Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T21:05:58.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

First Movers and the Growth of Small Industry in Northeastern Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Thomas H. Baker
Affiliation:
German National Research Center for Computer Science GMD

Extract

In the 1970s, Italy's economy grew faster than all in the industrialized world but Japan's. Its growth rates of up to 5 percent, although lower than in the 1960s, compared favorably to the relatively flat figures from Britain, Germany, and the United States, most strikingly in the two years after the second oil shock of 1979. Following its first “economic miracle” in the 1950s and 1960s, wrote The Economist, Italy's “second, lesser miracle” was how the country continued to thrive in the 1970s despite a “bumbling bureaucracy,” ineffective governments, high inflation and public debt, terrorism, and “the left-wing unions’ greedy, if understandable, reaction to the headlong development of the 1960s.” Italy's rapid growth was all the more impressive in light of the ongoing economic stagnation of the South and a general crisis in the big corporations of Lombardy and Piedmont, which had been dragged down by high oil prices, recession abroad, and indexed wages.

Type
Economies of Small Scale
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Carson, Iain. “Endless Tightrope: A Survey of the Italian Economy,” The Economist, Survey 14 09 1985, 4.Google Scholar

2 Berger, Suzanne, “The Uses of the Traditional Sector in Italy: Why Declining Classes Survive,” in The Petite Bourgeoisie: Comparative Studies of the Uneasy Stratum, Bechofer, Frank and Elliot, Brian, eds. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), 84.Google Scholar

3 Sabel, Charles F., Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Piore, Michael J. and Sabel, Charles F., The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar. The Economist speculated as early as 1972 that “Italy's relatively immature industrial structure may lead it to some form of organisation more suited to the 1970s and 1980s.” See Radice, Jonathan, “Incomplete Miracle: An Economic Survey of Italy,” The Economist, Survey (15 04 1972), 48.Google Scholar

4 See the bibliography to Grandinetti, Roberto and Grandinetti, Pierluigi, Il caso Friuli: arretratezza o sviluppo? (Udine: Cooperativa II Campo, 1979)Google Scholar; the bibliographical appendix by Fabio Menghini to Industrializz azione senza fratture, Fuà, Giorgio and Zacchia, Carlo, eds. (Bologna: II Mulino, 1983)Google Scholar; and Patrizia Sabbatucci Severini, “II mezzadro pluriattivo dell'Italia centrale,” in Storia dell'agricoltura italiana in età contemporanea: uomini e classi (Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1990).Google Scholar

5 Clerici, Stefano and Pieno, Antonio Di, “L'Italia al setaccio,” La Repubblica, 11 Venerdi (18 10 1991), 86.Google Scholar

6 First put forward in 1975, the “Third Italy” argument was developed more fully in Arnaldo Bagnasco, Tre Italie: la problematica territoriale dello sviluppo italiano (Bologna: II Mulino, 1977). The regions of Third Italy included Tuscany, Marche, Umbria, Emilia-Romagna, Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.Google Scholar

7 “Friuli” refers here to the provinces of Udine and Pordenone—the “Friuli” half (roughly) of the Autonomous Region Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Until 1968, what is now the Province of Pordenone was part of a larger Province of Udine.

8 Grandinetti, , Il caso Friuli, 2627.Google Scholar

9 See, for example. Fabbro, Sandro, “The Reconstruction of Friuli in Northern Italy,” Ekistics, 52:312 (1985), 258Google Scholar; and Grandinetti, Roberto, “Lo sviluppo industriale in Friuli dal dopoguerra agli anni '80,” in Storia contemporanea in Friuli, 14 (1984), 111.Google Scholar

10 Mattioni, Emilio and Comuzzi, Franco, “Appunti per una analisi delle politiche di sviluppo nella regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 1964–1980,” Quaderni della Fondazione Feltrinelli, 18 (1982), 69.Google Scholar

11 Elena Saraceno, “Non-agricultural Characteristics of the Study Area, Udine” [Context study, Part II, Project “Rural Change in Europe: Farm Structures and Household Pluriactivity,” Arkleton Trust Ltd., Scotland] (Udine: Centro di Ricerche Economiche e Sociali, 1988), 5.

