Page 46 - Changing Living Spaces

Luca Mocarelli and Paolo Tedeschi

goods of the Alpine workshops was usually higher, but it was necessary to
lower the price or direct production towards high-value niche markets. In
addition, the rent for Alpine pastures for cattle-breeding decreased due
to the development of new large dairy farms in the plains and the spread
of modern stables for year-round cattle breeding, reducing transhumance
between the plains and the mountains in the summer. This also lowered
the rent for the buildings where the cheese was made and, of course, the
production of Alpine cheese and the associated local taxes on trade. In ad-
dition, technological innovations in transportation, especially the spread
of railroads, increased the competitiveness of raw materials coming from
transalpine countries and reduced the market in the plains for the Alpine
mines, whose sales depended on the demand of local workshops.12 Finally,
the progressive introduction of agricultural machinery in the plain and
the great agricultural crisis of the 1880s meant that seasonal work was no
longer available in the countryside. Many villagers thus lost their tempo-
rary work in the plain and the income it provided.
This situation led to the definitive emigration of many families and
thus to a decline in the population of the Alpine villages in Lombardy.
These lost more than 20 percent of their inhabitants, but the demograph-
ic decline sometimes reached 45 percent in the high valleys, which were
far from the main markets in the low valleys and plains. For many fam-
ilies in the Alps, the income from IPe and the use of common real estate
was not enough to survive. The only solution was to emigrate permanent-
ly to the low valleys or the plains, although some also sought new work
in other European countries or crossed the ocean to reach North America
or Latin America. The privatization of the commons with the aim of in-
creasing fiscal revenues and improving the quality of life of the Alpine in-
habitants did not have the expected results and, together with other fac-
tors, contributed to the destruction of the existing social and economic
equilibrium.
However, this process did not affect part of the villages in the low val-
leys, where there were iron, brass, or textile manufactories that produced
high-value goods for niche markets (e.g. cutlery, weapons, metal tools).
These workshops continued to sell their products in the lowland markets,
thus preventing the increasing migration of the inhabitants. The profes-
sional skills of the villagers and their ability to diversify their products

12 About Lombard mines, see: Calegari and Simoni (1994), Trezzi (1992), Piardi and
Simoni (1982), and R. Predali (1980).

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