Searching arms for the farming: immigrants and migrants in São Paulo coffee economy in the late nineteenth century

Abstracts

O artigo traz algumas reflexões sobre as estratégias políticas engendradas pelos cafeicultores paulistas para arregimentar a força de trabalho necessária à expansão da economia cafeeira nas décadas finais do século XIX. Discute-se a presença de dois grupos que participaram desse processo: os imigrantes europeus e os nacionais livres, no caso, os retirantes fugidos das secas que assolaram o sertão cearense.

movimentos migratórios; cafeicultura; mão de obra; expropriação; mercado de trabalho

ARTICLES

Searching arms for the farming: immigrants and migrants in São Paulo coffee economy in the late nineteenth century

Departamento de História, Faculdade de Ciências e letras/Assis, Universidade estadual Paulista (Unesp). [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

The article offers some thoughts on the political strategies devised by the São Paulo coffee producers to recruit the labor needed for the expansion of the coffee economy in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It discusses the presence of two groups that took part of that process: the European immigrants and the free citizens, in case, the escapes migrants of droughts which ravaged the hinterland Ceará.

Keywords: migratory movements; coffee growing; labor; expropriation; labor market

COFFEE EXPANSION AND LABOR

From the 1870s onwards Brazilian coffee production increased rapidly. In this scenario the west of São Paulo (known as the oeste Paulista) stood out, with the result that the following decade the province was the largest coffee producer in the country. Due to the growth of world demand, the expansion of coffee accumulation intensified with the progress of processing methods and the construction of railways. This resulted in increased profits, due to increased productivity and the reduction of costs. New areas were incorporated, expanding the agricultural frontier, and increasing the need for labor.

The development of the coffee economy, thus, worsened the problem of the supply of labor for agriculture. While in the oldest areas – Vale do Paraíba and the parts of the oeste Paulista opened first – slave labor seems to have be used for agricultural toil, in the pioneer zones the restricted offer, associated with the high price of slaves, induced a search for alternatives. This did not prevent coffee, with the expansion of plantations, from demanding a final effort from the reserves of slaves available in other less profitable activities, obliging small mercantile companies to diversify to meet the labor shortage. The process of the concentration of the slave population in plantations was strengthened while small holdings came to use free labor most intensely.

Basically there were three types of workers: slaves, immigrants, and free Brazilians. In São Paulo, between 1877 and 1880 the stock of captives remained practically unaltered, while the entrance of foreigners was still relatively small, especially when compared with the numbers of mass immigration from the end of the 1880s. The free poor, nevertheless, expanded in the province. Autonomous growth, internal migration, and the various forms of slave emancipation contributed to this.

The participation of the so-called caboclo free poor in the pioneer areas gained importance. As plantation owners did not use their slaves in tasks that put at risk their assets, the caboclos were traditionally used to for clearing forests and were hired on contracts,

Supported by the 1866 Report of the Minister of Agricultural Affairs, emília Viotti states that there is evidence that São Paulo was starting to practice the division of labor that was part of coffee growing. People from outside the planation were hired to prepare and till the soil, for the planting, and to look after the coffee fields in the four to six year period (Costa, 1998, p.189).

Affonso Taunay, based on Delden laerne, describes the opening of new coffee plantations by contractors in the 1880s.

Generally, it was done by Mineiros, people from Minas Gerais, who set themselves up temporarily, here and yonder. The plantation owners gave them a coffee field planted by slaves, under the condition that they would carefully tend the new crops for four consecutive years, and upon the payment of 300 – 400 réis per bush. These people also replanted, with new shoots, any possible fallow areas in the coffee field. They had the right to grow food for themselves during these four years. (Taunay, 1943a, p.140)

The incipient division of labor – forest clearance, formation of coffee fields, handling, and harvesting – allowed the plantation owners to concentrate their slaves on tasks directly linked to coffee growing. Activities which were also done by european immigrants in parceria (sharecropping) contracts and later in the colonato system.

In São Paulo the privileged economic conditions allowed the establishment of an elevated flow of foreign workers, thereby permitting coffee production costs to be lowered. Fundamental for this was the participation of the state, subsidizing the transport of immigrants who had no other option than to sell their labor. The great flow was fundamental for the maintenance of low wages and the amount of workers on plantations, since turnover was high.

As a result the connection of immigrants with settlements were weakened, so that these almost exclusively assumed the function of a channel of labor force supply for large plantations. The poor free Brazilians, despite being despised by a large part of the dominant groups, also fulfilled their role within the perspective of the increased offer of labor. Their hiring for tasks in the expansion of frontiers – such as opening new plantations and the formation of new coffee fields – allowed an expansion in coffee accumulation, at the same time that it permitted the use of immigrant labor in services directly related to coffee growing.

In the middle of the crisis of slavery, the junction of these two groups – Brazilian workers and immigrant workers – implied a further artifice for the reduction of labor reproduction costs in the coffee economy. Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that the transition to free labor did not occur in a similar manner all over Brazil. In São Paulo, as has been emphasized, the profitability of the coffee economy in the second half of the nineteenth century allowed the financing of european immigration, while in other regions where there was no capital to invest in immigrants, so free Brazilian labor was used.

In the Northeastern sugar region, the slaves sold to the South-Central region were replaced by free workers, enlisted in various manners. 'Conditional' residents established themselves on lands owned by sugar-mill owners, where they cleared forests and made small roçados (areas where they could grow crops), and in exchange were required to work for two or three days a week for free, or at a low wage, in the cultivation of sugarcane. The relationship with parceiros or rendeiros was based on the concession of lands, where the agricultural worker had to plant sugarcane and give the landowner half of the harvest. Skilled employed workers also existed, and in the harvest months the hiring of daily workers was common (eisenberg, 1977).

