in the history of work’s culture in industrial society. Her publications include:“Les Fées machines”. Les ouvriers italiens aux Expositions universelles (1851 – 1911) (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017); Il lavoro artigiano in S. Musso (ed.), Storia del lavoro in Italia. Il Novecento, v. VI (Rome: Castelvecchi, 2015); “Les travailleurs artisans en Italie 1880 – 1940: continuitè, trasformation et cultures du travail”, in N. Hatzfeld, M. Pigenet and X. Vigna (eds.), Travail, travailleurs et ouvriers d’Europe au XXe siècle (EUD, 2016); and “La perception de la nocivité sociale du risque d’accidents du travail à travers la documentation photographique en Italie au XIXe et au XXe siècle”, in T. Le Roux (ed.), Risques et accidents industriels (fin XVIIe – fin XIXe siècle) (PUR, 2016). Nikos Potamianos is Assistant Researcher at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies – FORTH (Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas). He was born in Athens in 1971 and received his Phd in history at the University of Crete. He is member of the Academic Board and reader in the journal Ta Historica, member of the Greek Economic History Association and founding member of the Greek Network for the history of labour and labour movement. His books (in Greek) include The ‘noikokyraioi’. Shopkeepers and master artisans in Athens 1880 – 1925 (Crete University Press, 2015); GSEVEE: 100 years of history. Small businessmen and their unionism in Greece 1919 – 2019 (Small Enterprises’ Institute, 2019); and ‘Spectacles of impertinence’. A social history of the carnival of Athens, 1800 – 1940 (Crete University Press, 2020). He is co-editor, with Dimitra Lampropoulou and Leda Papastefanaki, of the special issue of Historein 19/1 (2020) on Global Labour History. His current research is focused on moral economies. Paolo Raspadori is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Perugia, Department of Humanities. For many years, his area of focus has included Italian labour and business history. He has published several essays and articles in national and international journals, and two monographs: Ospitare, servire, ristorare. Storia dei lavoratori di alberghi e

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ristoranti in Italia dalla fine dell’Ottocento alla metà del Novecento (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2014); and Lavoro e relazioni industriali alla Terni, 1900 – 1914. Gli uomini dell’acciaio (Ancona: Quaderno monografico di Proposte e ricerche n. 27, 2001). Stavroula Verrarou was born in Kalamata in 1970. She graduated from the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Athens, in 1991. She holds a MA in Modern Greek and European History (1998) from the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Crete. In 2014 she completed her doctoral thesis titled “From landowner to farmer: economical and social changes in Trifylia (South Greece) in 19th century”, from the same department in the University of Crete. From 1994 to 1996 she worked as a grant-holder in the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (in the research project about the Greek communities in Cappadocia with chief researcher Christos Hadziiossif). She has also worked in the General State Archives of Greece – Archives of Messinia (2010 – 2013), where she participated in the study of archiving and publishing the photographing archive of Christos Aliferis. Since 2001, she has been teaching in public secondary schools. Her research interests include economic and social history, historical demography and labour history.

Index Accomando, Alessio 355 Acemoglu, Daron 107 Achaia 45, 47 Aegean Sea 21 Aigio 47, 54 Alessi, Giuseppe 353 Algeria 119, 121, 124 Americas 4, 155, 207 Amsterdam 20 Anatael Meneses, Pedro 340 Anatolia 140 f., 145 Ancona 348, 354, 359 f. Antonioni, Michelangelo 297 Arcadia 45, 51 Archive of Yugoslavia 201, 206 Arrighi, Giovanni 7 Asia Minor 121, 169, 228, 235 Asociación de Maquinistas Navales 338 Asociación General de Maquinistas Navales de Bilbao 339 Association of Commercial and Industrial Employees (Portugal) 65 Association of Commercial Employees of Lisbon 65 Association of Portuguese Shop Assistants 71 Athens 22, 25, 28, 47, 54, 61, 78, 84, 118, 199, 122, 153 f., 154, 156 – 168, 227 – 228, 231 – 233, 242, 249 Athens Labour Center 243 Attiki 44, 47, 51 Austria 1, 23, 26, 72, 140, 154, 157, 175, 178 – 182, 184, 187, 189, 191 f., 194, 221 – Lower Austria 184 – 189, 191 – Upper Austria 185 f., 189, 191, 193 Avdela, Efi 23, 107, 121, 236 Axis Occupation 227 – 229, 248 Balkans 2, 5, 8, 10, 12 – 15, 18, 131 – 133, 137 – 142, 145 f., 242 Bata company 24, 201, 203 – 207, 211, 213 f., 216 f., 219, 221 f., 224 Baťa, Tomáš 203 – 209, 214, 216, 218 – 220 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110620528-019

