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Proto-industrialisation and occupational mobility in Catalonia, c.1680-1829 Dr Julie Marfany, University of Cambridge
(jem23@cam.ac.uk) XIV IEHA conference, Helsinki, 21st-25th August, 2006
Session 39: Intergenerational transmission of occupation and social class
Introduction
This paper investigates occupational mobility in a Catalan proto-industrial community
over the period 1680-1829. Despite a large and still-growing literature on proto-
industrialisation, historians have paid relatively little attention to the question of
occupational mobility in proto-industrial societies. This is somewhat surprising, given
that occupational mobility is implicit in many accounts of proto-industrialisation.
Proto-industrial activities often began as by-employments in rural areas where the
opportunity costs of working outside of agriculture for part of the time were low.1 In
some regions, large sectors of the population might then end up working in proto-
industry full-time, while in others, some ties to land remained.2 Either way, mobility
between the two sectors existed. This mobility tends, however, to be taken for granted
in the literature, and to be neither quantified nor thoroughly assessed.
The extent to which proto-industrialisation may have implied occupational
mobility is important as regards the question of openness in choice of occupations.
Much of the literature on work in early modern societies has been concerned with the
extent to which guilds restricted participation in craft activities, usually by levying
higher charges for entry on outsiders compared with the sons and sons-in-law of guild
1 P. Kriedte, H. Medick and J. Schlumbohm, Industrialisation before industrialisation, trans. B. Schempp (Cambridge, 1981), Ch. 1; J. Thirsk, “Industries in the countryside” in F.J. Fisher (ed.), Essays in the economic and social history of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 70-88; R. Braun, Industrialisation and everyday life, trans. S. Hanbury Tennison (Cambridge, 1990; 1st German ed., 1960); J. Schlumbohm, “From peasant society to class society: some aspects of family and class in a northwest German protoindustrial parish, 17th – 19th centuries”, Journal of Family History, 17,2 (1992), pp. 183-99; G. Gullickson, Spinners and weavers of Auffay. Rural industry and the sexual division of labour in a French village, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1986). 2 For an example of the former situation, see D. Levine, Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (New York, 1977). For an example of the latter, see F. Hendrickxs, “In order not to fall into poverty.” Production and reproduction in the transition from proto-industry to factory industry in Borne and Wierden (the Netherlands), 1800-1900 (Amsterdam, 1997).
members.3 Proto-industry was initially viewed as having evaded guild controls,
primarily through its rural locations, and therefore to have permitted greater freedom
of choice. Again, this hypothesis has been the subject of much debate, but little
empirical testing. The degree to which proto-industry opened up new opportunities to
earn a living has tended to be studied indirectly, through the medium of demographic
change. Thus, in areas where proto-industrialisation was accompanied by a fall in the
age at marriage or rising nuptiality overall, these changes are often attributed to the
greater ability of proto-industrial producers to earn a living than had formerly been
the case.4 It is not often specified, however, whether these new opportunities involved
a new choice of occupation or a greater availability of traditional work.
Finally, a third somewhat vexed question concerns the relationship between
proto-industry and subsequent factory-based industrialisation. Among the many
criticisms of the original argument that proto-industry facilitated further industrial
development has been the view that proto-industry did not, as was originally claimed,
build up a store of human capital in the form of skilled workers who could then
transfer from a rural setting to the factory. Instead, the claim has been made that rural
artisans were the least likely to submit to the discipline of the factory, and that
therefore there was no continuity between the proto-industrial workforce and that of
the factory.5
In the Catalan context, the third question is particularly important, since the
transition from proto-industry to the factory was not only a successful transition, but
also one based in part on a shift from woollen to cotton production. A detailed study
3 The restrictive nature of guilds has recently been reasserted by Sheilagh Ogilvie, “Guilds, efficiency and social capital: evidence from German proto-industry”, Economic History Review, LVII, 2 (2004), pp. 286-333, partly in reply to Larry Epstein’s claim that guilds were highly efficient in creating a pool of skilled labour and facilitating technological innovation, in contrast to the “sluggishness” of proto-industry: S.R. Epstein, “Craft guilds, apprenticeship and technological change in preindustrial Europe”, Journal of Economic History, 58,3 (1998), pp. 684-713. 4 Schlumbohm, “Peasant society to class society”; U. Pfister, “Proto-industrialization and demographic change: the canton of Zürich revisited”, Journal of European Economic History, 18,3 (1989), pp. 269-62. 5 P. Hudson, The genesis of industrial capital. A study of the West Riding wool textile industry c.1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 81-4; T. Liu, The weaver’s knot. The contradictions of class struggle and family solidarity in western France, 1750-1914 (Ithaca, New York, 1994), pp. 123-7.
of occupational mobility into and within the textile sector would contribute greatly to
understanding how and why Catalonia industrialised. The question of openness is also
of interest in the Catalan context, since Catalan inheritance customs, by placing great
emphasis on impartibility and male primogeniture, are also likely to have conditioned
the occupational choices of men. It is of interest in this regard to see whether or not
younger sons, who did not inherit, were more likely to pursue a different occupation
from that of their fathers.
