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

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

It is estimated by the Socialists that in Italy the labouring man pays 54 per cent. of the taxes; business men and the professional classes pay 34 per cent., while the class which lives upon rents and the income from investments of various kinds furnishes but 12 per cent. of the revenues of the state.

Italy has, I think, every kind and method of taxation which has ever been invented. There is an income tax, which varies between 7½ and 20 per cent., though small incomes of less than one hundred dollars a year are exempt. The tax on landed property amounts to 30, 40, or even 50 per cent. In addition to these there is the lottery, the state monopolies, the stamp tax and dog tax. Finally the municipal taxes on all kinds of foodstuffs which are brought into the town. This tax absorbs from 20 to 30 per cent. of the labouring man's income.

All these taxes, direct and indirect, are so arranged that the heaviest burden falls upon that portion of the community which is least able to bear it. For example, salt is a Government monopoly in Italy, and in 1901 the people of Italy paid $15,000 for salt which cost the Government $1,200 to manufacture. The Italian Government ships salt to America for the use of the Gloucester fishermen for 50 cents a barrel of 280 pounds, or five and three-fifth pounds for a cent. This same salt costs the Italian, because of the monopoly of the Government, 4 cents a pound—that is to say, twelve times what it costs in America. In order to protect this monopoly the Government even goes so far as to station guards along the whole seacoast to prevent people from "stealing" sea water in buckets, to obtain salt.

Fortunately the state monopoly of salt does not extend to Sicily, but the principle of taxing the people according to their necessities, rather than according to their ability to pay, is the same there as elsewhere in Italy. As an illustration of the unfair way in which the taxes are levied in some parts of the country it is said that the donkey of the poor farmer is compelled to pay a tax, while the saddle-horse of the rich landlord goes free.

In comparison with this, the Negro in the South hardly knows what taxes are. The Negro farmer, for example, has an inexhaustible market for his cotton, corn, pork, and vegetables, and all the other farm vegetables that he can raise. Land is so cheap that a thrifty farmer can buy and pay for a farm within five or six years. Taxes on farm land are so low that the farmer hardly considers them in his yearly budget.

Poor as some of the Negro schools are in some parts of the South, they are vastly better and more numerous than those of the country people in Sicily. More than that, the Government puts no tax either on rain or sunshine, and the Negro in the Southern States has plenty of both, which is not true of the Sicilian farmer, who has too much sunshine and not enough rain. So much is the farmer in Sicily in need of water that at certain times in the year it is said that wine is cheaper than water. Finally, the Negro farmer, if he desires to take a load of produce to the town, does not, as is the case of the Sicilian, meet a policeman on the outskirts of the city who takes one fifth of his cotton, corn, eggs, or whatever he happens to have, away from him, before he will allow him to enter the town.

One day, while I was walking along the edge of the harbour in Catania, I noticed a man who was at work mending a high wire netting, about twenty or thirty feet high, which extended along the edge of the water. I saw that it extended as far as I could see. Upon inquiry I learned that it was placed there to prevent the fishermen, whom I noticed constantly coming and going with their little sailing boats, from bringing their fish into the city without paying the tax.

At the custom house, where the fishermen land, I observed one of these fishermen, who had landed with a small quantity of fish, which he was carrying to the market nearby, stop and fumble in his clothes, trying to find money enough to pay the tariff. When he could not find sufficient money to pay the sum demanded, he left two small fishes behind with the collector to cover the amount of the tax.

Fish is the cheapest and most abundant food the poor in the city can get to eat. The sea, just beyond their doors, is swarming with this kind of food. Nevertheless the city maintains an expensive army of officials to collect this miserable little tax upon the necessities of the poor.

The yearly income of a labourer's family in Catania is about 750 lire, or $170 a year. Of this amount it has been reckoned that in the way of taxes upon foodstuffs brought into the city the labourer pays 150 lire, or one fifth of his whole income.