Belgium 68, 72 f., 109, 111, 113, 116, 289 Belle Époque 79 Bendix, Reinhard 300 Berlin 159, 229 Beveridge Plan 94, 100 Biagiarelli, Carlo 268 Biella 284 Biella workers’ assistance board (Ente biellese di assistenza agli operai) 284 Bitola 137 Black Sea 13, 21 Bohemia 179, 184, 186, 188 f., 191, 193 Bologna 258, 336 Borovo 24, 27, 201 – 224 Bosnia 145 Bourdieu, Pierre 107, 119, 121, 124 Brashov (Kronstadt) 139 Bratzigovo 147 Braudel, Fernand 154 Bremen 360 Bucharest 139 Buscetta, Tommaso 355 Campbell, John K. 120, 230, 237 CAMPSA 334 Cantieri del Tirreno (CdT) 348 Cantieri Navali del Tirreno e Riuniti (CNTR) 348 Cantieri Navali Riuniti (CNR) 345, 348 f. Cardona, María 336 Carinthia 189 Carollo, Vincenzo 354 Cavataio, Michele 355 Central Balkans 25, 27, 131 f., 139 f., 142, 147 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 10 Chamber of Commerce 255, 259, 263, 267, 347, 349 Chambers of Labour 4, 27, 258 Chandrinos, Iassonas 228 Chushkov, Nikola 143 Ciabattini, Francesco 260 Cipriani, Armando 260

370

Index

Cisleithania 179 Clastres, Pierre 107 Cold War 2, 92, 315 Colnaghi, Battista 266 f. Comitato Nazionale per la Produttività 309 Commercial Association of Shopkeepers of Lisbon 62 – 66, 69 – 74, 76 – 78 Commercial Association of Shopkeepers of Lisbon (Associação Comercial dos Lojistas de Lisboa, ACLL) 62 Commercial Athenaeum (Portugal) 65 Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulle condizioni dei lavoratori 279 f., 287 f., 290, 292 Communist Party of Greece (KKE) 227, 239 – 241, 246, 247, 248 Compañía Transmediterránea 334 Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) 308, 357 Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori (CISL) 314 Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Nazionali Lavoratori (CISNAL) 361 Contratto Collettivo Nazionale di Lavoro (CCNL) 351 Coppedè, Marino 264 f. Crespo, Belén 336 Croatia 18, 20, 24, 201 f., 204, 211, 223 Croatian Workers Alliance 219 C. Torley & C. 270 Czechoslovakia 205, 207 D’Alessandro, Nicola 355 Damianakos, Stathis 229, 234, 245 Danube 146, 221 f. December 1944 riot 228 De Gasperi, Alcide 92, 96 f. Denmark 109, 116, 203 Dini, Giuseppe 261 f. Drapetsona 233 Economic Cooperation Administration (Eca) 297 f. Edirne 136, 140, 145 f. Egypt 20, 119, 141 Einaudi, Luigi 97 Endler, Eugenio 269