Finally, the study of occupational mobility in the past is important for reasons
that transcend the specific cases of proto-industrialisation and of Catalonia. An
analysis of occupational mobility over the life-cycle, as well as intergenerationally,
can help to ascertain the reliability of occupational labels in the past. It has been
suggested that, prior to the modern industrial era, the frequency which with dual
occupations or by-employments were found was such as to make the definition of
occupations and occupational mobility highly problematic.6 In particular, if many
early modern households had land or were engaged in agricultural activities alongside
crafts, who can meaningfully be described as a farmer or peasant? Similarly, it can be
difficult, as will be discussed below, to separate out issues of occupational mobility
from divisions of labour. At certain times and in communities of a certain size, a
distinction between, say, a carpenter, a turner, a cooper and a wheelwright may be
meaningful, but at other times and in other places, it may not. To some extent, these
are methodological questions: the issue of by-employments is perhaps more acute
when considering the household as a unit of production than when the investigation is
concerned with male occupations.
The context and the case study
The study of occupations is of particular importance in Catalonia, given the region’s
precocious industrialisation compared to the rest of Spain and southern Europe. While
other areas on the so-called “periphery” of Europe failed to industrialise over the 6 See, for example, M. Berg, The age of manufactures 1700-1820 (2nd ed., London, 1994), pp. 23-6.
eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Catalonia stands comparison with the “core”
regions of northern Europe in experiencing a process of rapid industrialisation during
this period, primarily textile-based.7 The transformation of the Catalan economy was
essentially a process of regional specialisation.8 New foreign demand for wine and
spirits stimulated the expansion of commercial viticulture in the southern and coastal
regions, where soils were too poor for cereal crops. Western Catalonia, by contrast,
was increasingly given over to cereal production, while rural industry became
increasingly concentrated in the central mountainous region, where the climate was
less favourable to growing vines, and the soil too poor for cereal yields to be
intensified. Rural industry in central Catalonia increasingly developed along proto-
industrial lines, producing for distant markets, with corresponding changes in
organisation of production. Initially, this proto-industry was mainly a woollen
industry, reflecting both traditional skills and the capture of particular markets.
Changes in tariff policies in 1778, however, made it cheaper to import raw cotton
rather than cotton already spun.9 Until then, the cotton industry had been restricted to
Barcelona, where it was mainly organised in workshops producing printed calicoes.
The ability to import raw cotton therefore broadened out the cotton industry to include
spinning and weaving. The putting-out networks established by the wool industry
were an obvious source of cheap labour for the cotton industry, which duly took them
over. At the same time, many clothiers and woollen manufacturers switched over to
cotton. Throughout the early stages, cotton manufacturing remained small-scale and
domestic, as the woollen industry had been. The introduction of the spinning jenny
did little to alter this pattern. It was not until water or steam power became necessary
in the 1830s and 1840s that the shift to the factory began to occur.
7 For the core-periphery comparison, see S. Pollard, Peaceful conquest. The industrialization of Europe 1760-1960 (Oxford, 1981), pp. 206-7. 8 P. Vilar, La Catalogne dans l’Espagne moderne. Recherches sur les fondements économiques des structures nationales, 3 vols., (Paris, 1962); J. Torras, “Especialización agrícola e industria rural a Cataluña en el siglo XVIII”, Revista de Historia Económica, 2, 3 (1984), pp. 113-27. 9 J.K.J. Thomson, “An explanation of the ‘take-off’ of the Catalan cotton industry”, Economic History Review, LVIII, 4 (2005), pp. 701-35.
Recent work has stressed the rural and proto-industrial roots of Catalan
industry, in contrast to an older historiographical tradition that dated the Catalan
industrial revolution as beginning in 1832, with the founding of the first successful
steam-powered mill in Barcelona.10 My current work is very much in keeping with
these recent arguments. In studying continuities between wool and cotton and
between proto-industry and the factory, the appearance of new occupations and the
extent of occupational mobility into textiles from other sectors or within textiles, be it
mobility over an individual lifetime or intergenerational mobility are important
variables to identify and analyse.
The case study is the town of Igualada, over the period 1680-1829. Igualada is
situated some 60 km west of Barcelona, along the former royal road to Madrid. Over
the eighteenth century, the town shared in the transformation of the Catalan economy.
