Chicago eagle. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1889-19??, 1890-03-15
FEARFUL SUFFERING.
Iffe 4mong the Poor ia SUNNY Itory.

A most shocking state OF affairs eX-
lists among the lower classes of Italy, If
reports 10y The Italian authorities are
taken as true Every province of Italy,
with the exception of one, Is ravaged /
by malaria and fever, condition
which has come about by neglect of
thousands of acres of arabic |
land which has changed in
to death-dealing marshes. Tnous-
ands, for the last twenty cen
turtles, have persisted every year.
Not above one-tenth of the cultivatable
area IS in fair or high state of cultiva-
ton. Everywhere dense agricultural
ignorance prevails. In one district OF
Northern Italy the laborers use the
same kind of a pillow that Virgil de-
scribed nearly 1900 years ago. In ST.
cily, where few persons of enterprise
attempted to Introduce some modern
machines for experimental work In
farming, the mutineers purposely upset
the machines into a roadside ditch,
where such fragments of them still re-
main as have not been stolen and sold
for old metal. The neglected, Ignorant
common people will have nothing to do
with manufactured fertilizers. Their
minds are closed to all Innovations and
are preoccupied with the belief that
every one superior to themselves in
knowledge or social position wishes to
extort money or labor from them. In
most of the larger provinces morals are
at the lowest ebb Wages average
from Doc 25c, 35c, to Acc a day, ac-
cording to locality, the rate being far
to meagre for comfortable maintenance
of existence. In the northern district
of Fruili laborers are bound by contract
to work for l0c day and board them
selves. Women field laborers work on
the same conditions at &c a day. Chill
dren are put to farm work before they
can speak distinctly, and they earn &c
or Be day. Thousands of people suf-
fer from chronic hunger.
One province contains 1900 people,
| who never taste meat or wine, although
the Juice Of the grape is one of the sta
pie articles of nourishment produced by
! the soil. The northern half of the
peninsula down to the boundry of, and
even into, Umbria is stricken with that
fearful disease, the Austrian leprosy, or
the pellagra, a wasting malady that
drives a large proportion of its victims
into melancholia, to suicide, or some
other form Of insanity, permanent until
relieved by death. One-half of the
families of the province Of Verona are
tainted with this disease disease
which is the product of unsanitary
living, want of nutrition, and pre-emi-
! nently from the mustv maize, from
which the people make their one arti-
Gle of food, polenta, or corn meal mush
Thousands of laborers are forced to
live en- about three cents worth of this
mush day, and perform severe labor
in the fields. Their voices, their vast
ing flesh. their impoverished blood, cry
to Heaven for redress; but human kind
ness, human help does not answer
that cry. The description given of the
wretchedness, the squalor, of the homes
of these brothers and sisters of ours is
narrowing to any soul not entirely
hardened from human sympathy. The
narrator AYERS that no pen paintings OF
lola surpass the actual dirt and filth
and absence OF every decency and ap
pointment ofnecessity in these forlorr
communities.
The trade in children maintained il
and about Picinisco, the cruelties prac
ticed upon the boy slaves in the sulphur
E mines Of Sicily, the mutilating of chill
dren aud youth for the profession 0
mendicancy, the miseries of the mines
of NIassa- Carrara and Serravez eIici
signs and sobs that ought to arouse til,
Christian and Christianized world. Ye
up to this time the world goes on it
: way, with eyes averted from sucl
scenes as these, and with its hand
r over its ears to shut out the sound o
= distress and anguish.