All these taxes, direct and indirect, are so arranged that the heaviest burden falls upon that portion of the community which is least able to bear it. For example, salt is a Government monopoly in Italy, and in 1901 the people of Italy paid $15,000 for salt which cost the Government $1,200 to manufacture. The Italian Government ships salt to America for the use of the Gloucester fishermen for 50 cents a barrel of 280 pounds, or five and three-fifth pounds for a cent. This same salt costs the Italian, because of the monopoly of the Government, 4 cents a pound--that is to say, twelve times what it costs in America. In order to protect this monopoly the Government even goes so far as to station guards along the whole seacoast to prevent people from "stealing" sea water in buckets, to obtain salt. Fortunately the state monopoly of salt does not extend to Sicily, but the principle of taxing the people according to their necessities, rather than according to their ability to pay, is the same there as elsewhere in Italy. As an illustration of the unfair way in which the taxes are levied in some parts of the country it is said that the donkey of the poor farmer is compelled to pay a tax, while the saddle-horse of the rich landlord goes free. In comparison with this, the Negro in the South hardly knows what taxes are. The Negro farmer, for example, has an inexhaustible market for his cotton, corn, pork, and vegetables, and all the other farm vegetables that he can raise. Land is so cheap that a thrifty farmer can buy and pay for a farm within five or six years. Taxes on farm land are so low that the farmer hardly considers them in his yearly budget. Poor as some of the Negro schools are in some parts of the South, they are vastly better and more numerous than those of the country people in Sicily. More than that, the Government puts no tax either on rain or sunshine, and the Negro in the Southern States has plenty of both, which is not true of the Sicilian farmer, who has too much sunshine and not enough rain. So much is the farmer in Sicily in need of water that at certain times in the year it is said that wine is cheaper than water. Finally, the Negro farmer, if he desires to take a load of produce to the town, does not, as is the case of the Sicilian, meet a policeman on the outskirts of the city who takes one fifth of his cotton, corn, eggs, or whatever he happens to have, away from him, before he will allow him to enter the town. One day, while I was walking along the edge of the harbour in Catania, I noticed a man who was at work mending a high wire netting, about twenty or thirty feet high, which extended along the edge of the water. I saw that it extended as far as I could see. Upon inquiry I learned that it was placed there to prevent the fishermen, whom I noticed constantly coming and going with their little sailing boats, from bringing their fish into the city without paying the tax.