Working Women, Working Men: Sao Paulo & the Rise of Brazil's Industrial Working Class, 1900-1955 / Edition 1

by Joel Wolfe

Overview

In Working Women, Working Men, Joel Wolfe traces the complex historical development of the working class in Sào Paulo, Brazil, Latin America's largest industrial center. He studies the way in which Sào Paulo's working men and women experienced Brazil's industrialization, their struggles to gain control over their lives within a highly authoritarian political system, and their rise to political prominence in the first half of the twentieth century.
Drawing on a diverse range of sources-oral histories along with union, industry, and government archival materials-Wolfe's account focuses not only on labor leaders and formal Left groups, but considers the impact of grassroots workers' movements as well. He pays particular attention to the role of gender in the often-contested relations between leadership groups and thee rank and file. Wolfe's analysis illuminates how various class and gender ideologies influenced the development of unions, industrialists' strategies, and rank-and-file organizing and protest activities.
This study reveals how workers in Sào Paulo maintained a local grassroots social movement that, by the mid-1950s, succeeded in seizing control of Brazil's state-run official unions. By examining the actions of these workers in their rise to political prominence in the 1940s and 1950s, this book provides a new understanding of the sources and development of populist politics in Brazil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822313472
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	05/28/1993
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

Read an Excerpt

Working Women, Working Men

São Paulo and the Rise of Brazil's Industrial Working Class, 1900-1955

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By Joel Wolfe

Duke University Press

Copyright © 1993 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-1347-2

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CHAPTER 1

Industrialization and the Birth of São Paulo's Working-Class Movement, 1900-1924

Large-scale industry is the factor that most efficiently contributes to social tranquility, for the well-being of the people and for the wealth of the public. —Antônio Francisco Bandeira Junior A Indústria no Estado de São Paulo em 1901

Strikes will become more general, more and more frequent, responding to the ever-increasing oppression of capitalism. —Report of the Second Brazilian Socialist Congress, cited in Dulles, Anarchists and Communists in Brazil

The industrialization Antônio Francisco Bandeira Junior praised and the fledgling Socialist party decried had barely begun in the São Paulo of 1900. Neighborhoods such as Brás and Mooca, where large textile factories and small metalworking and other shops would soon dominate, were still swampy lowlands with only a handful of industrial establishments and few inhabitants. Beyond the downtown business triangle, a few elite residential areas, and the immigrant slums of Bexiga, São Paulo still had the look of an agrarian hamlet. Small farms with their fruit trees, cattle, and rustic houses operated in Consolação, Higienópolis, Vila Buarque, Pinheiros, and other neighborhoods of the city. Foreign visitors and local commentators alike praised the beauty of this bucolic town at the turn of the century.

The steady expansion of the state's coffee economy, along with planters' and merchants' desire to diversify their holdings, fostered the development of industry throughout the state of São Paulo, especially in its capital. Industrialization, though, was not the panacea Bandeira Junior and other elites believed it would be; nor was it a linear process that stripped workers of their humanity or agency. Although the growth of industry had a profound impact on the population of São Paulo, that same population, most of whom would become the industrial working class, shaped the process of industrialization. Those sameindividuals, many of whom were immigrants or first-generation Brazilians, began to form small, independent groups to confront bosses and city leaders about the conditions they faced at work and in their neighborhoods, and they came into contact with the small group of leftist activists who were attempting to build a union movement in São Paulo. The conflicts and compromises among these groups brought changes to São Paulo that neither the proponents nor the critics of the city's early industrialization could have predicted at the turn of the century.

