As the sun loses heat it contracts, and every pair of particles in the sun are nearer to each other after the contraction than they were before.

It contracts again at its northern boundary to about 30 m.

The corn-growers and the revenue collectors were ruined by exorbitant imposts or by the iniquitous cancelling of contracts; temples and private houses were robbed of their works of art; and the rights of Roman citizens were disregarded.

In March 1902 agrarian strikes organized by the leg/fe broke out in the district of Copparo and Polesine (lower valley of the Po), owing to a dispute about the labor contracts, and in Apulia on account of unemployment.

In the spring of 1908 there were agrarian strikes at Parma; the labor contracts had pressed hardly on the peasantry, who had cause for complaint; but while some improvement had been effected in the new contracts, certain unscrupulous demagogues, of whom Alceste De Ambris, representing the syndacalist wing of the Socialist party, was the chief, organized a widespread agitation.