Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1899 American Edition.djvu/1104

 748 ITALY

port sides. The vital parts of the ships are protected by eighteen inches of vertical compound armouring. They have thus an advantage over the colossal Italia and L&panto, which, through deficiency of side-armouring, are subject to serious damage to the substructure of the heavy guns, The Be Umhcrto, l:iarde(jna, and Sicilia are very powerful battleships. They may be regarded as enlarged Benboivs, Their heaviest guns are of 67 tons, and are mounted in pairs in polygonal inclined barbettes fore and aft in the keel-line of the ship. The heaviest guns have been replaced by lighter ones in the older battle- ships. Tiie new battleships, Ammiraglio cli Saint-Bon and Emamiele Filiherto, mark a change in Italian ship-building policy. The protection is better. The over-all steel belt is 10 inches thick at the water-line, and the redoubts have 4-incli plating, and the maximum thickness of the protective deck is 3 inches. The heavy guns are coupled in turrets at either end of a redoubt, which contains the secondary armament. The armament consists of four 10-inch guns and eight 6-inch, eight 4*7 inch, and twenty-two smaller quick-firers. Three other battleships of greater displacement (13,500 tons) have been laid down, and are in an early stage. They were designed by the late Signor Brin, Minister of Marine. To replace the several armoured cruisers built nnder the name of Garibaldi and Varese, at Leghorn, and Sestri Ponente, and sold, by permission of the Italian Government, to the Argentine Kepublic and Spain, two other cruisers of the same class, and bear- ing the same names, have been laid down. They will be of greater displace- ment than their predecessors, and superior in armament and some other respects.

The personnel consists of 1,731 officers (comprising 1 admiral, 20 vice- and rear-admirals, 140 captains and commanders, 340 lieutenants, 167 sub-lieutenants, 120 midshipmen, 303 engineers, 173 surgeons, 129 pay- masters, 129 warrant officers, 3,729 petty officers, 18,377 sailors, 155 bovs ; total 23,992.

Production or Industry.

1. Agriculture.

The systems of cultivation in Italy may be reduced to three : — 1, The system of peasant proprietorship (coltivazione per economia o a mano propria) ; 2. That of partnership (colonia parziaria) ; 3. That of rent (affitto). Peasant proprietorship is most common in Piedmont and Liguria, but is found in many other parts of Italy ; in the province of Rome, the Abruzzi and Molise, Campania, Apulia, the Basilicata, Calabria, and in Sicily and Sardinia. This system tends to become more general The system of partnership or colonia parziaria, more especially in the form of mezzadria, consists in a form of partnership between the proprietor and the cultivator. No wages are pai^l, profits and losses are equally divided, the families of the two partners sub- sisting, it may be, entirely on the common produce of the cultivation. This system is general in Tuscany, the Marches, and Uml)ria ; it prevails over other systems in Emilia, and is frequently found in the sub-mountain (pede montane) regions of Lombardy and Venetia, in the Abruzzi and Molise, in Campania and in Sicily. It is almost unknown in the Basilicata, little practised in Apulia, Calabria, and Sardinia, and has been entirely abandoned in the two most advanced centres of cultivation in the south, viz : — Barese and the province of Naples. Various modifications of the system exist in different parts of Italy. The system of rent (affitto) exists in Lombardy and Venetia, especially in the marsh lands, Emilia, Campania, the Abruzzi and Molise, Piedmont, and Sicily. It is little used in Umbria, the Marches, Tuscany, the Province of