Making Two Blades Grow . . .
ASWAMP and a shooting-lodge was all that existed two years ago at Maccarese, near the mouth of the Tiber. Now it is a rich agricultural district, employing over two thousand labourers.
This bonificazione (drainage—irrigation—land-reclam- ation) is the most advanced and successful of the great works designed to turn the deserts of Smith Italy into a garden, thereby absorbing the surplus population as well as increasing the wealth of the country. They may be considered as among the most important enterprises in Europe in their effect on future peace and prosperity, and the Maccarese property is the chief of them all, not only because it is in large measure completed and paying its way, but because a malarious marsh—ugly, sterile, accursed—has been converted into soil as fertile as any in Europe, rich with flowers and vines and the promise of increase.
A few years ago it was impossible to live here in summer. Men, women and children, cattle, horses and even pigs had to go up in August to Viterbo, or to the Apennines beyond. To pass the night in the Maccarese was at that time to keep vigil with the anopheles, sinister goddess of malaria. Now, however, there is little risk of infection. Out of 2,200 persons working on the estate last summer only 41 developed symptoms of malaria, and they were all recidivist cases, infected in previous years. The children of the farmers suffer no harm at all, and never develop the fever. For safety's sake they live for four months in big military tents on the beach, but the hygienic measures are such that there is practically no risk of infection for any human being of any age, provided he takes the simple precautions that are taught in the schools and placarded in public places. Probably 5,000 people will earn their living here eventually—on a strip of red loam some three miles long by two broad. Until the bonificazione, some fifty sick peasants dragged out their existence in these swamps. We need not be statisticians to see that if the waste spaces of Italy can be made to support 100 healthy people where they sufficed for only one fever-stricken wretch before, her 480,000 head of extra population need not emigrate or find an outlet in wars of conquest. Just how much land can be reclaimed it is impossible to say, as the financial and technical problems involved in converting the desert to the sown are complicated, but a conservative estimate of the 'situation gives Italy another twenty years of work before the best of the land south of Rome is brought under cultivation.
" Modern farming • will only pay when undertaken on a big scale," a director of the company told me. " It is no use niggling • with small areas. Here at Maccarese we have all the latest machinery and the best methods of production. and marketing. It has cost us £680,000 to drain and irrigate the land, sow it, erect the necessary houses for the cultivators and arrange our marketing. We expect a profit of 7 per cent—perhaps more. Of course, we have had previous experience with such projects in Upper Italy. Indeed, one of the first land-reclamation companies_ in Italy was, formed with English capital in 1865 or thereabouts. Since then we - have covered a lot of ground, in every sense. We pay good wages. Our labourers receive from 400 to 700 francs a. month, in addition to from 25 per cent. to 50 per cent. of the produce, depending on various factors, • such as whether they supply the seed or not. Two years ago there was only the Castel' San Giorgio—a shooting lodge—on this property. The rest was swamp. Look at it now, with school, shops, hospital, roads, electric light—a regular village, besides all our colony centres. And all these people are healthy and prosperous instead of sick and poor."
We drove up to the Castello. The stables have been converted into bathrooms and laundries. We entered a clean shop, whose shelves were full of general mer- chandise, all sold at 10 per cent. below Roman prices. I saw the hospital (whose only occupant at the moment— this was winter—was a mechanic with an injured thumb), and was shown graphs recording the progress in health of the colony. Then to the school, where our visit was quite unexpected. There are 25 infants here and 150 older children. The playrooms on the top floor are a delight to the , eye. Everything is baby-size. Tiny chairs, tiny tables, painted white, with flowers, delicious small thick cups . and plates, toys—the whole place has a loved and lived-in air. Even in the country of Mme. Montessori I did not expect to find such a jolly place in which to play.
• The property is divided up into " Colony Centres " of eighty hectares each (about 200 acres). Every centre has a fourteen- or fifteen-room farmhouse, lighted by electricity and provided with mosquito-proof doors and windows, to accommodate four or five families. Close by are the barns and cow-shed. All the arable land down to the sea has been cleared, levelled, ditched and drained : most of it is already under cultivation. A big grain elevator stands by the railway siding. There is an artesian well for drinking water, and, of course, a powerful electric pumping plant, with subsidiary Diesel engines, for draining and irrigation. Clear of all charges L. 2,000 per hectare (f.8 10s. per acre) can be obtained .
as the rental of such reclaimed land. Moreover the market for dairy produce, fruit, and vegetables is capable of gnat extension.
I have heard it advanced that the industrialization of Italy which is proceeding apace in the North is a mistake, for the country is not rich in raw materials, and that her true wealth lies in capitalizing her sunlight and her climate to the full.
" Don't make the common mistake of foreigners that the Southern Italian won't work," my _guide told me. " I have families froth all over Italy and some of the best of them come from Naples."
Could our farmers learn anything from the Maccarese ? I doubt it, for conditions are entirely different. But they could learn a good deal from a man such as my guide who has travelled all over Europe, studying agri- culture, and all over England, buying livestock. " Small. farms, like small businesses," he said " are doomed. unless they supply specialities. Large scale methods are necessary in districts newly developed, such as the Maccarese, or for districts which are failing to pay, like so much of your arable -acres now put out to grass.. Such methOds will be applied with the vigorous support of the. Fascist Government, who see the necessity for a popu- lation strongly based on the land, the visible giver of life. Mussolini was born and bred in a village and he knows the importance of the peasant."
Looking at those rich acres, at the vineyards, poultry runs, vegetable gardens, at the Decauville railway and long irrigation cuts,, at the lorries travelling between the scattered colonies, at the very tidy young peasants bicycling towards the Castel' San Giorgio (where doubt- less the wit and beauty of Maccarese dances of an evening to the gramophone), I could see no reason on the rich Italian earth or under the kind Italian sky why this experiment should not be repeated and extended in- -definitely. No doubt it will be.
F. YEATS-BROWN.
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