The two massive complexes of the Marzotto(1) SPA company, in Largo Margherita(2) and Maglio di Sopra(3) remain as evidence of the rapid industrialisation process experienced in the Agno Valley(4) during the last century and the first thirty years of this century; these have caused a radical re-organisation of the area, and a revolution in production methods and in the life of the ancient highland population.

The Valdagno textile adventure began with Luigi Marzotto who in 1806 managed to employ 80 workers in a small spinning mill, and in terms of quality and quantity in a short time surpassed other concerns in the same sector which, like the one in Schio, boasted a long tradition, mainly consolidated during the second half of the eighteenth century thanks to favourable relations with the ‘Serenissima’ (Republic of Venice). He was in fact able to survive the crisis of the first decade of the nineteenth century, brought on by Austrian competition and cholera and pellagra epidemics, by falling back on his other business activities, among which a chalk mill and a hotel.
In 1836, after the unfavourable economic situation, he concentrated the various phases of wool processing, such as washing, spinning, weaving, fulling and pinning, near his house in the district called ‘Molini di mezzo’, later ‘Contrà Machina Marzotto’. It was right from this original nucleus that the large Works in Valdagno Centrale later developed, and from time to time the machines and architecture were radically renewed.

The company took off thanks to Luigi’s son Gaetano who gave it a new boost beginning from 1842, and in particular introduced a 400-spindle mule-jenny in 1856 and eight mechanicallooms from the English company Smith & Bros. in 1862. In 1869 other important innovations took place which confirmed the complex structure of the plant at the time. It was equipped with nineteen carding machines, a machine for applying combing cards(5), four mule-jenny spinning machines, three self-acting machines having a total of 2560 spindles, three twisting machines, eighty looms - some of which Jacquard - five fullers, some teaselling machines, three longitudinal cutting machines, some presses, apart from the burring machines(6), the boilers and the dyeing vats etc.
By this time, all the operations were concentrated inside the factory, whereas wool washing was still carried out in the appropriate baths outside.
The energy required to drive the machinery system was ensured by a 36 HP hydraulic turbine and a 30 HP steam engine.
The employment capacity of the company was about 200 people, of which 50 were women and 30 children, with daily shifts of twelve hours and also night shifts at certain times of the year.
In 1876 the work force employed numbered 400.
In the same year, Gaetano, together with his brother Giovanni, purchased a large piece of land in Maglio di Sopra from the widow Countess Adriana Marcello, née Zon, in order to build the large Spinning Works(7) (1882), later enlarged with a combing department.

From the beginning, both Marzotto Wool Mills constituted an organised whole and were linked by means of the Vicenza-Valdagno tramway which was inaugurated on 3rd August 1880 and extended to Recoaro in 1907 thanks to the Marzotto initiative.

This is how the large textile factory came to make a name for itself in the area as an industrial structure emerging from among the small traditional eighteenth-century handicraft companies: silk mills, carpentry shops, forges etc. The Canal(8), an artificial tributary of the Agno torrent and the only source of motive power for the old workshops, was deviated to supply the Maglio di Sopra Works, which caused all kinds of iron working to cease. The different forms of production connected with the agricultural tradition also disappeared, as the factory had become the only entity capable of giving workers permanent employment.
The history of the Marzotto Wool Mill slowly came to be identified with that of the valley.

As the activity of the company became more complex, Gaetano obtained the involvement of his brother Giovanni and his son Luigi, who later died in 1895. He was then offered the valid help of his second son Vittorio Emanuele, who was given credit for the technological modernisation carried out according to the innovations which had already been experimented in Europe and in the Rossi Wool Mill in Schio. On the death of his father in 1910, the division of the inheritance (causing him to lose the Spinning Mill at Maglio di Sopra, as well as part of the capital which went to Luigi’s children) slowed down his desire for expansion, but did not prevent the development of the industrial complex, characterised by its strongly centralised nature, which was quite different to the policy of decentralisation in the area, previously followed by Rossi.

At the beginning of the twentieth century(9), both Marzotto factories, employing 1700 workers, were able to show new technologically innovative processes(10) and a consolidated source of energy with the construction of the hydroelectric power stations along the valley north of the built-up area: Gazza-Lora, Agni, Frizzi, Bruni, Margherita, Ponte Verde, Facchini, Righellati (in the Recoaro area); Selladi, Torrazzo, Marchesini, Corè, Forge (in the Valdagno area).

On the 4th April 1912 Marzotto founded a Joint-Stock Company called ‘Filatura di Lana a Pettine (Combed Wool Spinning) Gaetano Marzotto & Figli’ with its head office in Milan, with a capital of 150,000 Italian Lire.
The company strengthened during the First World War thanks to orders from the armed forces and wage restraints. This is how the process of capitalistic development was brought to perfection and allowed the Marzotto Wool Mill to become one of the principal financial key points of the Italian industrial middle classes. Therefore, we have the setting up of the Combing factory in Mortara in the Pavia province (1918), and later the purchase of the Wool mill in Manerbio in the Brescia province (1927), the one in Brugherio(1934) in the Milan province, the Weaving factory in Brebbo (1930) in the Varese province and the one in Pisa (1937).

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