Silk, fruit, and vegetables are the staple products that connect Italy commercially with the rest of the world. About a million people are concerned in the silk industry, and Italy is one of the foremost countries in the world in the production of raw silk. Most of the crop is produced in northern Italy; western Europe and the United States are the chief buyers. The silk of the Piedmont region is the best in quality.
Fruit is the crop next in value to raw silk. Sicilian oranges and lemons, from about twenty millions of trees, find a ready market in Europe; the oranges come into competition with the California and Florida oranges of the United States, in spite of the tariff imposed against them by the latter country. Olives are probably the most important fruit-crop. Both the preserved fruit and the oil are exported to nearly every civilized people. Much of the oil is consumed at home, very largely taking the place of meat and butter. Lucca-oil is regarded as the best.
ITALY
The grape-crop is enormous, and the fruit itself is exported. Some of the fruit sold as "Malaga" grapes throughout the United States during winter months comes from Italy. Chianti wine, from the vineyards around Florence, has hitherto been regarded as an inferior product, but the foreign demand for it is steadily increasing. The Marsala wines of Sicily are largely exported.
Among mineral products the iron deposits in the island of Elba are undoubtedly the most valuable, but they are yet undeveloped to any great extent. The quarries at Carrara produce a fine marble that has made Italy famous in sculpture and architecture. Much of the boracic acid used in the arts comes from Tuscany, and the world's chief supply of sulphur comes from the neighborhood of Mount Etna in Sicily. Of this Americans buy about one-third.
On account of the lack of coal, the manufactures are restricted mainly to art wares, such as jewelry, silk textiles, and fine glassware. The Venetian glassware, the Florentine and mosaic jewelry, and the pink coral ornaments are famous the world over. Within recent years, however, imported coal, together with native lignite, have given steel manufacture an impetus. Steel ships and rails made at home are meeting the demands of commerce. Goods of American cotton are made for export to Turkey and South American countries.
Raw silk, wine, olive-oil, straw goods, sulphur, and art goods are exported. Cotton, wheat, tobacco, and farm machinery from the United States, and coal, woollen textiles, and steel goods from Great Britain are the chief imports. Most of the foreign trade is with the nearby states. The raw silk goes to France.
Since the unification of Italy the railways have been readjusted to the needs of commerce. Before that time the lines were wholly local in character; with the readjustment they were organized into trunk lines. They enter France through the Mont Cenis tunnel; they reach Switzerland and Germany by way of St. Gotthard Pass; they cross the Austrian border through Brenner Pass.