Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1896-07-24
PALERMO, ITALY.

lALis
The Impending Revolution I'm Sicily.
Italy in Africa should not draw public
attention away from the ruin at home. The
people of Sicily starve.
The country people have but two things
to live from-their sulphur mines and the
land. Both are worked by middlemen in
the name of absentee owpers. Both, too,
have suffered greatly from recent COMPETE
ton with other and newer countries. The
middleman has to secure all he can for
himself after his employer is served The
workman and the peasant must learn to be
content with what il. left. In the last few
years nothing has HaA left.
"Fire on us-kill us!' was the answer
of the sulphur workers a year ago, when
the soldiers of United Italy were sent to
disperse them where they had gathered to
express their need. ''Kill us-better
than to Hear our children cry with hun
ger"
1t is not that the soil is barren or worked
out On the contrary, the island is de-
lightful in climate and natural advantages.
And the people are neither idle nor law
less, 10 far as any law has been made for
them The common people, shorn like the
obeGient sheep they are, yield to the only
two laws they know-that of the rent
collector and tax gatherer, and that of
starving silently.
An Italian officer, in farming district
near Palermo, narrated what he had seen
to Signor Rossi, correspondent of the
Tribuna of Rome, conservative paper.
Last July l stopped on march by
threshing floor where they were measur-
ing grain. When the shares had been
divided, the one who had cultivated the
land received less than half bushel. The
peasant, leaning on his spade. looked at
his share. His wife and their five children
were standing by From the painful toll
of a year, this was what was left to him
with which to feed his family. The tears
rolled silently down his cheeks. And
there are some peasants who, when their
shares have been measured ont, are left,
not with little of the grain they have cul-
tivated, but with debts to their mas
ters.''
The Partisan lady who has won esteem
in the press under her pen name Of Arvede
Barine, asked one day of young girl,
what do people do here for living?"
The girl answered, as if it was matter of
course: Here people die of hunger"
She was the bread winner Of the family
All her labor earned was not quite 80 cents
a month.
Three-quarters of the land of Sicily is the
property Of the great land owners, who
have always looked upon the peasants as the
feudal lord looked on his serfs. They rare
ly live on their immense estates. The his
torian, Tallari, who has made investiga-
lions for himself, say that the party in
power does not pay the excise duties which
weigh so heavily on the poor Certain Of
ticers from other parts Of Italy insist on
their own payments being received. but
major has a right not to pay said the
astonished collector. Meanwhile the land
agent was driving through his hundreds of
beeves without paying the tax, while each
peasant had rigoi ously to pay his lires
Isl. SOY for single mule.
In former years e-quarter of the land
was the possession Of the peasants them
selves. But even this is falling into the
hands of the great landowners, through the
policy of United Italy, which brushes the
people with taxes to support its expenses
as nation, while 1t cannot, or will not,
better the od.Uus land laws. In one COM
mune of the province Of Syracuse, in
single day, the goods Of 1870 persons were
receatly put up at auction at the suit Of the
tax collector Seven Of these persons
owed less than Tires (S1) each, and few of
the others were as much as 10 Tires in de
fault With the church lands and COM
munal domains of the old regime, United
Italy has tried Intellectually to remedy the
evil OF the 20, 900 small proprietors thus
created, few are able to Withstand the
strain, and so all this confiscated land goes
into the hands of the landlords of the new
order of things.
When the peasant, as is often the case,
comes out from his years labor in debt,
his masters sometimes continue their usur-
ious loans. But. sooner or later, the mules
or oxen for his ploughing are seized, and
nothing is left him but to become one of
the laborers hired by the day.
These are set to work in the uninkabted
districts. There for four months, shey
work sixteen hours a day under a tropical
sun, and are herded together at night IN
sheds open to the dreaded fever. For
merly the wages were from 40 to 10 cents
day. Now that labor everywhere goes
begging, man that digs the ground can
be had for cents, and a reaper for Is or 90
cents day. At the end Of the season the
peasant is happy if he has $50 to keep his
family until the season next year. He goes
back to the great town, where TO-, 900 or