The Development of Industry

New tariffs and the steady demand for the state's coffee exports were circumstances that favored São Paulo's transition from an overgrown agricultural hamlet to the Third World's leading industrial center. The new factories produced light consumer goods, especially textiles, using semiskilled labor. This manufacturing sector at first precluded the rise of a unified industrial bourgeoisie. Some mill owners maintained their primary interest in the coffee trade while others concentrated their investments in industrial production. The expansion of the city's industrial base, along with external economic shocks, led to the creation of a new area of industrial production: São Paulo's capital goods sector. This development in turn increased demand for skilled metalworkers in and around the city. The clothing, shoe, and processed food industries also expanded dramatically (on average, 8 percent per year from 1900 to 1920) in response to the overall growth of the state's economy and population. Ultimately, however, in the early twentieth century São Paulo experienced its first round of industrialization as an ancillary economic activity. The actions of neither mill owners nor their workers were of primary concern to the ruling class of this overwhelmingly agrarian state.

Migrants from São Paulo's coffee fazendas filled the city's industrial labor market at this time. The migration of young Italians (especially women) from colono (tenant farmer) households to the city meshed with racist ideologies that sought to limit blacks' access to factory labor and created an industrial labor force dominated by women. That is, while men monopolized construction, printing, metalworking, and other trades, women made up the majority of industrial (especially textile) workers (table 1.1). As we shall see, the prevalence of women in textiles profoundly affected the development of São Paulo's labor movement.

World War I first interrupted, then intensified this process of industrialization. After a brief suspension of coffee and rubber exports, the Brazilian economy quickly recovered. By late 1915, Brazil was again exporting primary products, but its trade axis had shifted from Europe to the United States. The federal government stimulated this rise in exports by devaluing the milréis. Such an exchange rate policy along with shortages of manufactured goods on the international market combined to protect Brazil's nascent industrial sector. Although scholars dispute the exact impact of the war years on São Paulo's industry, all agree that the 1914—18 period witnessed significant increases in industrial output. Expansion of the textile sector grew out of both the increased capacity installed before the war and the intensified use of labor in the factories.

To meet increased demand, industrialists extended work hours, especially the night shifts. Mill owners continued to employ mostly women and children, and foremen did not hesitate to punish them for not meeting production quotas or for falling asleep at their machines. Accordingly, the number of accidents in São Paulo's factories rose steadily during the war. The city's press increasingly reported such accidents. A reporter for O Estado de São Paulo noted in 1917 that many of the children exiting a textile mill appeared to have been not only injured by machinery but also abused by foremen: "Yesterday we watched 60 children entering the factory at Mooca at 7:00 pm. They would leave only at 6:00 AM. That meant that they worked 11 hours straight on the night shift, with only a 20-minute rest break at midnight! Worse is that they complain that they are beaten by the foremen of the spinning rooms. Many of them showed us the black-and-blue marks on their arms and backs.... The ears of one are injured from their having been pulled so violently and so often. These are 12-, 13-, and 14-year-old children."

Although exact figures are not available, both foreign observers and Brazilian government officials noted that São Paulo's mill owners reaped substantial profits during the war years. Even the president of the state of São Paulo publicly declared that industrialists were unfairly profiting from workers' labor. He wrote, "It is clear that industrialists and merchants are reaping profits in the current situation, profits never before seen and that demonstrate that the prices of goods that are indispensable for subsistence exceed what is needed to satisfactorily remunerate capital and the activity of workers."

Industrial expansion had a dramatic impact on life in São Paulo. With the city's population and number of buildings more than doubling from 1900 (239,820 people and 22,407 buildings) to 1918 (504,278 and 55,356), residents experienced the many problems and frustrations of living in a metropolis. Along with this expansion São Paulo witnessed the clear demarcation of neighborhoods by social class. The growth of luxury housing and of the city's commercial center forced an increasing number of workers to move into cortiços in the factory districts of Brás, Mooca, Belemzinho, and Cambuci. Before and during the war years, the São Paulo city government carried out an extensive urban planning campaign to manage this growth. Residences and small shops on Avenida São João were demolished to create the sort of boulevard considered appropriate for the downtown. The city also moved to improve transportation and sewage lines. In 1915 and 1916, Mayor Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa encouraged further high-rise construction downtown and attempted to renovate Brás and other working-class neighborhoods. Washington Luís sought not only to spur further growth but also "to purify [the city] morally and physically." Paulistano elites wanted to cleanse the working-class neighborhoods of their "vicious mixture of scum of all nationalities, all ages, all of them dangerous." São Paulo's workers felt the full effects of Washington Luís's reforms. In addition to the changes in the downtown area, the city modified the food distribution system by closing the central market in Anhangabaú and instituted a system of neighborhood markets known as feiras livres. This helped women workers because it freed them from having to travel to the central market for a large selection of food items, but the decentralization of food distribution also created a system in which the goods sold in the working-class feiras were of the lowest quality and highest price in the city.

