+---------------+-----------------------+------------------+ |Financial Year.|Pounds of quinine sold.|Deaths by Malaria.| +---------------+-----------------------+------------------+ | 1901-1902 | .. | 13,358 | | 1902-1903 | 4,932 | 9,908 | | 1903-1904 | 15,915 | 8,513 | | 1904-1905 | 30,956 | 8,501 | | 1905-1906 | 41,166 | 7,838 | | 1906-1907 | 45,591 | 4,875 | +---------------+-----------------------+------------------+
The profit made by the state, which is entirely devoted to a special fund for means against malaria, amounted in these five years to £41,759. It has been established that two 3-grain pastilles a day are a sufficient prophylactic; and the proprietors of malarious estates and contractors for public works in malarious districts are bound by law to provide sufficient quinine for their workmen, death for want of this precaution coming under the provisions of the workmen's compensation act. Much has also been, though much remains to be, done in the way of _bonificamento_, i.e. proper drainage and improvement of the (generally fertile) low-lying and hitherto malarious plains.
In Venetia the lives of the small proprietors and of the salaried peasants are often extremely miserable. There and in Lombardy the disease known as _pellagra_ is most widely diffused. The disease is due to poisoning by micro-organisms produced by deteriorated maize, and can be combated by care in ripening, drying and storing the maize. The most recent statistics show the disease to be diminishing. Whereas in 1881 there were 104,067 (16.29 per 1000) peasants afflicted by the disease, in 1899 there were only 72,603 (10.30 per 1000) peasants, with a maximum of 39,882 (34.32 per 1000) peasants in Venetia, and 19,557 (12.90 per 1000) peasants in Lombardy. The decrease of the disease is a direct result of the efforts made to combat it, in the form of special hospitals or _pellagrosari_, economic kitchens, rural bakeries and maize-drying establishments. A bill for the better prevention of pellagra was introduced in the spring of 1902. The deaths from it dropped in that year to 2376, from 3054 in the previous year and 3788 in 1900.
In Liguria, on account of the comparative rarity of large estates, agricultural labourers are in a better condition. Men earn between 1s. 3d. and 2s. 1d. a day, and women from 5d. to 8d. In Emilia the day labourers, known as _disobbligati_, earn, on the contrary, low wages, out of which they have to provide for shelter and to lay by something against unemployment. Their condition is miserable. In Tuscany, however, the prevalence of _mezzadria_, properly so called, has raised the labourers' position. Yet in some Tuscan provinces, as, for instance, that of Grosseto, where malaria rages, labourers are organized in gangs under "corporals," who undertake harvest work. They are poverty-stricken, and easily fall victims to fever. In the Abruzzi and in Apulia both regular and irregular workmen are engaged by the year. The _curatori_ or _curatoli_ (factors) receive £40 a year, with a slight interest in the profits; the stockmen hardly earn in money and kind £13; the muleteers and under-workmen get between £5 to £8, plus firewood, bread and oil; irregular workmen have even lower wages, with a daily distribution of bread, salt and oil. In Campania and Calabria the _curatoli_ and _massari_ earn, in money and kind, about £12 a year; cowmen, shepherds and muleteers about £10; irregular workmen are paid from 8½d. to 1s. 8d. per day, but only find employment, on an average, 230 days in the year. The condition of Sicilian labourers is also miserable. The huge extent of the _latifondi_, or large estates, often results in their being left in the hands of speculators, who exploit both workmen and farmers with such usury that the latter are often compelled, at the end of a scanty year, to hand over their crops to the usurers before harvest. In Sardinia wage-earners are paid 10d. a day, with free shelter and an allotment for private cultivation. Irregular adult workmen earn between 10d. and 1s. 3d., and boys from 6d. to 10d. a day. Woodcutters and vine-waterers, however, sometimes earn as much as 3s. a day.