THE STATE OF SICILY.
[FROM A CORRESPONDENT.]
DR. NAPOLEONE COLAJANNI, a Radical Member of the Italian Parliament, and a man long and familiarly acquainted with Sicily, has recently published at Rome a pamphlet entitled " In Sicilia," in which he discusses the causes of the recent troubles in the island, and the conduct of the Government in relation to them. Dr. Colajanni is, we believe, a man who bears the reputa- tion of honour and veracity"; and his book, so far as it relates to the condition of the Sicilians—with which only we shall now deal—appears to us to bear internal evidence of a desire not to exaggerate, and of a general fairness of mind. We possess no knowledge of Sicily which could enable us to judge of the work from an independent point of, view, and therefore it is well that the writer impresses us as a fair man, and that he often justifies his conclu- sions by reference to documents and the writings of others on the state of Sicily, amongst whom may be mentioned Signor Sonnino, the present Minister of Finance for Italy.
The troubles in Sicily, which have attracted so much attention recently, are, according to our author, the outcome not so much of any socialistic or other political excitement, as of certain recent economic changes operating on a society afflicted with many old infirmities,—infirmities which seemed bearable to those accustomed to them till certain new sources of trouble and new strains were super- imposed upon them.
The rural class in Sicily constitutes about three-fourths of the entire population, the rest consisting of the aristo- cratic classes, the " galantuomini " or " classi dirigenti," which are very few in number, and the sulphur-miners. The sulphur-mines are found in the provinces of Girgenti, Caltanisetta, Catania, and Palermo, but chiefly in the two former. The mines are worked by the men who actually extract the substance, and are known as " pic- conieri "; they employ youths between the ages of eight and twenty, who are known as "carusi," who carry the sub- stance from the place where it is dug to the " calcherono," the place where the sulphur is melted and brought into the form of cakes. These workmen are all paid in pro- portion to the greater or less distance which the sulphur has to be carried and the length and steepness of the ladder which has to be ascended. The " carusi " have been objects of great sympathy on the part of many visitors to Sicily ; and their lot is not an easy or light one ; but, according to our author, their woes have been exaggerated. They receive from 70 centesimi to 2 lire a day (28 or 29 lire go to our pound sterling), but few receive the larger figure. Sometimes the "carusi" are treated with great harshness by their masters, the " picconieri ; " but some- times, on the other hand, they receive much kindness. The power of the latter over the former class of workers is due to a custom by which, when a " earns° " engages himself to work with a " picconiere," he receives from his master a sum of from 50 to 150 lire ; and this sum must be re- paid by the " cameo " to his master before he can leave his engagement. The repayment of this sum is naturally often difficult, and sometimes the " caruso " breaks through his customary duty, runs away from one master and engages himself to another, leaving his old employer to his legal rights. But these have little attraction for the Sicilian " picconiere ;" he more often resorts to the stick and the knife, and pursues sometimes his runaway servant— sometimes the new master, who, by the custom, has become liable for the debt of his servant. Hence arise frequent cases of vendetta and of personal outrages. The dwellings of these miners are said to be very miserable, but the hours of labour are not excessive, and an eight- hours regulation would, it seems, have little operation in the sulphur-mines of Sicily. The question whether the hard and early labour undertaken by these " carusi " does or does not produce a physical degeneration has been much discussed, but apparently still remains sub judice. As to the actual workers of the sulphur, their condition seems as bad as that of their carriers. Their wages oscil- late between 1 lira 50 centesimi and 3 lire a day, and this is subject practically to a heavy deduction of from 25 to 50 per cent. by reason of the prevalence of the truck system, that is the payment of the wages not in specie but in goods supplied by the masters. But what brings the greatest discontent into the mining district is this,—that the price of sulphur has, for the last fifteen years, gone down almost incessantly, and with it the wages of the miners, so that they are now receiving about half only their former rates of wages; and there can be no doubt that a sudden fall from comparative comfort to actual poverty is more productive of disturbance and outrage, than a long-continued and grinding misery ; so that it is not wonderful that amongst the sulphur-miners there have been formed the combinations of workmen which are known in Sicily as " Fasci," and that in one place at least in the sulphur districts (Valguarnera), the discontent has shown itself in an outburst accompanied by conflagrations and brutal violence.
If we turn from the condition of the sulphur-miners to that of the rural population, we find a great complica- tion. Some people write as though the land-system of Sicily was one and indivisible ; whereas, in fact, it differs from province to province, from circondario to circondario, from commune to commune. In many parts, as in the province of Messina, the metayer system prevails, and in these districts the " contadini " are generally the best off. But, again, the metayer system itself varies from place to place ; sometimes it is, applied only to certain products,— thus it is often applied to the fields of cereals, whilst the vineyards and olive-yards are exempted from it. But the metayer system, much as it is to be esteemed, is said to be open to certain abuses ; in many cases the landlord asserts a right to dip out of the common sack before its division, in order to recoup himself for the seed he has provided, and to satisfy various other customary claims, including sometimes that of the Madonna, or of some local patron saint ; and in the demand for the seed, it is said that even honourable landlords claim an addition of 20 per cent. for the use of the grain during the year.