Its population grew rapidly from a minimum of 1,700 inhabitants in 1717 to 4,900 in
1787 and around 7,000 by 1830.11 Much of this population growth was driven by the
expansion of the textile sector, first wool and then cotton. By the 1760s, Igualada was
the main centre producing woollen cloths in Catalonia. Cotton was introduced in the
1780s, as elsewhere in Catalonia, and rapidly displaced wool so that, by 1820,
Igualada was the second centre for spinning cotton after Barcelona and the fourth for
wool.12
Occupational mobility is analysed first over the life-cycle, in order to test the
consistency of occupational adscription, and then between generations. The sources
used are the parish registers of the town, which record male occupations both
thoroughly and consistently, not only at marriage, but also at burial, and at the
baptisms and burials of children. A family reconstitution has already been carried out
for this community, resulting in some 8,700 families. Occupations can thus be traced 10 A. Garcia Balañà, La fabricació de la fàbrica. Treball i política a la Catalunya cotonera (1784-1874) (Barcelona, 2004); L. Ferrer Alòs, “Bergadanas, continuas y mules. Tres geografías de la hilatura del algodón en Cataluña (1790-1830)”, Revista de Historia Económica, 22 (2004), pp. 337-86. 11 This population growth is the subject of my PhD: J.E. Marfany, “Proto-industrialisation and demographic change in Catalonia, 1680-1829” (University of Cambridge, 2003). 12 J.K.J. Thomson, A distinctive industrialization. Cotton in Barcelona 1728-1832 (Cambridge, 1992), pp.302-3.
over the life-cycle, from first recording at marriage, to subsequent recording at the
baptisms and burials of children, through to the burials of husband and wife. Female
occupations are not recorded in these sources, so the analysis has to be restricted to
male occupations only. Moreover, the restriction to married men imposed by the use
of the family reconstitution means that certain occupations, such as servant, that do
not seem to have been practised by married men, do not appear.
Changes in occupations over the life-cycle were analysed and quantified using
an algorithm devised by Peter Kitson.13 The algorithm uses as its base the equivalent
of the family reconstitution form (FRF), that is, it compares a man’s occupation at
marriage with the occupations recorded on subsequent events, such as the baptisms
and burials of his children, and his own burial or that of his wife.14 It is of great value
in that it not only reports the sequences and combinations of occupations, but also
compares the amount of actual change with the amount of potential change, given the
number of occupational descriptors present.
Changes in intergenerational mobility were easier to measure, since the
marriage register records not only a man’s occupation at the time of his marriage, but
also that of his father and the father of the bride. The analysis of intergenerational
mobility thus compares the occupations of fathers and sons as recorded on the
marriage register. The register also records place of birth and residence for both the
groom and his father, thus allowing for occupational mobility to be correlated with
immigration for a further test of openness.
13 P.M. Kitson, “Family formation, male occupation and the nature of parochial registration in England, c.1538-1837” (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004). The algorithm is described in Appendices 5 and 6. 14 Each marriage is assigned a unique identity number in the database, which then appears on all other events associated with that marriage, such as the baptisms and burials of children born to the marriage, and the burials of the partners to the marriage. Second marriages were excluded to avoid double-counting except where the first marriage was not in observation, that is, where the first marriage had taken place either prior to 1680 or outside the parish. Not all marriages end with the burial of the husband or wife: marriages which continued beyond the cut-off date of 1829 or where the couple presumably emigrated are also included, though obviously all calculations of occupational mobility require two or more observations. For convenience’ sake, the label FRF will be used for the marriage identity number.
Life-cycle mobility
The algorithm was run twice through the available data. This allowed for the
identification of errors and, more importantly, for the identification of spurious
occupational mobility, that is, occupational descriptors that were clearly synonyms.
Common errors were transcribing carder (wool or cotton carder) for corder (rope-
maker) or forner (baker) for torner (turner). Common synonyms were doctor en
medicina/metge (medical doctor) or arriero/traginer (muleteer). In the latter case, we
have an example of Spanish and Catalan terms appearing simultaneously in the
dataset. Another issue was lack of specificity. For example, many men were
frequently described simply as “weaver” on one occasion, but as “woollen weaver” or
“cotton weaver” on another. In fact, “weaver/woollen weaver” was the second most
frequent combination. These terms were then standardised before the exercise was
repeated.
A more difficult issue was deciding which cases of occupational combinations
really reflected occupational mobility, as opposed to a lack of division of labour or
lack of precision in the way terms were used. For example, several occupational titles
related to gunmaking appear in the data: armer, canoner, encepador and pedrenyaler.