England 64, 78, 140, 160, 165, 203 f., 219, 254 Euboea 44 Europe 1 – 15, 17 – 24, 26 f., 44, 48, 56, 64, 66 – 68, 75 f., 83 f., 88, 93, 102, 108, 115 f., 119, 122, 138 – 140, 154 f., 161, 165, 175 – 178, 182, 194, 203 f., 207, 219, 224, 230, 257, 297 f. – Central 3, 5, 13 – 15, 18, 22, 47 f., 53, 61, 84, 86, 97, 100, 102, 107, 119, 125, 131 – 133, 137 – 140, 143, 145, 161 f., 167, 178, 189, 194, 201, 203 f., 212, 228, 258, 297, 306, 312, 323, 325, 346, 349, 353, 356 – Eastern 2 – 5, 8, 11 – 13, 17 – 19, 27, 47, 51 f., 84, 145 f., 203 – Northern 2 f., 7, 24, 26, 54, 122, 140, 189, 193, 242, 284, 287, 290, 322, 347, 351 f., 360 f. – North-western 4 – 6, 10 – 13 – Southeast 4, 7, 10, 13, 18, 20, 203 – Southern 1 – 7, 9 – 14, 19 – 24, 26 f., 42, 120, 122, 153, 345, 352, 361 – South-western 3, 5 – Western 2 f., 6, 9, 11, 47 f., 52 f., 84, 93, 145, 230, 244, 281 European Economic Community 2 European Labour History Network (ELHN) 20 European Union 108, 117 Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (FIAT) 362 Falck, Enrico 304, 305 – 306, 313 Falck, Giovanni 301, 302, 304, 305, 310, 313 Falck Steelworks 25, 297, 300 – 306, 309 – 311, 314 – 315 Falconi Crespi, Amelia 268 Fanfani, Amintore 96, 98 – 100, 305, 311 Faroqhi, Suraiya 134 Fascist Association of Italian Industrialists (Confederazione Fascista degli Industriali Italiani) 24, 277, 279 f., 283 f., 287, 292 Fascist Federation of Artisans (Federazione Fascista degli Artigiani) 83, 88 – 91

Index

Federazione Impiegati Operai Metalmeccanici (FIOM) 357 Federazione Italiana Metalmeccanici – Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori (FIM-CISL) 357 Fincantieri 345, 347 f., 351, 356 Fincantieri Archive 347 Florence 253, 257 – 262, 264 Florio, Ignazio jr. 348 Fondazione Maria Piaggio Casarsa 348 France 2, 12, 19 f., 56, 67 f., 72, 76, 84, 91, 109 – 116, 122, 139 f., 164, 204, 206, 227, 234, 254, 270, 281, 289 Franco, João 72, 73, Franco, Francisco 328, 338 Franghiadis, Alexis 47 Franzinetti, Guido 2 French Association for the History of the Worlds of Work (Association Française pour l’Histoire des Mondes du Travail, AFHMT) 19 Friedl, Ernestine 120, 124 Friedmann, Georges 307 Friedmann, Harriet 57 Frumento, Arnaldo 312 Furtado, Celso 6 Gabrovo 139, 142 f. Gahura, František L. 204, 209 Gallarate 267 Gastouni 47, 53 Gekides (Ottoman workers) 54 Gemelli, Agostino 305, 307 General Radical Union 241 Genescá Corominas, Antonio 325 Genoa 278, 306, 347, 348, 352, 353, 361 Germany 18, 72, 76, 111, 113, 116, 140, 159, 178, 182 f., 189 f., 204, 208, 254, 270, 278, 281, 289 Giambuzzi, Tommaso 264 f. Giannini, Luigi 98, 262 Gműnd 186 Gobetti, Piero 315 Gramsci Institute 347 Great Britain 6, 64, 67 – 70, 156, 159, 177, 204, 270, 278, 324 Great Depression 203, 205, 243, 257

