IN THE HEEL AND TOE OF THE BOOT
It is a very nearly safe prophecy to say that the heel of the Italian
Boot, or rather southern Molise and Apulia, shall yet pour forth the
greatest flood of southern Italian emigrants bound for America which has
yet been witnessed in the varying exodus from southern Europe. There
have been times when it seemed as if these provinces were about to rise
and distance Campania and Sicily, whose flow has generally been the
largest; but the great mass of the peasantry of the Apulian plain has
not yet started toward America, and will not until the status of the
Italian emigrant in America becomes similar to that of the Irish in
1878–79, a quantity respected and duly reckoned with, or until the
steamship companies make Bari, Brindisi, or Taranto ports of direct
departure for the United States.
As remarked previously, the fluctuations of the volume of emigration, as
viewed in retrospect and from this side of the water, are hardly
understood, though a social crisis in Russia always produces an
outpouring of the Jews, good crops in the Northwest an increase in
Scandinavians, and a period of strikes in the United States an augmented
Polish immigration. The figures for the past twelve years, taken from
June till June, compared with the relative wage rate, are interesting:
_Year_ _Immigrants Arrived_ _Average Daily Wage in U. S._
1891 489,407 $1.00.
1892 579,663 1.00.30
1893 439,730 .99.32
1894 285,631 .98.06
1895 258,536 .97.88
1896 343,267 .97.93
1897 230,832 .98.96
1898 229,299 .98.79
1899 311,715 1.01.54
1900 448,572 1.03.43
1901 487,918 1.05.62
1902 648,743 1.04.93
1903 857,046 1.03.89
It will appear that there are other and less understood influences at
work, to cause the swelling or diminishing of the flood of immigrants,
than the wage rate in the country. In a previous chapter I have noted
the bearing of the prospect of more stringent immigrant legislation on
the flood of 1903, and in the section of the country now under
discussion we found abundant evidences of the effects of the news spread
far and wide that people who did not get into the United States soon
would find it more difficult than ever to get in.
Many, many families on the Apulian plain, who had been doing very well
so far, were preparing to depart for the United States just as soon as
the harvest season was over. They had been intending to go to the United
States for some years, but had put it off, fearing to disturb a
condition that was well enough, but nevertheless being fully decided,
sooner or later, to go to the United States. The prospect of a law
excluding illiterates precipitated them. Many of these same families are
already in this country, having left their homes since we visited them.
[Illustration: Threshing Beans]
There is something that is insistently Greek about the people of the
Heel, and they more nearly approach the Oriental than any others of the
Italian provincials. I do not think they have quite the passionate
natures of the Sicilians or the ruggedness of the mountain Calabrese,
nor are they as energetic as their fleas, which are certainly the
liveliest I have ever encountered.
To the casual observer they seem to be lazy, and their habitations
present a certain neglected appearance that is strongly contrasted with
those houses in each town which have been rehabilitated with money sent
home from America. But the people are not lazy. They are merely bound by
traditional methods of doing things, and by an unconquerable
sub-malarial condition. In many spots one will see large plantations of
_Eucalyptus globulus_ planted to counteract malaria.
There is an odd theory, of interest only because of its oddity, that the
famous Apulian fevers are the results of the dissolution of the numbers
of men fallen in battles which have taken place on Apulian soil. A
little computation and historical reference shows millions of men to
have fallen in the Heel, and when the armies of the Crusaders camped
about Brindisi they were nearly wiped out by death from sickness. Ever
since that time fevers have prevailed, and there are some spots that are
certain death to any foreigner should he sleep there over night.
Large quantities of cotton are grown in this region, and when one is
travelling south it will be noticed that shortly after the groves of
hazelnuts, beeches, and chestnuts cease, the first plantations of cotton
will begin to appear. The plain of Cannæ roughly marks the limit of the
cotton country. Around the Gulf of Taranto there will be seen large
fields of cotton and saffron, and though the country is very fertile and
densely populated, the agricultural system is very bad, and the ground
inefficiently cultivated merely because it is a centuries-old custom to
let the ground lie fallow for two years after each crop.
Olive orchards flourish, and nearly every considerable town is a centre
of salad-oil manufacture. Oranges are grown in abundance, but cannot
compete with the Sicilian for export. The Apulian wine is very fine,
being much softer than the Sicilian, yet not as popular as the wines of
Capri and the Vesuvius region.
