DEMOCRATS OUT-MANEUVER COMMUNISTS
Vacirca, Vincenzo
Report from Italy: Democrats Out-Maneuver Communists By Vincenzo Vacirca New Leader Correspondent in Italy ROME*-As this is being written, the last"deputy of the Communist front is making...
...The full impact of the lay-offs during the past few months has not yet been felt...
...can kneel in abject devotion before the monstrous idols who try to dominate the world from the turreted Kremlin...
...Relief agencies throughout the state are swamped with applications for emergency indigent aid...
...It was evident that Togliatti and his followers were not concerned either about peace or about the welfare of Italy...
...Only a few workers are demanded for highly skilled jobs...
...THE AGITATION of the Communists aroused, the attention even of those who were indifferent to the Pact, and...
...Negroes have been particularly hard hit by the recent layoffs...
...Jobs in agriculture, transportation, food processing and certain related industries will open during the summer and fall...
...This number, multiplied by ten minutes for each orator, amounts to about twenty-eight hours...
...This last Communist parliamentary attack has engendered general disgust for the dishonest and brutal manner in which it has been conducted, for the impudent lies uttered by the speakers, for the malicious anti-American spirit which it has unveiled...
...Total unemployment in October of 1948 was only 220,000 or about five per cent of the total labor force...
...This motion was defeated by more than two-thirds, after a roll-call vote was taken...
...They seized on an article in the Chamber rules which gives every deputy the right to make a vote statement not to exceed ten minutes...
...The problem for California is what to,do about them, and California doesn't have the answer...
...The Communists then tried a different strategy...
...The employment problem confronting Negroes in the large cities—Oakland...
...Discrimination in employment is wide-spread and approximately ninety percent of job orders placed with employment agencies .specify that Negroes and other racial minorities are not wanted...
...All such resources are only very limited and partial solutions to the fundamental problem of too many people and too few jobs...
...The Atlantic Part, therefore, seems to be a bulwark of democracy, erected by all peoples who do .not wish to perish, a defense against the possibility of ultuck by the regenerated Mongolian hordes...
...Unlike raisins or oranges, the unemployed arc not for export...
...simultaneously, job placements by these agencies have dropped off by as much as thirty or forty percent, and even more in some localities...
...Immedi! ately after, a roll call vote will be taken...
...All have given proof of an admirable resistance and tenacity—never has the Italian Chamber been so full...
...It is the old story: they cannot develop skills because of denial of jobs...
...From time to time they rise, enter the Chamber, and then come out again...
...Some of the unemployment can be explained in terms of seasonal, forces...
...Twentyseven speakersrbombarded the government with extremely violent verbal attacks for several days...
...The deputies are tired...
...This trust has driven the free peoples, the1 peoples who really want peace, the peoples who have been ruined and are still bleeding from the last war, to seek protection under the wings of the American eagle...
...The Russian bear will cease to frighten only when the .weaker nations are united in solid pact which will make them collectively strong...
...deputies of the majority lost time, but not their patience, stoically to sitting it out to the final vote...
...Although California has only about seven percent of the national population, it has about fifteen percent of the curently unemployed...
...Thus the battle for Moscow was a miserable failure, not only in terms of the outcome (which was foreseen), but also of the moral and political effect which the Communists' undignified behavior has had on the vast majority of Italians...
...Report from Italy: Democrats Out-Maneuver Communists By Vincenzo Vacirca New Leader Correspondent in Italy ROME*-As this is being written, the last"deputy of the Communist front is making his statement on the Atlantic Pact...
...overnight it became a powerful and immediate reality...
...In an hour, when the end of this article is going to be written, the results will be known...
...About two-thirds of the unemployed have been covered by job,insurance programs and weekly benefit checks will enable them to "get by" for a few more weeks...
...The figure is now estimated to be in excess of 500,000...
...offices of the State Employment Service are daily filled with job insurance claimants...
...Somo have recently mdved back where they came from, But the number is insignificant, and there has been a continuous net gain in population throughout the entire post-war period...
...In February of 1949 483,000 workers in California were unemployed...
...Non-seasonal industries in the urban centers have laid off thousands of production workers: employers report that their backlogs of orders arc exhausted, and that prospects for employment of new or the re-employment of old workers are far from encouraging...
...It does not matter what words and phrases constitute this Pact, nor what terms are stipulated, nor what type of intervention is provided...
...It is estimated that one out of every three Negroes in the labor force is unable to find work as compared to one in every eight among white workers...
