DEAR FOOD IN ITALY.

Evening Star, Issue 14630, 28 July 1911, Page 7

DEAR FOOD IN ITALY.

Mass meetings in protest against the 5 vapid aud persistent rise ot tlie cost of ; living have been held in nil working-class 1 quarters of Rome, and fulminated in a 1 monster demonstration at Uie Coliseum, 1 at which all local trades and professions ! were represented. The processional banf nors boro, among other devices, “Wo want > food at fair prices,” “ Down with specul lators and middlemen,” “Let ns cultivate t the Roman Campagna,” “Give us univer--5 sal suffrage.” , The speakers contended that whereas 1 there had been an all-round increase in the 1 cost of living of 40 per cent, in five years, 5 the recent rise in food prices was 20 per 5 cent., to meet which a body of 20,000 5 clerics and the vast mass of workers had t been conceded a paltry 5 per cent, increase ) in wages. They were famishing, while officialdom was c-lebrating the golden jubilee of Italy’s freedom. Resolutions were passed attributing the exploitation of 2 human labor to the parasitic activity of the idle rich on the products of labor, to j Protectionist f od taxes, and to tho un- * cultivated state of that vast stretch of i territory around the capital known as tho ’ Roman Campagna. Tho agitators invoked j the practical aid of the Government to--1 wards remedying these crying evils.— 6 ‘ Daily Chronicle’s ’ correspondent.