"Fecund Activity"

The meek, cowed Cabinet of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini met last week for the first time since he sensationally "rotated" (dismissed) Finance Minister Count Volpi and several other most distinguished statesmen (TIME, July 16, 23). "My ministers are rotated," explained Signor Mussolini to his ministers, "when each accomplishes a cycle of fecund activity. . . . The cycle of Count Volpi as Finance Minister was completed with the stabilization of the lira on a basis of gold. ... He has immortalized his name." The new Finance Minister, Senator Antonio Mosconi, a Venetian aristocrat, was next informed that he is expected to immortalize his name rounding out a fecund cycle bounded by Six Points: 1) "Immutable maintainance of the present level of stabilization (i lira equals $.0526)." 2) Total curtailment of foreign borrowing by the State, plus drastic censorship of private Italian loan flotations abroad. 3) Stern coercion of Italian tax evaders and delinquents, "who are the vilest leeches sucking the blood of human society." 4) "Resolute avoidance of any increase in taxation." 5) "Introduction of the most crystalline simplicity and clarity in all state accounts, so that each citizen, without the aid of metaphysics of accounting or computing machines, can read them and understand them." 6) "Vigilant economy and inflexible refusal to authorize any economic enterprise not considered vital." Clearly the stringency of this Six Point Cycle means that // Duce will not stop short of so-called "Wartime measures" to ensure the fiscal recovery of Italy and prompt payment of her war debts. Ceaseless and ever potent must be Finance Minister Mosconi's fecund activity. Inspiring to him, last week, was the fact that Italy's germinal grain fields are now sprouting and flourishing with an activity announced to promise bumper crops. So impetuously potent is the grain, this summer, that demands for agricultural laborers have reduced the number of Italians unemployed from 447,021 last January to 429,211 last month.