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Italian boys clothes -- activities work gender industry
Italian Child Labor: Gender -- Industry
Figure 1.--One industry that they did participate in was silk spinning mills, rather like the girls who worked in American cotton mills. An Italian reader writes, "Italian farmers do not grow cotton. So there are no cotton mills. In northern Italy and in Tuscany many farms were breeding silkworms. So there were many silk spinning mills (filanda pl. filande). In rhe early 20th century the spinners employed were almost all young girls. My grandmother, born in 1904 in a village near Milan, told me she started working in a filanda after she finished the 3rd grade." This photograph was taken in the early-20th century, we would guess aboy 1910. It is a filanda near Bergamo, north of Milan.
Most of what we have found about child labor in Italy is about boys. This is certainly the case with the photographic record. This is diffrent from America where we finds girls working in factories and the garment industry, at least by the late-19th century as industry was taking hold in America. There were industry developing in northern Italy. We do know to what extent child labor was prevalent in Italy's developing industries. One industry that they did participate in was silk spinning mills, rather like the girls who worked in American cotton mills. An Italian reader writes, "Italian farmers do not grow cotton. So there are no cotton mills. In northern Italy and in Tuscany many farms were breeding silkworms. So there were many silk spinning mills (filanda pl. filande). In rhe early 20th century the spinners employed were almost all young girls. My grandmother, born in 1904 in a village near Milan, told me she started working in a filanda after she finished the 3rd grade."