However, the alternatives consolidated in each region should not be analyzed in a watertight manner in the transition to free labor. In the second half of the nineteenth century the legislation of the empire on immigration and colonization and the reports of the presidents of the various provinces are rich in information about attempts and intentions to attract immigrants to colonize lands and develop production by improving agricultural techniques, always associated with the idea that european brought progress with them. on the other hand, even the province of São Paulo did not avoid using Brazilian workers on large plantations.

The aim of this article is the following: reflect on the strategies used by the agrarian Paulista elite to enlist the labor force necessary for the expansion of the coffee economy. For this two groups who participated in this process will be focused on: european immigrants, widely studied in the historiography about coffee; and the Cearense migrants who moved to São Paulo during the great droughts which afflicted the Northeast sertão in the final decades of the nineteenth century: 1877-1879, 1888-1889 and 1900-1901.

EUROPEAN IMMIGRANTS

It can be considered that the immigration directed by the Paulista government began in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, there are reports that by 1827 an incipient policy of forming settlements was in practice. The first settlement was established in the Rio Negro sertão, on land that is now in Paraná, but which at the time was still part of the Paulista province. German immigrants arrived (200 in 1827 and 726 in 1828), brought from Bremen by the envoy of the imperial government, Major Jorge Antonio Schäffer. one of the clauses on the colonists' contract calls attention, as it obliged them to take up arms if necessary, as well as to subject their children to military service.

In 1836 27 settlers arrived with their families. They were engaged in the services related to the Santos railway. A year later, the president of the province ordered Major João Bloem, then travelling through europe, to hire workers for the same railway. At the end of 1838, 277 individuals arrived in Santos with 59 women and children, almost all from Prussia, though part of them did not accept to work in Santos, moving instead to the Ypanema ironworks.

When the slave trade ceased in the 1850s, interest in this type of colonist intensified. São Paulo province signed two contracts with Vergueiro & Cia. The first, on 20 August 1852, stipulated the annual introduction of 500 German, Portuguese, and other nationalities, colonists, in family groups. There was no direct subvention, but the government was obliged to lend the company 25 contos de réis per year for three years. The second, from 4 September 1854, involved the annual introduction of one thousand colonists, in the same conditions as the previous contract.

The tendency of plantation owners to found colonies is almost general, doing this due to the lack of whites for farming or because they were satisfied with the results obtained from the ones they have established. For which reason it is to be expected that they will progressively increase the number of them.

In 1852, there existed the colonies of Sete Quedas, founded by Joaquim Bonifácio do Amaral, and São lourenço, by luiz Antonio de Souza Barros, both in Campinas; Senador Queiroz in limeira, founded by Senator Francisco de Souza Queiroz; Boa-Vista, by Benedicto Antonio de Camargo, and Bery, by José elias Pacheco Jordão, in Rio Claro. In 1853, Carumbatahy, founded by Fr. Manoel Rosa de Carvalho, in Rio Claro, and São Joaquim, belonging to Joaquim Benedicto Queiroz Telles, in Jundiaí. In 1854, the colonies Morro Grande, owned by João Ribeiro dos Santos Camargo, in Rio Claro; in Jundiaí Santo Antonio, belonging to Comendador Antonio Queiroz Telles, and São José, owned by Antonio Joaquim Pereira Guimarães. All anchored in the par-ceria system, similar to what Campos Vergueiro had established.

Symbolized by the revolt of the colonists on the Ibicaba plantation in 1857, the parceria system, with so many contradictions, rapidly lost prestige among colonists and plantation owners. The failure of this system can be explained by several factors, such as problems with payment for coffee harvests, the enormous debts accumulated by colonists before they reached the plantations, and abuses on the part of land owners, who did not hesitate to resort to state intervention to oblige their parceiros to fulfill their contracts.

Revolts and protests in various colonies were, to an extent, the result of the failed expectations of both sides: the colonists came with the aim of becoming landholders, but felt they were reduced to the situation of slaves; plantation owners, used to dealing with slave labor, sought a type of worker who would replace them in the agricultural labor, at the same time that they had difficulty in dealing with the contractual relations.

These episodes contributed to discrediting the parceria system and to demoralizing national and Paulista migration policy, causing a decline in the already modest flow of immigrants. In 1871, the approval of the Ventre Livre law brought with it the return of discussion about the problem of labor for agriculture, reviving the question of immigration. The São Paulo government signed contracts with the recently created Associação Auxiliadora da Colonização e da Imigração (Immigration and Colonization Assistant Association) for the introduction of 15,000 european immigrants. Intended to last five years, involved in the organization were important plantation owners such as Francisco Antonio de Souza Queiroz and Antonio da Silva Prado. However, this agreement did not bear significant fruit, since between 18721874, only 489 immigrants arrived.

In the 1880s, the demands of labor intensified, not just because of their growth, but also due to the strength of the abolitionist movement which put slavery at risk. The few immigrants who the plantation owners ordered sent from europe were no longer enough; this recruitment had to be expanded. The state was called on to promote, address, and organize transoceanic immigration, becoming the guarantor, in relation to land owners, of the constant supply for labor for plantations. It is at this moment that Paulista immigration policy underwent in practice a change in direction, starting to finance the obtaining of labor for agriculture. A task of great dimensions – as shown by the annual entrances of immigrations after 1887 – which only the state was able to carry out, as an instrument of actions for the plantation owners. Since the beginning of the decade, some plantation owners in the province had tried, as a solution for the problem of labor for coffee plantations, to implement a subsidized immigration policy. Freely using the provincial funds and increasingly marking the position of São Paulo in the national context, they managed to put this policy into effect. With government subsidies, plantation owners no longer needed to individually pay for the expenses of importing workers, and the problem of debts was resolved. The ever increasing flow of european workers, especially Italians, made the legal compulsion of work as established by the 1879 law of Tenancy and Services unnecessary, a law would afterwards be seriously prejudicial to attract more immigrants. It was revoked by an 1890 decree.

