Carusu

These carusi generally worked in near-slavery, often given up by foundling homes or even by their own families for a succursu di murti (death benefit), which effectively made them the property of either the picuneri or of the owners of the mines.

A parent or foundling home official could redeem them by paying back the death benefit, but in the poverty-stricken Sicily of the time, this was a rare occurrence.

[3] The conditions of the carusi were described by two politicians from mainland Italy, Leopoldo Franchetti and Sidney Sonnino who had travelled to Sicily in 1876 to conduct an unofficial inquiry into the state of Sicilian society: The children work under ground 8 to 10 hours a day, having to perform a specific number of trips, in order to carry a given number of loads from the tunnel excavation until the collection point in the open air.

[3] As an eyewitness, he described the plight of the carusi as follows: From this slavery there is no hope of freedom, because neither the parents nor the child will ever have sufficient money to repay the original loan.

Illiterates with no schooling, frequently maltreated and with lopsided bodies and misformed knees due to carrying heavy loads.

He observed that: "so diminutive in stature are these men, and so deformed physically, that the Government can hardly obtain in a sulphur mining district conscripts for the army.