Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-17
.hich demands and commands possess

which demands and commands posses
sion.
Again, were not these" absolutely re-
morseless combinations of landed capital
au lnsurmountable bar to the acquire
ment of any portion OF the soil By the
lowly italian rustico, his condition would
still be equally as hopeless. No human
! being who labors in the fields of Italy
| could, by any manner Of deprivation
approaching starvation, save sufficient
money in the course of his
ENTIRE NATURAL LIFE
to purchase enough land in which to de-
Gently lay the bones of his own family
The government, or the church +,
provides, in the Campo Santo of
every village, town and city, q
hole for the bones and quieklime to
consume them; because, presume, the
government, the church and all manner
of land hoiding task masters have kept
him in such an equable constantly con-
Stunning condition of poverty that this
sort of an equivalent is regarded as q
kindly, as well as hygeinic, measure of
final Justice. One Italian soldo is equal
to one-fifth of an American cent.
Throughout all southern Italy the
wages of shepherds, oartmen, vine-
dlessers, grape-gatherers, ploughmen
and every manner of labor
ing countryman, average eighty SOL
di, or sixteen cents, per day! Out of
this sixteen cents per day, which is not
securable for more than half the days of
the year, the Italian rustIco pays the
rent of his capanna or hovel, feeds and
clothes his family, pays all manner of
outrageous petty imposizione or taxation,
and, aggregatively, munifcently sup
ports his church with an unsurpassed
devotion and loyalty. The difference
between the peasantry of ireland and of
Italy is this: The Irish are a superior
race despoiled of glorious originally
possessed Embellishments, writing
under sodden, implacable, unredressed
wrong. Italian peasantry were new
er else than serfs and whatever excep-
tional individual heart-burnings may be,
as class are incapable of resenting the
loss of conditions and heritage of which
they have never been deprived. A Mas
aniello or Garabaldi, fred by gleam-
ings of the outer world g refexiye intel
ligence, may every two or three centu-
ries, rise from among fishermen, sailors,
or city laZZaroni, and cavort about for
tie upon two legs have come to know,
have ever stood and will ever stand still
in their Italian fields and hovel-man-
gers, and with radiant, grateful eyes
lick the hands which dole them husks-
the only fruit of their Iabors they were
ever allowed to know.
All Southern Italy is extraordinarily
pastoral in landscape and character of
husbandry, and outside few of the coast
cities the entire population are practi-
cally peasant laborers, shepherds, Ylne-
yard laborers and workers in the fields.
The olive, orange, grape and date palm
are cultivated everywhere at the edges
of villages and on sunny mountain slopes,
but the larger portion of the lan1 Is en-
ployed in the growing of small grains
and corn. have yet to discover, save in
the north, where the landscape partakes
of Alpine diversity and ruggedness,
those splendid and poetical combinations
with which so many word painting en-
thusiasts seem impressed. In detail it is
nowhere so enjoyable as that of old En-
gland, New England, or any of thou
sand localities we know in our own loved
land. Here and there, as in Spain, are
little
SPOTS OF SURPRISING LONELINESS,
but still, as in Spain, the general face Of
the country hints of sadness and dreari-
ness; impels feeling that it is worn out,
burned out, lived out; forces a
consciousness that the sun has
eaten its heart away; and
one is pursued by a brooding,
ominous, indefinable conviction that.
with the eternal fires beneath aud the