(2 of 3)
1) Tycoon Belloni was guilty of gross malfeasance as Podesta (Mayor) of Milan two years ago, when Manhattan's Dillon Read & Co. lent the city $30,000,000 and sold the paper to U. S. investors at the attractive bond yield of 6½%.
2) It now appears that several million lire of the money loaned cannot be traced, seem to have disappeared in the direction of Signer Ernesto Belloni.
Even so Il Duce faced a major scandal-crisis. With $400,000,000 of U. S. money invested on the Italian peninsula—and mostly paying 7%—charges like those made against Tycoon Belloni, last week, cannot but affect the World's opinion of the Fascist regime as a whole. In the 47th year of Signer Mussolini's age, in the seventh year of Dictator Mussolini's regime, how do his achievements stack up against his failures? Last week it seemed especially pertinent to examine both in ordered sequence:
Trade Success. Prior to the War, imports to Italy exceeded her exports by 51%, and as late as the period 1921-25 the average "adverse balance" was still more discouraging, 57%. Credit for what has been accomplished since rests with the Fascist Régime exclusively. In 1927 the adverse balance of trade had been pared down to 33%.
"White Coal" Success. Since Italy has no coal mines it is an impressive achievement that in recent years her constantly increasing demands for power have been met by installing half a billion dollars worth of hydro-electric machinery, not by importing more coal from abroad. Today Italy leads every other European country in the amount of energy she niches from ''white coal"—water power. Of actual coal she burned but 10,700,000 tons last year, approximately the same as her 10,600,000 tons consumption in 1913.
Employment Success. Italy and Great Britain have approximately the same population—circa 40 millions. Today most Englishmen phlegmatically regard the long standing existence of some one and a quarter million unemployed as a sort of necessary evil. Neither British Conservatives nor British Laborites have been able to do anything about it. Not so in Mussoliniland.
Starting with 500,000 unemployed, the Dictator has steadily cut down this figure—by no matter what methods—until to-day 250.000 Italians are idle. He is now pushing forward a huge, perhaps top-heavy. Land Reclamation Program, asserts that it will wipe out the unemployment bogey utterly.
Wheat Failure. Despite Farmer Mussolini's energetic example in growing wheat by the most advanced methods on his own estate; despite his clarion propaganda calling Italians to fight the "Battle of the Grain" (TIME, Oct. 24, 1927); it is a fact that Italy still buys abroad a third of her wheat, as she has done for decades. More discouraging still, the "improved farming methods" constantly mooted by Fascismo have absolutely not increased the average yield per acre. As yet there is no victory in the "Battle of the Grain."
Birth Failure. Taxes on bachelors, subsidies to prolific parents, even the inspiring gift of the Dictator's signed photograph to mothers of twins and over, have not produced the desired result. The birth rate in Italy continues slowly to decline.