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National Geographic : 1909 Dec
Contents
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE "We're glad to be back awhile to see the old place once more," one of them explained to me, "but wait until times are good in America again and you'll see the biggest rush from Italy that has ever taken place." Leaving Calabria and traveling north toward Naples through Basilicata, I found similar conditions. In the larger towns and among the upper classes nei ther our language nor our ideas are understood, but one need go no farther out of Potenza, the provincial capital, than the vineyards on the side of the hill upon which it is built to find men work ing in the fields who are ready to talk to you in your own language and wel come you as a friend when you tell them that you are from the United States. Now what impressions does one get of the Italian emigrant after seeing him thus in Sicily and in the southern provinces of the mainland whence the westward stream comes? The point that struck me first was that Italy was not overpopulated. There is an impression in this country, I know, that it is, in which I myself shared until I traveled through it and studied the fig ures. Italy has about 30,000,000 inhab itants, but Germany and Great Britain, with about the same area, are supporting populations in each case of twice that size and doing it better into the bargain. Besides that, the greatest density of pop ulation in Italy is to be found in the north, where prosperity is highest and emigration least. The difference is that Italy is still try ing to support her population by agricul ture, whereas Germany and Great Britain have long since seen the necessity of working out their destinies through manufacture and trade. Moreover, Italy is a backward country agriculturally, which may come as another disillusionment to many who have heard of its wonderful vineyards and olive groves, of the marvelous patience and labor that are put into reclaiming rocky slopes, and fighting inch by inch with nature for every possible bit of soil. But this is true of certain localities only. The environs of Naples, the Conca d'Oro of Palermo, the slopes of Mount 2Etna are indeed examples of intense and intelligent cultivation, but, on the other hand, there is much land in south Italy wasted and misused, and great stretches, like the splendid valley along the Ionian Sea from Catanzaro to Metaponto, where they are putting in twice as much work and get ting half as large a return as if that same land were in France or Switzerland. The wooden plow is still in use in many places in Italy, and modern farm machinery is practically unknown in the south. Everything is done by hand at a tremendous expenditure of human labor, which might be more productively em ployed, while the use of fertilizers or the rotation of crops is not understood. The root of the trouble is the land system. The whole of south Italy is an agricultural country, and yet one may al most say that there is not a farmer in it, as we understand the word here. There are land-owners on one hand and agricultural laborers on the other-that's all. The landlord idles away his time in the cities. Such a thing as living on the land, getting out in his shirt sleeves to work it, and hiring others to help him when necessary is unheard of. Fre quently he never even visits his estate, but leaves everything to a chain of middlemen, each of whom wrings an un earned living out of the peasant below. And the agricultural laborer? He works twelve hours each week day and frequently half of the Sabbath at an im possible wage-about forty cents a day for a man and half that for a woman or for a miserly share of the produce, without proper tools or adequate instruc tion. He does not live on the land any more than its owner, but, through a habit acquired in the old days, when it was necessary to keep together for protection against outside attack and for fear of the malaria in the lowlands, he huddles with others in dirty, unsanitary towns on the hilltops, where houses are built as close together and he is as cramped for room as in the city of Naples. The principal difference between that, 1098
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