In 1884, the Paulista government opened financial credits for the introduction of immigrants, and in 1885 it began to subsidize directly transport costs. Part of the resources, however, were aimed at the colonization program, whose objective was the creation of settlements. In 1886, political groups from the new West assumed political control of the province, thereby assuring that the financial resources provided to the administration would be channeled to large plantations, in other words, guaranteeing the supply of labor through mass immigration.

The importation of large numbers of subsidized foreign workers was a victory for the plantation owners from the fringes of the Westward expansion. These had made themselves represented in the high ranks of the government and had a strong lobbying power to influence immigration policy, which in a gradual and consistent manner managed to promote the coming of immigrants as a labor force for the plantations.

This met strong opposition in the Central Immigration Society, led by Alfredo d'escragnolle Taunay, André Rebouças and Henrique Rohan, whose purpose was to subsidize immigrants, giving them land and support for the formation of small food producing properties. Founded in Rio de Janeiro on 17 November 1883, it made efforts to get mortgaged plantations divided into lots that could be bought by immigrants and Brazilian colonists. Its policy aimed to stimulate small landholdings, starting from the idea that the desire of the immigrant was always to become a landholder. However, this was not what the greater part of Paulista plantation owners thought, whose concern was always to achieve labor for their crops.

The participation of the Paulista public authorities, subsidizing the voyage to Brazil, and the serious economic problems of some european countries, such as Italy, made the mass transfer of labor from the old World to the New feasible. A flow of immigrants which did not directly interest the plantation owners as a business, attracted men and companies charged with recruiting them and transporting them.

Initially, these entrepreneurs signed agreements directly with the Paulista government. A contract dated 11 April 1885 with Henri Raffard, luis Bianchi Betoldi and José Antunes dos Santos to bring six thousand immigrants from lombardy, Tirol, Galicia, Azores and the Canaries; the contract dated 14 April 1885 with Francisco Ferreira de Moraes to bring two thousand immigrants; the contract dated 25 April 1885 with R. o. lobedans to bring two thousand immigrants from Austria and Germany; the contract dated 6 May 1885 with Companhia de Colonização Agrícola to bring 780 people form the Azores; the contract dated 17 May 1886 with José Antunes dos Santos, to bring four thousand immigrants from the Canaries, the Azores, and Madeira, as well as one thousand Swedes, Danes, and Germans.

A policy with well laid out objectives and the knowledge of the european reality contributed to the success that the Promotion Society had in relation to encouraging immigration. The preferential location for action was Italy. Queiroz Telles (Viscount Parnaíba), president of the province between 1886 and 1887, had visited eight european countries in 1878, and returned enthusiastic about their potential as a source of labor, especially in relation to the Italian peninsula (Morse, 1970, pp.223-224).

A non-profit making body, the Promotion Society centralized contracts for the introduction of immigrant subsidized by state money. It was easier for plantation owners to find in europe the desired immigrants: farming families without economic resources, who would be brought to work in the plantations. In the immigration contracts this option clearly appears, as it was required that at least 90% of the immigrants would be of this type.

Even the Brás Immigrant Hostel, built with funds from the Paulista government and partially opened in 1887, came to be run by the Promotion Society after 1888, ceded in a contract in which the government agreed to provide an annual subvention of 20 contos de réis, in monthly payments.

During its existence, the Immigration Promotion Society not only served the interests of plantation owners, but also functioned as channel for the transfer of public resources to the companies hired to introduce immigrants. With significant revenue which, according to its 1892 report, amounted to 5800 contos de réis, including the transport of immigrants and the costs of their bed and board between october 1887 and December 1891.

Of all the contracts for bringing immigrants, it is worth noting those signed with Angelo Fiorita & C., the principal partners of the Immigration Promotion Society, responsible, according to Renzo Grosselli, for the arrival of around one million immigrants throughout Brazil.

On 31 December 1895, after bringing more than 220,000 immigrants to São Paulo,

Certainly, when he took office Prudente de Moraes defended the interests of his native state, including the basilar question of the supply of labor for coffee plantations. Nevertheless, his actions did not seek to impose a Paulist migration policy on the entire nation, as Alvim affirms. To the contrary, things were done to remove the federal government from questions related to immigration and to leave it the responsibility of the states. The principal landmark in this new direction was the intention, based on law no. 360, dated 30 December 1895, to transfer the contract celebrated with the Metropolitan Company to the federative units or to rescind it, as happened in September 1896. In practice, this marked the end of the intervention of the republican government in services related to the bringing immigrants to the country, ratifying its decentralization.

In relation to the allocation of immigrants to plantations, the Paulista government financed their railway transport in response to the request of the plantation owners. Recruitment varied according to the structure created to receive the immigrants. In the period before the construction of Brás Immigrant Hostel, the reception and distribution services showed signs of organization. At the end of the 1870s, the Paulista government rented houses closes to luz railway station to houses those newly arrived from the ports of Santos and Rio de Janeiro. In 1885, it started to use lodgings in Bom Retiro which rapidly became insufficient due to the increase in the migratory flow.

In this period, the plantation owners were even able to request immigrants from the government via telegram. Afterwards the 'request formula' was drafted, whereby plantation owners could stipulate the amount of immigrants required, and were obliged to include a certificate from the Municipal Agricultural Commission about their integrity and profession. During the period of mass immigration, immigration procedures and laws, which underwent few significant alterations, always reflected the requirements of the other side of the Atlantic.

The official agencies responsible for immigration policies underwent changes over time, but their principal objective was never altered: maintaining meticulous control and obtaining the labor necessary for the coffee plantations. Annexed to the hostel were offices of the Inspectorate of lands, Colonization, and Immigration, afterwards the Directorate of lands, Colonization, and Immigration and after 1905 the official labor and Colonization Agency, which also had a currency exchange and a post and telegraphs office. In 1911 the official Placement Agency was created, linked to the State Department of labor, responsible until 1930 for questions involving immigrants.

