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

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

I had seen, as I entered the Palermo harbour, the manner in which this coal was unloaded, and it gave me the first tangible evidence I had found of the cheapness of human labour in this over-populated country. Instead of the great machines which are used for that purpose in America and England, I learned, this work was all done by hand.

In order to take this coal from the ship it was first loaded into baskets, which were swung over the side of the vessel and there piled upon a lighter. This lighter was then moved from the ships to the shore. The baskets were then lifted out by hand and the coal dumped on the wharf. From these it was reloaded into carts and carried away. It was this coal, handled in this expensive way, that this farmer was using to pump the water needed to irrigate his land.

After leaving Palermo I went to Catania, at the other side of the island. The railway which climbs the mountains in crossing the island took me through a very different country and among very different people than those I had seen at Palermo. It was a wild, bare, mountainous region through which we passed; more bare, perhaps, at the time I saw it than at other times, because the grain had been harvested and plowing had not begun. There were few regular roads anywhere. Now and then the train passed a lonely water-wheel; now and then I saw, winding up a rocky footpath, a donkey or pack-mule carrying water to the sulphur mines or provisions to some little inland mountain village.

Outside of these little villages, in which the farm labourers live, the country was perfectly bare. One can ride for miles through this thickly populated country without seeing a house or a building of any kind, outside of the villages.

In Sicily less than 10 per cent. of the farming class live in the open country. This results in an enormous waste of time and energy. The farm labourer has to walk many miles to and from his labour. A large part of the year he spends far away from his home. During this time he camps out in the field in some of the flimsy little straw-thatched shelters that one sees scattered over the country, or perhaps he finds himself a nest in the rocks or a hole in the ground. During this time he lives, so to speak, on the country. If he is a herdsman, he has his cows' or goats' milk to drink. Otherwise his food consists of a piece of black bread and perhaps a bit of soup of green herbs of some kind or other.

During my journey through this mountain district, and in the course of a number of visits to the country which I made later, I had opportunity to learn something of the way these farming people live. I have frequently seen men who had done a hard day's work sit down to a meal which consisted of black bread and a bit of tomato or other raw vegetable. In the more remote regions these peasant people frequently live for days or months, I learned, on almost any sort of green thing they find in the fields, frequently eating it raw, just like the cattle.

When they were asked how it was possible to eat such stuff, they replied that it was good; "it tasted sweet," they said.

I heard, while I was in Sicily, of the case of a woman who, after her husband had been sent to prison, supported herself from the milk she obtained from a herd of goats, which she pastured on the steep slopes of the mountains. Her earnings amounted to not more than 12 to 14 cents a day, and, as this was not sufficient for bread for herself and her four children, she picked up during the day all sorts of green stuff that she found growing upon the rocks, and carried it home in her apron at night to fill the hungry mouths that were awaiting her return. Persons who have had an opportunity to carefully study the condition of this country say it is incredible what sort of things these poor people in the interior of Sicily will put into their stomachs.

One of the principal articles of diet, in certain seasons of the year, is the fruit of a cactus called the Indian fig, which grows wild in all parts of the island. One sees it everywhere, either by the roadside, where it is used for hedges, or clinging to the steep cliffs on the mountainside. The fruit, which is about the size and shape of a very large plum, is contained in a thick, leathern skin, which is stripped off and fed to the cattle. The fruit within is soft and mushy and has a rather sickening, sweetish taste, which, however, is greatly relished by the country people.