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

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

There was at one side of the room a press with a great twisted arm of a tree for a lever, but this was only used, I learned, for squeezing dry the refuse, from which a poorer and cheaper sort of wine was made. Directly in front as one entered the building, and high up under the roof, there was a huge, round, shallow tub-like vat. In this vat four or five men, with their trousers rolled up above their knees and their shoes and stockings on, were trotting about in a circle, and, singing as they went, tramping the grapes under their feet.

Through an open space or door at the back I caught a glimpse now and then of the procession of girls and men as they mounted the little stairs at the back of the wine house to pour fresh grapes into the press. In the light that came in through this opening the figures of the men trampling the grapes, their bare legs stained with wine, stood out clear and distinct. At the same time the fumes which arose from the grapes filled the wine house so that the air, it almost seemed, was red with their odour. It is said that men who work all day in the wine press not infrequently become intoxicated from merely breathing the air saturated with this fermenting grape juice.

I imagine that the harvest season has always been, in every land and in every time, a period of rejoicing and gladness. I remember it was so among the slaves on the plantation when I was a boy. As I watched these men and listened to the quaint and melancholy little songs they sang, while the red wine gushed out from under their trampling feet, I was reminded of the corn-huskings among the slaves, and of the songs the slaves sang at those times.

I was reminded of it the more as I noticed the way in which the leader in the singing bowed his head and pressed his temples, just as I have seen it done before by the one who led the singing at the corn-husking. I recall that, as a boy, the way this leader or chorister bowed his head and pressed his hands against his temples made a deep impression. Perhaps he was merely trying in this way to remember the words, but it seemed as if he was listening to music that welled up inside of him, seeking in this way, not merely to recall the words, but catch the inspiration of the song. Sometimes, after he had seemed to listen this way for a few minutes, he would suddenly fling back his head and burst into a wilder and more thrilling strain.

All this was strangely interesting and even thrilling to me, the more so, perhaps, because it seemed somehow as if I had seen or known all this somewhere before. Nevertheless, after watching these men, stained with wine and sweat, crushing the grapes under shoed and stockinged feet, I had even less desire to drink wine than ever before. It perhaps would not have been so bad if the men had not worn their socks.

One thing that impressed me in all that I saw was the secondary and almost menial part the women took in the work. They worked directly under an overseer who directed all their movements—directed them, apparently, with a sharp switch which he carried in his hand. There was no laughter or singing and apparently little freedom among the women, who moved slowly, silently, with the weary and monotonous precision in their work I have frequently noted in gang labour. They had little if any share in the kind of pleasurable excitement which helped to lighten the work of the men.

Once or twice every year, at the time of the grape and olive harvests, the girls and women come down from their mountain villages to share with the men in the work of the fields. For these two brief periods, as I understand it, the women of each one of these little country villages will be organized into a gang, just as is true of the gangs of wandering harvesters in Austria and Hungary. I had seen, on the Sunday I arrived in Catania, crowds of these women trooping, arm in arm, through the streets of the city. A party of them had, in fact, encamped on the pavement in the little open square at the southern gate of the city. They were there nearly all day and, I suppose, all night, also. I was interested to observe the patience with which they sat for hours on the curb or steps, with their heads on their bundles, waiting until the negotiations for hiring them were finished.

This brief period of the harvest time is almost the only opportunity that the majority of these country women have to get acquainted with the outside world. For the remainder of the year, it seems, they are rarely allowed to venture beyond the limits of the street or village in which they live.

In the course of my journey across the island I had seen, high up in the mountains, some of these inaccessible little nests from which, perhaps, these girls had come. In one or two cases, and especially at the time I visited the sulphur mines, I had an opportunity to see something of the life of these mountain villages. Now that I have come to speak especially of the women of the labouring and agricultural classes, I may as well tell here what I saw and learned of the way they live in their homes.

Such a village as I have referred to consists, for the most part, of rows of low, one-story stone buildings, ranged along a street that is dirty beyond description. The wells are frequently built without mortar or plaster, and roofed sometimes with wood, but more frequently with tiles. In a corner there is a stone hearth upon which the cooking is done, when there is anything to cook. As there is no chimney, the smoke filters out through the roofing.