The experience that began in the 1870s served as the first attempt to tackle problem of organizing to encourage and receive immigration, which required rapid responses to meet the effects of the great offer and demand. Plantation owners, supported by the state, were capable of seeking satisfactory solutions, at least for their own immediate interests.

It is therefore possible to perceive the architecture of a wide-ranging process which aimed to import an abundant and cheap labor force for large properties. A mass of expropriated workers who would not be able to acquire their own lands of economic autonomy (Kowarick, 1994, p.90). Made feasible by cheap transport, this great flow of labor not only supplied the plantations at a low cost, but also protected plantation owners against great labor mobility, since it permitted the continuous repositioning of the labor force. This was only possible due to the serious crisis afflicting Italy, where peasants were losing their lands and could not be absorbed by the country's economy.

Given this scenario, possibilities were opened for the insertion of the Brazilian worker, thereby indicating the need to relativize what the historiography calls the contempt of the Paulista plantation owners for the free poor Brazilians, by preventing their participation in the coffee economy.

CEARENSE MIGRANTS

It was in the context of the expansion of coffee growing and the consequent demand for labor that the first family groups of migrants fleeing from drought arrived in São Paulo.

On the São Paulo das Cachoeiras plantation in Amparo, the coffee was only tended by Brazilian labor. The report presented to the provincial president about the situation in the middle of the 1880s, describes in details the type of work used there:

Coffee has been planted by Cearense and Paulista contractors, who have taken responsibility for planting and tending the coffee for four years, at 400 reis per plant, and have the right to plant between the coffee buses all the cereals necessary for their sustenance, and are obliged to keep the plantations clean, and in the case of delays, do whatever is required of them.

The contractors have the choice to send their children to the colony school, and are treated as equals by the administration. There is no written contract; according to the laws in force, there are only verbal agreements with the contractors. No advances are made by the colony administration, except in relation to the services provided, so that at any moment the contractor wants to leave, his account is liquidated and they can leave in peace, receiving the balance, if there is one, in their favor; for this they had dual ledgers, in which the conditions of the contractor were stated, as well as the account of how much they owed, signed by both parties, so that the finalization of accounts, comparing the two ledgers, is a question of minutes.

Of the 12 Cearense families contracted for services in the colony, seven liquidated their accounts and left paid and in harmony with the owners, having handed over the plantations that they had taken care of.

There therefore remain five families who, satisfied, continue to perform the services they are required to. The contractors live in their own houses, built by them alongside the plantations at their own expenses.

The information contained in the report shows the use of these workers in the planting and handling of the coffee plantations for four years, receiving 400 réis per bush. Similar to the description of Affonso Taunay, given above, it further reinforces the type of insertion of the poor free man – especially migrants – in the freely expanding export economy.

Since the lack of labor could not prevent coffee accumulation, some plantation owners did not hesitate to also use Brazilian labor. In this sense, the presence of Paulista families is clarifying, as alongside the Cearenses they formed the body of workers of this plantation.

Very probably the Cearense families mentioned in the document arrived in that property in 1878. In the documentation belonging to the collection of the São Paulo State Archive, together with a letter from a colonization agent, asking for passage for eight migrants for the municipality of Amparo, a letter from the owners of the São Paulo das Cachoeiras plantation was found, stating that they had hired these workers: "We have hired for our plantation, São Paulo das Caxoeiras, the below named Cearenses, for whom we request passage to the city of Amparo, for the 23rd of this month."

The Angélica plantation, sold by the Vergueiro family to the london & Brazilian Bank, restarted its activities solely with free workers. According to Warren Dean, in 1878 more than six hundred migrants were hired by the administrator (Dean, 1977, pp.118-119). The Colonist Registration Book of the Rio de Janeiro Inspectorate of lands and Colonization reports the departure of migrants from the hostel, hired for work on the Angélica plantation: "Sr. Scoth Blacklaw, bringing to the Angélica plantation owned by the Banco Inglez the Cearenses listed below, commits himself to give a house to each head of family and to pay the work of each person, according to the price agreed with them."

Also in relation to the recruitment of Cearense migrants, other plantations need to mentioned. The property of Barão Porto Feliz, located at Cordeiro Station, in the limeira region, received 101 individuals; in Guaratinguetá, the plantation owner Raphael Brotero hired another 79. Interest in these workers was high, so much so that Brotero sent a telegram to the president of the province requesting more migrants: "Very few Cearenses have arrived. Send another 20 families."

Starting in January 1878, the arrival of the migrants was already expected. At the end of 1877, the Inspectorate, attentive to the need to increase the quarters for the reception not only of foreign immigrants, but also Brazilian migrants, suggested the renting of houses close to luz railway station.

The movement of the hostel was accompanied by daily charts with entrances and departures, with information about the age and nationality of individuals. In this charts, it can be seen that the Cearense families composed the absolute majority of those who passed through the hostel afterwards going to the coffee plantations. However, it should not be forgotten that at this time many european immigrants entered São Paulo on contracts with private agents, going directly to plantations, without state help.

In turn, the imperial government did much more than just finance the transport. Some telegrams sent in 1878 by the then Minister of Agriculture and President of the Council of Ministers, Cansansão de Sinimbú, to the head of the executive of São Paulo province, demonstrate that the central authorities also participated in the organization and distribution of the migrants then in the Capital.

The presence of the Cearenses, part of a group generically called 'Brazilian workers,' even had repercussions in the 1878 Agricultural Congress in Rio de Janeiro. Major Manoel de Freitas Novaes, from Queluz, a municipality in the Paulista Paraíba Valley, who had gone several times to the hostels in Rio de Janeiro, hiring 294 migrants (47 families) for his colonies,

There is a colony that started 28 years ago with four so-called caboclo families ... but in it there is not a single contractor; what predominates there is the most perfect spontaneity of these people, it is the liberty they have, not only to work, but to enjoy... The caboclo is better than the foreigner, because they enter into the forest and, unscathed, clear the trees; while the foreigners who enter into the sertão are rendered useless by the insects that attack them.

