A history of Italian tiles - 7 (2001) - Infotile

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A History of Italian Tiles - Part viiThe leopard changes its spots?By Garreth CruikshankSomewhere, someone was playingthe Mission Impossible theme on aclapped-out Hammond organ. I wishedthey would stop. As I roused myself tofull wakefulness the true source of thenoise became clear - my cell phone.“Yes, hello.” Too late. I had missedthem. They’d call back. I looked around,bewildered. Where was I? Not Forli.Slowly it dawned on me - somehow Ihad managed to make my way homefrom the Opera House and put myselfto bed. The clock said 10.20 a.m. Iyawned and went back to bed. Ohh, Ifelt terrible.This was going to be a critical visit, ado-or-die meeting. I was determinedthat we should get to the bottomof this mystery. I was sure SignoraPoletta knew more than she wasletting on. I needed some answers.The phone rang. “Pronto.”“Ciao bello. It’s me. What time will Ipick you up?”“When are we meeting her?”“4.30 p.m.”“4 o’clock in the lobby then. I’llbe carrying a book and a painedexpression.”“So what’s new. O.K. Ciao,” and withthat Patrizia hung up. I had just overan hour.‘Volume seven of Bodkin’s research’was a small red leather tome. Whilethe handwriting was still recognisablyhis, it was more scrawled. It hadacquired an urgent, edgy quality. Gonewas the precise, self-controlled hand.‘With the exceptions of Lazio andVenice, Italy was unified in March1861, an event brought about bya number of factors: a fortunatediplomatic situation combined withCavour’s masterly ability to exploitit, and Garibaldi’s spirit of adventureto name but a few. But unificationcame at a price, both economic andpolitical. It had been achieved by aseries of annexations of Piedmont ofthe various pre-existing Italian states,so the new nation, from the start,developed more as an expansion ofthe old Piedmont rather than a new,original political organism. Until 1864Turin was the nations capital; projectsfor an administrative system basedon the autonomy of the regions wereabandoned, to be replaced by a rigidlycentralised system. Also the electorallaw favoured the economicallydeveloped regions, to the extent thatin more than one region of Italy thevote became the privilege of a fewnotabilities. This heavy bureaucratic,censorial character was at the heartof the new state’s prematureunpopularity, brought into being bythe gap between the government andthe governed. It was this unpopularitywhich was the heaviest price Italyhad to pay for the way unification hadbeen achieved.In June 1861, a few short monthsafter the proclamation of the Kingdomof Italy, Cavour unexpectedly died, andItaly was deprived of her great leader.The men who inherited his heavyresponsibilities were at pains not towander too far from the path he hadindicated.These men, who belonged to thegovernment of the ‘historical Right’,from 1861-1876, were obsessed withthe task of making up the state’sawesome deficit and balancing thebudget. From 1869, due to draconianfiscal measures, the condition of thetreasury improved and a balancedbudget was achieved in 1876.In the meantime the Cavour - inspiredpolicies of construction of publicworks and infrastructure continuedto gather momentum. Italy’s effort inthe area of railway building was themost impressive, with the networkexpanding from 2,175 km in 1870 to8,713 km in 1880.A policy of public works and budgetadjustment could only be achieved ina country of limited economicresources, by means of extremelysevere taxation. In fact, Italians weresoon the most heavily taxed peoplein Europe. The effects were felt onthe level of consumption, was keptvirtually stationary - hence productiontoo was affected. The very lowbuying power of the great mass ofconsumers certainly did not favour thedevelopment of such manufacturingindustries as existed, which were, inany case, quite unable to competewith the cheaper foreign productsthat the liberal policies of the Rightallowed free entry to the country.In the south in particular, thiscombination of free trade and taxationpractically extinguished the scatteredlocal industry.Some scholars have maintained thatthe type of economic policy describedhere corresponds to the initial phaseof capitalism preceding its true ‘takeoff’,in which the initial problems arean ‘original’ accumulation of capitaland the construction of the necessaryinfrastructures; in short, a pre-industrialphase. And that is precisely what thegovernment did. The problem wasnot to encourage the developmentof industrial production, whichwould have been premature, but toencourage, rather, this accumulationand prepare the conditions in whichthe ‘take-off’ could occur.For men like Cavour and FrancescoFerrera, who had grown up in theage of triumphant capitalism andfree trade, Italy’s development intoan independent bourgeois countrypresupposed her unreserved entryinto the great circuit of Europeantrade. Once exposed to the biting windof competition, Italian agriculturalistsand businessmen would have tomake a virtue of necessity andtransform their concerns into modernorganisations able to compete onthe international market. Economicand social regeneration would, ofnecessity, advance from below,from the free initiative and individualproducers, as had happened in thegreat bourgeois countries of Europe.This would be a slow process, butits gradualness would guarantee itssuccess, theoretically.However, the unimaginativesuccessors of Cavour’s legacydid almost nothing to remove theobstacles that, in the new Italy,obstructed the free development ofbourgeois energies from below.As the years passed and stagnationcontinued, the more perspicacioussectors of public opinion began to
