Business: A SOCIETY TRANSFORMED BY INDUSTRY

(6 of 10)

adequate when only a small upper-class elite could afford a higher education, but nearly 500,000 young Italians are now enrolled and overcrowding is becoming explosive. Many priests oppose their bishops on the issue of contraception, partly because the newly urbanized faithful can scarcely afford the large families that were an asset on the farm. As more and more women take jobs, they increasingly demand equal rights, including repeal of the old law that prescribes prison for adulterous women but not men.

Il Boom itself is a target of protest, both because it is there and because there is not more of it. Italian Novelist Alberto Moravia echoes U.S. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith when he complains about the affluent society: "The priority given here to goods compared with that given to social and cultural needs shows the degree of our corruption. Italian industry thinks only of the expansion of consumption. And it is not with culture, but with money, that one buys." Many of the critics, particularly the protesting student extremists, take their prosperity for granted and never knew the general privation of times past. Gianni Agnelli has a keen understanding of the social dissent. "The people of the older generation compare the life that they had with the life of the young today and see how much better off they are," says he. "From that grows the gap in understanding. But the young are saying that we could have it better, and this is certainly true."

As a young man, Agnelli could hardly have had it any better. His family has long flourished in Italy's subAlpine Piedmont, a region noted for its soldiers and industry. Grandfather Giovanni Agnelli gave up a military career in 1899 and founded, with partners, Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino.* After some early hard times, Giovanni took personal control. Soon Fiat prospered on the strength of racing successes. It absorbed many early rivals and moved from artisan to assembly-line production, which enabled it to build 70% of the Italian Army's World War I trucks. The company went on to furnish Mussolini's military, and Il Duce rewarded it with the tariff protection and freedom from strikes that guaranteed its preeminence. In 1921, the year before Mussolini took power, Gianni Agnelli was born to a life of elegance and power—and, eventually, responsibility.

A Circuitous Route

Gianni—he was christened "Giovanni" but began early to use the shorter name to distinguish himself from his grandfather—followed a circuitous and somewhat star-crossed route to his inheritance. When he was only 14, his father was killed in a plane crash; ten years later, his half-American mother died in an auto accident. Gianni was raised largely by English governesses (he speaks impeccable English) and by his relentlessly entrepreneurial grandfather. He recalls that "we always wanted to know what was going on in Detroit"—and at 18 he was sent on a two-month auto tour of the U.S. Gianni saw World War II from both sides, first as a tank officer on the Russian front. After Italy withdrew from the war in 1943, he joined an Italian outfit that fought alongside General Mark Clark's Fifth Army.

Back from the wars, Gianni chose to follow some of his grandfather's advice: "Have a fling for a few years to get it out of your system." He