Continuing, the Major described the labor systems in his colonies: "There are mixed colonies, who are paid on the day they harvest the coffee; others who give the coffee already prepared, and also others paid per day or contract."

In 1879, the movement of Cearenses to São Paulo was very small. In an 1880 report, the president of the province mentioned that only 24 migrants had come.

The numbers of the flow diverges according to each source, but they are significant. The data compiled in the books of the Companhia de Vapores show that more than nine thousand migrants were brought to the South Central region, while the destination of 2892 (547 families) was the province of São Paulo.

A significant part of these migrants sent to São Paulo became part of the coffee economy, in a similar form to european workers. At least this is what is indicated by the records of those who passed through the Brás Immigrant Hostel. A symbol of Italian immigration, the place also received Brazilian migrants: 417 people (81 families), though only 23 records identified their final destination – Rio Claro, Rebouças, Capivari, Ribeirão Preto and louveira.

The destination of these men, women, and children, nevertheless, concerned some well-known Cearenses. Rodolpho Theophilo, a fierce critic of the abandonment of the suffering population, described the migration of his people to the South Central region in his work about the Ceará droughts. He noted that these workers were used as labor in the coffee plantations.

We who were the first to free our slaves, are now sold to the plantation owners in the South and who knows, but in their extensive coffee plantations where we will replace the slaves we freed, we will find instead the whip of the overseer, the trunk, or the iron collar as punishment for the most glorious deed – the extinction of slavery. (Theophilo, 1901, p.46)

In 1898, after 10 years of intense migratory flow, the arrival of foreigners in São Paulo fell noticeably. In 1899 the official numbers indicate that more foreigners left than entered, a fact repeated in 1900. At the turn of the century, an immigration deficit emerged, which did not correspond to the expectation of the coffee planters. Between the end of 1900 and the beginning of 1901, a new levy of migrants fleeing the drought reached São Paulo. The books of the Immigrant Hostel registered this event. Along with the Italian settlements, also noted was the arrival of 441 Cearenses, Baianos, and Pernambucanos coming from Rio de Janeiro.

Once again the migrants were welcome. The demand for labor was concentrated in the newest coffee regions, called Paulista, Mogiana and Araraquarense, where coffee was expanding freely. Using the records of the Immigrant Hostel between 1898 and 1902, Pierre Monbeig identified the destination of european families which passed through there: Ribeirão Preto received 14,293 immigrants; São Simão, 7,837; São Carlos do Pinhal, 7,739; Araraquara, 7,679; Mococa, 2,329; Amparo, 2,138 and Rio Claro, 2,919 (Monbeig, 1984, pp.172-173). These three zones also received migrants, sent to the plantations located in the municipalities of Mococa, São Manoel, Ribeirão Preto, Bom Jardim and Valinhos.

FAMILIES OF IMMIGRANTS AND MIGRANTS

In São Paulo, establishment of new production relations was combined with the immigration of european workers. A resource to constitute the labor force for coffee growing and to replace captive labor with free labor, forged without the taint of slavery.

Affonso Taunay's study of coffee provides information about the use of Brazilian labor alongside immigrants on the same property. In the 1880s, the Ibicaba plantation contained Germans, Portuguese, and Cearense migrants. All looked after new plantations which had previously been planted by slaves workers and received pre-established values for the four annual harvests and per each alqueire harvested (Taunay, 1943b, pp.114-116).

Similar to european immigrants, the absolute majority of Cearenses migrated in family groups. Few individuals arrived alone in São Paulo. In 1878, the colonization agent divided the migrants who passed through the hostel into three age groups: those above nine; from two to nine; and less than two, revealing, from what it seems, a concern not only with the price of fares, but also with the amount of labor available in the plantations. Defended by the plantation owners and by part of the intellectual elite of the time, family migration was the rule among these migrants, like the european immigrants.

The colonization system was organized on a family basis, combining the strength of the husband, wife, and children above seven years of age. The colonists combined the planting of coffee with the production of a substantial part of their means of living. In the new plantations they could plant corn, beans, and other supplies among the coffee bushes; in the older ones, the owner generally ceded land for these crops. Unconsumed excess was sold to traders, or even to the plantation owner.

Family units were preferred by land owners, since they constituted a cheap market reserve, thereby representing a lower acquisition cost for labor. Provincial law no. 28, dated 28 March 1884, which provided financial credit to introduce immigrants to large plantations, contained a paragraph stating the obligation of family composition. The advantages were visible, especially at harvest time, when the wives and children of workers met the additional demand. Family labor was convenient for the colonist, since the cooperation of all members allowed opportunities for gain to be best taken advantage of.

The greater the number of family workers the greater the amount of coffee collected, creating favorable conditions on both sides: the plantation owner managed to reduce the cost of wages; the colonist, depending on the intensification of the work imposed on the families, could increase their monetary earnings. Family division existed even during harvesting: men collected the high parts of the coffee plant, while women the intermediary parts, and children the bottom.

Before the great flow of immigrants, plantation owners sought to resolve the problem of lack of labor. They counted on the intensification of exploitation of slave labor, with the insertion of free Brazilians and the still modest arrival of europeans.

Wilson Cano calculated that the demand in the period between 1881 and 1885, when the coffee planted at the end of the 1870s reached maturity, reached 62,500 workers. Based on official sources, he states that at this time 22,000 immigrants entered São Paulo, resulting in a deficit of a little over 40,000 workers necessary for the expansion of coffee planting. This fact led to the hypothesis of the entrance of foreigners (Cano, 1981, p.38).

