Photographs of spinning frames pour diagonally down the page like cloth off a loom, and a ribbon reading «esportazione mondiale» catches them at the bottom. This is the South’s entry in the textile-autarky campaign.
«AUTARCHIA TESSILE» stands at the top, the same slogan carried by the Bemberg, Snia Viscosa and Sodolin sheets of this series. The copy has the campaign’s full rhetorical pitch: traditionally oriented toward «every most arduous affirmation in the world of the superiority of Italian labour», the Manifatture Cotoniere Meridionali consider it a right, more than a duty, to commit all their forces «nella battaglia per l’indipendenza economica nazionale». At the foot, in block letters stacked three lines high: MANIFATTURE COTONIERE MERIDIONALI.
Cotton at Fratte
The Manifatture Cotoniere Meridionali — MCM in later shorthand — was the historic cotton group of the Italian South, uniting mills at Fratte, on the edge of Salerno, with others across the Agro Nocerino Sarnese. In the autarky drive a cotton company had the hardest brief in the textile family: unlike wool or hemp, its raw material did not grow at home in any quantity, which is perhaps why this sheet talks of labour, battle and independence, and shows machinery rather than fibre. The export ribbon does the rest — proof that the South’s spinning could stand in world markets.
Marks and date
The collector attributes the sheet to Erberto Carboni, reading an EC monogram at the right margin; on our scan no monogram resolves beyond the series’ agency roundel. Published without an attribution; no printed date, late-1930s campaign.
About this image. The work is still protected by copyright: under Italian law (L. 633/1941) rights run for 70 years from the death of the author. Since the author has not been identified, that term cannot be considered expired, and the image is treated as fully protected. It is reproduced here for documentation, study and critical purposes only, under Art. 70 of L. 633/1941 and the fair-use provision of 17 U.S.C. §107. The scan was made by the collector from his own copy of the sheet, part of the period material he keeps in a private archive: owning the physical sheet is not the same as holding the rights to the work. The image is not offered for sale, no reproduction rights are granted, and any request concerning the work should be addressed to the rights holders. Cultural Heritage Online publishes this material to document it, with no celebratory intent; see our terms and the DMCA contact published there.
Sources
- Manifatture Cotoniere Meridionali — the historic cotton group of Fratte (Salerno) and the Agro Nocerino Sarnese
- The sheet itself, for the copy and the ribbon.
