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.