...About 170 signed up to speak...
...it is likely to be quickly followed by similar protests throughout California as unemployment mounts...
...wasted by interruptions, arguments and fist fights purposely provoked to consume time and patience, ' , • The ministers and...
...It is a psychological riddle how men —Frenchmen and Italians—born and bred in the climate of Western civilization, can deny their .heritage and plunge themselves with sadistic ami nihilistic voluptuousness into the darkness and savagery of this East...
...Then De Gasperi answered the opposition with a firm and calm speech, despite the continuous noisy interruptions...
...But when these sources have been drained, the only "alternative for marty workers will be the indigent relief rolls...
...To this must be added the time...
...Togliatti can well scream that it is a "pact of war and aggression...
...Many are dozing on the sofas and armchairs, which are all occupied...
...AMONG GOVERNMENT AGENCIES in California, the tendency is to wait and hope that "normal adjustments" will result in re-absorption of substantial numbers of the currently unemployed...
...The vote was tb be taken after De Gasperi's statement...
...they cannot obtain job1, because they lack skills...
...Common people reasoned that if Moscow had hurled all its ammunition against the Pact, and had mobilized its most aggressive fifth column elements to defeat it, then the Pact was important...
...Employers have tightened job specifications...
...They suggested a postponement until after the publication OfHhe text of the Atlantic Pact...
...Many of the currently unemployed migrated to California during the war period when jobs were plentiful...
...The millions of lire which they spend for propaganda only succeed in increasing the general hostility...
...About five p. m., after about fifty hours of uninterrupted debate, the longest session in this parliament's history will end...
...What counts is not the words, but the spirit, the will, the faith which stand behind them...
...By December it had increased to 325,000...
...They were simply acting as the agents of Russian Imperialism—a barbarian, totalitarian, cruel, and destructive imperialism, which recalls to the history student the Mongolian invasions of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, who advanced from the Gobi Desert to the conquest of Asia and then pushed into Europe, leaving in their wake massacres and destruction...
...JOBS LISTED with employment agencies have dropped steadily for a number of months...
...THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED...
...There are practically no job openings for inexperienced, unskilled or semi-skilled workers...
...This means that one out of every seven or eight workers is unable to find a job...
...A few temporary work-relief projects have been organized in the San Joaquin Valley...
...While some analysts speak cautiously of "abnormal seasonal layoffs," and "healthy downward readjustments of the labor force," the number of idle workers increases at an alarming rate...
...But the Communists knejv that they were going to be hopelessly defeated...
...In Europe all feel that rich, prosperous, powerful America, which is deeply democratic by tradition, which has been the initiator of this Pact and which remains its center of gravity, can not waul war...
...More than tw6thirds of the deputies of the Italian parliament will give a vote of confidence Xo the government, and will authorize it to approve Italy's participation in the Atlantic Pact...
...They stagger along the wide corridors of the Chamber...
...The Italian Communists have achieved one thing in Italy—all that they uphold is instinctively opposed, and all that they oppose is immediately appreciated...
...The majority, formed by a spontaneous coalition of non-Communist parties, countered with a virile decision not" to" succumb to the obstructionist technique of the Communists and their satellites yoked to the Democratic Popular Front...
...Up to now the Italian people had spoken of the Atlantic Pact as of something vague, almost unreal—of interest to the major powers which still have a w«r potential,- but only indirectly affecting an Italy which has been disarmed by the peace treaty, and which is so ruined and impoverished that it cannot contribute actively to the conflict between the Eastern and Western blocs...
...Unemployment in California By Cy Record New Leader Correspondent in California ON MARCH 16 more than" 200 members of CIO unions staged a "hunger parade" before the San Francisco City Hall...
...Negroes are further handicapped by lack iif skills and experience...
...The Front deputies all entered their names to make a vote Statement...
...All here believe that it is a pact of peace and defense...
...WHATEVER THE KEY to this riddle, it is certain that the Italian people do not intend to be passive subjects for the experiments of tho Eastern potentates and the agents they send to undermine the peoples of the West...
...Savings in the form of cash or war bonds will also be used...
...San Francisco, and Los Angeles will become little short of desperate if the present trend continues...
...But such seasonal job openings will be only a partial and temporary solution to the problem...
...This was the first such demonstration in more than twelve years...
...Their faces, especially those of the older ones, show the lines left by two sleepless nights and by nervous tension...
...This is not likely to happen...
Vol. 32 • April 1949 • No. 15
