ITALY'S TRADE AND SPECIAL TRADE CENTRES
The most distinctive natural product of Italy is silk, and the amount of raw and thrown silk exported is about $57,500,000 annually. Silk culture is carried on all over the kingdom, though the industry flourishes most extensively in Piedmont and Lombardy, in the north. Over 550,000 people are engaged in rearing silkworms, and the annual cocoon harvest approximates 100,000,000 pounds. Silk-"throwing," or-spinning, is the principal manufacturing industry, and the amount of silk spun and exported is about 45,000 tons, most of which goes to France. After silk the products of the country that constitute the principal exports are olive oil, fruit (oranges, lemons, grapes, almonds, figs, dates, and pistachio nuts), and wine (in casks). The olive-oil export and the fruit export are each about a fifth of the export of silk, and the wine export about a sixth. Other important and characteristic exports are raw hemp and flax, sulphur, eggs, manufactured coral, woods and roots used for dyeing and tanning, rice, marble, and straw-plaiting. The principal import is wheat, for agriculture, though generally pursued, is still in a backward state of efficiency, and the average grain crop is only one third what it is in Great Britain. One eighth the total amount of wheat needed to support the people has to be imported. In fact, the total amount of food-stuffs raised in the kingdom is much less than the amount required, being, for example, per inhabitant, not more than one half of what is raised in France. In particular, there is a deficiency of meat, and the amount of meat raised per inhabitant is the lowest in Europe. As a consequence the Italians are poorly fed, and it is estimated that four per cent. of the annual death loss is occasioned by impoverishment of blood due to insufficiency of wholesome food. After wheat and raw cotton, the next principal import is coal, for Italy has no workable coal-fields. As far as possible water power is used as a motive power instead of coal, especially in the iron industries. An important import also is fish, for, owing to the great number of fast days which the Italian people observe, and to the dearness and scarcity of meat, fish is a very general article of consumption. Six million dollars' worth is imported annually, and perhaps an equal amount is obtained from local fisheries, for there are over 22,000 vessels and boats and over 70,000 men engaged in this industry. After silk-throwing, the most characteristic Italian manufacturing industries are those which are of an artistic or semi-artistic nature, such as the making of fine earthenware, porcelain, glassware, mosaics, and lace. Venice (154,000) and Genoa (225,000) are still the principal seaports and trade centres of Italy, but in commercial importance these famous cities are only the mere shadows of what they once were. Naples (529,000), the largest city, is a place of little enterprise, for its imports, principally cereals, are three or four times the value of its exports, which are mainly cheap country produce. Milan (457,000) and Turin (348,000) are the great trade centres of the north interior, and the most prosperous places in the kingdom, being the chief seats of the silk-throwing industry. Milan is also the chief seat of the Italian cutlery manufacture. Palermo (284,000) and Messina (150,000), in Sicily, are the chief ports for the export of Italian fruits, and also of Italian fish (anchovies, tunnies, etc.). Rome (474,000) and Florence (207,000) owe their chief importance to their art interest and to their historic associations, but Florence has an important manufacture of fine earthenware and mosaics. Rome is the chief seat of government. Catania (127,000), in Sicily, is the chief seat of the Italian sulphur export trade. Leghorn (104,000), the port of Florence, is the chief seat of the export straw-plaiting trade. It should be noted that notwithstanding Italy's extent of coast-line a large part of her foreign commerce is transacted northward by means of the railways that tunnel the Alps.
V. THE TRADE FEATURES OF RUSSIA
RUSSIA, A COUNTRY WHOSE FUTURE IS A PROBLEM
The position of Russia in the world is a sort of problem. Its area is immense. More than one seventh of the land surface of the globe is included within its compact borders. Of this vast territory the area of European Russia alone is only a fourth; but even so it is larger than the area of all other European states put together. The population of Russia is over 129,000,000, of which over 106,000,000 belong to European Russia. But taking even European Russia this is a population of only fifty-four to the square mile, the lowest proportion in Europe, except in Sweden and Norway. And the population is increasing. The birth rate is the highest in the world. And though the death rate is very heavy, being fifty per cent. more than it is in England, the increase from births is so great that the population doubles in forty-six years. There is thus apparently a prospect that Russia will, in the near future, play an important part in the drama of nations, her capacities and capabilities for growth seem so prodigious. And yet there is a reverse side to the picture. Of the 106,000,000 inhabitants of European Russia 10,000,000 belong to a cultured, progressive class, quite the equal of any people in Europe. But the remainder are principally a low grade of peasantry, not long removed from slavery. The principal occupation of these peasantry is farming. But their farms are small, not more than ten acres apiece, and the total revenue they get from them does not average more than $65 a year per farm. The food of these peasantry is the poorest in Europe. In the main it consists of rye bread and mushroom soup, worth about four cents a day. The houses are often mere huts, not more than five feet square. Women as well as men work in the fields, and yet the total amount of food raised is not more per head of population than one tenth of what is raised by the peasantry of France. The value of food raised per acre, too, is but little more than one third of the average per acre for all Europe.
RUSSIA A COUNTRY OF SOCIAL EXTREMES
The degradation of the peasantry of Russia is not simply material. It is also moral. In the language of a recent traveller, "they are the drunkenest people in Europe." The principal intoxicant is a sort of whisky called "vodka." With drunkenness exist also dirtiness, idleness, dishonesty, and untruthfulness. And as yet little has been done to ameliorate this degradation. Ignorance prevails everywhere. Even of the young people of the peasant class more than eighty per cent. can neither read nor write. There is no middle class. The gulf between the upper class and the lower is so wide as to be absolutely impassable. And for the most part the upper class is quite content to have this state of affairs continue.