About Cotrone the finest licorice in the world is produced, and in many
spots there will be seen clusters of date palms, though the fruit does
not mature as fully as it should.
Much of the wood required for artificial purposes in southern Italy
comes from western Apulia, Potenza and Calabria. Fine oaks, beeches,
chestnuts, etc., grown on the mountains, and the Sila chain, whose
highest peak is snow-covered, are well clad with pines which afford what
the Italian carpenter calls _legno bianco_ (white wood).
Aside from agriculture, some of the few industries are wood-cutting,
taxed unbearably by the government, sulphur-mining at Eboli, salt-mining
about Lungro, honey-producing about Taranto, fish-catching and exporting
from the same town, velvet and silk producing in and about Catanzaro,
and sheep and goat herding in the Sila chain. The agricultural products
are the mainstay of the people, who are so densely packed in some
communities that if it were not for the _Cactus opuntia_, which is grown
in hedges in place of fences, there would be scarcely enough to eat.
The town of Taranto, which is built on a rock cut off from the land by a
239–feet-wide canal, which will allow the passage of any battle-ship in
the Italian navy, is possibly the most densely inhabited spot on the
earth. Sixty thousand people live there in a space so small that New
York’s most thickly populated tenement districts do not compare with it.
An odd thing is noticeable in this town, especially among the fishermen
of the Mare Piccolo. The Italian is generously tinctured with Greek, and
among the totally illiterate the jargon is absolutely unintelligible to
an outsider.
Around the Heel nearly all the settlements are well back from the coast,
and strange to say the reason is, not that it is healthier or more
convenient, but that in the Middle Ages they were established there
because it was not safe to live alongshore. Since then no one has
thought of changing; in fact the entire region, except as it has been
stirred by the letters of emigrants and the doctrines of Socialists and
Anarchists, seems to live by the precept, “What is, is best.”
Something of the deep establishment of customs and of the religious
state of the country can be gathered from the following. In Bari there
is the Church of San Nicola, than whom there is no more revered saint in
all Italia Meridionale, wherefore note the number of Nicolas. In the
crypt his remains are supposed to be encased in a tomb from which exudes
on and about the 8th of May an oily substance that is miraculous.
Pilgrims come for the feast of the 8th of May by thousands and
thousands, and nearly all of them are in the costume of the remoter
villages. On the promontory at Cotrone stands a pillar which marks the
site of the temple of Hera, once the goddess of all the peoples about
the Gulf of Taranto, but now it has for a neighbor the Church of the
Madonna del Capo, and each Saturday young girls from the region about go
in procession to the church in their bare feet, all clad in white.
The people in many of the towns are primitive, especially in the
Basilicatan Mountains, where strangers are often as unwelcome as they
are to-day among the mountaineers of East Tennessee. Some few families
control nearly all the tillable land, and exact from the poor peasants
one-half of all they produce on it for rent. To the American farmer who
has been long accustomed to raising a crop on shares, that does not
sound very bad, but the _latifondo_, as this system is called, is one of
the curses of Italia Meridionale to-day, and in that portion of this
narrative which deals with our studies in Sicily, where the same
condition prevails as in Apulia, Basilicata, and Calabria, I shall give
more definite expression on the system. One of the very powerful
families in this region is the Baracco family, and they literally hold
in their hands the fate of a vast region.
Not only is the country very primitive in spots, but in some it is
exceedingly wild. About Mount Vulture, and especially in the great
half-destroyed lateral crater, the forests are so dense as to be almost
impenetrable, and wolves and wild boars are numerous.
Leaving entirely the consideration of the regions of the Heel, and
speaking only of Basilicata and Calabria, which have been pouring
emigrants into the United States, there should be mentioned the great
enemy of the peasant, which has driven more men to America than any
other thing, the terrible _torrente_.
It is merely a mountain stream, totally dry in the summer time, as what
little water might course down it is carried along in clay-lined
irrigating ditches, and distributed along the face of the hills
sometimes hundreds of feet above the level of the river bed, so cleverly
are some of the canals constructed. But, in the rainy season, when
enormous quantities of water are precipitated every day on the mountain
sides, the _torrente_ becomes a devilish agent of destruction, and its
waters devastate whole communes in a few hours.