The first appear to be generic terms for gunsmith. Encepador, however, refers
specifically to the task of fitting wooden handles or butts to the metal barrel of the
gun, while pedrenyalers made flint-fired pistols or small arms.15 It seems, however,
that such terms are used interchangeably in the Igualada data. Another group of terms
related to commerce, so different terms for merchant and shopkeeper, such as
botiguer, comerciant, negociant and marxant were all standardised to a single
occupational descriptor. While in theory there might be differences in the precise
meanings of such terms (botiguer referring to a shopkeeper, while comerciant and
negociant might be best translated as “merchant”), it seems that, in practice, there was
none that could be identified. A final group worth mentioning was the transport
15 This is based on the definitions in the best Catalan dictionary of historical terms: A.M. Alcover and F.B. Moll (eds.), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols. (2nd ed., Mallorca, 1950-68).
sector, where it was decided to standardise such terms as arriero or traginer
(muleteer), carreter (carter) and llogater de mules (someone who hired out mules), as
they occurred in combination with a degree of frequency that seemed to justify such
standardisation. The advantage to the approach taken here is that standardisation can
occur from the “bottom up”, that is, according to the realities revealed by the data
rather than to any theoretical maxim as to which occupations should be regarded as
similar. At this level, standardisation rarely involves combining activities with
different Hiscodes.16
Prior to standardisation, there were 14,810 changes out of a possible
maximum (given the number of recorded occupations) of 40,589. In other words,
change occurred in 36.5% of all instances that it might theoretically have done so.
After standardisation, this figure fell to 31.6%. The difference is not great, but in fact,
much of the remaining occupational mobility could also be standardised away if one
wished to be more ruthless. For example, abaixador (cropper) and paraire (clothier)
appeared together in 45 cases, making it the sixth most frequent combination. This is
hardly surprising, since many clothiers had equipment for carding, cropping and
dyeing cloths recorded in their inventories. Much of the occupational mobility was
within the textile sector, as will be discussed in a moment. Moreover, although there
were 577 different combinations of occupations, 399 (69%) occurred only once,
leaving the possibility that some of these may have been simply recording errors.
On the whole, occupational status was fairly stable over the life-cycle. Table 1
shows the frequencies with which more than one occupation was recorded on an FRF,
according to the number of instances in which an occupation was recorded. Clearly,
the greater the number of observations for a given family, the greater the likelihood
that a change in occupation might be captured. To some extent, this was indeed the
case, as is evident in the second column of the table, where the percentage of FRFs
recording only one occupational title declines as the number of instances on which
16 For a discussion of coding Catalan occupations into HISCO, see J. Marfany, “Coding into HISCO in Catalonia: issues and perspectives”, paper presented at the ESSHA conference, Berlin, March 2006.
occupations were recorded increases. Nonetheless, around two-thirds of most FRFs
still recorded only one occupation regardless of the number of observations, and in
total, over 80% did so. Most men in Igualada thus kept the same occupation from
marriage right through the length of time that they were in observation.
Table 1: Number of different occupations per reconstituted family according to the number of observations
Sum of different occupations (%) Observations 1 2 3 4 5 6 N 1 100 2886 2 83.3 16.7 899 3 80.3 17.5 2.2 641 4 75.9 18.9 5.2 0.0 502 5 74.9 19.5 4.1 1.3 0.3 395 6 66.0 25.7 7.5 0.5 0.3 0.0 373 7 66.6 25.7 5.9 1.3 0.5 0.0 374 8 63.6 29.6 6.2 0.6 0.0 0.0 321 9 65.4 26.0 6.8 1.8 0.0 0.0 338 10 66.4 22.9 7.4 2.6 0.7 0.0 271 11 69.3 23.0 6.3 1.5 0.0 0.0 270 12 69.5 22.1 5.7 2.3 0.4 0.0 262 13 65.4 25.6 6.9 2.0 0.0 0.0 246 14 66.7 20.3 8.7 3.9 0.5 0.0 207 15 68.6 23.0 5.8 2.1 0.5 0.0 191 16 63.2 25.2 8.4 2.6 0.6 0.0 155 17 57.1 31.9 8.4 0.8 0.8 0.8 119 18 71.8 16.5 7.1 1.2 2.4 1.2 85 19 65.2 27.3 6.1 1.5 0.0 0.0 66 20 50.0 31.6 15.8 2.6 0.0 0.0 38 21 55.3 26.3 13.2 2.6 2.6 0.0 38 22 60.0 30.0 6.7 0.0 3.3 0.0 30 23 64.3 28.6 0.0 0.0 7.1 0.0 14 24 63.6 36.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 11 25 60.0 40.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 5 26 33.3 0.0 66.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 3 27 50.0 0.0 50.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2 28 50.0 50.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2 29 100.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1 30 66.7 0.0 0.0 33.3 0.0 0.0 3 Total 80.9 14.8 3.4 0.7 0.2 0.0 8724
Furthermore, very few people (4.3%) changed occupation more than once.
This suggests that the scenario may be one of people practising by-employments part
of the time, or moving backwards and forwards between two, perhaps related,
occupations. Table 2 sets out the most commonly observed combinations of
occupations, all those occurring 10 times or more.
