DOI chapter:
Chapter XI: Ischia
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.59000#0434
Ischia
by those who earn but a few francs in wages, and have
often large families to support, the misery in which a
large proportion struggle on is easily understood. The
poorer the player, the higher the play—is as a motto
all over the South.
Considering the kind of engrained evils against
which the Italian poor have to contend, one is more
than ever convinced that no change of Government,
no increase of trade and lowering of taxes, no bettered
sanitary conditions, really touch the evils at the root.
Education, and that alone, is needed—not direct
lessons against the folly of the Lottery, against
superstitious faith, against theft and begging and all
the Camorristic practices dear to them, but that simple
compulsory schooling which clears the cobwebs from a
man’s mind and teaches him to think. The educated
classes who play weekly in the Lottery do so, after all,
with their eyes open; but the poor are the victims of
ignorance, their worst foe ; and in spite of all the
advertised improvements of Naples — the schools,
charities, and what not—the fact remains that the
poorer working - classes are still bringing up their
families without education of any kind.
The Ischian women seem more intelligent than the
men. They answer questions readily and clearly, and
have good business heads ; but this fact may strike the
stranger just because all the ablest men emigrate now,
and rarely return. It is quite out of the common to find
any women among the peasants who have no husband,
brother, or son abroad. Many of the men go to
205
by those who earn but a few francs in wages, and have
often large families to support, the misery in which a
large proportion struggle on is easily understood. The
poorer the player, the higher the play—is as a motto
all over the South.
Considering the kind of engrained evils against
which the Italian poor have to contend, one is more
than ever convinced that no change of Government,
no increase of trade and lowering of taxes, no bettered
sanitary conditions, really touch the evils at the root.
Education, and that alone, is needed—not direct
lessons against the folly of the Lottery, against
superstitious faith, against theft and begging and all
the Camorristic practices dear to them, but that simple
compulsory schooling which clears the cobwebs from a
man’s mind and teaches him to think. The educated
classes who play weekly in the Lottery do so, after all,
with their eyes open; but the poor are the victims of
ignorance, their worst foe ; and in spite of all the
advertised improvements of Naples — the schools,
charities, and what not—the fact remains that the
poorer working - classes are still bringing up their
families without education of any kind.
The Ischian women seem more intelligent than the
men. They answer questions readily and clearly, and
have good business heads ; but this fact may strike the
stranger just because all the ablest men emigrate now,
and rarely return. It is quite out of the common to find
any women among the peasants who have no husband,
brother, or son abroad. Many of the men go to
205