decreased
one-fourth since heavy duties were imposed to protect native beet sugar,
and it averages barely over five pounds per head. The consumption in the
United States is sixty-five pounds per head. The iniquitous salt tax
raises the price of salt from eleven pounds for two cents to one pound
for two cents, and the peasants sometimes cook their corn meal in sea
water, although this is smuggling. What the peasants lack in grain and
meat they strive to supply by vegetables, and the proportion of
vegetables, peas, and beans consumed is greater than that for any other
country of Europe. The peasants drink no beer, spirits, tea, nor coffee,
but the average annual consumption of wine is twenty gallons a head.
Food alone costs the peasants 85 per cent of their wages, whereas it
costs the German peasant 62 per cent and the American workman 41 per
cent. The poor and working classes pay over one-half the taxes,
amounting, even without wine, to 10 or 20 per cent of their wages. There
are in the south and Sardinia some 13,000 sales of land a year on
distress for non-payment of taxes, and the expropriated owners become
tenants. Several villages in Southern Italy have been almost wholly
abandoned and one village has recently announced its intention of
removing itself entire to one of the South American republics.[45] The
rich escape taxation, which is laid largely on consumption. Besides the
state tax on imports, each city and town has its _octroi_, or import
tax, on everything brought into the city. These "protective duties rob
the poor to fill the pockets of the rich landlord and manufacturer."
Since 1870 wealth has increased 17 per cent and taxes 30 per cent. Taxes
are nearly one-fifth of the nation's income, against one-twelfth in
Germany, one-sixteenth in England, and one-fifteenth in the United
States. Wages rose from 1860 to 1885, but since 1890 they have fallen.

The army and navy are the greatest drain on the resources of the people.
They cost one-fourth more of the national income than do the armies and
navies of France and Germany. Eighty million dollars a year for military
expenditures in Italy is over 5 per cent of the income of the people,
whereas $194,000,000 for the same purpose in the United States is less
than 2 per cent of our incomes. In the Triple Alliance of Germany,
Austria, and Italy, the latter country crushes its peasants in order to
make a showing by the side of its wealthier partners. The army takes
ever