Published by EH.Net (May 2022).

Molly C. Ball. *Navigating Life and Work in Old Republic São Paulo.
*Gainesville,
FL: University of Florida Press, 2020. xx + 271 pp. $35.00 (paper), ISBN
978-1-68340-171-1.

Reviewed by Guilherme Grandi for EH.Net.



“It is time to reencounter and reconsider economic history,” Molly Ball
writes in the introduction to her book *Navigating Life and Work in Old
Republic São Paulo.* For the researcher, a history lecturer at the
University of Rochester, the history of working-class families in São Paulo
during the Old Republic period is an ideal subject when it comes to
building on our knowledge of labor relations in this Latin American
immigrant city from 1891 to 1930. Yet why does she make this claim?
Probably because the history of labor and immigration in Brazil have
customarily been a subject of study within Social History and Sociology,
rather than Economic History. Nevertheless, this does not mean that there
is a dearth of excellent work on this subject, produced by economic
historians in Brazil and abroad.

*Navigating Life* finds its place among a set of studies where one of the
biggest references is the work of Warren Dean. Originally published in
1969, his book entitled *The Industrialization of São Paulo* opened up a
field of research opportunities on labor and industry in one of Latin
America’s immigration cities. Dean was a pioneer in highlighting the role
played by foreign migrants in the development of industry in São Paulo.
Other researchers followed Dean down this path, including Wilson Cano with
his *Raízes da concentracão industrial em São Paulo *(The Roots of
Industrial Concentration in São Paulo), first published in 1977. However,
Ball’s book is most importantly in dialog with immigration studies in
Brazil. It is an addition to other valuable studies on migration streams
and living conditions for workers coming into southeastern Brazil. In this
sense, she opens a window, allowing us to penetrate deeper into
rank-and-file *Paulistano* workers’ lives. Using an up-to-date statistical
method combined with other social research techniques, Ball lays bare some
of the quirks of the labor market in Old Republic São Paulo, such as the
discriminatory practices used against women workers, Portuguese immigrants,
and Afro-Brazilians.

It is crucial to put her study in perspective in relation to others,
because it has advanced an understanding of how life and work were
articulated in São Paulo during the period in question. It is interesting
to note that Sidney Chalhoub, the author of *Trabalho, lar e botequim* (Labor,
Home and Tavern), did something quite similar in his study on the daily
life of workers in Rio de Janeiro during the *belle époque*. Moreover, *Santos
e Imigração na Belle Époque* (Santos and Immigration in *Belle Époque*), a
diligent study by Marília Cánovas, also deserves mention regarding the
historical reality of Spanish immigrants in Santos, a port city in the
state of São Paulo. These works (the former published in 1986 and the
latter in 2017) provide us with a range of evidence that can be compared to
some of Ball’s findings.

Ethnic identity is one of them. Ball shows that there was a pronounced
difference in relation to workers’ nationality that strongly impacted how
immigrants entered São Paulo’s formal labor market and the results they
were capable of obtaining. The prejudice held by *Paulistano* entrepreneurs,
as identified by the author in her discussion of workers from Portugal, is
emblematic and revealing in this regard. She shows how Portuguese
immigrants experienced hiring discrimination in São Paulo, while German,
Austrian and Italian immigrants could hold jobs that led to mobility into
the working middle class. This unequal treatment also impacted access to
health and education services for their children and relatives. This meant
that Portuguese and Afro-Brazilians descendants were disproportionately
hired for unskilled positions as compared to other foreign nationals.
According to Ball, white workers were more likely to find a job in
medium-skilled positions, corresponding to nine out of every ten workers
hired. In contrast, black and *pardo* workers were more likely to be hired
for unskilled positions, accounting for around 19 percent of these
positions.

As Joel Wolfe had already pointed out in *Working Women, Working Man*, a
study published in 1993, the gender gap is another fascinating topic
highlighted by Ball. The wage disparity between men and women in the city
of São Paulo is shown by using original archival and primary sources, like
company reports, worker records, newspaper price databases, and
cost-of-living surveys that she found in researching several Brazilian,
American, and European archives. In examining the historical reality of
four economic sectors (railroad, energy and urban transport, textile, and
department stores), Ball discusses patterns and trends related to the hopes
and behaviors of workers in the *Paulistano* labor market. What
opportunities were available to them in terms of going on strike, job
replacement, wage bargaining, and so on? The author emphasizes how
different groups had shared expectations based on gender, racial, and
national identities. In fact, black people, unskilled workers, and women
frequently faced significant hiring discrimination and persistent wage
disparities in Old Republic São Paulo. The research she has undertaken
makes this clear and shows how difficult it was for these groups of people
to find opportunities for advancement and social mobility throughout this
period. She succinctly writes that “workers adapted their strategies to
navigate the discrimination they faced.”

The most remarkable feature of *Navigating Life* is its research method, in
line with New Economic History guidelines. Throughout the book’s six
chapters, but particularly in Chapters 1 and 4, robust statistical evidence
puts the labor history of Old Republic São Paulo at the same level that
others have already placed places like Buenos Aires in Argentina and New
York in the United States. Like São Paulo, these cities were highly sought
out by European immigrants during the so-called First Globalization, i.e.,
between 1870 and 1914. Undoubtedly, Ball’s book has already found a place
as essential literature in studies on living conditions experienced by
workers in São Paulo during the golden age of the coffee economy. With
plenty of well-founded arguments, it is an outstanding work of research
that goes beyond paraphrasing the best and most widely-known
interpretations of São Paulo’s economic and social history, so to speak,
along with classical works on Brazilian historiography. Researchers with an
interest in the labor history and economics of Brazil’s biggest city have a
lot to gain from a reading of *Navigating Life*.

References:

Cano, W. (1990), *Raízes da concentração industrial em São Paulo.* 3a ed.
São Paulo: Hucitec.

Cánovas, M.D.K. (2017), *Santos e Imigração na Belle Époque.* *Os Espanhóis
– Cotidiano Urbano, Práticas Associativas e Militância Política
(1880-1922).* São Paulo: Edusp.

Chalhoub, S. (2012), *Trabalho, lar e botrquim: o cotidiano dos
trabalhadores no Rio de Janeiro da belle époque. *3a ed. Campinas: Editora
da Unicamp.

Dean, W. (1969), *The Industrialization of São Paulo. 1880-1945.* Austin:
University of Texas Press.

Wolfe, J. (1993), *Working Women, Working Men: São Paulo and the Rise of
Brazil’s Industrial Working Class, 1900-1955.* Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.



Guilherme Grandi is Professor of Economics at University of São Paulo. His
research focuses on the history of transports, immigration, and labor
history. He is the author of *Estado e capital ferroviário em São
Paulo *(Alameda,
2013) and the co-organizer of *História Econômica do Brasil: Primeira
República e Era Vargas *(Hucitec/Eduff, 2020).

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