These districts have struggled to wall in with masonry and concrete the
whole course of the stream, and to clear the bed of all obstructions
which would prevent the current having a straight, easy plunge to the
sea, but the water is perverse, and it is not unusual for the
best-curbed _torrentes_ to rip out their walls and ruin in a night the
labor of twenty years. Taxes and volunteer labor to repair communal
works, and expenditures and labors to patch up private estates, have so
impoverished the people that in many places they have been forced to
abandon, not only any attempt to curb the _torrente_, but to maintain
any department of the communal government that costs as much as a penny.
The general taxes went unpaid, and when the government forced sales of
houses and gardens, the people simply abandoned their places and became
wanderers or emigrated to America. At the present time nearly all of the
villages are in a condition that is much improved. Money sent home from
America is doing it. But the _torrentes_ are just as bad as ever, and so
long as they keep the people impoverished there will be no money to pay
for the maintenance of schools.
Sicily has a slight advantage in the formation of the country, but there
the _torrente_ is still the object of constant vigilance and does much
damage. People of intelligence are fully aroused to conditions in Italia
Meridionale, and a very excellent expression of the provincial attitude
was given in an article by Signor Enzo Saffiotti, which appeared in the
_Gazetta di Messina della Calabrie_ on the 15th of September, 1903. It
is given below:
THE SOUTHERN QUESTION CONFRONTS THE COUNTRY.
Congressional resolutions and government promises. The burden on the
Southern press. Great discontent among the people. Résumé of the
past thirty years of conditions. Riots in 1893. Agrarian and
mining crises. The Church’s tenths, the great landed estates
renting system and the confiscated demesnial properties. Heavy
usuries and peasants’ land contracts. Economic-social revival.
Appeal to Southern deputies. Restoration’s era.
We must not grow weary of repeating it!
One of the most urgent and yet most difficult problems which the
government and parliament have been called upon and are obliged and
bound promptly to solve in the present course of our national life is
the question of the condition of southern Italy. In order that such a
mighty and intricate matter may be properly adjusted, verily must it be
known to its every limit and studied through its every cause.
It is the task of the press, and particularly of the Southern press, to
associate its endeavors with noble and unselfish intention, to direct
with exactitude the current of public sentiment in the country, so that
it shall force the government to efficacious measures and precautions.
These may be obtained through some financial sacrifice and reduction of
useless expenditures in the state budgets.
The state cannot entrench itself behind financial difficulties when a
question that is not regional arises, for there are those to devise ways
out of the difficulty.
The deficit of many millions could in no manner continue to enfeeble the
state budget if a preference were given to the productive works, and the
national economic conditions would certainly be revived.
In parliamentary sessions, debates on the Southern question have at all
times been closed with vague votes and presidential assurances, the
latter filled with so many pretty promises for the improvement of these
our generous and forgotten regions.
They are promises which will doubtless continue to remain unfulfilled,
just as the preceding mass of assurances delivered by administrations,
leaders, and ministers. Meantime the South is waiting and will continue
to wait for those prompt reforms and vigorous measures which would
assist greatly in raising the economic status, and for the future
disclose a horizon bright and clear. It is anxious to be lifted from
that condition of humbled inferiority into which the guilty carelessness
of its rulers have thrust it.
Just a little has been done, comparatively nothing, directly to the
advantage of our population, harassed as it has been by the different
forms of commercial and industrial crises and vexed with all kinds of
local and fiscal taxes, yet they ever know how to keep high and
unchanging the Unitarian sentiment of the nation.
The cause of recurrent convulsions of agitation among the working class
and the slender middle class is not entirely to be attributed to the
propagation of socialistic doctrines, as the government is so ready to
explain it. It is all a leaven of discontent working within the
population, a realization of the isolation in which they are left, of
the deprivation of the rightful help and support from the government
which with provident laws and measures should defend their interests,
and further encourage and protect their industrial undertakings.
The various ministers, during the last thirty years of Italian political
life, have done nothing that was remarkable for these Southern regions,
whose economic conditions, though troublesome in the beginning, have
gradually grown worse.
