Saintly Requisition

To his admirers, Florence's bustling, bespectacled little Mayor Giorgio la Pira is a latter-day Francis of Assisi. Not only does Giorgio sometimes talk to the birds and the bees; he lives in a monastery cell, and often gives the clothes from his back, the food from his plate and money from his flat purse to the poor (TIME, June 7). A Christian Democrat, he broke the Reds' grip on the Florence city administration four years ago. Some of his fellow Christian Democrats, however, shudder at where his charitable philosophy sometimes takes him.

Last week Giorgio la Pira turned his attention to the plight of about 115 workers in the creaky Delle Cure Foundry on the outskirts of Florence, which makes pipe and other cast-iron products. Since it was started in 1933, in a dingy, damp building now 87 years old, the foundry has limped along, losing money most of the time. Its equipment is ancient and its labor force, since World War II, has always been too big. In 1952 the owners went bankrupt, automatically closing shop.

But the foundry wound up in the hands of trustees, and kept going, after a fashion, on a $25,000 government grant.

Early this year the trustees gave up, closed down again, prepared to sell the property for demolition. But the workers staged a sit-in strike, demanding that the government take over the plant and save their jobs. Since 70% of them are Communists, they directed their appeal principally to the Communist Party. Last week none other than Mayor la Pira drove up to the old building, formally requisitioned the foundry for the city of Florence, handed the workers checks totaling $1,600 and told them to keep working. The workers thereupon chose a 26-year-old Communist among them to be their boss.

The legality of Giorgio's requisition was, to put it mildly, highly dubious. As justification for it, Lawyer la Pira cited an 1865 law empowering requisition in case of disaster, and a similar clause in the present constitution--ignoring the fact that the intent in both cases was for the national government to take over, not a municipality. Communists uttered cheers and huzzahs, the right-wing Socialists passed a resolution of approval, and Tuscany's industrialists, who hate La Pira, denounced him. La Pira might gain more popularity, they sputtered, but he had achieved it by adding one more uneconomic industry to the government tax burden, a practice already too widespread in Italy. The ponderous Christian Democratic Party, embarrassed by La Pira's act, decided it had best not publicly disapprove it. Said Milan's influential Corriere delta Sera: "Neither the previous Communist administration of Florence nor any other mayor of the extreme left . . . has ever dared to take such an extreme measure."

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