FITTING TO DIRECT CULTIVATOR. — This is a sub-species of the broader scheme of leasing rustic lands, in which the tenant, as a small agricultural entrepreneur, directly attends to the cultivation of the land with work primarily his own or that of members of his family.
In this form of management, the landowner remains entirely outside the entire production cycle, the management of which passes to the tenant, who limits himself to receiving an annual rent, whether in money or in kind. The tenant, for his part, upon taking over the management of the land, commits himself to cultivating it according to the norms of good agricultural practice.
The live and dead stock necessary for the operation generally belong to the tenant. If, however, they are owned, in whole or in part, by the landowner, the tenant assumes the risks at the time of delivery and commits himself to returning them at the expiration of the contract in the same kind, number, and weight, upon payment of an interest-free deposit.
The forms of fitting to direct cultivator, more or less evolved, more or less favorable to the worker, enshrined in law, in provincial statutes, or in custom, constitute an infinite range, varying in relation to the diversity of agricultural zones, the economic and financial possibilities of rural classes, the fertility of the soil, the land tenure system, and local traditions.
The small fitting to direct cultivator, in its most evolved form, known as autonomous or family-based, which presupposes the attached farmstead, has spread especially in Veneto and Campania, as well as in other hilly areas where the fragmentation of property and the poverty of the soil have led to the spread of this type of agricultural contract in place of the age-old institution of sharecropping. In areas, however, where the particular land arrangement does not lend itself to farmstead attachment, the lease contract loses its characteristic familial physiognomy, assuming the form of small, non-autonomous, and parcelized leases.
From the leases of industrialized farm enterprises in Lombardy, to the mixed relationships of lease and sharecropping in some Venetian or Piedmontese provinces, to the near-sharecropping of Trentino (woodland and arable land under sharecropping, livestock and pasture under lease), there is a whole interweaving of relationships between landowner and worker that are not always easily classifiable.
In any case, it can be observed in every zone a clear tendency toward gradual evolution toward the most perfect form of autonomous lease, in relation to the improved financial conditions of rural categories, the need for clarity and precision in agreements, and the mutual technical and economic requirements of agriculture and the market, which cannot fail to exert their influence sooner or later on the definitive arrangement of legal relationships in agriculture.
The social problem regarding fitting to direct cultivator is above all a problem of better protection of agricultural labor in an intermediate form of management that should constitute a step in the worker’s progress toward ownership of the land. The need to adapt provisions in this matter is felt especially in relation to the requirement for control over rents, particularly in zones with dense agricultural populations, where the supply of land is not proportionate to demand.
The problem here is to ensure the small tenant a fair remuneration for his labor in keeping with his family needs, because in the profit of the small enterprise, after deducting the amount of the rent, what remains represents the income of the manual labor performed by the colonist family.
Appropriate fiscal and credit facilities should facilitate the tenant in acquiring ownership not only of agricultural capital but also of the land itself, for which agrarian reform projects envisage a right of pre-emption in favor of the tenant, under certain conditions in case of sale of the land. Provisions that are not foreign to other foreign legal systems.
The problem must therefore find a solution within the framework of a new political-social direction, inspired by Christian morality, in which the almost patriarchal conception of the rural family fully fits, understood not only as a community for the consumption of goods but also, and particularly, as a community of production (*Pius XII, Parola agli agricoltori*), where, in unity of interests and purposes, the purest and most sacred affections are concentrated under the roof of the domestic hearth.
Economic and social reasons also recommend ensuring the small tenant a certain stability on the land, to attach him more firmly to labor and the land, through a multi-year duration of the contract. In this sense, the legislation of many foreign countries with agricultural conditions not very different from ours has been moving. See, for example, the Dutch law of 12 Nov. 1941 and the Spanish law of 1940. A public control over annual rents is instead practiced in England (*Agricultural Holdings Act* of 1925): this system favors the better and more capable workers, gradually eliminating the inefficient and the dissolute.
