From policing to persuasion

For large-scale industrial enterprise in Europe and America, there was nothing especially novel, much less “fascist,” about setting up facilities to regulate the leisure of workers. The services recommended by Mussolini's regime to assist, educate, and uplift the “masses” differed little from the Sunday schools, night classes, “truck” stores, and company housing that, since the mid-nineteenth century, had been founded by paternalistic employers to root the transient peasant-laborer, enforce shop-floor rules, and train unskilled workers for increasingly complicated factory operations. The notion that businessmen should invest in community institutions as well was also entirely familiar to the post-1900 generation of industrial philanthropists whose patronage for parks and playgrounds, for the YMCA and for settlement houses was inspired by the realization that the formation of a modern industrial workforce – of loyal citizens, as well as disciplined operatives – demanded industry-wide cooperation and systematic intervention outside of the firm. In all respects Giani's own initial conception of the dopolavoro organization was indeed no more than a transposition of these increasingly common business practices into the Italian environment. Italian industry, he had presciently realized in 1919, had reached a critical stage of development following its hasty expansion during World War I: one in which firms were rapidly growing in size, management was becoming separated from ownership, and improved technology was being applied to rationalize industrial processes.