12 Grandinetti, Roberto, Sistema industriale e politiche regionali: analisi e proposte per il Friuli-Venezia Giulia (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1984), 16Google Scholar; Grandinetti, , “Lo sviluppo industriale,” 117.Google Scholar

13 Italy's postwar constitution assigned to Friuli-Venezia Giulia a special “autonomous” status, but uncertainty around the new borders with Yugoslavia delayed its institution well into the 1950s, at which time the instability of government coalitions and the resulting “immobilism” of the legislature caused yet further delays. Not until 1963 did the government, which now included the Socialists, set up a regional parliament in Trieste.

14 Brigitte Prost, II Friuli: regione di incontri e di scontri (Udine: Editrice Grillo, 1980)Google Scholar; Micelli, Francesco, “Friuli: regione di incontri e di scontri di Brigitte Prost” [book review], Meiodi e ricerche, 1:2(1980), 8284.Google Scholar

15 Bazo, Giorgio, Parmeggiani, Nico, and Maggi, Giorgio, L'economia della Provincia di Udine e le sue prospettive di sviluppo (Udine: Camera di Commercio, 1967), 2426Google Scholar; Parmeggiani, Nico, “Struttura economica di San Daniele, Iulia Geus, 11 (1961), 5356Google Scholar, and Gli stadi dello sviluppo industriale nella provincia di Udine: ricognizione storica dal prima Ottocento ad oggi (Udine: Del Bianco Editore, 1966), 128.Google Scholar

16 Prost, Il Friuli, 242–3.Google Scholar

17 Brenna, Antonio et al., L'industria nella provincia di Udine (Milano: Giuffrè Editore, 1964), 134, 247, 282.Google Scholar

18 Chandler, Alfred D., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

19 Brenna, , L'industria, 15Google Scholar; Prost, II Friuli, 238Google Scholar. See Holmes, Douglas R., Cultural Disenchantments: Worker Peasantries in Northeast Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 164203, for a vivid description of work in these mills.Google Scholar

20 Prost, Il Friuli, 165.Google Scholar

21 The communities were San Daniele, Buia, Osoppo, Majano, Ragogna, Rive d'Arcano, San Vito di Fagagna, Dignano, and Coseano, in the western half of the Central Hills. Between 1951 and 1961, manufacturing jobs increased in this area by 75 percent; and in the 1970s, its growth rate was topped only by that of the Manzano chair district. See Mattioni, Piero, “La collina nel contesto dello sviluppo economico regionale,” Bollettino della Camera di Commercio, 10 (1967), 50Google Scholar; and Grandinetti, , Sistema industriale, 65.Google Scholar

22 What defines an “artisan” firm in Italy is governed by a rather fragmented body of national and regional laws. In a strict sense, artisans are those firms which are on the official Register of Artisans; to qualify, a firm cannot exceed a maximum size, from a minimum of ten, to a maximum of thirty persons, depending on the sector. This essay sets the boundary at fifteen persons employed because that is the threshold used by key labor legislation in the 1970s.

23 In order to show more clearly when these sectors were first formed, I excluded secondary ventures started by established firms and traced subsidiaries back to their parent firms. Where existing firms were refounded for tax purposes or transformed through inheritance or buyout, the table reflects when they were first founded.

24 The data are from Bagnasco, Arnaldo and Trigilia, Carlo, Societe, e politica nelle aree di piccola impresa: il caso di Bassano (Venezia: Arsenale Editrice, 1984), 121, 307. Coincidentally, the two tables refer to areas with the same population size—40,000 in Bassano and 40,000 in the nine towns around San Daniele—and to similar sample sizes. In both projects, proportionally more interviews were conducted with industrial firms, and the mix of activities within the industrial and artisan categories reflected the relative weight of local industries. With some local variations (ceramics in Bassano, designer jewelry and prosciutto in San Daniele), the sectors surveyed were much the same.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., 95, 119.

26 Ibid., 35.

27 started the firm in 1921 with promissory notes from numerous parishioners in San Daniele, but conflicts with the Fascist authorities and with competing firms, together with the world depression after 1929, brought it to bankruptcy in 1931, saddling several working-class families with decades of debt.

