Augusto Ivan de Freitas Pinheiro and Eliane Canedo
Research and contributions: Cristiane Titoneli
New settlers arrive
Little by little, the wooden jetties vanished, with sheds and warehouses built on makeshift landfills. As slavery was slowly phased out in Brazil, freed slaves joined the labor market, swelling the crowds of under - and unemployed workers.
Fieldhands moved to the city, joining thousands of immigrants from a wide variety of countries and cultures, mainly Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Arab, Jewish and Asian.
Most of them had lived through tough times in their homelands, particularly where farming activities had been devastated by climate and war. They believed that the solution was to set out on a transatlantic journey, landing in Rio de Janeiro. Attracted by news that coffee plantations were expanding rapidly, they came in search of better lives in a new land.
The decade prior to the Republic posted the highest relative population growth. In absolute terms, the population almost doubled between 1872 and 1890, rising from 266,000 to 522,000 (...). In 1891 alone, 166,321 immigrants arrived, with 71,264 leaving for other States (...). The city’s balance was affected not only by quantitative changes. Its ethnic composition altered as well, together with its occupational structure.25
When not absorbed by agricultural activities, this unskilled workforce led to a steadily increasing urban proletariat wandering through the streets each day, looking for work and housing. Shortly before the Brazilian Republic was proclaimed, the Portuguese Ambassador noted: “The city of Rio de Janeiro is full of rogues and rascals of all kinds.”
Downtown, the Centro district continued to expand north and south of the city. According to Eusébio de Queiroz and Haddock Lobo, the closest survey was conducted in 1849, when 226,466 people were living in Rio. The floating population of the city increased, with large numbers of foreign travelers passing through Rio de Janeiro, while wealthy land-owning families journeyed frequently to Europe in search of culture and refinement. In parallel, intense economic activities flourished in this region, particularly hard and unskilled work, generally on the docks. “In 1847 and 1848, 992 long-haul ships moored there, carrying 103,000 tons of cargo, while 972 set sail, loaded with 108,663 tons.”26
Wealthier families moved away to areas north and south of the city, where new neighborhoods sprang up. Unable to find anything better, poorer people squatted in old colonial townhouses lining the narrow downtown streets, or on the outskirts of the hills near the port. As poverty deepened and public health conditions grew worse, diseases proliferated. Quickly losing its residential characteristics, the downtown area became a place of trade and services, packed with small factories and government activities.
It is important to recall that there were countless constraints on setting up businesses in Brazil through to the end of the XIX century, under a trade agreement signed with the UK, which pioneered factory production worldwide. Only small industrial plants were allowed, whose output was earmarked for domestic consumption, such as footwear and weaving, with these fabrics limited to coarse cloth worn by workers and slaves. Under these conditions, it is clear why there were so few factories in Brazil by 1850, with no more than fifty industrial establishments, including several salt pans.
However, during the second half of the XIX century, certain circumstances fostered the appearance of a movement whose initial purpose was to provide a counterweight to the absolute predominance of agricultural activities in the Brazilian economy. At the same time as large numbers of immigrants were flowing into the country, a series of laws culminated in the abolition of slavery in 1888, releasing funds (formerly used to buy slaves) for investments in the industrial sector. This was an interesting opportunity, as coffee was no longer yielding as much as before.
During the 1880s, an initial spurt of industrialization was a major step forward for the import substitution process: by 1899, there were 600 industrial establishments in Brazil, most of them in Rio de Janeiro.
In addition to being the capital of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro had built up the conditions needed to boost the vitality of its industrial activities by the late XIX century, including a labor force, a promising consumer market and a network of railroads that was already laid, outperforming any other economic hub. This was when the first print shops began to appear in the city, together with smelting and metal-working plants, in addition to factories making footwear, beverages, food, furniture and clothing. In common, they shared the fact that they were small and labor-intensive businesses with low mechanization levels.
Except for the textile factories,27 all of these small businesses initially set up shop in derelict mansions throughout the downtown area. By the end of the century, they were moving to the São Cristóvão district, crisscrossed by trunk railroads and also close to the ports in Gamboa and the Ponta do Caju. Imports of modern equipment, particularly from the UK, allowed Brazil’s industrial capital to leapfrog several stages, moving directly to large-scale industrial enterprises.
This was when Carlos Gianelli arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1880, intending to set up a mill. Only 25 years old, he spent some time studying in England, and built up experience working at his father’s business in Montevideo. With the help of his brother Leopoldo, he opened Rio’s first wheat mill in an old building in what was then the Rua Larga de São Joaquim (today Rua Marechal Floriano), running through the heart of the city. Despite the massive challenges they faced at that time, the Gianelli brothers struggled bravely and tenaciously to set up their business. After they were granted a license signed by Princess Isabel, they moved their plant to the Rua da Saúde (currently Rua Sacadura Cabral 170 and 172), in the Gamboa district. The first wheat mill in Brazil, this was also the first large-scale business in downtown Rio.
These trail-blazing entrepreneurs had to surmount massive hurdles, in order to survive during this period. There was no regular electricity generation, nor a skilled workforce. Competition with foreign goods was fierce, while yellow fever and smallpox epidemics swept regularly through the city, particularly the unhealthiest parts of the Centro that were home to the workers. However, it was they who managed to nudge the city into an industrialization process, although rudimentary and still dominated by the rural oligarchy, generating new jobs, even with no support from the government.