Cheywa Spindel highlighted that this hypothesis seemed little supported, especially analyzing the changes in the form and intensity of the use of free Brazilian and slave labor in the period in question. According to her, if the contribution of free Brazilians to the formation and handling of coffee plantations is incorporated in these calculations, it can be supposed that a large number of the liberated slaves were free from these charges and allocated to the coffee plantations already in production (Spindel, 1979, p.75).

The use of Brazilian workers to supplement, not only slave labor but also immigrant, can thus be observed, which seems to have occurred even with the growth of immigration after 1886. Through the division of labor caipiras, caboclos, and migrants were incorporated, who hired for contracts cleared forests for the opening of new plantations. With the crisis of slavery, there also opened the possibility of using them in the formation of new coffee plantations for a determined period. In this way the tasks related to the handling and harvesting of coffee were reserved to slaves and immigrants.

Generally speaking, the free poor had a fundamental role in the division of labor to obtain greater profitability, within the spectrum of available workers: slaves, immigrants, and Brazilians. Cheywa Spindel observes that this population represented an excess of labor available at a low costs, expanding the labor contingent and creating conditions for the concentration of coffee plantations already prepared or in production by slave or colonist labor, both with a higher cost than free Brazilian labor. She also emphasized that in addition to the expansion of plantations, another two factors favored the search for Brazilian labor: the gradual process of the legal extinction of the slave system and the failure of the first attempts to integrate foreign immigrants in the parceria system (ibidem, pp.66-67).

Nevertheless, she appears to consider that only economic aspects defined the role of free Brazilians in the coffee plantations, neglecting important factors such as the resistance of this population to be transformed into a labor force. While contract services were cheaper and convenient for plantation owners, it cannot be denied that, as the fruit of an 'agreement' between the two parties, it also dealt with some socio-cultural aspects of the free poor sectors, in the attempt to maintain their independent mode of life. In this way while they survived on subsistence agriculture, they managed to earn extra from services provided for determined periods.

The traditional forms of access and the use of land by the free population limited their expropriation. A traditional mode of life, secularly forged, characterized by resistance to systematic work for another, as Maria Sylvia de Carvalho Franco accurately showed. According to the historian, the availability of land not used by export agriculture allowed the existence of free poor sectors on the fringes of slavery, establishing limits to the proletarization of agricultural workers, who while they encountered minimal conditions of survival, resisted the imposition of land owners, bypassing the export productive process (Franco, 1997).

The dramatic context of droughts which impacted on the Northeastern sertão and especially Ceará, after 1877, meant that large amount of the population were unable to maintain their traditional system of life. Fleeing from the drought, losing their lands, their labor relations, their solidarities and sociability, these expropriated migrants were available to be inserted in new productive situations.

The migrants sent to São Paulo represented an increase in the offer of the potential labor force for coffee plantations. The droughts coincided with the lack of labor. In 1878, the expansion of plantations contrasted with the disseminating results of the experience with foreign workers. In 1888, the abolition of slavery demanded more urgent solution for the supply of labor. At the turn of the century, the immigration deficit made the large coffee growers apprehensive.

Their services were required by plantation owners for the opening of coffee plantations, handling, and harvest. The migration of family groups corresponded to the interest of coffee growers. Many came also with the experience of family work in the cotton plantations in the Cearense sertão, which possibly favored their adaptation. While the Brazilian elite disqualified Brazilian workers, Cearense migrants were still called on to participate, offering their labor force for coffee accumulation.

Nevertheless, the importance of these migrants cannot be overestimated within the general context of the São Paulo coffee economy. And this is not the objective of this article. From the 1880s onwards, european immigrants who arrived and were directed to plantations always constituted a constant and much superior flow. A direct response to the economic conditions of the region of origin, especially of Italy – where this movement represented one of the forms of resistance to the process of proletarization –, and to the policies of attraction developed in Brazil, particularly in São Paulo; in other words, propaganda and free transport.

It is not only the numbers of europeans arriving which demonstrated their greater importance within the coffee economy, but also the effort made to bring them, both political and financial. The striking trait of the Paulista immigration program was the subvention of the passage. This ambitious project, nevertheless, can also be characterized by the creation of the Immigration Promotion Society and the construction of Brás Immigrant Hostel.

A fundamental part of the project during its existence (1886-1895), the Promotion Society was the instrument which allowed the implementation of an immigration program structured to meet the needs of the large coffee plantations, through the establishment of large contracts to bring immigrants. The creation of the Immigrant Hostel, in turn, represented an important strategy to centralize foreign labor – the migrants were also housed there – who arrived in large numbers, allocating them in accordance with the demand of the coffee plantations. It can, therefore, be stated that the geographic space for the recruiting and direct contact of plantation owners with the labor force was strategically moved from europe to São Paulo.

The situation was different in the case of the Cearense migrants. of course the plantation owners had the support of the state – who financed the transport and accommodation expenses – in order not to waste the chance provided by the drought and to bring the labor so needed by the large exporting agriculture. This situation, however, was not configured in the systematic policy of the recruitment of this population. An opportunity to take advantage of the Cearense migrants emerged, as the latter, removed from their old way of life, were ready to be transformed into a labor force available for coffee growing.

Organized along slaveholding molds, Paulista coffee growing opened space for experiences with other forms of labor. Their economic expansion and dynamism created the conditions to overcome dependence on slave labor, opening the way for the participation of european immigrants in labor systems – parceria, contracting of services, and later colonato – which were presented as alternatives to the former productive structure. Certainly, Brazilian workers also had their place, and Cearenses migrants are proof of this.

Nevertheless, it should be considered that the level of integration of the free poor Brazilian in the coffee economy was initially delimitated by slavery and afterwards by proposals for the incorporation of foreign labor, which intensified after the final decades of the nineteenth century. Proposals which, in principle, valorized northern europeans; the hypothesis of the bringing of Chinese and the use of Brazilians was considered; however, finally, they surrendered to the europeans available at that moment: the Italians and, to a lesser extent, the Portuguese and Spanish.

