lp4guld

trade and professional estates along with the representatives of thefascist state. This Mussolini has called the Corporative State. Helooks upon it as his greatest contribution to the science of government.At this point we can say that fascism is (i) a capitalist type ofeconomic organization, (2) in which the government accepts responsibilityto make the economic system work at full energy, (3)using the device of state-created purchasing power effected by meansof government borrowing and spending, and (4) which organizesthe economic life of the people into industrial and professionalgroups to subject the system to control under the supervision of thestate.4. Mussolini, having incorporated the principle of state-createdpurchasing power into his system, turned naturally to the old reliableproject of militarism as the easiest means of spending money. It isscarcely necessary to dwell on this since our newspaper files are wellsupplied with statements of returning American travelers since 1935telling, some with an accent of approval, how Mussolini has solvedthe problem of unemployment in Italy by means of expenditures onnational defense. Some of our own high officials have found occasionto comment on this fact, contrasting his accomplishment with ourown failure to put our people to work.Money was spent on highways, schools, public projects of variouskinds, and on the draining of the Pontine Marshes, which became inItaly the great exhibition project nof unlike our TVA in America.But this was not enough, and so he turned more and more to militaryexpenditures. It must also be said that this fell in with his own tastesand temperament and with certain other objectives he had in mind,such as the elevation of the Italian spirit by this display of warlikepower.William Ebenstein gives the following figures for fascist outlayson the army and navy: 41924—25 3,240,000,000 Lire!934¯¯35 4,330,000,000 "1935—36 10,304,000,000 "1936—37 12,865,000,000 "'Fascist Italy, by William Ebenstein, American Book Company, New York, 1939.55