MUSSOLINI WIELDS AXE

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 June 1934, Page 12

MUSSOLINI WIELDS AXE

CHARGES REDUCED BY DECREE Beatrice Baskerville “Daily Telegraph” Rome correspondent, writes: — With a stroke of the pen Signor Mussolini has wrought sweeping changes in the domestic budgets of nearly 42,000,000 people. On April 14, after presiding at a Cabinet meeting, he issued a decree whereby employees of all categories lost from 5 to 12 per cent, of their salaries, and Cabinet Ministers 20 per cent, of their emoluments. He has ordered that all landlords shall reduce their vents by 12 per cent, for dwellings a».d 15 per cent, for other premises, and has brought the reductions into force as from April 16. It is believed that wages throughout the country will also be cut, so that all Italy will share in his effort to stem the tide of a growing budgetary deficit. It is interesting to watch this experiment in unorthodox economics from close Quarters. Will he succeed? And will internal prices respond to his command? Every Italian is asking these questions.

The majority of Italy’s huge army of State and para-statal employees, including those in banks, assurance offices and large business firms, fall under the reductions of 6 and 8 per cent. Their wages, paid monthly, range between 800 and 1,000 lire (£l3/6/8 and £l6/13/4 a month). They are married men with children.

They had little margin for amenities, even before the axe fell upon them. It is hoped that tne present cuts, plus increased revenue from the revised bachelor tax, will effect an economy of between £8,000,000 and £9,000,000 sterling. The Decr.ee came as a sudden and severe blow. It has hit the majority hard. Even the Italian housewife, who brings family budgeting to a fine art, is faced with a difficult problem. When the bread-winner suffers a cut upon a salary of under £l5 a month, her bill of fare must consist largely of dishes which we comprehensively call macaroni, or of potatoes and the cheaper vegetables and green salads, generously dressed with olive oil. Food prices are higher than in England, and certain items,’such as sugar, which is fourteen pence a pound, butter and coffee, are almost prohibitive for people earning these salaries.

It is evident, therefore, that a 12 per cent, reduction in rents was the necessary corollary to reduction in salaries. Otherwise the landlords, whether princely owners of large estates or people who have invested their savings in two flats, or the Statecontrolled co-operative building societies financed by the banks, would have received no rent at all within a few weeks’ time; and discontent would have grown to troublesome proportions.

FORCE IF NEEDED Therefore the Decree includes model tenements and workmen’s dwellings, which was not the case in 1930. It warns landlords that police measures will be taken against them if they fail to comply with its terms. Not only that, Gen. Starace, Secretary of the Fascist party, cabled orders to his federal secretaries in Italy and the Colonies to report each case of rebellion of the landlords. Fascists are threatened with expulsion from the party. This entails the loss of privileges, and makes it hard to get eviction orders against defaulting tenants. Bread-winners who were forced to

buy flats or shops during the house famine are doubly hit by the Decree. Rent reduction does not benefit them; the capital value of their homes has depreciated considerably within the past three years. Are they to get a rebate on taxes? The Decree does not say so. The Government is better equipped to enforce the Decree than it was when it made the cuts in 1927 and 1930. The Chamber of Deputies is entirely composed of men chosen or approved by the Fascist Grand Council. Malcontents can get no redress there. Above all, there is the Corporative State, which now controls the whole of national activity, from the captain of industry to the scavenger. It has been carefully planned so as to make the State the supreme arbiter in mat- ' ters affecting capital and labour. It makes strikes and lock-outs penal offences. Employers who declare a

lockout are liable to between three and twelve months’ imprisonment, with fines; workers, whether “white-collar” employees or operatives, who go on strike are liable to three months’, their ringleaders to a maximum of two years’ imprisonment plus fines. When the cuts were decreed in 1930 the bank clerks who rebelled were arrested and their ringleaders convicted. They did not serve their term; but their experience was a warning to others. The publicity given in the Italian Press to a small riot which took place in the Province of Aquilla a few days ago, when one man was killed and several wounded by the police, was meant as a timely warning that the law against public meetings will be rigorously enforced. According to the last census returns there are 2,000,000 bachelors in Italy, or about 20 per cent, of the total population. Their tax has now been put up 50 per cent., and is expected to yield £2,000,000 sterling.

