And yet, who can pity the moujik? His cheeks are
altogether too round, and his morals too superbly bestial; he has
clearly been created to sing and starve by turns. But the Italian
peasant who speaks in the tongue of Homer and Virgil and Boccaccio is
easily invested with a halo of martyrdom; it is delightful to sympathize
with men who combine the manners of Louis Quatorze with the profiles of
Augustus or Plato, and who still recall, in many of their traits, the
pristine life of Odyssean days. Thus, they wear to-day the identical
"clouted leggings of oxhide, against the scratches of the thorns" which
old Laertes bound about his legs on the upland farm in Ithaka. They call
them "galandrine."
On occasions of drought or flood there is not a word of complaint. I
have known these field-faring men and women for thirty years, and have
yet to hear a single one of them grumble at the weather. It is not
indifference; it is true philosophy - acquiescence in the inevitable. The
grievances of cultivators of lemons and wholesale agriculturalists,
whose speculations are often ruined by a single stroke of the human pen
in the shape of new regulations or tariffs, are a different thing;
their curses are loud and long. But the bean-growers, dependent
chiefly on wind and weather, only speak of God's will. They have the
same forgiveness for the shortcomings of nature as for a wayward child.
And no wonder they are distrustful. Ages of oppression and misrule have
passed over their heads; sun and rain, with all their caprice, have been
kinder friends to them than their earthly masters. Some day, presumably,
the government will wake up to the fact that Italy is not an industrial
country, and that its farmers might profitably be taken into account again.
But a change is upon the land. Types like this old man are becoming
extinct; for the patriarchal system of Coriolanus, the glory of southern
Italy, is breaking up.
This is not the fault of conscription which, though it destroys old
dialects, beliefs and customs, widens the horizon by bringing fresh
ideas into the family, and generally sound ones. It does even more; it
teaches the conscripts to read and write, so that it is no longer as
dangerous to have dealings with a man who possesses these
accomplishments as in the days when they were the prerogative of
avvocati and other questionable characters. A countryman, nowadays,
may read and write and yet be honest.
What is shattering family life is the speculative spirit born of
emigration. A continual coming and going; two-thirds of the adolescent
and adult male population are at this moment in Argentina or the United
States - some as far afield as New Zealand. Men who formerly reckoned in
sous now talk of thousands of francs; parental authority over boys is
relaxed, and the girls, ever quick to grasp the advantages of money,
lose all discipline and steadiness.
"My sons won't touch a spade," said a peasant to me; "and when I thrash
them, they complain to the police. They simply gamble and drink, waiting
their turn to sail. If I were to tell you the beatings we used to get,
sir, you wouldn't believe me. You wouldn't believe me, not if I took my
oath, you wouldn't! I can feel them still - speaking with respect - here!"
These emigrants generally stay away three or four years at a stretch,
and then return, spend their money, and go out again to make more.
Others remain for longer periods, coming back with huge incomes - twenty
to a hundred francs a day. Such examples produce the same effect as
those of the few lucky winners in the State lottery; every one talks of
them, and forgets the large number of less fortunate speculators.
Meanwhile the land suffers. The carob-tree is an instance. This
beautiful and almost eternal growth, the "hope of the southern
Apennines" as Professor Savastano calls it, whose pods constitute an
important article of commerce and whose thick-clustering leaves yield a
cool shelter, comparable to that of a rocky cave, in the noonday heat,
used to cover large tracts of south Italy. Indifferent to the scorching
rays of the sun, flourishing on the stoniest declivities, and sustaining
the soil in a marvellous manner, it was planted wherever nothing else
would grow - a distant but sure profit. Nowadays carobs are only cut
down. Although their produce rises in value every year, not one is
planted; nobody has time to wait for the fruit. [Footnote: There are a
few laudable exceptions, such as Prince Belmonte, who has covered large
stretches of bad land with this tree. (See Consular Reports, Italy, No.
431.) But he is not a peasant!]
It is nothing short of a social revolution, depopulating the country of
its most laborious elements. 788,000 emigrants left in one year alone
(1906); in the province of Basilicata the exodus exceeds the birthrate.
I do not know the percentage of those who depart never to return, but it
must be considerable; the land is full of chronic grass-widows.
Things will doubtless right themselves in due course; it stands to
reason that in this acute transitional stage the demoralizing effects of
the new system should be more apparent than its inevitable benefits.
Already these are not unseen; houses are springing up round villages,
and the emigrants return home with a disrespect for many of their
country's institutions which, under the circumstances, is neither
deplorable nor unjustifiable. A large family of boy-children, once a
dire calamity, is now the soundest of investments. Soon after their
arrival in America they begin sending home rations of money to their
parents; the old farm prospers once more, the daughters receive decent
dowries. I know farmers who receive over three pounds a month from their
sons in America - all under military age.
