Abstract
The chapter critically considers the recent debate on living standards and takes into account grain prices and wages in Milan in the eighteenth century. The choice is significant because comparative studies on living standards in Europe, which include Italy, have almost always been built with De Maddalena’s data on Milan. A first element that is highlighted is that a reconstruction of living standards built on wholesale prices of grains, as has usually been done up to now, is misleading since it leads to an overestimation of the decrease of purchasing power. A careful consideration of wages follows. It demonstrates that the uniformity of remuneration for builders in the eighteenth century shown by De Maddalena’s data is really an oversimplification and leads again to an overestimation of the decline in living standards. As a consequence it seems really problematic to build up a picture of living conditions in Italy based on data with such limitations.
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Notes
- 1.
Hamilton (1944), ‘Use and Misuse of Price History’, p. 47.
- 2.
Guerzoni, (2007), ‘The Social World of Price Formation’, pp. 85–86.
- 3.
An example of this point of view are the recent works by Broadberry and Gupta (2006), ‘The early modern great divergence’; Allen et al. (2011), ‘Wages, Prices and Living Standards in China’, and Allen et al. (2012), ‘The Colonial Origins of Divergence in the Americas’. But see also Angeles (2008), ‘GDP per capita or real wages?’
- 4.
Among others, see Söderberg (1987), ‘Real Wage Trends in Urban Europe’; van Zanden (1999), ‘Wages and the standard of living in Europe, 1500–1800’; Allen (2001) ‘The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices’; Hoffman et al. (2002), ‘Real Inequality in Europe since 1500’; Malanima (2007), ‘Wages, Productivity and Working Time in Italy’; Malanima (2013), ‘When did England overtake Italy?’ pp. 45–70.
- 5.
De Maddalena (1974), Prezzi e mercedi a Milano, pp. 379–381.
- 6.
Guerzoni (2007), ‘The Social World’.
- 7.
On this topic see Marin and Virlouvet (eds.) (2003) Nourrir les cités de Méditerranée and Marin and Virlouvet (eds.) (2016), Entrepôts et trafics annonaires en Méditerranée; Allen is aware of this problem and in order to solve it he created a ‘bread equation’ following this logic: ‘During the early modem period, however, municipal authorities regulated the price of bread, usually, with a “parts plus labor” rule. The bread price was set equal to the cost of the grain necessary for its production plus a markup for the baker’s other costs, his income, and municipal taxes. A regression of bread prices on grain prices, the mason’s wage rate (a stand-in for the baker’s income), and dummy variables for the cities capture this rule’ (Allen, ‘The Great Divergence’, p. 418). It could be a reasonable solution but only in the cases, and they are really a minority, in which we have no data in the archives about bread prices.
- 8.
Between July 1772 and June 1775 the price of wheat practically doubled, going from about 27 to about 48 lire, while that of maize increased only slightly less, from about 21 to about 37 lire. See Civil Historical Archives of Milan [hereafter CHAMI], Materie, c. 439.
- 9.
See the meeting of the Tribunale di provvisione of 23 May, in State Archive of Milan [hereafetr SAMI], Uffici Civici, p.a., c. 137 and the meeting of the Congregazione del patrimonio on 24 May, as above, c. 151.
- 10.
Mocarelli, L. (2012) ‘Le crisi alimentari’, pp. 99–100.
- 11.
Pillepich (2001), Milan capitale napoléonienne, p. 217.
- 12.
The papers containing the documents relating to 1772–1774 are in State Archive of Turin, Materie economiche di seconda addizione. Annona, c. 1, n. 12.
- 13.
Exactly for this reason the belief that this kind of intervention is relevant only over the short term is weak. In fact long series of wholesale prices of cereals would remain solid enough to represent the trend in cost of living over the long run, simply missing short-term fluctuations, only if the latter were rare.
- 14.
A’Hearn (2003), ‘Anthropometric Evidence’. The quotations are from pages 376 and 375 respectively.
- 15.
De Maddalena (1974), Prezzi e mercedi, pp. 44–48.
- 16.
Such a bias is also evident in the case of London building sector, as has been shown by Stephenson (2018), ‘Real Wages? Contractors, Workers and Pay’.
- 17.
The decision to accede to the request of the two foremen was taken by the delegated representatives of the Workshop on 29 December 1749, in Archives of the Venerated Workshop of the Cathedral of Milan [hereafter AVWCMI], c. 430, Deliberazioni dei deputati 1745–1749. On March 9 of the following year each would receive a one-off payment of 285 lire, since they had had to pay the workers more than the agreed daily rate to complete the scaffolding of the dome, work which had ‘exposed them to great danger’ (as above, Mandati 1750. Primo Quadrimestre).
- 18.
De Maddalena (1974), Prezzi e mercedi, pp. 419–420.
- 19.
De Vries (1994a), ‘How did Pre-Industrial Labour Markets Function?’ p. 39.
- 20.
Quotation from De Maddalena, Prezzi e mercedi, p.157.
- 21.
Vigo (1974), ‘Real wages of the Working Class in Italy’; Woodward (1995), Men at Work, pp. 169–190; Vaquero Piñeiro (1996), ‘Ricerche sui salari nell’edilizia romana’, pp. 136–138; Trivellato (1999), ‘Salaires et justice dans les corporatins vénitiennes’, pp. 271–273 and Wilson and Mackley (1999), ‘How much did the English Country House Cost’, pp. 443–446.
