BRACCIANTATO (agricultural). — A bracciante is a peasant without any particular specialization who finds temporary employment on a farm under a short-term wage-labor contract and obtains his means of subsistence from this occasional work.
In practice, it is not always easy to identify the bracciante in statistical surveys, because the group of people generically designated by this term includes individuals of very different origins, ranging from the unemployed industrial worker to the small peasant proprietor who seeks to supplement his very modest income through day labor. This case is extremely frequent in southern Italy, where the small proprietor is often, in turn, a tenant farmer, sharecropper, or bracciante, depending on the opportunities available to him, which he assiduously seeks, given the insufficiency of the income from his tiny property. This uncertainty in determining the number of braccianti accounts for the approximate estimates of their numbers and for the controversies that have taken place over the relevant figures.
According to the data from the censuses of the Italian population, up to and including that of 1921, male agricultural wage laborers numbered approximately 3 million. The two most recent censuses show this figure to have fallen considerably: 1,993,302 (males only, in 1931) and 1,791,918 (males only, in 1936), that is, 28% of the male agricultural population, compared with 45% in 1921.
Some have interpreted these figures as evidence of the profound transformation under way in the structure of Italian agriculture. Unfortunately, this optimism is unfounded, and in any event the figures given are insufficient to justify it, since the survey criteria used in the various censuses were not uniform and, as Molinari acknowledges in the Relazione generale al Censimento del 1936, the considerable difference between the data for 1921 and 1931 is due to the fact that in the first of the two censuses the designation of day laborer was assigned to those farmers, mentioned above, who also performed wage labor. There can be no doubt about this fact; moreover, the serious defects in the occupational classification used in the censuses, as regards agriculture, had already been highlighted in the Inchiesta agraria of Fama. As for the number of wage laborers in the strict sense, the data from the most recent census may be considered sufficiently reliable. We therefore have 1,817,283 temporary workers and 381,785 permanent wage laborers: in all, more than two million braccianti, that is, one quarter of Italy’s active agricultural population. One third of them are women.
The origins and reasons for the persistence of such a large number of braccianti in our country are numerous and vary from one area to another: strictly technical and economic reasons combine with historical and social ones. Everywhere, the common factor is the rapid growth of the rural population, unaccompanied by an adequate expansion of employment opportunities, together with the shortage of capital needed for major improvements to the land. Among the economic and technical reasons, mention must be made of the productive organization of recently reclaimed areas and of regions devoted to extensive cultivation, characterized by poor herbaceous crops and a lack of livestock activities. Under this system there are pronounced seasonal variations in the demand for labor.
The relatively high net income yielded in our country by agriculture organized in this way, together with the shortage of capital and the considerable risk involved in investments in intensive crops, especially tree crops, maintains a system of cultivation incapable of continuously absorbing agricultural workers throughout the year.
It should be noted that, although the capitalist farm creates and maintains wage labor, the more serious aspects of this relationship arise less from its nature than from its precariousness. The situation is less serious in areas where livestock farming predominates, where permanent wage laborers are very common, and more acute elsewhere.
In the south, the bracciante is maintained by the existence of large estates under extensive cultivation, while the very limited size of the holdings of direct cultivators obliges them to seek employment in the surplus labor opportunities available on extensive cereal farms. The lack of roads and water, together with the general conditions of the environment, obstructs the subdivision of the land into farms and perpetuates a system of cultivation that requires a large absorption of labor at peak periods, while leaving it almost unemployed during the rest of the year. In some areas, the persistence of large masses of braccianti also depends on the fact that land-reclamation works required more workers than the reclaimed land could absorb, at least initially.
The situation of the braccianti may be aggravated by the presence of seasonal industrial activities (sugar and canning), by the discontinuity of public works, by an excessive supply of labor in neighboring areas divided into farms, and finally by unemployment in industry.
From a geographical point of view, the bracciante is most common in the lower Po Valley (one third of all braccianti), particularly in Emilia, with 200,000, in Veneto, with 155,000, and in Lombardy, with 143,000. In Piedmont, braccianti are especially numerous in the provinces of Novara and Vercelli, particularly because of rice cultivation, whereas the intensive development of livestock raising in the Lombard plain maintains a considerable number of permanent wage laborers.
Outside the Po Valley, braccianti constitute a substantial mass in Sicily (235,000), Apulia (224,000), and, to a lesser extent, in certain areas of Campania, Calabria, and Latium.
From what has been said, it follows that the characteristic feature of their work, and consequently of their income, is precariousness. On average, it may be assumed that annual employment amounts to between 200 and 250 days; that is, approximately one third of the working days is lost.
This is work that generally requires no special aptitudes other than physical endurance; it is arduous and concentrated in certain months, and is performed under particularly harsh environmental conditions, from spring to autumn, for plowing, hoeing, harvesting, mowing, threshing, and excavation work. During peak periods, the eight-hour limit is exceeded. Once these periods have passed, unemployment is unavoidable. Under these conditions, even though wage rates have improved over time, the income of these workers remains extremely low.