Table 2: Most frequent combinations of occupations over the life-cycle Occupations Frequency Smallholder/muleteer 136 Calico manufacturer/weaver 81 Smallholder/clothier 61 Clothier/weaver 59 Smallholder/weaver 50 Cropper/clothier 43 Smallholder/merchant 36 Cotton manufacturer/weaver 32 Cotton manufacturer/calico manufacturer/weaver 31 Smallholder/tanner 27 Cloth manufacturer/clothier 26 Stocking-knitter/tailor 19 Smallholder/miller 17 Maker of silk trimmings/weaver 15 Smallholder/hatter 14 Tanner/clothier 13 Carder/master builder 13 Calico manufacturer/calico printer 13 Smallholder/merchant/muleteer 11 Smallholder/blacksmith 11 Clothier/hatter 11 Weaver/silk weaver 11 Smallholder/cobbler 10
The table reveals two main patterns. Unsurprisingly, ten of these combinations, just
under half, were individuals combining smallholdings with another activity.
Smallholder is the translation of pagès, usually a generic term for anyone working the
land, but in this context referring to smallholders, and to the less frequent terms
llaurador (literally a ploughman, but again with a more generic meaning) and hortolà
(someone who cultivates a vegetable plot). By far and away the most frequent
combination was smallholding with some form of transport activity, “muleteer” here
being the standardised form for muleteers, carters and those who hired out mules, as
explained above. In an area where most ploughing and most transport of goods or
people were done by mules, it makes sense that those who owned mules should put
them to both uses. Smallholdings were also combined with most artisanal and
commercial activities. There is nothing unusual for an early modern society to show
such patterns. In the case of Igualada, however, the small size of most holdings made
participation in other activities essential, since most households owned insufficient
land either to meet reproduction costs or to occupy available labour.17
The second type of combination captured in Table 2 is textile occupations.
Here, the idea of occupational mobility is trickier. The newness of the cotton industry
during this period raises questions as to how precisely contemporaries distinguished
between activities and the terms used to describe them. For example, it is unclear how
far a calico manufacturer (fabricant d’indianes) was distinct from a cotton
manufacturer (fabricant de cotó). Here, further standardisation might well be justified.
Moreover, “manufacturer” in this context is misleading: to modern minds, the term
implies a distance from the production process that does not correspond to reality.
While there was an element of self-aggrandisement, as noted by Jaume Torras, in the
decision by many clothiers (paraires) to begin styling themselves as cloth
manufacturers (fabricants de panyos), the significance of this should not be
exaggerated.18 Most of these self-styled manufacturers, both in wool and cotton, had
small workshops employing mainly family labour, and are likely to slipped between
co-ordinating the work of others and weaving and printing themselves at different
stages, depending on fluctuations in profits and availability of labour. It is unrealistic
to assume that a rigid distinction existed between weaver and manufacturer at this
stage. Rather, the textile sector should be viewed as extremely fluid, both in terms of
the type of work carried out by individuals and the extent to which they were
independent or not at different times. The use of other, less precise terms such as
cotoner and indianaire, here subsumed into manufacturers, adds support to this view.
17 On the size of landholdings in Igualada, see J. Marfany, “Proto-industrialisation, property rights and the land market in Catalonia”, paper presented at the IEHA conference, Helsinki, August 2006. 18 J. Torras, “Estructura de la indústria pre-capitalista. La draperia”, Recerques, 11 (1981), pp. 7-28.
A further aspect of fluidity within the textile sector is the shift from wool to
cotton. Prior to standardisation of occupations, which removed most of these shifts,
there were 78 combinations of wool and cotton activities, such as clothier with cotton
manufacturer, or wool weaver with cotton weaver. This illustrates nicely the extent to
which the new cotton industry built upon the existing skills of the proto-industrial
labour force and, indeed, eventually ousted wool from the established putting-out
networks. As I have argued elsewhere, this continuity is an important feature of
Catalan industrialisation.19
More surprising, if we return to Table 2, are the cases where two artisanal
activities were combined where one was not in textiles. There are five of these:
stocking-knitter and tailor, maker of silk trimmings (perxer) and weaver, tanner and
clothier, carder and master builder and clothier and hatter. The first two are less
surprising, since they were related activities in terms of skills. The other three,
however, involved very different skills and membership of different guilds, not to
mention in terms of the equipment required. The most plausible, though unprovable,
explanation here is that it is the textile activity that was the “open” one in the case of
tanners and hatters. Being a clothier could simply mean being a putting-out merchant:
it might not involve any investment in equipment, merely the time required to co-
ordinate the putting-out aspects of production. This explanation is less clear in the
case of carders and master builders, where equipment was a requirement, but here
seasonality of work might be a factor.
Intergenerational mobility
On the whole, the relative stability of occupations in Igualada is reassuring as regards
the study of intergenerational mobility. It seems as if most people throughout their
lives kept to the trade to which they had been apprenticed, though without these trades
necessarily being particularly specialised. If they moved into a different sector of the
19 J. Marfany, “Is it still helpful to talk about proto-industrialisation? Some suggestions from a Catalan case study”, Economic History Review (forthcoming).
economy, it was far more likely to be into agriculture than into another craft. Such
stability therefore justifies the comparison of occupations over a generation.
