Alpha Book

Successful business implies the comprehension of details. It is tedious
work, and if you mean to try it you must begin at the beginning. You
ought to do so. There is an enormous business before you, with
considerable capabilities in it. If I were in your place, I would take
what fell naturally to my lot."
"What is that?"
"Farming. They call it agriculture in parliament, because they do not
know what farming means. The men who think that Italy can live without
farmers are fools. We are not a manufacturing people any more than we
are a business people. The best dictator for us would be a practical
farmer, a ploughman like Cincinnatus. Nobody who has not tried to raise
wheat on an Italian mountain-side knows the great difficulties or the
great possibilities of our country. Do you know that bad as our farming
is, and absurd as is our system of land taxation, we are food exporters,
to a small extent? The beginning is there. Take my advice, be a farmer.
Manage one of the big estates you have amongst you for five or six
years.


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