HOW TO SETTLE 211 



the second decade was merely a peppercorn rent. However, the 

 labour of improvement bargained for in reclaiming land lying under 

 the level of the sea was such as the small band of labourer-tenants 

 could not be expected to carry through. It plainly called for a 

 deal more of equipment and also a larger staff. The experiment 

 failed, but it served to bring out the essential qualification of work- 

 men like these Ravennates to engage in work of the kind under 

 appropriate conditions, meaning, above all things, the presence of 

 good leaders and the willingness of the men to submit to their 

 guidance. 



In general, the affittanze are much on the lines of tenant societies, 

 such as Sir Richard Winfrey, having organised them on the pro- 

 perty — about 2,200 acres — rented from Lord Lincolnshire and 

 the Crown in Lincolnshire and Norfolk, is making familiar to us. 

 There is, indeed, a rather essential difference in this, that the tenant 

 in the affittanza, as a member of his society, is on the one-for-all and 

 all-for-one principle, collectively with the other members, respon- 

 sible to the landlord for the rent to be paid, whereas under Sir 

 Richard Winfrey's scheme the tenant is merely under-tenant 

 under a capitalist body of original tenants responsible to the land- 

 lord. Sir Richard's experiment, however, comes nearest the 

 practice of the affittanze of anything at present existing in this 

 country. The affittanze, of course, were in the field long before Sir 

 Richard took action in the matter. They also dive lower down 

 socially, being devised expressly for men of the labouring class, 

 who in Italy are at the start more backward than ours, beginning 

 practically altogether without money, and who have had to pinch 

 badly to work themselves up to their present point ; and they have 

 long since become more extensive and a far more important factor 

 in national economy, admittedly promising well to the nation. Their 

 origin has by recent writers been attributed to the cessation of great 

 road and railway works previously conducted about the early and 

 mid nineties. 



The movement, however, began really much sooner and not as 

 a result of unemployment, but of a genuinely democratic desire to 

 emancipate labour by co-operative action. It was in 1882 that 

 Signor Mori, a large landowner in the province of Cremona, for 

 which city he sat in the Italian Parliament, conceived the idea 

 of starting something like an Italian " Ralahine "— he himself 

 with his land, and partly with his money, playing the " Vandeleur." 

 Cremona, the principal city in a distinctively agricultural district — 

 not by any means miscra now, but on the contrary, nourishing as 