371

Greece 2, 4 f., 12 – 15, 20 – 22, 41 f., 46, 48, 50 – 53, 56, 67 f., 107 – 117, 119 – 125, 158, 161, 166, 169, 227 – 230, 232 – 234, 239, 242 f. Greek Federation of Workers 166 Greek-Turkish Friendship Pact 235, 239 Gunder Frank, André 6 Habsburg Empire 138, 178, 182 Hadjitoshev family 139, 144 Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard 10 Hirshon, Renếe 121 Hrelja, Kemal 202 f., 206, 215, 223 Hungary 91, 182, 189, 204 India 8, 155, 157, 204 Ionian islands 44, 49 Italian Association of Labour History (Società italiana di storia del lavoro-Sislav) 19 Italian Catholic Action (Azione Cattolica Italiana) 98 Italian Communist Party (Partito comunista italiano, Pci) 86, 92, 95, 103, 310, 357, 358, 362 Italian Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana, Dc) 83, 86, 92, 96, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 302, 304, 315, 353, 354, 358 Italian General Confederation of Industry (Confidustria) 86 Italian General Craft Confederation 16, 84, 86, 92 – 95, 98 – 100 Italian General Craft Confederation (Confartigianato) 86, 92 Italian Liberal Party (Pli) 92, 96, 99, 103, 312 Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, Psi) 92 Italy 2 f., 5, 7, 12, 17, 20, 24 – 27, 83 – 89, 92, 94, 96, 102, 109 – 116, 119, 125, 140, 153, 189, 207, 227, 253 – 258, 260, 263, 278 – 281, 283 – 285, 287 – 292, 301, 307, 312, 314, 345 f., 348 f., 351 f., 354, 360 Jemelka, Martin

202, 206 f.

372

Index

Kabylie 119, 121 Kalofer 140, 142 Kaminski, Martin 202 Karać, Zlatko 202 Karađorđević dynasty 222 Karapanos, Konstantinos 48 Karavidas, Konstantinos 56 Karfík, Vladimir 204, 209 Karkavitsas, Andreas 163 f. Karlovo 135, 140, 142, 144, 147 Kasaba, Resat 7 Kazanlık 139 f. , 140 Keratsini 233 Kesariani 228 KKE, see Communist Party of Greece Klisura 140 Kocka, Jürgen 10 Kokkinia 228, 233 Kolar-Dimitrijević, Mira 202 Komlosy, Andrea 8, 11 Koprivshtitza 135, 140 Korinth 47 Kotěra, Jan 204 Koumoundouros, Alexandros 45 Kreuzberg 228 Kustendil 135, 147 Kyparissia 43, 46, 49 – 52 Labour National Liberation Front (EEAM) 228 Laconia 45, 51 f. , 52 La Maquinista Terrestre y Marítima 338 Lambropoulos 167 Lambropoulou, Dimitra 121 Lanaras 227, 242 – 248 Lattughini, Angiolo 259 Leak, Martin William 44 Le Corbusier 204 Leontidou, Lila 228, 233,239, 240, 242 Liakos, Antonis 156, 233 Liberal Party 92, 99, 239 Lignite Mines of Attica, Inc. 243 Linz 182, 189 Lisbon 19, 61 – 66, 68 f., 71, 73, 75, 78, 79 Ljubljanac, Svetlana 202 Lloyd Italiano 348 Lombardy 25, 255, 278 f., 284, 289