28 Brenna, , L' industria, 134–40.Google Scholar

29 In 1937, notably, Snia Viscosa built a plant in the swamplands of lower Friulu to produce cellulose and synthetic fibers. Prost, Il Friulu, 256.Google Scholar

30 The lodge in San Daniele included bankers and notaries, hospital administrators, physicians, landowners, entrepreneurs, and army officers. Many townspeople knew nothing of the lodge's existence until after 1945, and some elderly people still lower their voices to speak of it. Celotti, Antonio, La Massoneria in Friuli: prime ricerche sulla sua esistenza ed influenza (Udine: Del Blanco Editore, 1982), 55, is one of the only published works of any substance about this crucial element of Friuli society.Google Scholar

31 Parmeggiani, , Gli stadi, 132Google Scholar; Mattioni, , “La collina,” 50Google Scholar; Brenna, , L'industria, 282.Google Scholar

32 Associazione degli Indust?ali della Provincia di Udine, Repertorio delle industrie aderenti e delle loro produzioni (Udine: Tipografia Doretti, 1959), preface.Google Scholar

33 Brenna, , L'industria, 117, 134, 263.Google Scholar

34 Effetti degli incentivi alle attivitá industriali del Friuli-Venezia Giulia [a study undertaken by the consultancy “Soris SpA” of Turin] (Trieste: Regione Autonoma Friuli-Venezia Giulia, 1970), 46.Google Scholar

35 Brenna, , L'industria, 119.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., 115.

37 Ibid., 110.

38 Saraceno, Elena, “L'emigrazione in Friuli dal secondo dopoguerra ad oggi,” Storla contemporanea in Friuli, 14 (1983), 149.Google Scholar

39 Grandinetti, , Il Caso Friuli, 14.Google Scholar

40 The foundation date shown in the registry at the Chamber of Commerce often tums out to be the date at which a firm was reorganized because of inheritance or buyout or for other accounting purposes.

41 Grandinetti, , Sistema industriale, 13Google Scholar; Grandinetti, , “Lo sviluppo industriale,” 117.Google Scholar

42 See Grandinetti, Pierluigi, Danieli, Annachiara, and Fabbro, Sandro, Industria edilizia e ricostruzione (Udine: Apindustria, 1977).Google Scholar

42 See Grandinetti, , Il caso Friuli, 2627.Google Scholar

43 Grandinetti, , Sistema industriale, 97Google Scholar. The comparison is merely suggestive since it does not correct for inflation. See also Fabbro, , “The Reconstruction of Friuli,” 58.Google Scholar

45 See Bednarz, Furio, “Domanda ed offerta di lavoro negli anni ottanta,” in L'apprendista imprenditore (Udine: Istituto di Ricerche Economiche e Sociali, 1986).Google Scholar

46 See Sassoon, Donald, Contemporary Italy: Politics, Economy and Society since 1945 (London: Longman Group, 1986), 17.Google Scholar

47 See Scase, Richard and Goffee, Robert, Entrepreneurship in Europe: The Social Processes (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 2.Google Scholar

49 Clerici, “L'Italia al setaccio,” 85.Google Scholar

49 Pinto, Diane, “Introduction,” in Contemporary Italian Sociology: A Reader, Pinto, Diane, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 12.Google Scholar

50 Crivellini, Marco and Pettenati, Paolo, “Modelli locali di sviluppo,” in Modelli locali di sviluppo, Becattini, Giacomo, ed. (Bologna: I1 Mulino, 1989)Google Scholar, 37; Giacomo Becattini, “Introduction,” in Ibid., 7.

51 Saraceno, , “Non-Agricultural Characteristics,” 9, 23Google Scholar. The industrialization was perceived so late, explained Saraceno, in part also “because of its characteristics of diffusion and integration in the rural areas, which attenuated its visibility.” Saraceno, Elena and Gentilli, Roberto, Progetto Udine anni ' 80 (Udine: Camera di Commercio, 1984), 7.Google Scholar

52 Grandinetti points out that there were few clear financial advantages for firms to move into the industrial zones. The existing Mediocredito program financed investments regardless of their location, and a 1969 law helped communities set up “local zones,” which could sanction and support existing industrial settlements “after the fact.” Grandinetti, , Sistema industriale, 4648.Google Scholar