As a matter of fact, the recurrence of those social phenomena have given
people at a distance who were inclined to turn their observation and
consideration on our affairs, a different impression from that which
would be gathered if the inward causes were otherwise studied, and this
attests in a very considerable way the moral sentiment of our people,
who, though of great sensitiveness and resentful of wrong, quietly
sustain the additional adversity of being misunderstood, even when
instinctively rebellious to all forms of oppressive authority.
On the day after the conflict in 1893, when the administration of that
day set on foot measures to favor the Southern provinces, which should
eventually alleviate the severe hardships of our condition, the
universal discontent began to disappear rapidly.
The resumption of quiet was not the result of the presence of bayonets
and the pronouncing of exemplary sentences from temporary tribunals, for
our people fear neither, but came about through the administration’s
pledging itself to help the population and hurriedly presenting to
parliament new and old schemes for relief. Owing to political changes,
these remained merely in their former status, that of schemes. Our
people, mindful of the past, realize in the new promises of the
government nothing but a quantity of pious lies, destined to deceive or
satisfy, if for no other reason, with their beautiful sound and
appearance. So pretences and claims on behalf of these promises are
merely like bad drafts of short date, and even had the government
fulfilled them it would not have been generosity, but apportioned
justice.
The hardships of southern Italy—those of Sicily are common with those of
the other regions—are of an economical nature, and arise from complex
causes, in which are competing factors, but antique and recent,
permanent and transitory, and thus inducing excessive taxes divided
unjustly, agrarian and mining crises, lack of needed public works, not
of merely electoral nature, but of a most necessary sort, the
insufficience of roads to connect districts, and the disproportionate
rates of the railroads for freight and transportation.
The first step toward a gradual reduction of these oppressive tariffs,
after so many years in which there has been so much complaint, has at
least been achieved in a very cautious way by the first ordinance of
Minister Palenzo, which went into effect with good results at the
beginning of the present month. It is to be hoped that our legislators
will uphold it with additional and greater reductions.
There still remain unsolved some other notable questions, among which
are the annual tithes of one-tenth taken by the Church, the system of
renting piecemeal large properties on oppressive leases to the peasants,
and others, all waiting these many years to be adjusted and regulated by
a wise legislation. Also from the distribution and opening up for
cultivation of the great demesnial estates (Church property confiscated
by the governments a quarter of a century ago), Sicily and the other
southern provinces could extract great benefit and profit.
The provincial evils will increase gradually, but powerfully, if radical
reforms are not introduced and carried out in the matter of the existing
agrarian régime, in which pauper peasants, on account of their miserable
condition, are making themselves greater burden-bearers under onerous
and usurious contracts, thus prostituting their industry to usury and
impeding all agricultural progress.
Meanwhile the population is increasing so rapidly that the products of
the soil are become insufficient for their very necessities. Prompt aid
to agriculture, which is the important resource of southern Italy, is
needed if the Meridionale population hope to derive any increase in
benefit or profit. Only with a readjustment of the agricultural régime
and the leasing of country properties may we hope for a true and healthy
social revival. With the renewal of parliamentary procedures it is to be
hoped that the government will seriously undertake the Southern Italian
question.
Our deputations—they who should be examples of harmony and
tenacity—instead of being objects of daily criticism, should join
compactly together, without making disrupting questions of party, race,
or political gradation, and demand and obtain those reforms waited for
so long.
They should have a sole intention, a single aim: to redeem the provinces
of southern Italy from the straits in which they lie so cruelly
oppressed. Returning to Montecitorio’s halls they should not evade their
principal duty. Discussions about this matter there have been in plenty,
until now we demand action; on behalf of the dignity and prestige of the
entire nation, the solution of the Southern Italian problem is clearly
imposed upon them. The legislative body has already announced its
position of being willing, and facing its promises it cannot honorably
fail.
After so many depreciations too often inspired by misconceptions, after
so many accusations, discredits, and imputations treacherously cast on
our patriotic population, there might come suddenly an era of
reparation—it might come at once!
The South is waiting!
ENZO SAFIOTTI.
This, though comprehensive and with more than one carefully veiled
threat in the lines, is only one of the many strong articles appearing
in the southern papers, and it is among the mildest. When the situation
is reviewed, I believe it not ill considered to say that Italy owes her
immunity from a great rebellion in the south to the relief afforded by
emigration and emigrant savings.
[Illustration: Scilla—Draught-oxen of Italy]