London 61, 119 Luigi Sturzo Institute 87 Luzzatti, Luigi 88 f. Lyberatos, Andreas 141 Macedonia 145 Madrid 61, 67, 78, 332 Magni, Tullio 262 Maksimović, Toma 220 Malagodi, Giovanni 96 f. Malta 350, 362 Mani 237, 241 Maria Theresa, Empress of Habsburg Empire 182 Maritsa (Meriç) 136 Marx, Karl 126 Mauro, Francesco 305 Mavromichalis 45 Mayo, Elton 306 Mediterranean Sea 2, 3, 5, 12, 21, 23, 107, 116, 118, 124, 345, 346, 350, 362 Melkon, Hacı Kiriak 146 Messinia 43, 45 f., 50, 118 Metaxas, Ioannis 244, 247 Milan 61, 75, 89 f., 253, 257 – 259, 261 – 263, 266 – 267, 278, 297, 304, 311, 315 Mill, John Stuart 124, 125, Moravian State Archive 201 Moro, Gerolamo Lino 98 f., 313 Moscow 139 Mouzelis, Nicos 8 Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) 361 Murad I Hudavendikȃr (Sultan of Ottoman Empire) 136 Mussolini 286 National and University Library in Zagreb 201 National Bank of Greece 51 National Craft Confederation 92 – 95, 98 National Craft Confederation (Cna) 92 National Institute for Sickness Assistance (Istituto Nazionale per l’Assistenza alla Malattia: Inam), 289 National Liberation Army (ELAS) 228, 248 National Liberation Front (EAM) 228, 248 – 249

Index

National Organization of Artisans and Small Industries 88 f., 91 National Organization of Artisans and Small Industries (Ente Nazionale per l’Artigianato e le Piccole Industrie, ENAPI) 88, 89, 91 National Organization of Small Industries (Ente Nazionale per le Piccole Industrie, ENPI) 88, 91 National Youth Organisation 247 Naviera Vizcaína S. A. 334 Navigazione Generale Italiana 348 Nenni, Pietro 92 Netherlands 20, 109, 111, 113, 116, 203 f., 208 Niarchos, Stavros 350 Nitti, Francesco Saverio 88 f. North America 6, 8 Norway 72 Nova Zagora 140 Olympia 45 f., 50 f. Olympic Games 168 Orwell, George 218 Otto, King of Greece 45 Ottoman Empire 5, 7, 14, 20 f., 27, 131 f., 140 – 142, 234 Palermo 26, 345 – 356, 358 – 362 Panagurishte 135 Papastefanaki, Leda 107 Papatsonis, Panayotis 45 f. Papatsoris, Anagnostis and Adam 45 Paris 20, 61, 75, 78 Parnonas 51 Pasquinelli & Co 262, 263 Patras 44, 54 f. Pavia 284 Pellanda, Ernesta 262 f. Peloponnese 43, 45, 47 f., 52 – 54, 119 Pérez del Rio, José 327 Peristeri 22, 227 – 245, 247, 249 Perrotis 45 Peter II, King of Yugoslavia 211 Philadelphia 65 Piaggio 348, 353, 357, 359 f. Piaggio family 345, 348

373

Piedmont 255, 261, 284 Pinciroli, Faustino 267, 270 Piraeus 55, 119, 161, 164,165, 168, 228, 242 Pirdop 142 Pirot 140 Pizanias, Petros 156, 233 Plovdiv 135, 140 – 142, 144 – 146 Poland 203 f., 208 Portugal 2 f., 5, 7, 12, 15, 20, 24, 62, 65 f., 72, 108 – 116, 346 Portuguese Federal Association of Shop Assistants 65 Prebisch, Rául 6 Psychogios, Dimitris 47 Pulz, Klementine 187 Pyrgos 47 Rachkov, Haci Hristo 139, 143 Reconstruction 304, 305 Richard Ginori, firm 265 f. Riva Trigoso 348, 352 f., 359 – 361 Roman Empire 5 Romania 18, 20 Romei, Gustavo 261 f. Roth, Karl Heinz 230, 231 Rusçuk 137, 144, 146 Russia 139 Saccenti, Arduino 265 f. Sahlins, Marshall 107 Salimba, Zizi 120 Salzburg 189 Samokov 140, 144 f. Sarajevo 137 Schumpeter, Joseph Alois 107 Schwob, Raoul 269 Seferiadis, Serafeim 8 Serbia 18 f., 208, 215, 223 Serres 136 Sesto San Giovanni 25, 300, 308, 310 f. Sestri Ponente 346, 354 Ševeček, Ondřej 202 – 204, 206, 209, 211, 214 f., 217, 219, 222 f. Sicily 346 – 348, 358, 360 f. Sidira Irini (Iron Peace), fascist organisation 241

