orn for home
consumption is a general product. Cotton is a good crop in Sicily and
the south, but the amount is insufficient for use and must be made up by
imports from the United States and Egypt.

Silk, fruit, and vegetables are the staple products that connect Italy
commercially with the rest of the world. About a million people are
concerned in the silk industry, and Italy is one of the foremost
countries in the world in the production of raw silk. Most of the crop
is produced in northern Italy; western Europe and the United States are
the chief buyers. The silk of the Piedmont region is the best in
quality.

Fruit is the crop next in value to raw silk. Sicilian oranges and
lemons, from about twenty millions of trees, find a ready market in
Europe; the oranges come into competition with the California and
Florida oranges of the United States, in spite of the tariff imposed
against them by the latter country. Olives are probably the most
important fruit-crop. Both the preserved fruit and the oil are exported
to nearly every civilized people. Much of the oil is consumed at home,
very largely taking the place of meat and butter. Lucca-oil is regarded
as the best.

[Illustration: ITALY]

The grape-crop is enormous, and the fruit itself is exported. Some of
the fruit sold as "Malaga" grapes throughout the United States during
winter months comes from Italy. Chianti wine, from the vineyards around
Florence, has hitherto been regarded as an inferior product, but the
foreign demand for it is steadily increasing. The Marsala wines of
Sicily are largely exported.

Among mineral products the iron deposits in the island of Elba are
undoubtedly the most valuable, but they are yet undeveloped to any great
extent. The quarries at Carrara produce a fine marble that has made
Italy famous in sculpture and architecture. Much of the boracic acid
used in the arts comes from Tuscany, and the world's chief supply of
sulphur comes from the neighborhood of Mount Etna in Sicily. Of this
Americans buy about one-third.

On account of the lack of coal, the manufactures are restricted mainly
to art wares, such as jewelry, silk textiles, and fine glassware. The
Venetian glassware, the Florentine and mosaic jewelry, and the pink
coral ornaments are famous the world over. Within recent years, however,
imported coal, together with native lignite, have given steel
manufacture an impetus. Steel ships and rails made at home are meeting
the dem