Division of labour, salaries and productivity in Barcelona’s indianas manufacture in the XVIII century

Abstract

Calico production (indianas) could be considered one of the first forms of industrial production based on the factory model. In this vein, this case study reports on the presence of a factory organization based on labour division and managerial structure. Nevertheless, the model still maintains aspects typical of craft and guild-based production, such as the low level of technology and the importance of skilled labour for the value-added production phases. The study represents an attempt to describe the division of labour within the manufacture, calculate the productivity of different factors of production with a special attention to work productivity, trying to verify the existence of a correlation between skilled work productivity and output.