Worker at the welt-stitcher — Vigevano shoe factory

By 1931 Vigevano counted over 800 footwear businesses and around 12,000 workers in the shoe sector alone: an entire city of 50,000 built around a single trade.

The first industrial-model shoe factory in Italy was opened in Vigevano in 1866 by the Bocca brothers; from there the city grew into a dense network of factories, sub-contractors and specialised machine workshops.

Between 1929 and 1935 Vigevano's output of rubber shoes — the district's new specialisation — rose from 15,000 to over 6 million pairs a year: a leap from craft to mass industry in under seven years.

Under the corporative regime, striking was a crime and the nominal eight-hour day was routinely overrun in the district's small firms: piece-rate contracts shifted the risk onto the worker's body.