374

Index

Simeonov, Georgui 143 Sindicato Nacional de la Marina Mercante 330 Sinigaglia, Oscar 301 f. Skaramangas 350, 362 Sliven 140 Smith, Adam 44 Sociedad de Navegación e Industria 324 Sociedad Española de Maquinistas Navales 338 f. Sociedad General de Jefes y Oficiales de Máquinas de la Marina Mercante 321, 327, 336, 338, 340 Sociedad Talleres Nuevo Vulcano 324 Sofia 133, 145 Sopot 142 Sotiropoulos, Sotiris 49 Spain 2, 5, 7, 12 f., 15, 17, 19 f., 67, 109, 111, 113 – 116, 122, 125, 228, 321 f., 324 – 327, 330 f., 335 – 337, 339 – 341, 346 Spanish Labour History Network (Red Española de Historia del Trabajo, REHT) 20 Split 5, 90, 223, 241 Stara Zagora 135, 139 State Archives of Palermo 347 State Inspectorate of Industry and Labour (Ispettorato dell’Industria e del lavoro) 24, 279 f., 292 Styria 184, 189 Suez Canal 350 Sullo, Fiorentino 99 Sweden 72, 354 Swett, Pamela 228 f. Switzerland 72, 204, 206 Syria 141, 146 Tanzimat 134 – 136, 141, 146 Tarnovo 139 f., 143, 146 Termini Imerese 362 Terni 289, 348 Thebe 44 Theodosiou, Nikos 235, 245, 246 Thessaloniki 230, 247 Thessaly 27, 45 Thompson, E.P. 23, 230 Thrace 169

Tillion, Germaine 118 Titomanlio, Vittoria 98 f. Todorov, Nikolai 141, 146 Togliatti, Palmiro 92 Toth, Marie 188 f. Tountas, Panagiotis 235, 245 Traverso, Erzo 227 f. Trezzi, Luigi 278 f., 289 Trifylia 43, 45 – 47, 50, 53 Trikoupis, Charilaos 46, 54 Tsakonia 51 f. Tsoukalas, Constantinos 107, 119 Tuna 146 Turkey 7, 12, 14 f., 20 f., 169 Unione Italiana Lavoratori Metallurgici (UILM) 357 Unión de Oficiales de la Marina Mercante (UOMM) 330 – 331 United Kingdom 281, 289, 349 USA 85, 140, 203 f., 281 Uşak 140 Valle Collantes, Francisco 340 van der Linden, Marcel 4, 8 f., 11, 16, 20, 154, 156, 346, 354 Vannetti, Cesiano 259 Veblen, Thorstein 107 Venizelos, Eleftherios 239 Vera Padilla, Juan 340 Verdera, Ernesto 340 Vergopoulos, Kostas 236, 245 Victoria (Australia) 65, 67 Vienna 119, 159, 175, 179, 180, 186, 190, 193, 193, 194, 221 Virgilio Corniamenti, firm 266 Vítek, Antonνn 204, 209 Vocational Apprentice School Bata Borovo 217 Wallerstein, Immanuel 6 – 8 War / Wars – Balkan Wars 55 – First World War (WW I) 79, 84, 88, 163, 179, 184, 187, 194, 203, 281 – Greek-Turkish War 232

Index

– Second World War (WW II) 6, 27, 92, 95, 116, 119, 201, 215, 224, 287, 289 Wright, Erik Olin 155 Yugoslavia 18, 24 f., 28, 201 – 207, 214 – 217, 222 – 225, 227

Zagreb 18, 202, 211, 223 Zante 50 Žebec, Ivana 202, 209 Zimmermann, Susan 4 Zlin 201, 203, 215 – 218, 224

375