The Naples Riviera

John Stuart Mill · en
coral-fisher has however much improved of late years, partly by measures
of government which now compel the contractors to treat their servants
more humanely, and partly by the fact that the practice of emigration in
Southern Italy has reduced the numbers of applicants for the coral-fishing
business and has thereby, indirectly at least, raised wages and bettered
the old conditions of service. A truly pitiable account is given of these
poor creatures some thirty years ago by an English writer, whose knowledge
of the Neapolitan people and character remains probably unsurpassed; and
it is some satisfaction to reflect that even in Mr Stamer’s day the bad
old oppressive system had already been somewhat tempered for the benefit
of these white slaves, who for nearly half the round of the year were
worse treated than King Bomba’s unhappy victims in the pestilent prisons
of Naples and Gaeta.

  [Illustration: A CAPRIOTE FISHERMAN’S WIFE]

“Badly paid, badly fed, and hard worked is the poor coral-fisher. Compared
with his, the life of a galley-slave is one of sybaritical indolence. His
treatment was, until very recently, not one whit better than that of the
poor oppressed negro as he existed in the vivid imagination of Mrs Harriet
Beecher Stowe; immeasurably worse than that of the real Simon Pure. The
thirty ducats for which he sold his seven months’ services once paid, he
was just as much a slave as Uncle Tom of pious memory, harder worked, more
brutally handled. His _padrone_ was a sea-monster, alongside of whom Mr
Legree would have seemed a paragon of Quaker-like gentleness and
amiability. His word was law and a rope’s end well laid on his sole reply
to any remonstrance on the part of his bondsmen. For six days out of the
seven he kept them working incessantly, not unfrequently on the seventh
into the bargain, if the weather was favourable; and that they might be
strong, hearty and able to haul away, their food consisted of dry
biscuits; a dish of maccaroni with just sufficient oil to make the sign of
the cross being served out for the Sunday’s dinner.”(1)