Milan marked the turn of the century with a fundamental change in both its government and its character. In January 1900 Giuseppe Mussi was formally sworn in as the new mayor of the city at the head of a Radical administration supported by the Republicans and Socialists who had made up the Democratic alliance in the elections of December 1899. For the next four years this coalition presided over a city whose economic and physical growth turned it into a true city of industrial capitalism: a fact confirmed by the 1901 census which, for the first time, recorded over half the city's workforce as employed in manufacturing. Economic and political conflicts, particularly those involving class interests, assumed new forms: old alliances became outmoded.

The next three chapters examine the consequences of these developments for the esercenti movement. This chapter analyses changes in the business of shopkeeping at both local and national levels and their relation to the position of small business within the national political process. Chapter 12 focuses on the developments in labour relations within the esercenti sector, whilst chapter 13 analyses the effects of these changes on esercenti political activity in Milan in the first five years of a new century.

THE BUSINESS OF SHOPKEEPING

The early years of the new century were prosperous ones for the city of Milan and the retailers who served it.