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monarch, Victor Emmanuel II, ruled over a free and united Italy,the government soon revealed that it had little notion what to doabout the persisting poverty and recurring crises. They were notunique in Italy. But poverty was a graver problem there than inother western nations. "The Italians," said Ferrero, "have beenused for two centuries to íive upon half a loaf." The living conditionsof Italian peasants during the first years of the new nation wereheld to be at as low a point as at any time in the previous 2,000years. 2 They were poor not merely compared with American standardsbut with those of the European nations around them. As lateas 1891, measured so much per head, the Englishman got $150 ayear, the Frenchman $130, the Prussian $85, and the Italian only$35. He subsisted on only half as much wheat flour as a Briton oreven a Spaniard. 3 This was the condition which confronted the victoriousleaders of the Risorgimento and their successors.Of course Italy in the fifty years up to 1914 shared in the developmentof the great age of machinery. Industrial workers increasedfrom 188,000 to 2,330,000. The great silk industry rosefrom nothing. Foreign commerce trebled. Railways were built. Thenation's savings rose from 980,000,000 lire to 5,822,000,000 lire. 4These statistics do not accurately measure the economic well-beingof the country. They do, however, indicate material progress. Butthat progress was not sufficient to end the dark poverty thatflourished in the midst of her progress. A larger number of personsenjoyed a higher standard of living. But also the number of peasantsand poor workers who failed to share in this increase remainedfatally large.The causes of this poverty were not essentially different from thecauses in other similar societies. They had two sources: one, thedefects of the economic system. The other lay in Italy's natural conditions.The system of production and distribution by privateowners using money as a means of distribution develops certaindifficulties in operation. There has been a good deal of popular discussionof these defects in recent years. They arise out of the opera-*The Corporate State in Action, by Carl T. Schmidt, Oxford University Press, 1939.*ltaly Today, by King and Okey, Nisbet & Co., London, 1909.^Mussolini's Italy, by Herman Finer, London, 1935.8