From the agricultural inquiry, through the more recent inquiry conducted by the National Institute of Agricultural Economics, to numerous monographs by individual scholars, it is possible to assemble painful documentation. Before the war, despite the more numerous employment opportunities offered by the economic policy pursued in certain areas where the number of braccianti was highest, average earnings rarely exceeded 2,000 lire a year, while expenditure for each consumption unit remained considerably below this figure. As can be seen, this was a miserable budget, even if these data may be regarded as only approximately accurate and as tending to understate the true figures. Housing conditions were generally appalling. The workplace was often at a considerable distance from the place of residence, requiring exhausting journeys that worsened the living conditions of the worker and his family. The head of the household’s meager income forced the children to begin working at an early age, and women with small children also contributed to the family income.
The most recent information reveals no substantial improvement in the condition of the mass of agricultural laborers, which may be summed up in the word misery. It follows from this that in some areas, in certain cases extending over vast districts—Romagna and Puglia—the state of agitation is permanent; this is also due to the fact that a considerable proportion of these workers is detached from the productive process. The agricultural laborer feels that the course of agricultural production does not concern him and that, through mechanization, it may even proceed without him. At the root of this evil lies the eternal quest of man, yearning for security for himself and his family, and for the peace that comes from having fulfilled one’s duty; whereas for many months of the year he is forced into the most degrading and demoralizing idleness.
If these are the conditions of material and social life, it is easy to imagine the extreme difficulties of a sound moral life. Education is hindered by the need to make use of the labor of children, and by all those circumstances—aggravated in this case by poverty—that already place the agricultural laborer at a disadvantage. Promiscuous, harsh, manual work, carried out far from home, and the high proportion of women agricultural laborers constitute, on the other hand, a very grave threat to a sound moral life; a threat that until now has been held in check by religious feeling, more or less strongly felt in the various areas, but itself exposed to facile hostile propaganda and not founded upon even a modest education.
Matters appear even more distressing when the agricultural laborer’s work entails moving away from his home. Then residence, even for fairly long periods, in work communities becomes a source of grave dangers.
Given these characteristics of the b., the problem is not limited to achieving more humane working conditions and a less miserable wage, but requires, insofar as possible, modification of the structure of the agricultural enterprise employing agricultural laborers. Indeed, the measures repeatedly adopted—work shifts, prohibition of labor exchanges and compulsory labor quotas, and restrictions on the use of machinery—merely redistribute work and often have the effect of increasing production costs. Together with the execution of public works, they may serve as a temporary solution to particularly acute unemployment crises, but they do not eliminate the causes of the ills affecting the b.
The fundamental remedy is farm settlement, through which, by combining different crops, a better distribution of the peasant family’s work throughout the year can be achieved, while the intensive character of the agriculture it presupposes increases its income. Residence on the farm, participation in the product, even when the establishment of a small holding has not been achieved, bind the worker to the land through the security of living conditions that it guarantees him and through the interest it arouses. On the farm it is easy to find activities which, while continually occupying the worker, assure him a higher income and at the same time provide the community with a greater volume of production.
Unfortunately, agrarian conditions do not always permit this transformation. At times farm settlement presupposes substantial land-reclamation works and requires considerable investment—in other words, the means of a large enterprise or of the State. In many areas of southern Italy, farm settlement is conditional upon a genuine agrarian reform, accompanied by a substantial complex of works including land reclamation, the construction of roads, aqueducts, and dwellings. To achieve these results, while beneficial and desirable private initiative is not excluded, the assistance or direct intervention of the State is required.
It is necessary, however, to point out that even in areas where farm settlement is possible, given today’s population overload, one cannot envisage the complete transformation of the mass of agricultural laborers. It has in fact been observed how numerous are the reasons that bring about the formation of the b., among which the increase in the rural population is by no means the least. Moreover, the necessary technical progress of Italian agriculture requires a wider use of mechanical means and therefore, in many areas, a smaller burden of human labor per unit of surface area.
It would therefore be imprudent to envisage the total solution of the problem through farm settlement, as though by the stroke of a magic wand. Agrarian transformation must be completed and accompanied by an adequate development of commercial and industrial activities, if emigration is not to be considered or cannot be undertaken. Where farm settlement cannot be implemented, the agricultural laborer’s conditions may be improved through a sharecropping contract. Under this arrangement, the agricultural laborer is granted a plot of land in concession, receiving, in return for the labor he applies to it, a share of the product that varies according to the type of crop (v. COMPARTECIPAZIONE). This employment relationship, while offering the agricultural laborer a valuable supplement to his budget, permits better use of the family’s labor force and contributes to increased production.