This system of markets intensified the impact of the wartime inflation for São Paulo's working people in general and women workers in particular. Speculation and increased exports of foodstuffs from the state to Europe forced up the prices for rice, beans, and other working-class staples. Hoarding, speculation, and exports brought wild swings in prices from month to month (table 1.2). During the war workers faced not only higher prices for foodstuffs but extremely unstable supplies as accepted practices and prices for food were discarded. The export of inexpensive foods forced Brazil to increase its imports of Argentine wheat for the bread sold in markets in the city's elite neighborhoods. Then, when Argentina imposed an embargo on wheat exports in early 1917, the São Paulo city government introduced pão paulista, bread baked with corn and some wheat flour, for the Italian immigrants in working-class neighborhoods. Bakers were supposed to mark this product clearly and to sell it at half the price of bread made completely from wheat flour, but few retailers obeyed this regulation. All these changes meant that women industrial workers—especially those in the mills—bore the brunt of São Paulo's wartime industrial expansion. Not only did they confront intensified work regimes in the factories, they also faced increasingly difficult conditions in their other jobs as the individuals most responsible for the maintenance of their families' lives.

The Development of the Early Labor Movement

São Paulo's struggling women workers could not hope for much help from the city's anarchist activists, for the ideological, social, ethnic, and gender differences between the leaders of the anarchist movement and São Paulo's working people limited the development of a coherent and effective labor movement. Indeed, Brazil's early anarchist movement owed more to the antistate politics of disaffected Republicans than it did to working-class organizing. Brazilians such as Benjamin Mota, Manuel Curvello de Mendonça, Avelino Foscolo, Fábio Luz, and Lima Barreto rejected the government of the Old Republic as a corrupt and failed experiment. They considered themselves exponents of logic and morality and called for a return to so-called primitive communitarianism. These anarchist activists concentrated their energies on education programs and cultural events such as the Workers' Theater. Further, anarchists attacked, implicitly and explicitly, the Catholic church. While anticlericalism was a fundamental part of anarchist ideology and was expressed often in plays, songs, and study groups, it created a gulf between activists and the majority of São Paulo's working people. When the Italian socialist Enrico Ferri spoke out against the church during a street rally in November 1911, for example, a crowd rioted and attacked the "freethinkers." Whatever their level of religious commitment or attachment to formal or informal churches, most of São Paulo's working people were troubled by the anarchists' anticlericalism.

In 1906 and 1907, São Paulo's anarchists began to focus on organizing the steadily growing number of workers in the city. Even this commitment to working-class politics—as opposed to the previous emphasis on culture and education—failed to produce a large-scale workers' movement. The leaders of the new anarchist movement were primarily artisans from the printing, stonecutting, carpentry, shoemaking, and other trades. As a group, they were better paid and more highly educated than most of the city's industrial workers. The anarchists themselves recognized that they had few ties to most of São Paulo's workers.

