Foster - Toward Soviet America - The Book the Communists Tried to Destroy (American Communist Mein K

ATTEMPTS TO LIQUIDATE CRISIS 207 countries are in its mire. During the past year Italian industrial production has rapidly declined, examples of this decrease being steel 16%, cotton 30%, automobiles 50%, etc., the general average of decline being about 40%. Exports, notwithstanding government forced-draft methods of dumping, have dropped seriously. The crisis also manifests itself heavily in the realm of finance; the stocks of the largest and most important industrial undertakings having fallen off 50% to 75% since 1929; in November the Banca Commerciale Italiana, the largest bank in Italy, was saved from bankruptcy only by drastic government aid; in 1931 the government faced a deficit of 896,000,000 lire as against a surplus of 150,000,000 lire in 1930.

The living standards of the Italian workers and peasants have also catastrophically declined. An Associated Press dispatch of Mar. 15, 1932, says: "Italy's unemployed at the end of February totalled 1,147,000, a new high and an increase of 96,000 in a month." Only one-fourth receive the beggarly unemployment benefits. Wages have been slashed as much as 40 % in the past four years.

The prices paid to the peasants for their products have been similarly cut. So greatly have the masses been impoverished that Mussolini could cynically remark: "It is fortunate for Italy that the Italian workers and peasants are not in the habit of eating more than once a day."