Carusu

Carusu (plural carusi) is the Sicilian word for "boy" and is derived from the Latin carus which means "dear" In the mid-1800s through the early 1900s in Sicily, carusu was used to denote a "mine-boy", a labourer in a sulfur, salt or potash mine who worked next to a picuneri or pick-man, and carried raw ore from deep in the mine to the surface.

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. Often "recruited" as young as five to seven years of age, once they were thus encumbered, many lived their whole lives as carusi, and in many cases not only worked, but ate and slept in the mines or nearby. 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.

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. […] The load varies according to the age and strength of the boy, but it is always much higher than a creature of such a young age normally can carry without serious damage to health or risk of mutilation. Incredibly enough, the younger children carry on their shoulders weights of 25 to 30 kilos, and those of sixteen to eighteen years 70 and 80 kilos.

As a result, the minimum age was increased to 10 years by government decree in 1876. In 1905 the minimum age was raised to 14 years and in 1934 to 16. The law was not rigidly enforced, however.

The horrific conditions in Sicilian sulfur mines prompted Booker T. Washington − himself an African American born a slave – to write in 1910: "I am not prepared just now to say to what extent I believe in a physical hell in the next world, but a sulphur mine in Sicily is about the nearest thing to hell that I expect to see in this life." He had traveled to Europe to acquaint himself, in his words: "with the condition of the poorer and working classes in Europe". As an eyewitness, he described the plight of the carusi as follows:

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