LAND RECLAMATION

Evening Star, Issue 23123, 24 November 1938, Page 2

LAND RECLAMATION

FASCIST PROGRAMME The news that the Italian Government has allotted 50,000,0001. for work on new irrigation schemes in connection with Lakes Maggiore and Garda emphasises the fact that land reclamation, temporarily sidetracked for military expenditure, has resumed its important place in the Fascist programme, writes a correspondent to ‘ The Times.’ In modern Italy “ bonifica integrale ” is more than a policy. _ Of it has been made a conception which expresses a whole range of patriotic sentiments—the wish for more and better production; the well-being of the peasant; a certain denunciation of urban life; and the recognition of an age-long struggle against Nature, which in Italy is never far beneath the surface. With nearly half the total area of rural Italy included in plans for reclamation, “ bonifica ” has come to mean almost anything from the maintenance of existing drainage schemes to the-provision of houses^for rural workers. The Mussolini Act of. 1928 provided for .7, 00p,000,0001. (Say £70,000,000) to be spent on laud within the riefet 14 years. In 1935, after years of lavish expenditure, there was a definite slackening in tempo. AVofk then in hand was continued, but not extended. Official figures show on paper that large amounts of money continued To be available for the service of reclamation. It is reasonably certain, however, that comparatively "little money was spent on “ bonifica ” between 1935 and the beginning of this year, and that for this period the position was accurately stated by Signor Angelini, president of the Confederation of Agricultural AVorkers, when he said (in May, 1937) that “ reclamation is marking time for reasons of a contingent nature, but it is hoped that work can soon be got under way again.” PROMISE TO THE SOUTH. In January last it was announced ,that a sum of 100,000,6001. wouldhe •devoted to' the- reclamation of 60,000 hectares in the Tavoliere of Apulia, in the far south of Italy. _ This was in accordance with a promise which Signor Mussolini had_ made to the upland peasants of Apulia that after work on the Pontine Marshes was completed, attention should be turned to their part of the country. Much attention has been paid to housing for the peasants since the Duce put in the foreground ” the problem of the countryman’s cottage.” An inquiry showed that eight per cent, of all rural houses, 276,810 houses, with 1,968,000 inmates, were fit only for demolition. This programme, too, has suffered from the tightness of money during the past few years. The indebtedness of rural Italy is How far this,matters ‘in a regime which is increasingly developing a close State-coritj'olled economy is perhaps doubtful, but.it seems inevitable that the of bonifica lies only with the State. Feverish borrowing followed the Act of 1923, which declared that landowners must., carry out their own bonifica wherever the ; State so decreed, and that expropriation would punish default. With the; reorganisation in 1936 of the Italian banking system, those debts have now been .transferred directly to tho State’s-control. The total, sum lent by agricultural credit institutipnsvin 1936 (1*825,839,000 lire) was just less-than double that standing in their.hooks Tor 1935. Private-enterprise has suffered a setback, evidently unintended, from which it can scarcely recover, and the fact that expropriation has hardly anywhere been carried out is a sign that the authorities realise tho financial condition in which landowners now find themselves.- AVithin the next few years valuable data should be forthcoming on the sociological experiments being made in large-scale land Settlement. Many of the 30,000 settlers in the Pontino were brought from urban surroundings. To provide the necessary labour family units were sometimes artificially made up. Signor Mazzocchi-Aleraanni, president of the Opera Nazionale per i Combattenti, which carried out tho reclamation, recently wrote;— “ AVe believe that this is a most useful social experiment in that it sets out to transform town dwellers in mind and spirit and make countrymen of them. ... If only a percentage of settlers are thus transformed, politically and socially the experiment; will have been the most important success in the annals of the opera, both from the national and international points of view.”