Economic and financial section > Problem of nutrition

- 158
established in the fertile regions of Central Italy, has been effected
either through the adaptation of the systems obtaining on land already
under cultivation or through its application to the agricultural workers
who, with their families, have been settled on the land made available
by the immense work of land reclamation undertaken and carried out
by the Fascist Government under the name of “ total reconditioning
Family Allowances.
In the last place, the desire to improve the nutrition of workers,
suggested another measure of a general character which deserves
mention : the introduction of “ family allowances ” through which
workers’ wages, instead of following an invariable and identical scale
for all those belonging to the same category, is increased in proportion
to the size of the families which they have to support.
Moderating Influence on Foodstuff Prices.
In Italy, the possibility of increasing the purchasing power of workers
in general through measures to keep down the cost of foodstuffs is an
aim which is pursued by the combined efforts of the State and the various
corporative organs.
Control of Prices in general.
The regulation of the prices of staple commodities is effected by the
competent corporative organisations and by the Fascist Party in such
a way as to prevent abuses and excessive price increases, while at the
same time guaranteeing an equitable profit to all economic interests.
Such regulation is achieved in two ways :
{a) By fixing maxima for the retail prices of the chief articles of
food (bread, flour, pastes, meat, oil, butter, cheese, dried fish). These
maxima are fixed periodically (as a rule, every fifteen days) by
authorities set up in accordance with the corporative principle—that
is to say, by provincial intersyndical committees, which base their
decisions on the information and cost prices indicated by a central
price committee presided over by the secretary of the Fascist Party
and made up of representatives of all the employers’ and workers’
confederations ;
(b) By the discipline of the members of the various commercial
categories grouped in their syndical organisations.
It is, indeed, the traders’ syndical organisation which follows price
movements, and, on detecting excessive or unwarranted idses, intervenes
either by persuasion or disciplinary action or by requesting the
Government to take the appropriate economic measures.