department. The great works of the Vatican are especially famous (more than 17,000 distinct tints are employed in their productions), and there are many other establishments in Rome. The Florentine mosaics are perhaps better known abroad; they are composed of larger pieces than the Roman. Those of the Venetian artists are remarkable for the boldness of their colouring. There is a tendency towards the fostering of feminine home industries—lace-making, linen-weaving, &c.
Condition of the Working Classes.—The condition of the numerous agricultural labourers (who constitute one-third of the population) is, except in some regions, hard, and in places absolutely miserable. Much light was thrown upon their position by the agricultural inquiry (inchiesta agraria) completed in 1884. The large numbers of emigrants, who are drawn chiefly from the rural classes, furnish another proof of poverty. The terms of agrarian contracts and leases (except in districts where mezzadria prevails in its essential form), are in many regions disadvantageous to the labourers, who suffer from the obligation to provide guarantees for payment of rent, for repayment of seed corn and for the division of products.
It was only at the close of the 19th century that the true cause of malaria—the conveyance of the infection by the bite of the Anopheles claviger—was discovered. This mosquito does not as a rule enter the large towns; but low-lying coast districts and ill-drained plains are especially subject to it. Much Malaria. has been done in keeping out the insects by fine wire netting placed on the windows and the doors of houses, especially in the railwaymen’s cottages. In 1902 the state took up the sale of quinine at a low price, manufacturing it at the central military pharmaceutical laboratory at Turin. Statistics show the difference produced by this measure.
| Financial Year. | Pounds of quinine sold. | Deaths by Malaria. |
| 1901–1902 | . . | 13,358 |
| 1902–1903 | 4,932 | 9,908 |
| 1903–1904 | 15,915 | 8,513 |
| 1904–1905 | 30,956 | 8,501 |
| 1905–1906 | 41,166 | 7,838 |
| 1906–1907 | 45,591 | 4,875 |
The profit made by the state, which is entirely devoted to a special fund for means against malaria, amounted in these five years to £41,759. It has been established that two 3-grain pastilles a day are a sufficient prophylactic; and the proprietors of malarious estates and contractors for public works in malarious districts are bound by law to provide sufficient quinine for their workmen, death for want of this precaution coming under the provisions of the workmen’s compensation act. Much has also been, though much remains to be, done in the way of bonificamento, i.e. proper drainage and improvement of the (generally fertile) low-lying and hitherto malarious plains.
In Venetia the lives of the small proprietors and of the salaried peasants are often extremely miserable. There and in Lombardy the disease known as pellagra is most widely diffused. The disease is due to poisoning by micro-organisms produced by deteriorated maize, and can be combated by care in ripening, drying and storing the maize. The most recent statistics show the disease to be diminishing. Whereas in 1881 there were 104,067 (16.29 per 1000) peasants afflicted by the disease, in 1899 there were only 72,603 (10.30 per 1000) peasants, with a maximum of 39,882 (34.32 per 1000) peasants in Venetia, and 19,557 (12.90 per 1000) peasants in Lombardy. The decrease of the disease is a direct result of the efforts made to combat it, in the form of special hospitals or pellagrosari, economic kitchens, rural bakeries and maize-drying establishments. A bill for the better prevention of pellagra was introduced in the spring of 1902. The deaths from it dropped in that year to 2376, from 3054 in the previous year and 3788 in 1900.
In Liguria, on account of the comparative rarity of large estates, agricultural labourers are in a better condition. Men earn between 1s. 3d. and 2s. 1d. a day, and women from 5d. to 8d. In Emilia the day labourers, known as disobbligati, earn, on the contrary, low wages, out of which they have to provide for shelter and to lay by something against unemployment. Their condition is miserable. In Tuscany, however, the prevalence of mezzadria, properly so called, has raised the labourers’ position. Yet in some Tuscan provinces, as, for instance, that of Grosseto, where malaria rages, labourers are organized in gangs under “corporals,” who undertake harvest work. They are poverty-stricken, and easily fall victims to fever. In the Abruzzi and in Apulia both regular and irregular workmen are engaged by the year. The curatori or curatoli (factors) receive £40 a year, with a slight interest in the profits; the stockmen hardly earn in money and kind £13; the muleteers and under-workmen get between £5 to £8, plus firewood, bread and oil; irregular workmen have even lower wages, with a daily distribution of bread, salt and oil. In Campania and Calabria the curatoli and massari earn, in money and kind, about £12 a year; cowmen, shepherds and muleteers about £10; irregular workmen are paid from 812d. to 1s. 8d. per day, but only find employment, on an average, 230 days in the year. The condition of Sicilian labourers is also miserable. The huge extent of the latifondi, or large estates, often results in their being left in the hands of speculators, who exploit both workmen and farmers with such usury that the latter are often compelled, at the end of a scanty year, to hand over their crops to the usurers before harvest. In Sardinia wage-earners are paid 10d. a day, with free shelter and an allotment for private cultivation. Irregular adult workmen earn between 10d. and 1s. 3d., and boys from 6d. to 10d. a day. Woodcutters and vine-waterers, however, sometimes earn as much as 3s. a day.
