The news from Italy this week is somewhat disquieting. In
Southern Italy a bad vintage and a failure in the wheat- crop have aggravated the agrarian discontent against the food-taxes, and at Bari, the scene of recent riots, an outbreak of cholera has already claimed many victims. Nor are these agrarian troubles confined to the South. The Times corre- spondent in the issue of Thursday gives an instructive account of the struggle between Capital and Labour which is going on in the congested districts of the Romagna, notably the province of .Ravenna. The situation is extremely com- plicated, bat is roughly comparable to a triangular duel between landlords, tenants, and labourers. With the first named are ranged the contractors who rent the large blocks of reclaimed land cultivated by day labourers ; the tenants, or mezzadri, are half capitalists, half labourers, as they hold their plots on equal shares with the landowners ; while the day labourers, or braceianti, for the most part have no hold on the land, and are only employed during certain seasons. The braccianti are enrolled in a Socialist Labour League; the tenants belong to a Republican Labour League; and these two groups have come into sharp conflict this year over the question of harvest machinery ; while the Agrarian Associa- tion, the league of the proprietors, watches the fight and occasionally supports the Republicans.
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