The gulf between the rank and file and the anarchist leadership became obvious during the widespread textile strike of May 1907. After the Mariangela mill's workers struck against the brutal treatment they suffered at the hands of foremen who directed them for twelve-hour shifts, six and sometimes seven days a week, textile workers throughout the city organized strike committees to demand improved working conditions. Thinking the workers' discontent could lead to a revolutionary upheaval, the anarchists attempted to take over direction of the strikes from the workers. While the centralized organizing and support for the eight-hour day by the anarchists' Workers' Federation of São Paulo (Federação Operária de São Paulo, FOSP) helped the overall movement, the individual workers' committees rejected a revolutionary platform. Instead they sought reforms designed simply to improve work conditions and pay.

The 1907 strike illustrates why São Paulo's industrial workers had few reasons to embrace the anarchists' revolutionary political platform. These immigrant workers did not place their demands within a framework critical of industry or capitalism as such, and as a group they still identified with their fellow Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards—including many of their bosses. They had had little or no contact with radical ideologies before arriving in São Paulo, and they did not yet view themselves as part of a subordinate class united against employers, they were in the city to better their social and economic position. Workers were often proud of the achievements of immigrant industrialists like Francisco Matarazzo, the owner of the Mariangela mill, who employed them.

Further, São Paulo's anarchists demonstrated little interest in organizing the city's women workers. Like their elite opponents, the anarchists believed women were weak and required men's protection. Belém Sárrage de Ferrero wrote in 1911, for example, "Let us make of women what they should be: the priestesses of the home, the priestesses of morality." In addition to wanting to expel women from the labor market in order to protect them, anarchist men were often hostile to women's presence in the factories as low-paid workers. A 1914 meeting of Rio de Janeiro's tailors thus concluded that "the woman of our class ... we are sorry to say, is our most dangerous competition, and this contributes a good deal to her own as well as to our impoverishment." At times, anarchists' frustrations with working women became outright misogyny, as expressed in a 1900 article in the anarchist Il Diritto: "We are not well enough aware of how at present women are a danger, an enemy of the social movement. We could not precisely count the number of militants who have deserted the struggle and abandoned forever the revolutionary ideas they once so avidly espoused so as not to displease their women and to have tranquility on the domestic scene." Some anarchists, though certainly not all, even considered feminism a threat to working-class consciousness and thought all feminists were lesbians (whom they viewed unfavorably).

Anarchist discourse at this time developed a dichotomy between male and female worlds. Men worked outside the home, participated in politics through study and labor groups, women were to work in the home, raising children and caring for their men. Men's opposition to women's factory work was not only based in their belief that women's presence devalued work and so lowered wages for all workers; it also reflected men's desire to protect women. Many men (anarchists, conservatives, etc.) viewed factories as dangerous locations for women and children; not only was the work difficult and at times perilous, but factories were also areas where women were at once independent of their fathers' and husbands' control and potentially threatened by the power of male bosses (foremen). Not surprisingly, anarchist discourse concerning women's work highlighted their need for "protection" and conflated the situations of adult women with those of children. In the final analysis, this discourse not only devalued women's factory work, it also envisioned organizing and protest activities as essentially male.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Working Women, Working Men by Joel Wolfe. Copyright © 1993 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Tables,
Acknowledgments,
Acronyms,
Introduction,
Chapter One Industrialization and the Birth of São Paulo's Working-Class Movement, 1900-1924,
Chapter Two "Order and Progress" and Revolution in Industrial São Paulo, 1925-1935,
Chapter Three Class Struggle versus Conciliação: The Estado Novo, 1935-1942,
Chapter Four World War II and the Struggle for Citizenship, 1942-1945,
Chapter Five The Industrialists' Democracy in São Paulo, 1945-1950,
Chapter Six Factory Commissions and the Triumph of São Paulo's Working-Class Movement, 1950-1955,
Epilogue From Union Democracy to Democratic Politics?,
Appendix: Interviews and Oral Histories,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,

Editorial Reviews

"This is an excellent book, based on an impressive amount of research. It is a valuable and pathbreaking contribution to the historical study of class formation, gender, and the politics of industrial workers in South America's most important industrial center."--Thomas Holloway, Cornell University

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