CLASSICAL SHARECROPPING

The system of sharecropping or mezzadria was the dominant institution of the Tuscan countryside, and the vast area where it held sway was the zone where fascism was strongest. There were, however, provinces where sharecropping was not the rule, and these must be mentioned in order to explain the geography of fascism. In the industrial provinces of Massa-Carrara and Livorno, agriculture was poorly developed and was conducted in the main by small proprietors who were never successfully unionized on a large scale. Here agrarian fascism was a negligible force. Lucca and Grosseto provinces, by contrast, posessed important agricultural zones, but they were entirely different both from each other and from the rest of Tuscany. Grosseto province was an area of backward great estates worked by migrant day labourers. In its social and economic structures, therefore, Grosseto was the northernmost extension of southern Italian latifundism rather than a characteristic representative of central Italy. Lucca resembled Grosseto in possessing social structures that were very different from the rest of the region. Lucca, however, stood apart in a very contrasting manner. Grosseto was the realm of latifundia; Lucca was a province of dispersed landownership in which the peasant direct cultivator was the dominant figure.