BACHELOR’S BURDEN

A bachelor of 30 who is drawing pay equal to I’2oo a year must now pay a bachelor tax of £6 a year, in addition to 8 per cent, income-tax and a complementary tax, making a total of nearly £22 a year. An enterprising bachelor I know has worked out a little sum which shows that if the 2.000,000 bachelors married their wedding feast and setting up of home would circulate £34,000,000 in the country. Therefore, the Government taxes him as punishment. The Benedicts will be made to pay. Some time ago, in an Umbrian town, I noticed a number of well-worn bicycles propper against a wall in one of the rooms in the Municipal Hall. “Ah. we have seized those things from bachelors who have not paid their tax!” an official explained. Are people grumbling about the cuts? Of course they are. But a little murmuring does no harm, and when the cost of living is forced down it will subside. But here Mussolini faces a more formidable task than applying the axe to employees and landlords. He must so adjust internal prices that national health and content is ensured.

To-day the position is this: The Ministry of Communications has reduced prices of food sold in its “Provvida” stores (dispensaries) from 5 to 10 per cent. The Unione Militare has done likewise. State-controlled co-operatives

are following the example. But although the retailers are to enjoy a 15 pei’ cent, reduction on the rent of shops and storehouses, they show little inclination to let the consumers have the benefit thereof.

“Then why don’t people buy in the ’Provvida’ and co-operatives?” The answer goes to the root of the employees’ position. The “Provvida” sells food to many categories of State employees, but not to all. The poorer class cannot always deal there, for one reason because they cannot buy small quantities; and they must pay cash. The State employee gets paid on the 27th of the month. When his margin is small and his family large, he finds it convenient to deal where he can have a libretto, or little book in which his purchases are entered. When pay-day comes there is sometimes enough after paying the rent, gas and light to settle the whole of the sum marked in the libretto. More often there is a deficit. So he never quite clears his bill in the shop where his wife buys bread, macaroni, groceries, and perhaps bacon, lard, ham, and dried cod for the Friday dinner. The libretto ties her to that shop. The shopkeeper takes the risk. But he makes his customers pay for it.

SHOPKEEPERS’ AVILES The woman who pays cash goes to one of the street markets and gets far better value. But this cannot be where there are many mouths to feed on a salary of £8 a month. In many cities the authorities are going back to the old system of calmiere, or fixed price-lists, which were introduced during the war and twice revived, but were allowed to lapse when lower purchasing power and general depression caused prices to fall. AVithin the past few days these lists have been a good deal in evidence. But the shopkeepers are as resourceful as Were the landlords. They exclude the better cuts of meat, fresher fruit .and vegetables, the good butter, the pure olive oil from the fixed price. They tell the customers, “Oh, that is oil the luxury class, and not included in the calmiere.”

In some cities the civil authorities have closed the shops of hardened offenders for periods varying from two days to a week. But will this stop the abuse?

The shopkeeper argues that wholesale prices have not dropped since the Decree came into force: that middlemen take all the profits; that the 15 per cent, reduction in rents does not cover taxes and overhead charges; that he is saddled with bad debts; that, in short, he must close down unless he is able to buy cheaper than he does now.

The newspapers give prominence to complaints that meat and horseflesh, which is consumed by the poorer people, is dear, that ’bus fares, medicines, schoolbooks and gas must come down

before the employee can face the situation with a quiet mind. Reductions in electric light and gas rates have been promised in most cities as from May 1. The newspapers have orders from higher spheres to give much space to campaigns against profiteers, and to educate the housewife to judge whether prices asked in shops are in keeping with wholesale prices.

DRASTIC ACTION TAKEN

ROME, May 3

Swift action has been taken against tradesmen in Rome found guilty of refusing to reduce their primes. The decree of April 14, which cut all employees’ wages and all house rents, stated that retailers would be made to lower their charges. To-day thirteen retailers discovered it was no empty threat. The Prefect of Rose has closed their shops for periods varying from two to ten days. At the same time the Press is educating tenants in the art of dealing with recalcitrant landlords, who must submit to a 12 per cent, reduction of house rents and 15 per cent, on the rents of other premises. The authoritative “Giornale d’ltalia” tells its readers not to lose time arguing with their landlords, but to deduct the proper percentage from their rent payments as from April 16. As to landladies of furnished rooms, they must be dealt with kindly but firmly, because the decree applies to them as well. Prince Boncompagni Ludouisi, Governor of Rome, has announced that he will reduce the tax on rent paid by holders of unfurnished houses and shops by 12 and 15 per cent, respectively. The payment of the first instalment of this tax falls due in August. His example has been followed in two or three other cities.

The Fascist Industrial Union has summoned a large firm of grindstone manufacturers on a. charge of dismissing 100 workmen within the past few weeks in order to take them on again at lower wages.

This is an infraction of the labour charter, the foundation of the new Corporative State.