44 ITAI,Y - INSURANCE AND THRIFT 



has awaited a statutory solution (i). Pending legislation some pro- 

 prietors and directors of agriculture have long provided spontaneously 

 for the insurance of fieldworkers, having united for such end in special 

 mutual societies. There are six of these : one at Vercelli which had the 

 merit of being the pioneer in 1902, and the others at Florence, Mi- 

 lan, Turin, Bologna and Rome. Today when the question is again being 

 mooted we tliink it useful to give some data as to their organization and that 

 of societies of other kinds which do business in the same branch of insurance. 

 We will thus show the manner in which private initiative has been able in 

 Italy to face and to overcome difficulties both ingeniously and economi- 

 cally, in the absence of an organic law, and will show also the difficult}^ of 

 the problem. 



§ I. The mutual fund of vercelli. 



It was the Associazione fra gli Agricoltori del Vercellese (2) which in 

 1902 took the initiative in Italy in organizing insurance against the acci- 

 dents of agriculture, even before in 1903 that law (29 June 1903, no. 243) had 

 been promulgated which compels insurance in the case of several kinds of 

 agricultural labour (threshing by machine, felling in woods, work done 

 with the help of motors, etc). The Associazione instituted the Mutual Fund 

 of Vercelli in the form of a co-operative society, and mau}^ agriculturists 

 adhered to it. Impelled by a sentiment of humanity or a desire to free them- 

 selves from possible civil liability they thus guaranteed just indemnities in 

 cases of accident to their dependents. The fund became active on i June 

 1903, insuring about 15,000 labourers for total wages which amounted to 

 3,000,000 hras a year. The law which has been mentioned was passed, 

 and the fund, wishing to undertake the compulsory insurance it enacted, 

 transformed itself into the fund of a union, legally recognized by a royal 

 decree of 10 August 1904, and having by-laws which allowed it to 

 extend its action to the agricultural labourers whom the law did not 

 compel to be insured. 



The fund indemnifies, in cases of death and of permanent disable- 

 ment, whether total or partial, all workmen, both casual and permanently 



(i) Many proposed laws tending to extend compulsory insurance against the accidents of 

 labour to fieldworkers have at various times been brought before the Italian parliament, on 

 the initiative of parliament and of Ihe government. But for various reasons none of them has 

 as yet been passed. The last was brought foiward in December 1915 and was due to the depu- 

 ties Borromeo, Venino and Belotti. See in this connection our article, " A New Bill for Compul- 

 sory Insurance ag:iinst Accidents in Agricultural Labour ", in our issue for Jime 1916, and the 

 article of the deputy Bartoli B jlotti, " Per I'assicurazione obbligatoiia degli infortmii sul lavoro 

 agricolo", in the Nuova Antologia, Rome, N>.. 1073, i October 1916. 



(2) Association of Vercellese Agriculturists. 