In comparing the occupations of fathers and sons, it was impossible to be as
precise as in the life-cycle analysis. For many occupations, the numbers involved
were too small to allow for any test of statistical significance. Nonetheless, some
broad comparisons could still be made. For part of the analysis, occupations were
grouped together, so mobility could be compared across sectors at least. Occupations
were grouped according to a scheme already used elsewhere. Agriculture was one
sector, textiles was another. Among other artisans, the leather industry was treated
separately as being the other significant industry in Igualada at the time, but also a
useful comparison with textiles in that it appears to have been much more “closed”
than other occupations. Remaining artisans were grouped as goods and services (food,
innkeeping, transport, clothing and footwear), and other artisans (building trades,
woodwork, metalwork, apothecaries, barber surgeons and other crafts). The remaining
categories were professionals and commerce (doctors, lawyers, government officials,
wholesale and retail trade) and “others”, a miscellaneous category for occupations
such as soldier that did not fit into the other categories.
The occupations of fathers and sons were as recorded in the marriage register
at the time of the son’s marriage. The first point to make is that there was a high
incidence of sons following the same occupation as their fathers. Even before
occupations were standardised in the manner described above for life-cycle mobility,
in 2870 (56%) out of 5167 marriages where occupations were known for both father
and son, these were identical. In 1129 (39%) of these 2870, the occupation was that of
smallholder. Tanner accounted for 308 (11%), clothier for 250 (9%) and woollen
weaver for 120 (4%). Standardisation actually made little difference to this pattern.
Overall, the figure rose to 2975 (58%), with smallholder remaining top with 1136.
Standardisation did, however, cause an important shift in the ranking. By subsuming
“woollen weaver”, “cotton weaver” and so on into “weaver”, the latter occupation
jumped to second place with 332 (11%). Taking the process one stage further by
comparing the broader groups described above, the overall figure for fathers and sons
in the same occupational sector rose to 3231 marriages (63%). In most cases,
however, fathers and sons were in the same occupation. The additional cases were
mostly in textiles, demonstrating once again the fluidity of this sector. Fathers and
sons might well both be weavers, but not necessarily in the same branch of the
industry. Similarly, clothier fathers might often have weaver sons.
Table 3: Observed and expected values for combinations of fathers’ and sons’ occupations.
I. Agriculture V. Others II. Goods and services VI. Professionals and commercial III. Leather VII. Textile IV. Other artisans
Father’s occupation Groom’s occupation I II III IV V VI VII Total Observed I 1145 19 17 28 1 4 31 1245II 249 532 29 51 5 27 121 1014III 80 36 333 21 0 5 42 517IV 130 28 6 304 1 7 37 513V 10 4 2 4 7 10 5 42VI 31 15 1 5 4 117 12 185VII 367 213 72 98 4 27 870 1651Total 2012 847 460 511 22 197 1118 5167Expected I 485 204 111 123 5 47 269 1245II 395 166 90 100 4 39 219 1014III 201 85 46 51 2 20 112 517IV 200 84 46 51 2 20 111 513V 16 7 4 4 0.2 2 9 42VI 72 30 16 18 1 7 40 185VII 643 271 147 163 7 63 357 1651Total 2012 847 460 511 22 197 1118 5167
A second point is that this high incidence of sons following the same
occupation as their fathers was not just driven by the large size of certain sectors.
Table 3 sets out the observed values for sons’ occupations crossed with those of their
fathers, compared with the values that would be expected if the relative size of the
occupational sector were the only determining factor. What stands out from this table
is that in all sectors the incidence of sons in the same occupational sector as their
fathers was higher than expected. A chi-squared test showed that the results were
statistically significant. The greatest difference was in the “others” category, where
the observed result was 39.1 times higher than the expected. This category was an odd
one, however, and the numbers very small. Following that, it was the professionals
and commercial group who showed least mobility, with 16.6 times more sons
following fathers than expected. Given the higher status attached to many of the
occupations in this category, as well as the higher investment required in terms of
both education and capital for start-up, the closed nature of this group is only to be
expected. Other sectors were more open, but to varying degrees. Men in the leather
industry were 7.2 times more likely to have fathers also in leather than expected, other
artisans 6 times more likely and goods and services 3.2 times. Most open were
agriculture and textiles, with the incidence in both cases being 2.4 times higher than
expected.
These results are unsurprising, given the guild restrictions operating against
outsiders. As elsewhere in Catalonia and Europe, Igualada’s guilds charged lower
entry fees to sons and sons-in-law of masters than to those without fathers in the trade,
who in turn paid less than those from outside the town.20 To give one example, in the
guild of blacksmiths and carpenters, eldest sons of masters paid 1 lliura in 1754,
younger sons paid 4 lliures, sons-in-law born in Igualada paid 6 lliures, sons-in-law
from outside paid 8 lliures, other Igualada-born men also paid 8 lliures and those
from outside paid 12 lliures. By 1815, not only had the entry costs gone up across the
board, but the gap between masters’ eldest sons and the highest cost paid by outsiders
had widened to a difference of 15 lliures. Even without guild incentives, it makes
sense that sons would be brought up to follow their fathers’ trades: there would be
familiarity from an early age, and discipline might be less of a concern if one had
one’s own son or journeyman as apprentice.