ALENCASTRO highlighted that since colonial times, Brazilian productive organization demanded a labor force imported via the Atlantic: the dynamic sectors of the economy depended on the slave trade, and later on dealing with european immigrants. According to him, the Brazilian labor market was 'deterritorialized' between 1550 and 1930, when the principal labor contingent was born and grew up outside the national and colonial territory (ALENCASTRO, 2000, p.354).

In the case of the Paulista coffee economy, the creation of its labor market presented a similar characteristic: the strong presence of the offer of imported labor, added by internal migration. As Chiara Vangelista has noted, in essence the proletarization process of the mass of workers in the coffee plantation occurred outside of São Paulo. In other words, on the one hand, european immigrants rejected by their economic system of origin; and the other by migrants from various parts of Brazil (Vangelista, 1991, p.74), particularly Cearenses fleeing from drought.

In summary, movements of populations which, for one reason or another, felt expropriated in their means of life, and resolved or felt obliged to leave their locations of origin, in an attempt to resist this process. on their part, the large Paulista coffee planters had a clear idea about the type of labor necessary and what to do to obtain this. Martinho Prado Júnior, principal defender of immigration, expressed in his speech to the Provincial legislative Assembly at the beginning of 1888 in an objective manner what the ideal plantation worker was, by drawing important to the financing of trans-Atlantic crossing: "immigrants with money are useless to us."

REFERENCES

• ALENCASTRO, Luiz Felipe de. O trato dos viventes: formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000.
• ALVIM, Zuleika M. F. Brava gente! Os italianos em São Paulo, 1870-1920. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986.
• CANO, Wilson. Raízes da concentração industrial de São Paulo 2.ed. São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz, 1981.
• CONGRESSO AGRÍCOLA, Rio de Janeiro, 1878. Introdução e notas de José Murilo de Carvalho. Edição fac-similar. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 1988.
• COSTA, Emília Viotti da. Da senzala à colônia 3.ed. São Paulo: Ed. Unesp, 1998.
• DEAN, Warren. Rio Claro: um sistema brasileiro de grande lavoura (1820-1920). Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1977.
• EISENBERG, Peter L. Modernização sem mudança: a indústria açucareira em Pernambuco, 1840-1910. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1977.
• FRANCO, Maria Sylvia de Carvalho. Homens livres na ordem escravocrata 4.ed. São Paulo: Ed. Unesp, 1997.
• GONÇALVES, Paulo Cesar. Mercadores de braços: riqueza e acumulação na organização da emigração europeia para o Novo Mundo. São Paulo: Alameda, 2012.
• _______. Migração e mão-de-obra: retirantes cearenses na economia cafeeira do Centro-Sul (1877-1901). São Paulo: Humanitas, 2006.
• GROSSELLI, Renzo Maria. Di schiavi bianchi a coloni: un progetto per le fazendas; contadini trentini (veneti e lombradi) nelle foreste brasiliane. Trento: s.n., 1991.
• HALL, Michael M. Origins of mass migration in Brazil, 1871-1914 Tese (Doutorado) Columbia University. Nova York, 1969.
• KOWARICK, Lúcio. Trabalho e vadiagem: a origem do trabalho livre no Brasil. 2.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1994.
• MARTINS, José de Souza. O cativeiro da terra 6.ed. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1996.
• MENDES, Plinio Silveira. São Paulo e seus serviços administrativos de imigração. Boletim do Serviço de Imigração e Colonização, São Paulo: Secretaria da Agricultura, Indústria e Comércio, n.4, 1941, p.85-99.
• MONBEIG, Pierre. Pioneiros e Fazendeiros de São Paulo São Paulo: Hucitec; Polis, 1984.
• MORSE, Richard M. Formação Histórica de São Paulo (de comunidade à metrópole) São Paulo: Difusão Europeia do Livro, 1970.
• SPINDEL, Cheywa R. Homens e máquinas na transição de uma economia cafeeira Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1979.
• TAUNAY, Affonso d'Escragnolle. História do café no Brasil v.7. Rio de Janeiro: Departamento Nacional do Café, 1943a.
• _______. História do café no Brasil v.8. Rio de Janeiro: Departamento Nacional do Café, 1943b.
• THEOPHILO, Rodolpho. Seccas do Ceará (segunda metade do século XIX) Ceará: Louis C. Cholowieçki Typografia Moderna a Vapor Ateliers Louis, 1901.
• VANGELISTA, Chiara. Os braços da lavoura: imigrantes e caipiras na formação do mercado de trabalho paulista (1850-1930). São Paulo: Hucitec, 1991.

¹

Paulo Cesar Gonçalves

²

³

In the 1840s, Senator Vergueiro brought ninety Portuguese families to his plantation in Ibicaba and started the parceria system, though without much success. This did not prevent the Senator from contracting another eighty German families a few years later. Based on these experiences, Vergueiro founded a company to bring immigrants, Vergueiro & Cia., the first private enterprise aimed at establishing contracts directly with plantation owners and the government.

⁴

In addition to the annual assistance of 1.5

conto de réis, Vergueiro & Cia. also obtained other advantages: the development of its commercial relations; the advance payment of many tickets by Swiss municipalities; and the commission it received from each colonist it brought.

⁵

Concerned about the future of slavery, members of the agrarian elite created numerous private colonies with free labor, searching for alternatives to meet the demand for labor and to replace slaves. The enthusiastic words of José Antonio Saraiva, then president of the province, illustrates this:

⁶

⁷

only after 1875 did the numbers of immigrants arriving start to reach the thousands, though the imperial government was mostly responsible for their coming, while the Association slowly crawled along on the task it had been created for.

