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Fall and rise of Swiss industrial profit rates 1850-1929. World Economic History Conference. Panel: Profits, Dividends and Returns

Year: 2025
Type: other
Abstract: Profits, Dividends and ReturnsRise and Fall of Swiss Industrial Profit Rates In the mid-19th century, Swiss industry was largely structured around small and medium-sized manufacturing companies, where the wealth and personal spending of capitalist families were closely linked to their companies.Often located in rural areas along rivers, these production sites were mainly used for spinning, weaving, and dyeing cotton or silk fibers.Workers labored more than half the day for wages barely sufficient to ensure the reproduction of the workforce.At the dawn of the Great Depression, most factories were expanded or relocated, mainly to suburban areas close to railways used for transporting goods.The working day was reduced to 10 hours, but the pace of the machines accelerated.In addition to cotton and silk fabrics, workers now produced medicines, turbines, aluminum plates, and motors, among other things.Administrators, accountants, and foremen measured and organized production; individual companies and partnerships gradually transformed into joint-stock companies, and capitalist families gradually abandoned their role as investor-entrepreneurs to become shareholders and administrators.Wage labor became the norm in capitalist production.In less than eighty years, industrial companies and, with them, Swiss capitalism underwent a profound transformation.Perhaps the most revealing aspect of this change was the shift in the relationship between labor and capital: while working hours became shorter and more regulated, the intensity of the workday increased.Added to this were growing industrial concentration, and the integration of production stages that had previously been carried out at home.This "factorization" of capitalist production reflects what historian Claire Lemercier and sociologist Pierre François have described as the transition from the age of commerce to the age of the factory (François and Lemercier 2020:13-19).In 1965, the French historians of the second generation of Annales defined capitalist production as follows: "the categorical imperative of accumulation, which is both a process of safeguarding and extending capital" 1 (Bouvier, Gillet, Furet 1965, 10).Inspired by Marxism, this definition links the notion of capital reproduction and profit, the engine of accumulation.Companies whose aim is to earn profits are at the core of this process.Even if the state is an essential partner, it is not the state which produces, counts and accumulates, but the companies, their workers, employees and bosses.The aim of my paper is to present the quantification of the profit amounts of some sixtyseven Swiss industrial companies active in textiles, metallurgy, machinery, and chemicals between 1850 and 1929 2 .Based on the companies' internal and published records, my quantitative approach aims to describe and analyze the evolution of Swiss capitalism in relation to its position in the international division of labor.Understanding the historical transformations of Swiss industries in this way no longer appears singular 1 Translated by the author 2 The dataset includes 67 industrial firms of various sizes: 8 in chemicals and pharmaceuticals, 27 in machinery and metallurgy, 17 in cotton manufacturing, and 15 in the silk industry.Owing to the difficulty of accessing archival material, large firms are overrepresented.Full source references and the underlying dataset will be published in the doctoral dissertation, to be completed in early 2027 (Goy 2027)
Source: IRIS
Author: Goy, Samuel
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7000478053
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