Another form of contract for the holding of land is known as the " terzeria," because under it the produce of the land is divided into thirds, of which the landlord takes two and the tenant retains one. But in this case the landlord not only finds land which has lain fallow for a year, but has ploughed and prepared it for the crop by his oxen. Again, there is another form of contract known as " terratico," which is a simple letting to hire of the farm- lands at a fixed rent, payable in produce or in money, according to the agreement of the parties. The " inquili- naggio " is a form of contract applied to vineyards. The contadino, under this, hires the land for a period varying from fifteen to twenty-nine years ; he plants the vines, and gives yearly a stipulated portion of the produce to his landlord. Many of these holders of vineyards have been sorely stricken by the plague of the phylloxera, which has wrought fearful havoc in the province of Syracuse, and threatens that of Catania.
The peasantry who live and work under these various forms of contract on the small or middle-sized estates are the best off ; the worst are those who live on the great estates, for on them them exists a practice of subletting which reminds one of what used to exist in Ireland. In these latifundia the proprietor usually lets the land in large masses to a tenant, at a rent ; the tenant sublets to sub-tenants ; and these, again, let it out on the metayer system, or cultivate it by day labour. Upon this complicated agricultural system has come a severe depression. The breaking off of the good. commercial relations with France has depressed the price in Sicily both of corn and of wine, its two chief products ; and other causes have added to it, such as the refusal of North America to allow the fruit ships from Sicily to enter her ports, from the fear of cholera. The result has been acute misery throughout the rural population of Sicily. Bread from one of the poorest communes of Sicily has been shown by analysis to contain 65 per cent. of inorganic matter. Much no doubt was hoped for when the island of Sicily came under the rule of the late King of Italy, and when the vast estates of the ecclesiastical corporations were withdrawn from them and sold to lay owners. But it appears that they were to a large extent purchased. by great absentee proprietors, and that little or no change for the better has taken place in the management of the estates. One of the alleviations of the life of the peasant's wife was her pig. She tended it with loving care, and cherished. it like an ewe lamb. But loved. as it was in its life, it was loved still more in its death. The best parts of the body were sold. to the butcher for a sum which was the chief source of payment for the clothes of the family ; the head, the feet, the black puddings furnished the materials for the one real feast of the year ; neighbours and friends were called in, and the day of the porker's death was the whitest day in all the year. But the rural population of Sicily dwell in the towns, and are not distributed over the country, and lofty notions of sanita- tion have invaded the towns of Sicily, and the pig has been hunted down and driven away; and this has left an aching void, a sense of injury which is said to be a real and important element of disturbance amongst the labouring population.
Then there is the pastoral population, consisting of the men and boys who look after the herds of cattle and the flocks of sheep, who lead hard. lives and receive little pay, who are little better than semi-barbarians, and are almost always the accomplices of the cattle-stealers and of the brigands. The lives of the herdsmen are especially hard. They scarcely ever sleep or live under a roof either in the heats of summer or the snows of winter, and they revisit their families only three or four times in every quarter of a year,—a circumstance of great injuryto the family morals.
The municipal authorities of the Sicilian towns have the command of considerable funds, which are raised princi- pally by an octroi (Dazio di consumo), a health-tax, and a tax upon animals ; and the mode in which these taxes have been raised, and the manner in which they have been expended, have raised the bitterest hostility to the local authorities in the minds of the c,ontadini ; and so entirely is this hatred addressed to the local authorities that at Giardinello, at Santa Caterina, and other places, the mobs that have shouted " Down with the taxes ! Down with the Syndic ! " have carried in their processions the portraits of the King and the Queen.
" As to the way," says the present Minister of Finance, Signor Sonnino, " in which the class of the galantuomini' have availed themselves of the communal administrations for their own benefit and to the injury of the contadini,' it will be enough, in order to form some idea of it, to examine commune by commune the lists of taxation. In a general way we find the tax imposed in the heaviest way upon beasts of draught and burden, that is to say, prin- cipally on the mules and horses which are the chief property of the peasants. And conversely the tax is im- posed rarely and in less proportion on the cattle, that is to say, on the cows and oxen, because these are the property of the landlords. In most places the peasant pays as much as 8 lire for a mule and 5 lire for an ass, and the landlord and the superior tenant pay nothing, or relatively a very small sum, for a hundred cows or oxen. The communal tax on beasts of draught and burden in Sicily amounted in 1874 to 589,557 lire, whilst the tax on cattle amounted to 146,493 lire."
And not merely does the injustice exist in the mode in which the taxes are imposed, but the utmost laxity and even dishonesty+ is alleged to exist in the mode of their collection,—in truth, as to the general fact of the wretched character of the administration in the island, there seems to be neither doubt nor dispute. Certain lords, who have, for example, twenty mules, return only four,—these are entered on the schedule, and no one takes the trouble to inquire into the truth of the return. An examination made at the instance of the Prefect of the province of Palermo, showed that the Syndic and the Councillors had not entered for taxation one-tenth of the animals which belonged to them, whilst certain poor wretches were entered. for more than they possessed. If rumour is to be believed, Sicily is not the only part of Italy where this kind of thing is done. But if the mode of levying the local taxation is unjust, the method of its expenditure is said to be at least as bad. In the province of Caltanisetta a road has been constructed at the expense of the province for the sole benefit of a baron ; at Agira, a road. has been made at the expense of the commune, principally for the benefit of one rich lord ; another commune ruined. itself in the construction of an intercommunal road ; and great expenses have been in- curred in the construction of theatres, in festivals, in matters of luxury, and in various forms of display ; whilst the most necessary sources of outlay, like the supply of water and the promotion of education, are absolutely neglected. In such a condition of society Socialism and Anarchy can easily find. a foothold, and preachers of violence willing hearers.
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