20 P. Molas Ribalta, “Els gremis d’Igualada a la fi de l’Antic Règim”, Miscellanea Aqualatensia, 2 (1974), pp. 139-49.
With regard to the differences noted above between occupational sectors, it is
therefore unsurprising that agriculture and textiles should be the most open.
Agriculture was by its nature unguilded: here, the issue was one of access to land,
which could always be leased or purchased. Moreover, this was a period when new
forms of sharecropping contracts were making small plots of land accessible on easier
terms than previously. In the textile sector, guild controls broke down very rapidly,
driven by the desire of clothiers to secure a labour force on terms more suited to
themselves. The breakdown of these controls has been documented in detail by Jaume
Torras, and may well be a factor in explaining how proto-industry in Igualada
managed to be more dynamic and successful than elsewhere.21 Moreover, the start-up
costs in textiles were relatively low, especially within the putting-out system, where
looms could be hired and increasing numbers of producers worked for others instead
of having independent workshops. Inventories show that most manufacturing was
done within the home. Leather, by contrast, required access to running water and
tanneries with vats, often separate from the house.
The scale of guild entry costs also points to another significant factor in the
Catalan context, that is, the potential differences in terms of occupational mobility
between eldest and younger sons. As mentioned in the introduction, Catalan
inheritance customs meant that eldest sons inherited 75-80% of family property. Most
studies of Catalan inheritance have been concerned with the implications of this for
the transmission of land. For artisans, however, a workshop, tools and equipment,
credit and reputation would constitute an equally importance inheritance. If younger
sons, however, were excluded from this by default, one might expect that they would
be more inclined than their eldest brothers to follow a different path. Work presented
elsewhere has shown that age rank certainly affected men’s ages at marriage.22 21 J. Torras, “From craft to class: the changing organization of cloth manufacturing in a Catalan town” in T.M. Safley and L.N. Rosenband (eds.), The workplace before the factory. Artisans and proletarians, 1500-1800 (Ithaca, NY, 1993). pp. 165-79. Ogilvie cites Igualada as an example of proto-industrialisation being more dynamic when it could escape guild control: “Guilds, efficiency and social capital”, pp. 312-14. 22 J. Marfany, “Choices and constraints: marriage and inheritance in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Catalonia”, Continuity and Change, 21,1 (2006), pp. 73-106.
To some extent, the results bear this out. Where possible, the occupations of
men at marriage were divided according to whether or not they were the eldest
surviving son in observation.23 It was possible to identify 1680 grooms as eldest sons
at the time of marriage, of whom 1040 (62%) were in exactly the same occupation as
their fathers and 1153 (69%) were in the same occupational group, with only 527
(31%) in a different occupational group. For the 754 younger sons, only 331 (44%)
were in the same occupation, while 412 (55%) were in the same group, and 342
(45%) were in a different group. Again, a chi-squared test showed the results were
significant. The differences, however, were not as marked as those in Table 3.
Younger sons were 1.27 times more likely to be in a different occupational group
from their fathers than expected, but only 0.85 times less likely to be in the same
occupational group. Age rank clearly had some effect, but younger sons were still
highly likely to follow their fathers’ occupations or a similar trade. Again, given entry
costs and familiarity, this was not surprising.
A final question to be considered is migration in relation to occupational
mobility. It might also be assumed that younger sons would be more likely to migrate
away from their place of origin, if they had no property to inherit. Similarly, more
“open” sectors might also be expected to have higher proportions of immigrants.
Since the marriage registers give place of birth and residence for grooms and their
fathers, the latter hypothesis can be tested. Again, issues of sample sizes restrict the
analysis to a simple comparison of natives and immigrants across the different
sectors. Age rank obviously cannot be tested for, given that outsiders by definition
have no baptism records.
Table 4: Occupations of grooms in Igualada by birthplace, 1680-1829 I. Agriculture V. Others II. Goods and services VI. Professionals and commercial III. Leather VII. Textile
23 “In observation” refers to the inability to control for sons emigrating, or for immigrant families having had sons baptised outside the parish. To be included here, men had to have a baptism recorded in the parish from which their age rank among their male siblings could be determined.
