214 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



braccianti, the workers, as their name implies " with their arms " — 

 employed alternately upon agricultural and navvy work, as employ- 

 ment offered. I have personally known and followed their move- 

 ment since 1893, when they were just beginning to emerge from 

 obscurity, abject distress and poverty. As wage labourers they had 

 passed through very hard times, with quite insufficient remunera- 

 tion — very badly accommodated during their periods of outdoor 

 labour in cabins littered with foul straw for bedding. They managed 

 to form societies, to obtain some independent contracts for work, 

 still miserably under-paying themselves, in order to accumulate a 

 small capital, wherewith to make themselves more independent and 

 place themselves in a position to obtain larger contracts. The 

 cessation of railway and road work already adverted to having set 

 them out of employment, these men in their societies eagerly joined 

 themselves to the affittanze movement then already in existence, and 

 gave to it a powerful impetus. It is these men mainly who are being 

 settled on those affittanze. The Societd Umanitaria coming on the 

 scene with a handsome endowment, left by a philanthropic Jew, and 

 taking up the cause of these men, proved of substantial help. It 

 brought the men, not only money, but also very valuable advice on 

 technical as well as general business matters — which advice, to do 

 them justice, Italian working men are wont gladly to accept, allow- 

 ing themselves to be led by those who knew better than themselves. 

 The institution of affittanza collettiva is now a well recognised 

 and appreciated feature in Italian public economy, which has 

 brought to those engaged in it independence and a much more 

 satisfactory status than they held before, and promises to do much 

 to increase the production of the country, because it has made it 

 the workers' own interest to increase it. They no longer work 

 just for their wage, but for all that they can get out of the land. 

 The land occupied is all rented. That is still the accepted custom 

 of the country. Rents pay landlords much better in Italy than they 

 do our landlords in this country, because, with all agricultural back- 

 wardness, there is not a little grinding, and therefore landlords are 

 not overwilling to part with their land — even in the " Agro Romano," 

 where the latifundia deplored by the younger Pliny proves a standing 

 hindrance to progress — albeit steps have now at last been taken to 

 pick holes in those vast domains by expropriation. The leases or 

 agreements granted to societies are more satisfactory to landlords 

 than those granted to single tenants, because obviously it is an 

 advantage for the landlord to have to deal with one manifestly 

 solvent society than with a host of individual small men. Conse- 



