w turn to the third
curse, which eats up the wages of the working man at Rome--a curse even
greater, I think, than the "festas" or the malaria--I mean, the
universality of the middle-man system. If you require any work done,
from stone carving to digging, you seldom or never deal with the actual
workman. If you are a farmer and want your harvest got in, you contract
months beforehand with an agent, who agrees to supply you with harvest-
men in certain numbers, at a certain price, out of which price he pockets
as large a percentage as he can, and has probably commissions to pay
himself to some sub-contractor. If you are a sculptor and wish a block
of marble chiselled in the rough, the man you contract with to hew the
block at certain day-wages brings a boy to do the work at half the above
amount or less, and only looks in from time to time to see how the work
is proceeding. It is the same in every branch of trade or business. If
you wish to make a purchase, or effect a sale, or hire a servant, you
have a whole series of commissions or brokerages to pay before you come
into contact with the principal.

If you inquire why this system is not broken through, why the employer
does not deal directly with his workmen, you are told that the custom of
the country is against any other method; that amongst the workmen
themselves there is so much terrorism and intimidation and _espionnage_,
that any single employer or labourer, who contracted for work
independently, would run a risk of annoyance or actual injury; of having,
for example, his block of marble split "by a slip of the hand," or his
tools destroyed, or a knife stuck into him as he went home at night, and,
more than all, that, without the supervision of the actual overseer, your
workmen would cheat you right and left, no matter what wages you paid.
After all it is better to be cheated by one man than by a dozen, and
being at Rome you must do as the Romans do.

It may possibly have been observed that, in the foregoing paragraph, I
have spoken of the "workmen at Rome," not of the Roman workmen. The
difference, though slight verbally, is an all-important one. The workmen
in Rome are not Romans, for the Romans proper never work. The Campagna
is tilled in winter by groups of peasants, who come from the Marches, in
long straggling files, headed by the "Pifferari," those most inharmonious
of pipers. In summer-time the harvest is reaped and the vintage gathered
in by lab