Despite the backward social and economic conditions of the South and despite the lack of raw materials in the more progressive north, the tutelage of Italy by the Cavour ‘s heirs had produced many of the pre-conditions and much of the infrastructure required by a modern state. 

The state itself, by promoting railroads and naval construction, stimulated the growth of heavy industries in the north. This led to population inflows from the countryside both to the cities and to the areas of railroad construction and tunneling. Simple country folk were uprooted and thrown together in relatively anonymous social conditions, where the traditional support of family and Church was absent. Often working for meager wages and always subject to the caprice of employers, the newly arrived Italian workers suffered many of the same disorienting effects as workers in the early stages of other industrial revolutions, such as England or Germany. One response, hesitant and tentative at first, was the development of workers’ associations to help protect the worker in the workplace and to ease his lot in life. In other words, the concentaration of workers which took place alongside the growth of industry led, in Italy as elsewhere, to the development of socialism and the organization of a socialist party.

What was unique about Italy was that its early socialists were interested not only in the fate of industrial workers, but also in the peasantry. The development of modern,
capitalistic agriculture derived in part from the scientific and technological developments of the latter part of the nineteenth century, but also from the simultaneous emergence of a broader, national market at the time of unification. These forces were to change the relations between peasants and landowners in the north of Italy beyond recognition. Here, production of specialized cash crops replaced traditional subsistence agriculture. The major victims were the peasants, whose condition rapidly deteriorated. 

Finally, while both of these developments were in process during the first decades after
unification, Italy had yet a third cause of social distress. This came from a rapid growth in population. With a deteriorating working and living conditions in the north and with stagnation in the south, the expanded population had few possibilities. The industries in the the north could not absorb all of them. The alternative--for many a desperate one--was emigration. 

These themes will provide the topics of our work for week seven.