suspect that the prospect of alongdevelopment from below might not bebest suited to Italy, which had to makeup for a great deal of lost time andwas pressed by urgent problemsdemanding immediate attention. Thequestion was asked whether Italy toocould not take those short-cuts thathad allowed Germany, a few yearsafter its constitution as a nation, tobecome a great independent powerwhose products now reached themarkets of the world, and whosetechnical ability aroused the envy ofall its competitors. So, somewhatconfusedly, there took shapethe prospect of a Prussian line ofcapitalist development: an economictransformation brought aboutfrom above, and with the state’scontribution as a determining factor,under the banner of protectionismand the reinforcement of the country’sinternational prestige.In about 1874 ‘economic Germanism’began to be discussed in Italy.This concept propounded the needto reconsider the free-trade biastraditionally part of Italian economicpolicy. That the state should act as anaccelerating force to the economy wassomething both admitted in theoryand practised by all the governmentswhat had ruled Italy. The economy’s‘modus vivendi’, the bond betweenthe bourgeois manufacturers andbusinessmen of the north and thesouthern landowners was alsomodelled on Bismarck’s Germany.In 1878 pressure from the textileand machine industries in the northsucceeded in winning a protectivecustoms tariff from the government.From that moment Italy’s economiclife became more sustained and themoney market more animated. Thisdevelopment was assisted also bythe introduction of new forms ofcredit specifically designed to financeinvestments on the French example.The new banks also moved in thisdirection. Some of the capital wasinvested speculatively: the 1880s sawthe first rush towards speculativebuilding. Rome was subject toindiscriminate demolitions, and thecentre of the capital emerged with apretentious new face, forever marredby a number of eyesores - of which themost monumental is without a doubtthe so-called ‘Altar of the Nation’. InFlorence and Naples the demolitionsquads were also active.But a considerable part of the capitalon the market was employed in moreproductive, long-term investments,in industry. The advance of themetal industry was spectacular;the chemical, machine and mineralindustries all made steady progress,and the electrical industry alsotook its first steps. All these areaswere essential to the ultimatetransformation of the tile sector into amodern industrial enterprise.On the whole the production of Italianindustry made a general increase of 37per cent from 1881 to 1887, with anannual growth rate of 4.6 per cent.Italy’s first modest industrial boomcoincided with the beginning of thegreat agricultural crisis. The rise inprices of industrial products that wereprotected by customs barriers talliedwith the fall of agricultural prices,and the draining of capital from thecountryside of the town, from the southto the north steadily increased. Thearrival of American corn, made possibleby a drastic reduction in sea freightcharges created a crisis throughoutEurope, though in Italy it was the moreserious in that an agricultural system aspoor in capital as her’s was weak andunprepared to face it.figure AA four tile forerunner (12.5cm x 12.5cm)of the 20cm product that swept europein the 70’s, produced in 1903.Once again it was the poorest countrypeople who had to pay the price. Manywere seized by the desperate desireto escape from the downward spiral ofpoverty and degradation in which theywere trapped. At first unobtrusively,then with mounting speed, theretook shape the phenomenon of massemigration. Swarms of emigrantscrammed onto transatlantic shipsbound for the vast melting-pot ofNorth America, or else tried theirchances as farmers in Latin America.In the five year period 1886-90 theaverage annual number of emigrantswas approximately 222,000.In 1887 a new tariff was drawn up,marking a very important step in thehistory of Italian capitalism, and maybe considered the birth certificate ofwhat Gramsci called the ‘agriculturalindustrialbloc of the Italian dominantclasses’, for the new tariff raisedsubstantially the customs barriersprotecting the infant Italian industry.However, far from involving a processof levelling and of regeneration frombelow, the development of capitalismin Italy represented a widening of thealready immense social and regionalgaps existing in the country. The resultwas a social fabric in which new andold were juxtaposed and interwoven,in which a capitalism with a highdegree of monopolistic concentration,a close interrelationship of banks andindustry and state protection coexistedwith an agriculture that insome regions was still at a semifeudalstage, and with omnipresenthandicrafts at a cottage level.The five years from March 1896 toDecember 1900 are among the mostturbulent and spectacular of all thehistory of united Italy. Street uprisingswere bloodily repressed (with cannonfire), parliamentarians overturned thevoting-urns, there were anarchist actsof violence, duels between politicalleaders, and, finally, the assassinationof a king. The picture of a century’send, pregnant with apocalyptic fearsand hopes, is complete.Nevertheless, the economic pictureduring this period was healthy. From1896-1908 the annual growth rateof Italian industry on the whole wasnoticeably high, at 6.7 per cent. Someexperimental industries such asmetallurgy, chemicals and machinery,all vital to the tile industry, showeda growth rate of more then 12 percent. The automobile industry madea dramatic surge forward. Motor carproduction companies multipliedrapidly, from seven in 1900 to seventyin 1907.But the protection enjoyed by Italy’sindustrial majors does not adequatelyexplain their rapid development. Thereis another factor to be taken intoaccount - the low cost of labour.At the beginning of the century theItalian worker was not only one ofthe worst paid in Europe, but alsoworked the longest hours, for therewas no law limiting the working day.As for wages, in spite of the increasesthat had followed the agitations andstrikes of the first years of the newcentury, the wide use of female andjuvenile labour did much to keepthem low.
Page 4 and 5: On the other hand a considerablepar
Page 6 and 7: We went on in this vein until werea

A history of Italian tiles - 7 (2001) - Infotile

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