托福阅读真题第273篇Industrial Decline in Seventeenth-century Italy

托福真题网 2022-10-16 发布于山东

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托福阅读真题第273篇Industrial Decline in Seventeenth-century Italy

Industrial Decline in Seventeenth-century Italy

The seventeenth century was not a good time for Italian industry. Production of cloth fell drastically in Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples, and other cities; papermaking and other crafts declined, banking and shipping suffered in their wake. At the time, the argument was made in document after document that heavy taxation was to blame for industry’s woes, and that only a measure of tax relief could reverse the trend by making goods more competitive. At first sight the argument seems to have a good deal of merit, for we know that in the course of the seventeenth century the burden of taxation increased in most Italian states. A closer look, however, ought to make us hesitant to accept the loud complaints of merchants and artisans and their plans for relief at face value because what few data are available on the incidence of taxation on the price of manufactured goods suggest that the taxes were rather modest. In the Genoa silk industry, for example, taxes accounted for a mere 5 percent to 6 percent of total costs; in Florence the government apparently taxed the price of woolen cloth at only 1 percent, in Milan at perhaps 2 percent. Only in the case of Venice, where taxes represented a staggering 42 percent of the price of high-quality cloth, can we say with confidence that drastically slashing taxes would have made the industry more competitive.

But, Venice excepted, there are other reasons for believing that taxes were not a decisive factor in undermining the competitiveness of Italian goods. The case of Milan is revealing on this point. There the government did from time to time grant tax reduction, and yet textile production failed to recover. Moreover, even the strongest advocates of tax relief as the panacea for industrial recovery also urged the government to impose a total ban on imported goods, thus implying that tax relief, however desirable, was no cure-all.

If not taxes, then labor costs may have been the villain. And indeed documents of the time often included complaints about the excessive costs of labor: wage rates were said to be higher than those prevailing abroad, with the result that Italian manufactures could not effectively stand up to Dutch and English goods in some markets, and the same kind of complaint was voiced about labor costs in the shipbuilding and shipping industries. Seventeenth-century documents make it virtually impossible for us to measure and compare labor costs in different countries at the time, but the very fact that Italian goods and freight services were being undersold by foreign products, and that labor costs were frequently singled out at the time as being responsible for the loss of market shares, strongly suggests that high wages were a chief weakness of the Italian economy.

As for what kept labor costs high, seventeenth-century sources often point a finger at the powerful and firmly entrenched craft guilds (associations of artisans), alleging that they kept wages up either directly by setting and enforcing rigid wage rates, or indirectly by controlling (and, in fact, restricting) access to crafts by means of long-apprenticeship requirements and stiff admission fees, with little regard for the long-term consequences of their actions. In some instances those charges may well have been justified, but a sweeping indictment of the guilds does not seem warranted. Much of the evidence we have of labor relations points in the direction of labor markets in which artisans had little control over the level of pay.

Rather, the explanation for persistently high labor costs must be sought in long-term conditions of the labor market that sustained relatively high levels of pay in the towns, even in the face of declining employment in a number of major industries. Most probably, the key factor at play here was the total demand for labor remaining fairly stable over the course of the century, as the urban economies continued to offer a broad range of employment opportunities in select luxury or artistic crafts, retail trade, and domestic service. That this was indeed the case is strongly suggested by the fact that neither Genoa, Milan, Venice, nor Florence were turned into ghost towns when their celebrated manufactures went under. Actually their population remained fairly stable over the course of the century.

►The seventeenth century was not a good time for Italian industry. Production of cloth fell drastically in Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples, and other cities; papermaking and other crafts declined, banking and shipping suffered in their wake. At the time, the argument was made in document after document that heavy taxation was to blame for industry’s woes, and that only a measure of tax relief could reverse the trend by making goods more competitive. At first sight the argument seems to have a good deal of merit, for we know that in the course of the seventeenth century the burden of taxation increased in most Italian states. A closer look, however, ought to make us hesitant to accept the loud complaints of merchants and artisans and their plans for relief at face value because what few data are available on the incidence of taxation on the price of manufactured goods suggest that the taxes were rather modest. In the Genoa silk industry, for example, taxes accounted for a mere 5 percent to 6 percent of total costs; in Florence the government apparently taxed the price of woolen cloth at only 1 percent, in Milan at perhaps 2 percent. Only in the case of Venice, where taxes represented a staggering 42 percent of the price of high-quality cloth, can we say with confidence that drastically slashing taxes would have made the industry more competitive.

►But, Venice excepted, there are other reasons for believing that taxes were not a decisive factor in undermining the competitiveness of Italian goods. The case of Milan is revealing on this point. There the government did from time to time grant tax reduction, and yet textile production failed to recover. Moreover, even the strongest advocates of tax relief as the panacea for industrial recovery also urged the government to impose a total ban on imported goods, thus implying that tax relief, however desirable, was no cure-all.

►If not taxes, then labor costs may have been the villain. And indeed documents of the time often included complaints about the excessive costs of labor: wage rates were said to be higher than those prevailing abroad, with the result that Italian manufactures could not effectively stand up to Dutch and English goods in some markets, and the same kind of complaint was voiced about labor costs in the shipbuilding and shipping industries. Seventeenth-century documents make it virtually impossible for us to measure and compare labor costs in different countries at the time, but the very fact that Italian goods and freight services were being undersold by foreign products, and that labor costs were frequently singled out at the time as being responsible for the loss of market shares, strongly suggests that high wages were a chief weakness of the Italian economy.

►As for what kept labor costs high, seventeenth-century sources often point a finger at the powerful and firmly entrenched craft guilds (associations of artisans), alleging that they kept wages up either directly by setting and enforcing rigid wage rates, or indirectly by controlling (and, in fact, restricting) access to crafts by means of long-apprenticeship requirements and stiff admission fees, with little regard for the long-term consequences of their actions. In some instances those charges may well have been justified, but a sweeping indictment of the guilds does not seem warranted. Much of the evidence we have of labor relations points in the direction of labor markets in which artisans had little control over the level of pay.

►Rather, the explanation for persistently high labor costs must be sought in long-term conditions of the labor market that sustained relatively high levels of pay in the towns, even in the face of declining employment in a number of major industries. Most probably, the key factor at play here was the total demand for labor remaining fairly stable over the course of the century, as the urban economies continued to offer a broad range of employment opportunities in select luxury or artistic crafts, retail trade, and domestic service. That this was indeed the case is strongly suggested by the fact that neither Genoa, Milan, Venice, nor Florence were turned into ghost towns when their celebrated manufactures went under. Actually their population remained fairly stable over the course of the century.

The seventeenth century was not a good time for Italian industry. Production of cloth fell drastically in Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples, and other cities; papermaking and other crafts declined, banking and shipping suffered in their wake. At the time, the argument was made in document after document that heavy taxation was to blame for industry’s woes, and that only a measure of tax relief could reverse the trend by making goods more competitive. At first sight the argument seems to have a good deal of merit, for we know that in the course of the seventeenth century the burden of taxation increased in most Italian states. ⬛ A closer look, however, ought to make us hesitant to accept the loud complaints of merchants and artisans and their plans for relief at face value because what few data are available on the incidence of taxation on the price of manufactured goods suggest that the taxes were rather modest. ⬛ In the Genoa silk industry, for example, taxes accounted for a mere 5 percent to 6 percent of total costs; in Florence the government apparently taxed the price of woolen cloth at only 1 percent, in Milan at perhaps 2 percent. ⬛ Only in the case of Venice, where taxes represented a staggering 42 percent of the price of high-quality cloth, can we say with confidence that drastically slashing taxes would have made the industry more competitive. ⬛