The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

In Italy, the Socialistic movement among the agricultural classes took a somewhat different course. For one thing, it was not confined merely to the poorest class—namely, those labourers who live in the villages and go out at certain seasons to assist in the work on the farms—but extended to the small proprietors also, and those who rented land. In many cases the large estates in Italy are not managed as in Hungary, by the proprietor, but by middlemen and overseers, who pay a certain amount of rent to the proprietor and then sublet to tenants. Sometimes, particularly in southern Italy, lands are sublet a second and third time.

In many cases the terms upon which the land was held and worked by the small farmer were terribly oppressive, even in northern Italy, where conditions are incomparably better than in the south.

Although the peasants in northern Italy were nominally given their freedom in 1793, their condition, until a few years ago, has been described by one who was himself a large land proprietor as "little better than if they were slaves." In addition to the high rents, the tenant farmer was compelled to furnish the overseer with a certain number of chickens and eggs, and a certain amount of peaches, nuts, figs, hemp and flax, in proportion to the amount of land he rented.

The overseer claimed, also, just as the overlord did in the days of feudalism, the rights to the labour of the peasant and his ox-cart for a certain part of every year. His children were expected to work as servants in his household at a nominal price. The overseer sold the crop of the tenant farmer, and, after deducting all that was coming to him for rent and for other charges, returned the remainder to the tenant farmer as his share of the year's work.

In one case where, as a result of the revolt of his tenants the middleman was driven out, the tenant farmer, under the direction of the Socialist leaders, undertook to rent the land directly from the landowners, it was found that the middleman had been appropriating not less than 48 per cent. of the profits, which, under the new arrangement, went directly into the hands of the man who tilled the soil.

For a number of years there had existed among the small farmers numerous societies for mutual aid of various kinds. After the Socialists began to turn their attention to the agricultural population they succeeded in gaining leadership in these societies and used them as a means of encouraging agricultural strikes. It was from these same societies also that they recruited the members of those organizations of farm labourers and tenants which have attempted to form large estates on a coöperative basis. By this means the small farmer has been able to do away with the middleman and still retain the advantages which result, particularly in harvesting and marketing the crops, from conducting the operations on a large scale.

In recent years coöperative organizations of all kinds have multiplied among the small farmers of northern Italy. There are societies for purchasing supplies as well as for disposing of the products of the small farmers; the most important of these societies have been, perhaps, the coöperative credit organizations, by means of which small landowners have been able to escape the burden of the heavy interest charges they were formerly compelled to pay.

I was interested to learn that both the Government and the Socialists were at different times opposed to these coöperative societies, although for different reasons. The Socialists were opposed to coöperation because by removing the causes of discontent it sapped the revolutionary spirit of the farming classes. The Government, on the other hand, was opposed to the coöperative societies because their leaders were so frequently revolutionists who were using the society to stimulate discontent and organize the movement to overthrow the Government.

The great general strike of September, 1904, which resulted in practically putting an end, for five days, to all kinds of business industries in the city of Milan, was provoked by the state police firing upon some peasants who were holding a meeting to pay their shares and take their lots in an agricultural coöperative society.

I have attempted to describe at some length the character of the Socialistic movement as I found it in Hungary and Italy, because it represents on the whole the movement of the masses at the bottom of life in Europe. Through this party, for the first time, millions of human beings who have had no voice in and no definite ideas in respect to the Government under which they lived are learning to think and to give expression to their wants.