The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in EuropeWashington, Booker T.
History
The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe
Washington, Booker T.
Poor -- Europe; Working class -- Europe
I visited several other streets during my stay in Naples which were,
if possible, in a worse condition than the one I have described. In a
city where every one lives in the streets more than half the time, and
where all the intimate business of life is carried on with a frankness
and candour of which we in America have no conception, there is little
difficulty in seeing how people live. I noted, for example, instances
in which the whole family, to the number of six or seven, lived in a
single room, on a dirt floor, without a single window. More than that,
this one room, which was in the basement of a large tenement house, was
not as large as the average one-room Negro cabin in the South. In one
of these one-room homes I visited there was a blacksmith shop in one
part of the room, while the family ate and slept in the other part. The
room was so small that I took the trouble to measure it, and found it 8
× 13 feet in size.
Many of these homes of the poorer classes are nothing better than dark
and damp cellars. More than once I found in these dark holes sick
children and invalid men and women living in a room in which no ray of
light entered except through the open door. Sometimes there would be
a little candle burning in front of a crucifix beside the bed of the
invalid, but this flickering taper, lighting up some pale, wan face,
only emphasized the dreary surroundings. It was a constant source of
surprise to me that under such conditions these people could be so
cheerful, friendly, and apparently contented.
I made some inquiry as to what sort of amusements they had. I found
that one of the principal forms of amusement of this class of people is
gambling. What seems stranger still, this vice is in Italy a Government
monopoly. The state, through its control of the lottery, adds to the
other revenue which it extracts from the people not less than five
million dollars a year, and this sum comes, for the most part, from the
very poorest part of the population.
There are, it seems, something like 1,700 or 1,800 offices scattered
through the several large cities of Italy where the people may buy
lottery tickets. It seemed to me that the majority of these offices
must be in Naples, for in going about the city I saw them almost
everywhere, particularly in the poorer quarters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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