The main issue of political debate in late 19th-century Italy was land ownership. Liberal governments insisted that the municipalities should sell off most of the common land to private owners—at least 740,000 acres (300,000 hectares) were sold by 1880 in southern Italy alone, and more was occupied illegally. Another 1,250,000 acres (500,000 hectares) of ecclesiastical estates were similarly sold, often at extremely low prices. Overall, at least 5,000,000 acres (2,000,000 hectares) were transferred. In some regions, including Piedmont, Liguria, and Sardinia, the sales did create a “property-owning democracy”; that is, a large number of rural people became small landowners, albeit with scattered strips that made improvement unprofitable. The sales also introduced people to the market economy, because they had to repay their mortgages in cash and find money for high land taxes. Small-scale ownership did not become common in most other regions, despite the land sales. Peasants who did acquire land were often forced to sell it again to meet tax debts or interest payments. However, land transfers did often create a non-noble rural middle class that owned an adequate amount of land or extensive flocks and could dominate local politics; this was particularly true in the former Papal States of central Italy.

Privatization of the commons also had serious environmental and social consequences. Much common land was woodland, bought up and felled by speculators who sold timber to railway companies (for sleepers) or to mines (for roof support). Deforestation became widespread; Sardinia, for example, lost four-fifths of its trees in the 19th century. The results included soil erosion, landslides, stagnant water in valley bottoms, and increased malaria—the greatest scourge of rural Italy, which in turn prevented much fertile low-lying land from being cultivated. Furthermore, the state also abolished traditional rights such as grazing and wood gathering on the remaining unsold common land. Millions of households that had relied on access to this land to obtain fuel for heating and cooking or pasture for their pigs were suddenly forced either to suffer real poverty or to break the law.

Protectionism

Most agricultural land in Italy produced grain, especially wheat. In the early 1880s world wheat prices fell by one-third, and the incomes of the larger and more prosperous farmers (who grew for the market rather than for their own consumption) collapsed. As landowners were the most powerful pressure group in the country and were strongly represented in parliament, the government could not resist their demands for protectionism.

The most prominent wool and cotton manufacturers of northern Italy also favoured tariff protection, and these industries were second only to the silk industry in importance and numbers employed. Some tariff protection (up to 40 percent) had, in fact, already been given to textiles and other light industries in 1878, but employers naturally wanted more, particularly after the restoration of gold convertibility in 1883 in effect revalued the lira. Moreover, in the 1880s Italy also gained a steel industry (Terni Steelworks, founded 1886), which was designed to build warships and railways but was sold to subsidized industries and was itself unable to survive without protection. All this meant the rise of a strong protectionist lobby, representing large landowners and textile manufacturers and linked to powerful steel and naval interests.