Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/221

Rh one worker to each 91.4 acres, counting the entire territory. In Italy there was one to each 5.07 acres, counting only the productive lands. But as these are there reckoned at more than two thirds of the whole, the comparison stands almost at full force. Including all of Italy, we should find one worker for each plot of eight acres or a little less.

Making all due allowance for primitive methods and smaller individual efficiency, we still see how much more intensive is the care of the lands. And we must not forget that in Lombardy and some other parts of the Mediterranean kingdom, modern methods are gaining ground. Indeed that nearly two thirds of the country is worked as productive soil is in itself significant to one who knows the ruggedness of much of the realm. The stretches of bare Apenine slope seem to be endless, and one is sometimes inclined to say that Italy is fertile only in spots. It has been called a "gray rather than a green country," a designation which must stand true except for idealizing imaginations which require Italy to unroll fields of endless verdure. One must traverse the Val d'Arno, or cross and recross the plains of the Po, find the fertile corners of south Italy and Sicily, and then explore the terraced mountainsides and secluded Apenine valleys, to learn how the little kingdom feeds so many people. If we are reminded that the people are poor and the comforts of life small, we recognize the fact, often sad and depressing, but even here, when considering capacity for population, we remember that Italy has lost by long use of her soils, and by much injury through deforestation, no small measure of her ancient capacity for food production. We, on the other hand, have a virgin country and on the whole our spirit of conservation has arisen in time to save us from fatal losses.

The value of Italian products, as reported, for tillage, animals and forest, is annually about $1,000,000,000. This figure, however, does not include the items of poultry, eggs or vegetables. These, and especially the last, are no doubt far more important relatively than in our own country. The above figure gives a little less than $30 in value for each person in the kingdom. This indeed would seem a starvation figure, but for the vegetables, whose rapid succession of crops and large consumption, must be a large factor in maintaining so great a density.

The comparison turns greatly in our favor when we consider underground resources, and here her paucity makes Italy instructive for population study. Gold and silver are so small as to be negligible, and yet she must acquire her reasonable sum of these metals. Sulphur is far in the lead, but amounts annually to but little more than $7,000,000. Zinc follows with $4,000,000, lead with a little more than one and one half million and all the others fall below the last figure. Iron gives an annual value of $1,371,155, and employs but 1,790 workers. Mineral fuel stands at $838,375, a small fraction of the mineral fuel output of the single state of Iowa. Coal and coke are imported to the extent of about $40,000,000, and boilers and machinery cross the