With the abolition of the guild system and the rise of a new legal regime based on free contract, a central dilemma emerged in Europe: how to enforce labour control in this new era of individual economic freedom. This article examines how this issue was addressed in the State of Milan, where ideas about freedom of contract championed by state reformers such as Pietro Verri and Cesare Beccaria were met with continued requests from merchant-manufacturers to apply corporal punishment and threat of imprisonment to ensure workers’ attendance. Analysing the new regulations, the ideological credos of the new regime, and the effectiveness of the reforms as they played out on the ground in the silk industry, this article shows that the chance that labour relations could be managed within a civil law regime appeared to be in direct contrast with the dominant conception of workers’ conditions, in particular their lack of propriety and good faith. As credit-debt bonds and limitations to weavers’ mobility stood as the most effective means to ensure labour coercion, a closer look at the daily interactions in the workshop allows us to shed new light on the rationality of workers’ practices like Saint Monday, cast by contemporary commentators in merely moralistic terms.

随着行会制度的废除和基于自由契约的新法律制度的兴起，欧洲出现了一个核心困境：如何在这个个人经济自由的新时代加强劳工控制。本文探讨了这个问题在米兰州是如何解决的，在米兰州，Pietro Verri 和 Cesare Beccaria 等国家改革者所倡导的合同自由思想受到商人制造商不断提出的实施体罚和监禁威胁的要求，以确保工人的出席。分析新法规、新政权的意识形态信条以及改革在丝绸行业实地实施的有效性，这篇文章表明，劳资关系可以在民法体制内得到管理的可能性似乎与工人条件的主流观念形成鲜明对比，尤其是他们缺乏正当性和诚信。由于信用债务债券和对织工流动性的限制是确保强制劳动的最有效手段，仔细观察车间的日常互动可以让我们对工人做法的合理性有新的认识，比如圣星期一，铸造当代评论家仅仅用道德的术语。