The miners who work the sulfur mines in the beautiful island of Sicily are some of the most unhappy victims of oppression on the face of the earth: the oppression of property, we mean. A comrade who has lately been among them sends us a description of the state of things. You cannot conceive, he writes, a more primitive kind of work; there is no machinery to take the miners down into the pits or to bring the mineral up. All is done by hand, and the "hands" are moody little children. Children, some of whom are only six years old, have to carry on their shoulders loads weighing from one hundred to two hundred pounds, up steep, rough, broken flights of steps for two or three hundred yards. The poor little creatures arrive at the top utterly br... (From : AnarchyArchives.)
IRELAND The gains and losses during the past four weeks in Ireland have been pretty equally balanced. For although there are. fifty landlords making terms with their tenants to every five still holding out for their old spoils, it must be always remembered that the "good" landlords are "simply the shrewder ones, who know that half a loaf is better than no bread." When Clanricarde's agent sends forth peremptory orders to pay up, and site at the receipt of custom the whole of an appointed day, but goes home at evensong with an empty cash-box under his arm, his master, the usurer, can only vent his spleen by turning out on the bleak road-side some miserable fellow-creature, but that puts nothing in his pockets. Pousonby when he cannot get his ... (From : AnarchyArchives.)