ITALY AND HER SOCIALISTS.

THERE is a great outcry at present raised against the "Socialists" of Italy-most of whom would, in truth, under closer examination, reveal themselves as no Socialists at all. They are said to be at the bottom of all mischief that occurs in the peninsula; the great drag upon the wheel of progress, which is ready to carry the country forward into prosperity; the canker that eats away the heart of the newly united kingdom. The cry was, as a matter of course, raised first in Italy, where succeeding Ministries, admittedly composed of place-seekers, bound together by no common principle, and pursuing no common aim, have found themselves not a little hampered in their inefficient attempts at reform by those inconvenient monitors, clamorously reminding them of pressing popular wants. They urge that the cronica fame of the masses, who are in despair quitting the country wholesale (as the Minister, M. Giolitti, has attested) and the distress and destitution of the classes who constitute the very life-blood of the nation, require remedying, if the State is to prosper, even before such useful but much less urgent advances in economic rehabilitation as the removal of the disagio on Italian currency, are taken in hand. From the Italian borghese papers-every one of which is more or less "nobbled "- the idle tale has, as a matter of course, been carried into the foreign, and more particularly the British, press, and by this means the British mind, habitually prone to accept impressions on things foreign ready made as they are communicated to it, and to turn instinctively against anything suggestive of "Socialism," has been effectually prejudiced. Inexact statements grow more untrue as they are echoed from one place to another. And so we have been brought to the assertion of a writer, made in a November magazine, that "there are no peasants and no working men among its leaders" (the leaders of the Socialist party); that the Socialist party "has now become a purely Parliamentary and political faction, with Parliamentary and political aims," by which "social reform has been put on one side, and party intrigues, obstruction, manipulation of groups, and unholy alliances have become the only questions of real importance." The Socialists, so our writer goes on, "never do any really useful work among the poor," nor take "the slightest interest in charities," &c. And the British public is led to swallow all this, and to take sides accordingly against the popular party struggling, as it happens, rightfully enough, for what Thiers has described as "the necessary liberties," and for conditions of life in which the poor may live.

The statement here quoted is, in truth, contrary to facts from beginning to end. There are, of course, self-seeking, factious persons among the Socialist leaders in Italy, as there are among the leaders of every party, in Italy or elsewhere. However, one of the most striking facts in the present movement, dubbed "Socialist," is the particular attention paid specifically to practical social work. These "Socialists" labour most assiduously among the poor, not merely to "organise" them as a political party (though they would be more than human if they failed at any rate to try to do that), but even more to impart to them the teaching which the Government has withheld, even in respect of the most elementary items of education; to show them how to improve their condition without injury to any one else, by combination, be it co-operative, as we understand it, or be it collective bargaining-likewise co-operative for the disposal of their labour; to settle them, as peaceable citizens, under conditions which enable them to maintain themselves on the land. All Italy is, in truth, now astir with the life which such action, steadily pursued (in its first beginnings since some years) has infused into the nation. It is by dint of their activity, their organising skill, and their close touch with the humbler classes, that the so-called "Socialists" have become practically the masters of Italian co-operation, leaving the older "fathers" of the movement behind in the race. They are practical reformers at least as much as theoretical socialists. They employ co-operation for the most legitimate objects. Some of them own frankly that they do all this intending to turn co-operation to account as a training-school for Socialism. But in any case they organise their societies most effectively; they have sent a stimulating influence into the remotest crannies of working-man life, they gain a hold upon the entire working population, and, whatever their ultimate object may be, for the time they do undoubted social good. There can be no question about this. If my statement should seem to need confirmation, I would briefly instance the active Camera del Lavoro, say, of Milan or of Bologna, where there is a veritable beehive life among toilers, become hopeful and anxious to raise themselves by their own efforts; the strong societies of muratori, which have turned wage-earners into independent collective contractors, in whose employment labour accidents are almost unknown. Or, again, the braccianti, say, of Budrio or Ravenna, who have to a truly surprising degree improved, by peaceable means, the conditions of life of the whilom helpless day labourers, putting a stop to the inhuman employment of child labour, during exceptionally long hours, at a miserable wage, in the pestiferous rice swamps, with the effect of poisoning the blood of the entire race; or, lastly, the capital organisation of the sturdy Piedmontese labourers at Turin, where trade unions, friendly societies, stores, and an admirable people's bank, all of them strong, all willingly join hands, maintaining their own free hospitals and their co-operative pharmacies for the benefit of the workers, and housing all this large apparatus in a pretentious palazzo, which in itself tells by its size and its spic-and-span-ness of success and prosperity achieved.

The Italian "Socialists," as they are called, do not in truth require any commendation from me, though my testimony comes from one who has seen a good deal of them, at work. Here is what M. Giolitti, the present Minister of the Interior, has publicly stated about their activity in Parliament:

"The motive is exclusively economic; and if the Socialists had not found the ground favourable, owing to the miserable condition of the working-man, their propaganda would not have exercised the slightest influence. To state one instance in my own province, where assuredly Socialist agitation has not been wanting, the labouring folk have not been led into any of those manifestations which have attracted attention in other districts. In the whole of this immense movement there has never been a single demonstration of a political character. It is true that the movement is led by Socialists. But whose fault is it, if not that of the bourgeoisie-which even the more enlightened Conservatives find fault withwhich remains inert, passive, lacking all understanding of the peril towards which we are advancing owing to such attitude of theirs? Whose fault is it that it is only the Socialists who have occupied and still occupy themselves with the condition of life of the working classes? The bourgeoisie should descend among the people and prove to them that their legitimate aspirations may be realised by others than the advanced parties. is the Conservatives who try to impart a political character to the movement in denying the economic motive which produces it, and endeavouring to represent it as a purely Socialist agitation."

