Business: A SOCIETY TRANSFORMED BY INDUSTRY

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almost 200% since 1960, to 1968's $10 billion. Italy had a comfortable $600 million surplus in its balance of payments for 1968, when its reserves of gold and currency exchange rose to $5.2 billion, a total exceeded only by the U.S. and Germany. The Italian lira ranks with the German mark as one of the world's soundest currencies, and it is eagerly sought by speculators, who bet on its upward revaluation in the not-distant future. A grudging testimonial to its strength came last month, when the U.S. Treasury, in a report on the American balance of payments problem, suggested that the defense of the dollar would be easier if Italy and West Germany did not promote exports quite so aggressively.

Though the country's export success is partly due to the relatively low wages of its workers, prosperity has spread fairly widely among the people. Per capita income has doubled in a decade to $1,340 a year. In a country where even ice cubes were scarce a decade ago, 65% of the families now have refrigerators. About 40% own washing machines, and 60% heat their frozen pizza in gas or electric ovens.

The most conspicuous sign of the new prosperity—and the greatest single force behind it—is the increasing au-tomobilization of Italy. As in the U.S. after World War I and in Germany after World War II, the mass marketing of autos has created new factories, jobs and paychecks in Italy by generating demand for steel, rubber, glass, brass and gas. There was only one car for every 350 Italians before World War II; now there is one for seven —compared with one for five in West Germany and one for two in the U.S. Every Friday 4,000,000 city dwellers pack baggage and bambini into their cars and, with horns shrieking and clutches crunching, take off for the country to enjoy what they call Il Weekend. The automobile gives them a new sense of freedom. In all, 8,000,000 cars jam the country's plazas, its poplar-lined roads and its new highways, which are already so crowded that trucks may soon be banned at peak traffic hours.

The auto-borne prosperity leads to economic and social mobility as well as to physical mobility. Sicilians and Calabrians who used to dream of emigrating to America can now find jobs in their own country. Last year 300,000 of them permanently left their farms for the northern manufacturing cities like Milan and Turin, where many work in Fiat's plants.

Propelling Prosperity

There remain shocking gaps in Italy's prosperity. Unemployment among the country's 20 million-member labor force hovers at 3,4%, which is high by Western European standards. It would be higher still, but 1,500,000 Italians have temporarily migrated in order to work in other European countries (one major employer: Germany's Volkswagen). In southern Italy, where many of the 18 million inhabitants live in poverty and illiteracy, per capita income is only $637. "Africa begins at Naples," goes an Italian saying about the South's leading city. Naples lives on memories, and some think that the last good one was the invasion of the fun-loving, free-spending G.I.s in 1944. Tens of thousands of destitute Neapolitans still exist in wretched bassi—basement apartments divided into "rooms" by blankets hung from lines that have been strung from wall to wall.

Now, many depressed areas are being revitalized. In