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an invention of present-day reformers may be interested in the
record of Italian deficits:
Deficits Balanced Budgets
From 1859 to 1876 17 years
** 1876 to 1884 8 years
" 1884 to 1898 14 "
" i898 tO i9iO 12 "
" 1910 to 1925 15 "
46 years 20 years
Thus in sixty-six years of national life up to 1925 the budget of
Italy was unbalanced for forty-six years. The first seventeen years
of this record arose out of the assumption of the debts of the several
constituent states and the great burdens attending organization of
the new nation. But after Depretis the deficits were the product of
a definite policy of spending borrowed money on public works to
avert economic disaster and enable ministries to remain in power. 3
The result of these spendings and borrowings, of course, was to
create a great and ever-growing debt. By June 30, 1914, Italy's
national debt was 15,766,000,000 lire—a huge sum in the purchasing
power of that day for a country of Italy's size and poverty. The
consequence of this was that Italy found herself, as she entered the
war, under the necessity of immense war expenditures financed by
huge borrowings on top of the already staggering public debt. The
effect of this debt, even before the war, was to impose an exhausting
burden of taxation on a people too poor to live in decency. By 1913
the interest on the debt alone made up a fourth of all the public
revenues. And by 1914, when people were grumbling about the
oppressive cost of the army and the navy, the interest on the debt
amounted to almost as much as both these sums. 4
^he figures used here are based on the following:
Pamphlet issued by Provveditorato Generale Delia Stato, Rome, 1925. Italian Government
Finances, by H. C. McLean, for 192} and 192j. Trade Information Bulletins Nos. 116 and
130, Commerce Reports, U.S. Dept. of Commerce. Italy's International Financial Position,
by Cons tan tine McGuire, Macmillan, New York, 1926, p. 63, et seq. Cambridge Modern
History, Vol. XII, pp. 232, 233. Fascist Italy, by William Ebenstein, American Book Company,
New York, 1939. The Fascist Experiment, by Luigi Villari, London, 1926. Encyclopaedia
Britannica, title "Italy," 14th Edition, Vol. 12.
*lialy*s International Financial Position, by Constantine McGuire, Macmillan, New York,
1926.
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