It

M. Giolitti openly accused " some landlords" of deliberately representing this economic movement as a political attack upon the country's institutions as a means "of keeping wages down." In endeavouring to remedy an evil which loudly calls for relief, so he adds, the Socialists have done what is right, while the other parties, the former Government and the bourgeoisie, have done wrong in neglecting that work.

Here we have at once the economic motive and the legitimacy, the beneficence and the necessity of the work done by the "Socialists" -of course, in their own way-attested by one of the highest authorities. And the value and utility of Socialist initiative and leading has not ended there. The Government and the bourgeoisie might be content to look on, the one in indifference, the other in jealous protest. The Church of Rome knows that it could not afford to stand idly by. The Pope has told it so. It is sheer nonsense to talk of an "unholy alliance" between Socialists and Clericals. The two may unite once and again for the support of, or

for opposition to, some particular measure. But, in truth, they are not allies, but rivals and keen rivals, too. However, what is war and struggle to them is gain to Italy. The Socialists might be Jannes and Jambres, and, in fact, all that is bad. But while they are performing these economic miracles, to secure a firm hold upon the labouring classes, Moses must certainly be on the spot to cap their wonders with greater and pit his own serpent against the serpents on the other side. The remarkable activity on economic and social ground in Italy of the Church of Rome is at present the talk of the world. The Church is raising up co-operative societies of the best description by the hundred. It has already covered the northern dioceses with more than a thousand useful village banks. It is teaching the small cultivators, systematically neglected by the Government and Parliament, and oppressed by grasping landlords and even more exacting middlemen, how to make their butter and cheese, press their wine, buy their manures, seeds, and implements, rent their land, all in common, and all on more economical terms. It is teaching them how to farm to better advantage, and many more such things. All this, so it is argued, must mean that "the Church" proposes eventually to employ the hundreds of thousands of men thus laid under an obligation as a docile army for political warfare. It is always the same tale. Do no good lest evil should come! So it may be. But it may also be that in this calculation the Church reckons without its host. There is many a precious gift given with an object which never attains that object. At any rate, we have not come to that point yet. And meanwhile unspeakable good is being done, and good which is most urgently needed. The working classes are in this way made to benefit by the economic risorgimento which a short-sighted Parliament has unwisely restricted to the interests of the upper ten, the manufacturers and the landlords, hoping that it will eventually filter down to the lower strata. Fields are beginning once more to make the landscape gay by bearing, and bearing for the profit of the cultivator who tills them, instead of, as heretofore, for the usurer only and the fittabile. And all this is being done because the "Socialists" have set the example, and "the Church" knows that if it would retain its hold upon the masses it must follow suit. It does not, surely, lie in our mouth, if we wish Italy well, as we profess to do, to disparage all this useful work, and to ascribe to it a false character and an unworthy motive.

I should like to ask more than this namely, why should we, whose freedom and prosperity have been built up, under many rough knocks and tumultuous upheavals, by altogether similar processes, through the action of precisely the same popular forces, throw stones at those who are doing in Italy what we have done at home? Our democrats have been branded as Chartists, Jack Cades, &c. In Germany the favourite term used to be "Democrat." In Italy it is "Socialist." Some bad name or other is always sure to be discovered for those who call attention to abuses, the removal of which runs counter to vested interests, and who enunciate novel principles and profess the heresy of to-day which becomes the orthodoxy of tomorrow. Nobody pretends that reformers, being human, and having an only partially educated class to lead, may not go astray occasionally and digress into excesses, advancing unreasonable claims. But this work has to be done, and in the end it is judged a merit to have forced the doing of it. In Italy, of all countries, there is urgent need of the destructive mattock as well as the constructive trowel of reform. For there are upas-trees still there, as there were in Ireland. The cry of distress is loud; and it is provoked by the most extreme need, which there is absolutely no denying. It is on record in the voluminous official Report of Count Jacini and his brother Commissioners; in the writings of Laveleye, of Pareto, and others. And it is to be seen by any one who cares to look about in the poor villages or the neglected workmen's hovels. The distress prevailing is the natural, the inevitable outcome of centuries of division, oppression, and misrule, of the selfish indulgence of the land-owning class, of neglect of popular education in the widest sense of the term, of a policy which advisedly makes the workman's food dear, heavily taxing corn, turning even that first necessary of healthful life, salt, into an unattainable luxury, and thereby filling the lunatic asylums with victims of the horrible disease of pellagra. It is the natural, the inevitable outcome of a policy which forbids combination among workmen for the most legitimate purposes, such as co-operative supply, labour, common schooling, confiscating the poor people's property and meeting all attempts to retain it by rude " methods of barbarism" applied by a rough soldiery-all on the absurd plea that some of the Committee of Management are professing "Socialists." What should we say in this country if a policeman were to walk into a co-operative store and direct it to be closed, confiscating the goods, &c., simply because, as he declares, one or other of the committee happen to profess "Socialist" opinions? That has been done in Italy, in the roughest conceivable way, and under such martial law perfectly innocent men have been hauled off into prison, and sent into a ruinous domicilio coatto, or compelled to fly the country, because rulers were afraid of "Socialism "-" Socialism" which many of these people professed, but of which very few indeed were able to fathom the meaning. It was a cruel revelation to me-Italian statistics are so backward-a few weeks ago, when revisiting the scenes in which only a few years previously I had seen promising, educating, and absolutely harmless co-operative societies at work, for the benefit of the poor, to find what sad havoc the dragonade of 1898 had wrought. The societies had been swept away as by a besom. And there was nothing left at once to take