- 22.
Mocarelli (2008), Costruire la città, p. 211.
- 23.
De Maddalena (1974), Prezzi e mercedi, pp. 44–46.
- 24.
See the dossiers with the calculations Crippa made in 1791 (SAMI, Acque, p.a., c. 967).
- 25.
The length of the working days was extrapolated from a note written on 14 August 1781 by Lieutenant Colonel Francesco Bonomo, regarding work carried out on the castle of Milan (CHAMI, Località milanesi, c. 128).
- 26.
Vaquero Piñeiro, (‘Ricerche sui salari’, p. 140) observes that in sixteenth century Rome there were none of the seasonal pay differences present in the previous century, whereas Woodward (Men at Work (1995), pp. 138–139) points out that in England it was vastly different from one region to another. The seasonal differences in wages is also discussed in Clark (2007), ‘The long march of history’, pp. 101–102.
- 27.
Sella (1968), Salari e lavoro, p. 79.
- 28.
In the tobacco factory men received 33 soldi a day from November to April and 38.10 soldi from May to October (see note from 1778 in SAMI, Finanza, p.a., c. 1097).
- 29.
Annali della Fabbrica del Duomo dalle origini sino al presente (Milano: Pirotta e Maspero, 1885), vol. VI, p. 74.
- 30.
The wages earned by the 84 masters employed by Catenacci to work on the castle of Milan ranged from the 26 soldi earned by the nine lowest paid to the 40 soldi received by the two top earners. Catenacci’s note dated 1796 is in CHAMI, Località milanesi, c. 128.
- 31.
The workers’ request was presented on 24 April 1796 (AVWCMI, c. 137 Facciata e corpo. Provvidenze generali).
- 32.
Berra and Bonola’s petition is dated 13 July 1799 (AVWCMI, c. 145, Facciata e corpo della chiesa. Occorenze particolari).
- 33.
This was the valuation of the deliberative committee convened by Archduke Ferdinand on 13 February 1773 (SAMI, Acque, p.a., c. 1004).
- 34.
Mocarelli (2008), Costruire la città, pp. 228–230.
- 35.
Barbot (2008), Le architetture della vita quotidiana, pp. 147–149.
- 36.
De Maddalena (1974), Prezzi e mercedi, pp. 41–43.
- 37.
Their claim was discussed at the meeting of the Congregazione del patrimonio on 23 June 1780 (SAMI, Uffici civici, p.a., c. 152).
- 38.
See the letter, dated 25 November 1778, from the Venetian resident in Milan, Cesare Vignola (State Archive of Venice, Senato dispacci Milano, c. 222).
- 39.
Phelps Brown and Hopkins (1956), ‘Seven Centuries of the Price of Consumables’. More recently both Hatcher (2011), ‘Unreal Wages: Long-run Living Standards’, and Humphries and Weisdorf (2017), ‘Unreal Wages? A New Empirical Foundation’ have stressed the fact that the estimates of annual labour incomes are subject to measurement error due to our ignorance about the days worked a year.
- 40.
Woodward (1995), Men at Work, p. 134.
- 41.
Marchetti (2003), ‘Il conflitto tra Chiesa e Stato’, pp. 34–37.
- 42.
Sella (1968), Salari e lavoro, p. 20; Goldthwaite (1982), The Building of Renaissance Florence, p. 423; ‘Riflessioni del Principato di Pavia [….] l’anno 1709’ (SAMI, Censo, p.a., c. 312).
- 43.
I thank Mauro Rota for allowing me to consult his really interesting paper The Real Wages of Skilled and Unskilled Roman Building Workers, 1340–1810.
- 44.
Capra (1987), ‘Ogni cosa prospera e prende incremento’, p. 175 estimated the cost of maintaining a family of four as over 400 lire a year, since, in the period 1750–1769, 200 lire would have been spent on bread alone, and in the last 20 years of the century around 280 lire.
- 45.
It is significant that their request, made in 1793 (CHAMI, Località milanesi, c. 284) was prompted by the need to generate income in the months when they were laid off as builders.
- 46.
On this important issue are seminal de Vries (1993), ‘Between Purchasing Power and the World of Goods’, and de Vries (1994b), ‘The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution’. But see also, more recently, Burnette (2008), Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain; Humphries (2011), Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution; Allen and Weisdorf (2011), ‘Was There an Industrious Revolution before the Industrial Revolution?’; van Nederveen Meerkerk and Schmidt (2012), ‘Reconsidering the First Male Breadwinner Economy’; Humphries and Weisdorf (2015), ‘The Wages of Women in England’.
- 47.
According to Capra (1993), ‘Il principe Trivulzio e la fondazione del Pio Albergo’ p. 70 there were about 6000 people, so 5–6% of the population of the city, benefiting from the assistance of religious institutions and foundations in Milan. It is obvious that the support of charitable institutions is relevant to standard of living and not to the cost of labour .
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Mocarelli, L. (2018). What Is Wrong with the History of Wages: Or the Divide in Economic History—A Reappraisal Suggested by Eighteenth-Century Milan. In: Hatcher, J., Stephenson, J. (eds) Seven Centuries of Unreal Wages. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96962-6_4
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