The zones where the need to adopt all these measures is most urgent and keenly felt are naturally those of large estates in southern Italy, where the worker’s position is made more uncertain and difficult by the existence of the large intermediary tenant and gabellotto, where plots of land are subdivided into modest spaces, often insufficient to ensure the means of life and work for a family unit, where farmstead attachment is practically unknown, and the Sicilian or Calabrian peasant day laborer is forced to long and tiring journeys to reach work each day, due to the lack of rural buildings in the countryside and of all those public works (electric and hydraulic plants, roads, bridges, etc.) that are indispensable to human existence.
Despite the manifest favor that social reformers show toward fitting to direct cultivator for the technical and economic autonomy it grants to the worker, it is nevertheless evident that this form of management cannot be extended beyond certain limits, encountering almost insurmountable obstacles where the size of the enterprise and the type of industrial-style cultivation require that employment of energy, technical and administrative skills, and influx of capital that are generally lacking in our rural classes. These are the zones or agricultural enterprises where other forms of management of the agricultural enterprise, not least sharecropping and large-scale leasing, still have an important social function to perform, which is the very reason for their existence in the current legal and economic order.
FIUME, Diocese of, in Venezia Giulia immediately subject to the Holy See. It has the additional abbatial title of S. Giacomo de Abbatia.
It has a surface area of 1,014.87 km² with a population of 110,000 inhabitants, of whom 108,000 are Catholic, distributed in 32 parishes served by 57 diocesan priests and 13 regular clergy; one seminary, 3 male religious communities, and 10 female religious communities (1950).
F., which arose in the Middle Ages on the ruins of the ancient Tarsatica, developed in the 13th century into a free commune, almost independent, and was initially under the authority of the bishop of Nola, who ceded it as a fief to the lords of Duino, who were succeeded by the Walsee. When the latter died out, F. passed under the dominion of the House of Austria. However, throughout this period, which lasted almost until the end of the 18th century, F. remained under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishop of Nola.
Thus, several attempts were made to free F. from the dependence on the bishop of Nola; one of the most serious occurred during the episcopate of Bishop Sazoneno, who, through his intervention with the Holy See, managed at that time to prevent F. from being detached from Nola.
In 1776 the city changed its political allegiance because Maria Theresa separated it from Austria to attach it to Hungary, though administratively to Croatia. But the imperial diploma did not meet with the approval of the inhabitants, who, partly because they resented Croatian interference, exerted such pressure that the empress Maria Theresa, with a new decree in 1779, attached F. directly to the Crown of St Stephen as part of the *seggio* of St Francis, along with its families. F. was thus severed from Nola and united to the diocese of Segna. This political arrangement, though it underwent various vicissitudes in the 19th century, remained in its broad outlines in force at the time of the First World War of 1914–18.
From the spiritual care point of view, F.’s ecclesiastical dependence on the diocese of Segna was not the happiest, for the clergy, though in the great majority well-trained—Fiuman vocations were few—though good and conscious of their duties, had no influence over a population of different language and outlook.
The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy put an end to the city’s painful ecclesiastical situation. The Holy See, after repeated requests from the National Council, established a government of the city following the withdrawal of Hungarian authorities, first sending an apostolic visitor in the person of Msgr. Valentino Liva to examine the entire situation. Then, as the National Council renewed its requests, and F. was freed from the diocesan jurisdiction of Segna, the Holy See appointed (23 April 1920) Msgr. Celso Costantini, then director of the Archaeological Museum of Aquileia, as apostolic administrator.
In 1920 the city was occupied by d’Annunzio, who established there the “Italian Regency of the Carnaro” (August 1920), but had to withdraw in accordance with the Treaty of Rapallo (November 1920), which created the Free State of Fiume. This state was definitively annexed to Italy in 1924, and on 25 April 1925 a papal bull established the diocese of Aquileia.
During the Second World War the city was evacuated, subjected to German reprisals, and occupied by Tito’s troops (3 May 1945), followed by consequent persecution, tinged with communism, of the clergy and Catholic Action.
The new diocese had the same boundaries as the province of the Carnaro and was initially divided into four deaneries: the vicariate forane of the city, that of Villa del Nevoso, detached from the diocese of Ljubljana, and those of Volosca and Elsane, taken from the diocese of Trieste; later, when the territory of the province was enlarged, the deanery of Crusizza (Castelnuovo d’Itria) was added, also taken from the diocese of Trieste.