IV. Other artisans Igualada Outside Igualada Total Occupation N % N % I 416 35 760 65 1176II 580 59 407 41 987III 445 86 74 14 519IV 254 51 244 49 498V 14 24 44 76 58VI 73 39 116 61 189VII 1140 69 518 31 1658Total 2922 2163 5027
Table 4 shows the proportions of grooms in each occupational sector born in and
outside Igualada. The results are interesting, in that “openness” according to one
criterion, that of intergenerational occupational mobility, does not always correspond
to “openness” in terms of the presence of outsiders. The sector with the highest
proportion of grooms born outside of Igualada was the “others” category, a feature
explained by the large number of soldiers in this group, resident in the town’s
barracks. After that, the highest proportions were to be found in agriculture, which
was one of the open sectors in terms of sons following their fathers’ occupations, but
also in the professionals and commercial group, which was one of the most closed in
that regard. Leather, also closed in terms of intergenerational mobility, had the lowest
proportion of immigrants, but it was textiles, as open as agriculture when it came to
intergenerational mobility and with increasingly fewer guild controls, that had the
second lowest proportion.
These results are not, however, as contradictory as they might appear. While
the professionals and commercial group had constraints on entry such as education
and capital that would tend to exclude those who did not already have fathers in this
group, the nature of many occupations in this group made geographical mobility
likely. Government officials were placed according to government requirements,
while lawyers and doctors would go where the best opportunities for a successful
practice were. Similarly, merchants might often be in the position of managing a
second shop for the family business somewhere other than their native town. As for
textiles, where new activities might have been expected to draw in outsiders, we have
seen that, despite the breakdown in guild restrictions, there were nonetheless strong
continuities between traditional woollen manufacturing and the new cotton industry.
What seems to be happening in textiles is the ability of the growing sector to retain
labour that might otherwise have migrated out of the town. Manufacturing was able to
absorb younger sons who previously had had to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Their
status may have remained lower than that of their eldest brothers in terms of working
for others and their standard of living, though it is unlikely that it would have been
any higher had they migrated. These suggestions are impossible to test at present, but
textile workers certainly married earlier than other sectors, and increasingly so over
the period, thus lending weight to the view that theirs was one of the most dynamic
occupational sectors in Igualada.24
Conclusion
The findings presented here go some way towards confirming the hypothesis put
forward at the start of this paper, namely, that occupational mobility was integral to
proto-industrialisation. Compared with other sectors of the economy, the proto-
industrial textile sector was one of the most open and dynamic. Much of the
occupational mobility that has been identified over the life-cycle was within the
textile sector. In particular, there was a clear shift from traditional woollen
manufacturing to the new cotton industry. Similarly, in terms of intergenerational
occupational mobility, textiles, along with agriculture, were the sectors where fathers
and sons were least likely to be found together. The differences in this regard between
textiles and other crafts fits with what is already known about guilds in Igualada, and
the breakdown of traditional controls in the textile guilds. The least “open” sectors
were those where guild controls remained strong, but also where start-up costs were
greater, as in leather, or the investment in education or training was longer, as in the
professions. Guild restrictions also operated to keep out immigrants, as in the case of 24 Marfany, “Choices and constraints”, 81-3.
leather, but start-up costs and education did not necessarily do so, as is evident from
the high proportion of immigrants in the professional and commercial group.
Conversely, though textiles was an “open” sector in some ways, it had fewer
immigrants than other sectors and than might have been expected. It seems as if the
increase in the textile sector may have been due to its ability to retain labour that
would otherwise have left, in particular younger sons.
Notwithstanding, neither the degree of openness nor the extent of occupational
mobility should be exaggerated. Even in the “open” sectors, such as agriculture and
textiles, sons were still 2.4 times more likely to follow their fathers’ occupations than
would be expected if there were complete openness. While eldest sons, as the
recipients of almost all the family property in Catalonia, were more likely to follow
their fathers than younger sons, just over half of younger sons (55%) were still to be
found in the same occupational sector as their fathers. The textile sector was still
drawing on a local labour force, an important factor as regards the transition from
wool to cotton, and from traditional to proto-industry and eventually to the factory.
Local skills and local knowledge were crucial in Catalan industrialisation.
Moreover, the validity of describing much of the occupational mobility here as
such could be questioned. As noted, much of the mobility is within the textile sector,
where the proliferation of new occupational titles and the seeming interchangeability
of these may reflect uncertainty among contemporaries as to the precise nature of new
tasks or, more likely, a lack of specialisation within the small family workshops that
remained the dominant unit of production. Even where occupational changes are
between two different sectors, the usual pattern is for one sector to be agriculture.
Here, the pattern is one of dual or by-employments, whereby households combined
the craft or other activity of the household head with smallholdings. This type of
occupational mobility is a product more of the balance of resources and opportunities
available to households at given moments, and is typical of pre-industrial economies.
Unlike the changes in the textile sector, it should not be identified as a factor leading
to or deriving from greater “openness”. In Igualada, signs of “openness” can be
detected in this period, but limited only to those sectors undergoing change: the proto-
industrial textile sector, and the agricultural sector, where a shift towards
commercialised viticulture was facilitating access to land. In other sectors, traditional
constraints of guilds, inheritance and start-up costs continued to operate.
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