⁸

In this period, the plantation owners, even though they received support from the state, still acted in isolation to obtain labor in europe. They also struggled to change the official immigration policy aimed at the settlement and colonization of the province, arguing that the settlements were onerous and useless, and did not help to attract immigrants. In the understanding of this group, the state should only help private individuals who intended to introduce colonists to their properties (Congresso Agrícola..., 1988). This was the aim of Provincial law no. 42, dated 30 March 1871, which authorized the government to issue policies up to the value of 600 contos de réis to assist farmers who wanted to bring colonists to their plantations, each having a right to a maximum of 10 contos, to introduce european immigrants. looked at retrospectively, it was a timid rehearsal of the fare subvention program which would be created years later.

⁹

In July 2, 1886, Paulista coffee planters, aware of the importance of controlling the various levels of immigration – foreign propaganda, transport conditions, the arrival, accommodation, and allotment on plantations – created the Immigration Promotion Society (Sociedade Promotora de Imigração). Amongst its founders were some renowned figures from the Paulista agrarian elite: Martinho da Silva Prado Jr., Rafael Aguiar Paes de Barros, Nicolau de Souza Queiroz and Jorge Tibiriçá.

¹⁰

In addition to housing immigrants, the hostel also centralized the service of contracting and distributing workers for agricultural work, becoming a fundamental stage in the labor control policy drafted by plantation owners and their political representatives.

¹¹

The desires of the coffee planters of the Paulista west to expand their plantations was implemented in a process in which the Promotion Society was a fundamental instrument: the coming of a large quantity of family labor to be recruited directly in São Paulo at no extra cost, since the state financed the cost of travel.

¹²

The first dates from 3 July 1886 and established the number of 6000 immigrants; the second, from 22 July 1887, involved the introduction of 30,000 immigrants; the third, dated 2 March 1888, established the number of 60,000 immigrants. Four years later, on 23 February 1892, a further 50,000 immigrants were ordered, and even before this contract had been completed, the last agreement with the participation of the Promotion Society was drafted on 10 January 1893, stipulated another 40,000.

¹³

¹⁴

the Immigration Promotion Society closed down, and the immigrant contracts were passed to the Secretary of Agriculture. There are few references in the historiography about the reasons for its dissolutions. Its statutes stipulated that it would last until 1892.

¹⁵

According to Zuleika Alvim, its members had not considered the central government would be able to totally assume the costs of the immigration necessary for agriculture. In 1894, after the Paulista Prudente de Moraes, the candidate of the coffee oligarchies, won the presidential election, agriculture received great attention, which allowed the society to be dissolved, since at that moment the model created by São Paulo came to be followed by the entire nation (Alvim, 1986, pp.49-50).

¹⁶

In other words, in the development of institutions which took care of immigrants their usefulness from the perspective of the state can be perceived, as representative of the interests of plantation owners, which was directly related to the question of work.

¹⁷

In 1878, after staying in the capital and in many cases also in the Court hostel, the Cearenses migrants were directed to the coffee plantations in limeira, Rio Claro, Guaratinguetá, Amparo and Casa Branca.

¹⁸

With the exception of Guaratinguetá, located in the Paraíba Valley, the other municipalities belong to the coffee regions called Mogiana and Paulista, where the planting of

rubiaceae was expanding rapidly.

¹⁹

²⁰

While the opening of new plantations demanded labor – resolved by the hiring on a contract basis of Brazilian workers, who cleared the virgin forest – the most serious problem resided in the harvesting of coffee. Wilson Cano calls attention to the exceptionality of the participation of Brazilian workers in these activities (Cano, 1981, p.37). However, the documentation obtained in the research suggested that the Cearense migrants were used in coffee plantations. Families were recruited to work on plantations, alongside immigrants, and possibly slaves.

²¹

The official letters found in the São Paulo State Archive also show that at least 278 migrants were hired. The number of families sent to Rio Claro was higher, but there is no specification of the plantations to which they went.

²²

²³

This significant body of documents, consisting of letters produced by the General Inspectorate of lands and Colonization, letters and telegrams, does not only give the destination of the large part of the migrants. It also reveals how the reception and allocation of these migrants was organized, which also involved the participation of the central authorities.

²⁴

The president of the province kept himself informed about the arrival of Cearense migrants and foreign immigrants, through official letters sent by the colonization agent.

²⁵

In São Paulo the colonization agent was responsible for sending the Cearense migrants then in the capital to the coffee plantations. He maintained contact with the plantation owners who wanted to hire workers to later request, via an official letter to the president of the province, the necessary train tickets. These expenses were classified as "public assistance," and passed on to the imperial government.

²⁶

²⁷

reported his experiences with free Brazilian labor, stating that

²⁸

²⁹

³⁰

The following decade, while there were no droughts in the Northeast of the country, less than a dozen Cearenses went to São Paulo. on the other hand, the flow of foreigners began to increase, between 1881 and 1886, a little more than 31,000 european immigrants.

³¹

In May 1888 slavery was extinct in Brazil. on the other hand, the volume of immigrants reaching São Paulo grew significantly. The same year, the emergence of another rigorous drought, which mainly affected the provinces of Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte, forced new waves to look for better living conditions. once again the state financed this migration.

³²

According to the 1889 Report for the Ministry of Imperial Affairs, São Paulo received 3368 migrant (638 families).

³³

³⁴

With the end of slavery and the beginning of the mass entrance of foreigners, imported labor would meet the needs of export orientated labor, sponsored by the state, thereby freeing plantation owners from the initial expenses with transport. The lack of attention given to Brazilian families who went to the province, even with the transport financed by the government, is not surprising.

³⁵

³⁶

It can be inferred, therefore, that these Brazilian workers were used in coffee plantations, which always needed labor.

³⁷

A LABOR IMPORTING ECONOMY

³⁸

Misery and subvention thereby constituted the key-elements in the formation of the labor force in the São Paulo coffee economy.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  24 July 2014
• Date of issue
  June 2014

History

• Received
  19 Sept 2012
• Accepted
  19 May 2014