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

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

One day, in passing through one of the suburbs of Catania, I stopped in front of a little stone and stucco building which I thought at first was a wayside shrine or chapel. But it turned out to be a one-room house. This house had a piece of carpet hung as a curtain in front of the broad doorway. In front of this curtain there was a rude table made of rough boards; on this table was piled a quantity of the Indian figs I have described and some bottles of something or other that looked like what we in America call "pop."

Two very good-looking young women were tending this little shop. I stopped and talked with them and bought some of the cactus fruit. I found it sold five pieces for a cent. They told me that from the sale of this fruit they made about 17 cents a day, and upon this sum they and their father, who was an invalid, were compelled to support themselves. There were a few goats and chickens and two pigs wandering about the place, and I learned that one of the economies of the household consisted in feeding the pigs and goats upon the shells or husks of the Indian figs that were eaten and thrown upon the ground.

As near as I could learn, from all that I heard and read, the condition of the agricultural population in Sicily has been growing steadily worse for half a century, at least.

Persons who have made a special study of the physical condition of these people declare that this part of the population shows marked signs of physical and mental deterioration, due, they say, to the lack of sufficient food. For example, in respect to stature and weight, the Sicilians are nearly 2 per cent. behind the population in northern Italy. This difference is mainly due to the poor physical condition of the agricultural classes, who, like the agricultural population of the southern mainland of Italy, are smaller than the population in the cities.

In this connection, it is stated that considerably less than one third as much meat is consumed per capita in Sicily as in northern Italy. Even so, most of the meat that is eaten there is consumed in the hotels by the foreigners who visit the country.

In looking over the budgets of a number of the small landowners, whose position is much better than that of the average farm labourer, I found that as much as $5 was spent for wine, while the item for meat was only $2 per year. There are thousands of people in Sicily, I learned, who almost never taste meat. The studies which have been made of the subject indicate that the whole population is underfed.

Upon inquiry I found it to be generally admitted that the condition of the population was due to the fact that the larger part of the land was in the hands of large landowners, who have allowed the ignorant and helpless peasants to be crushed by a system of overseers and middlemen as vicious and oppressive as that which existed in many parts of the Southern States during the days of slavery.

This middleman is called by Italians a gobellotto, and he seems to be the only man in Sicily who is getting rich out of the land. If a gobellotto has a capital of $12,000 he will be able to rent an estate of 2,500 acres for a term of six to nine years. He will, perhaps, work only a small portion of this land himself and sublet the remainder.

Part of it will go to a class of farmers that correspond to what are known in the South as "cash renters." These men will have some stock, and, perhaps, a little house and garden. In a good season they will be able to make enough to live upon and, perhaps, save a little money. If the small farmer is so unfortunate, however, as to have a bad season; if he loses some of his cattle or is compelled to borrow money or seed, the middleman who advances him is pretty certain to "clean him up," as our farmers say, at the end of the season. In that case, he falls into the larger and more unfortunate class beneath him, which corresponds to what we call in the Southern States the "share cropper." This man, corresponding to the share cropper, is supposed to work his portion of land on half-shares, but if, as frequently happens, he has been compelled to apply to the landlord during the season for a loan, it goes hard with him on the day of settlement. For example, this is the way, according to a description that I received, the crop is divided between the landlord and his tenants: After the wheat has been cut and thrashed—thrashed not with a machine, nor yet perhaps with flails, but with oxen treading the sheaves on a dirt floor—the gobellotto subtracts from the returns of the harvest double, perhaps triple, measure of the seed he had advanced. After that, according to the local custom, he takes a certain portion for the cost of guarding the field while the grain is ripening, since no man's field is safe from thieves in Sicily.

Then he takes another portion for the saints, something more for the use of the threshing floor and the storehouse and for anything else that occurs to him. Naturally he takes a certain portion for his other loans, if there have been any, and for interest. Then, finally, if there is nothing further to be subtracted, he divides the rest and gives the farmer his half.