S^o 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



[Nov, 2, 1885. 



AGKICULTUEE AND LABOUEEES' PAY 

 IN ITALY. 



According to the Eeport of the Commission ap- 

 pointed by the Italian Parliament in 1877, and 

 whose inquiries extended over several years, the 

 lot of proprietors and farmers, if not brilliant, is 

 at least tolerable, whereas anything -worse than 

 the condition of the labourers it is hard to con- 

 ceive. The members of the Commission failed to 

 arrive at any exact conclusion as to the average 

 pay of these unfortunates. According to some it 

 runs from threepence to lourpence a day, accord- 

 ing to others to sevenpenee, without making any 

 allowance for loss of time, either through bad 

 weatlier or ill-health. For this pittance they have 

 to work like galley-slaves, and out of it such of 

 them as have families must provide food for their 

 children, and keep a roof of some sort over their 

 heads. The utmost that a labourer can earn, witli 

 the help of his family, says Signer Ai'cozzi Manio, 

 a large landowner, is 384 lire a year, equal to a 

 little more than tenpence a day. Their food con- 

 sists of a coarse black bread, made of a mixture 

 of rye and maize of inferior quality, rice soup, 

 and dry haricots dressed with rancid oil. Wine 

 and flesh-meat they never taste. " Hard labour, 

 combined with insufficient food," writes Signor 

 Mereu, in the Bibliotlic<jiie Universelle, "necessarily 

 reacts with disastrous effect on the health of our 

 agricultural masses, who are forced by want to 

 live in wretched hovels, destitute alike of sunshine 

 and fresh air." The Eeport of the Commission 

 gives in this regard details which cannot be read 

 without a shudder. In Lombardy, as well as in 

 the South, whole frTr.iUes live pell-mell in huts 

 reeking witli every sort of abomination, and " in 

 a state of revolting promiscuousness." " It is in 

 the neighbourhood of rich and opulent Milan," 

 writes Commander Jancini (a gentleman who has 

 published a summary of the chief facts contained 

 in the Eeport). that the labourers are the most 

 wi'etched ; the fever of exhaustion {peUarira) and 

 phthisis make terrible ravages amongst them. 

 They are worse fed than dogs." The supjiosed 

 fertility of the Peninsula is a pure myth. Two- 

 thirds of it are occupied by the Alps and the 

 Apennines, a vast region with a rude climate and 

 an ungrateful soil. Of this region 56,000 square 

 kilometres are either covered with snow of strewn 

 with rocks, and utterly irreclaimable. In other 

 districts denudation has wrought irreparable mis- 

 chief, and the neglect of jiast generations and 

 former Governments has allowed once fertile plains 

 to become malarious swamps. Even the legendary 

 luxuriance of more favoured regions turns out to 

 have been greatly exaggerated. With the exception 

 of the Valley of the Po and of a part of Lom- 

 bardy, the soil is only moderately jiroductive, not 

 only because it has been impoverished by long- 

 continued croppings without any adequate return 

 in the shape of manure, but by reason of the 

 dryness of the climate, which in the absence of an 

 artificial system of irrigation puts really efKcient 

 farming out of the question. Italy does not even 

 grow a sufficiency of cereals for her own wants, 

 albeit the area of arable land is reckoned at 

 4,500,000 hectares (11,215,000 acres). The average 

 yield of corn per hectare is equal to 11 hectolitres, 

 as compared with an average j'ield of 33 hectolitres 

 in England, 22 in Holland, 20 in Belgium, 23 in 

 Germany, and 15 in France. Facts like these should 

 make us more tolerant of our own variable yet 

 not unkindly climate, and less envious of that 

 blue Italian sky under which, while there are so 

 much of grandeur and beauty, thove is also so 



terrible an amount of misery and want. The young 

 and vigorous who desire to better themselves leave 

 the country in droves. Those of them who can 

 raise a few Uras go to Austraha or America ; the 

 less fortunate foot it over the Alps, and seek work 

 in Germany, Switzerland and France. According 

 to oflicial figures, there are now living in divers 

 foreign countries upwards of 1,200,000 Italian im- 

 migrants ; and this estimate is beUeved to be much 

 below the mark. Ten years ago the emigration 

 was at the rate of 40,000 ; last year there left the 

 kingdom 140,000 individuals, by far the greater 

 part of whom were adult males in the prime of 

 life. But this exodus has its good as well as its 

 evil side; for, although the vast majority of the 

 exiles never revisit their native land, a certain pro- 

 portion return in greatly improved circum.stances, 

 and few in their prosperity forget the less fortunate 

 whom they have left behind. In France, for in- 

 stance, there are at present some 200,000 Italian 

 workmen, all employee! ; and it has been ascertained 

 that they send to their kinsfolk at home half their 

 earnings, said to be fully four francs a day. If 

 this estimate, which is given on the authority of 

 Signor Mereu, may be trusted, the amount received 

 in this way by Italy from France alone averages 

 very nearly five millions sterling a year. — Spectator. 



A Gekman paper says that forty parts of paper 

 pulp, ten parts of water, one part of gelatine, and 

 one part of bichromate of potash, with ten parts 

 of pliosphorescent powder, will make a paper which 

 will shine in the dark, and which will be suit- 

 able for labels, signs. Ax. — Indian Agriculturist. 



The Gekm.vn Agricultukai, Colony in Br.^zfl. — 

 From an interesting account of a fecent visit to 

 the German colony in Eio Grande do Sul, the most 

 southerly province of Brazil, written by Herr W. 

 Spielberg, member of the Landtag, we" learn that 

 tlie colonists first settled in the Sao Leopoldo and 

 Hamburger Berg districts, favourably situated for 

 trade with Porto Alegre. The clearing of the 

 land they secured has been a difficult task, but 

 many of the older settlers are now on the point 

 of deforesting the last quarter or third part of 

 their sections. Several later colonists have secured 

 more favourable situations on the Lower Marata, 

 in the neighbourhood of Sao Sebastiao, Sao Lou- 

 reni^o, *c., but they have the same hard work in 

 clearing tlie forest. Still later arrivals have, as 

 at Triumi^ho, on the Jacuhy, near San Joho, on 

 the Cahy, &c., begun by settling on the so-called 

 " enclosed land," a wrong term since enclosure and 

 forest alternate, and the real enclosed land 

 runs in a southerly direction from the Jacuhy. 

 This land is not much inferior to the forest 

 land in the first years in fertility, but it 

 is lighter and can soon be worked with the 

 ])lough, while the proximity of the lands to the 

 rivers Jacuhy, Taquary, Cahy, ,Sinos and Gravatahy, 

 navigable at all times of the year, and running 

 into the estuary of Porto Alegre, makes trade with 

 this port easy. The climate of this delta in quite 

 as cool and temperate as in the mountain dis- 

 tricts. Herr Spielberg does not think the position 

 of the colony is anything lilie what it has been 

 represented to be — and certainly cannot be com- 

 pared to that of the twenty-year-old colony in 

 Ontario — but there is nothing like want, and the 

 people all Uve and clothe well, the old ones l)eing 

 al)Ie to give their children a little money to set 

 them up. Of the social circumstances of the 



colony not so favourable a report can be given, , 



Kiihluic's German Trade Hevieic, 