The peasants somewhat rarely use animal food—this is most largely used in Sardinia and least in Sicily—bread and polenta or macaroni and vegetables being the staple diet. Wine is the prevailing drink.
The condition of the workmen employed in manufactures has improved during recent years. Wages are higher, the cost of the prime necessaries of life is, as a rule, lower, though taxation on some of them is still enormous; so that the remuneration of work has improved. Taking into account the variations in wages and in the price of wheat, it may be calculated that the number of hours of work requisite to earn a sum equal to the price of a cwt. of wheat fell from 183 in 1871 to 73 in 1894. In 1898 it was 105, on account of the rise in the price of wheat, and since then up till 1902 it oscillated between 105 and 95.
Wages have risen from 22.6 centimes per hour (on an average) to 26.3 centimes, but not in all industries. In the mining and woollen industries they have fallen, but have increased in mechanical, chemical, silk and cotton industries. Wages vary greatly in different parts of Italy, according to the cost of the necessaries of life, the degree of development of working-class needs and the state of working-class organization, which in some places has succeeded in increasing the rates of pay. Women are, as a rule, paid less than men, and though their wages have also increased, the rise has been slighter than in the case of men. In some trades, for instance the silk trade, women earn little more than 10d. a day, and, for some classes of work, as little as 7d. and 412d. The general improvement in sanitation has led to a corresponding improvement in the condition of the working classes, though much still remains to be done, especially in the south. On the other hand, it is generally the case that even in the most unpromising inn the bedding is clean.
The number of industrial strikes has risen from year to year, although, on account of the large number of persons involved in some of them, the rise in the number of strikers has not always corresponded to the number of strikes. During the years 1900 and 1901 strikes were increasingly numerous, chiefly Strikes. on account of the growth of Socialist and working-class organizations.
The greatest proportion of strikes takes place in northern Italy, especially Lombardy and Piedmont, where manufacturing industries are most developed. Textile, building and mining industries show the highest percentage of strikes, since they give employment to large numbers of men concentrated in single localities. Agricultural strikes, though less frequent than those in manufacturing industries, have special importance in Italy. They are most common in the north and centre, a circumstance which shows them to be promoted less by the more backward and more ignorant peasants than by the better-educated labourers of Lombardy and Emilia, among whom Socialist organizations are widespread. Since 1901 there have been, more than once, general strikes at Milan and elsewhere, and one in the autumn of 1905 caused great inconvenience throughout the country, and led to no effective result.
Although in some industrial centres the working-class movement has assumed an importance equal to that of other countries, there is no general working-class organization comparable to the English trade unions. Mutual benefit and co-operative societies serve the purpose of working-class defence or offence against the employers. In 1893, after many vicissitudes, the Italian Socialist Labour Party was founded, and has now become the Italian Socialist Party, in which the majority of Italian workmen enrol themselves. Printers and hat-makers, however, possess trade societies. In 1899 an agitation began for the organization of “Chambers of Labour,” intended to look after the technical education of workmen and to form commissions of arbitration in case of strikes. They act also as employment bureaux, and are often centres of political propaganda. At present such “chambers” exist in many Italian cities, while “leagues of improvement,” or of “resistance,” are rapidly spreading in the country districts. In many cases the action of these organizations has proved, at least temporarily, advantageous to the working classes.
Labour legislation is backward in Italy, on account of the late development of manufacturing industry and of working-class organization. On the 17th of April 1898 a species of Employers’ Liability Act compelled employers of more than five workmen in certain industries to insure their employees against accidents.
