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great remittances of cash from her emigrant citizens who had settled
in America and who kept a continuous flow of funds back to the
old folks at home. That played a very great part in balancing her
budget, for there was a steady stream of emigrants leaving Italy—
very poor people who contributed very little to the purchasing
power of her population and whose departure removed a considerable
army annually from among those who stood in need of government
assistance, draining away large numbers of the unemployable
population. Those who left became, by Italy's standards, heavy
earners in the New World and were transformed into contributors
to her* national income rather than unproductive beneficiaries of it.
The balanced budget despite this passed away definitely in 1911 not
to return again until a great war and a subsequent revolution had
swept from the people of Italy their freedom. 6
V · The New Industry
WE HAVE NOW SEEN that out of the chronic economic difficulties
of Italy the politicians had recourse to the practice of state
spending of borrowed money. This practice could not have continued
for so long a period as to be practically habitual without the
approval of the people. It imposed burdens because the debt service
charges added to the tax rate of an overtaxed people. Men of all
sorts grumbled at it. Politicians of all sorts disapproved it. But most
of them resorted to it as an inescapable evil. Italians were like the
economy-minded husband who demands that his wife spend less
money on the household but without curtailing any of his comforts.
6 Dr. Gaetano Salvemini, whose contributions to the examination of the whole fascist
experiment in Italy have been so great, makes one statement about the debt which does not
correspond with the above account at one point. In a debate with Dr. Roselli, a fascist
apologist, before the Foreign Policy Association, he said: "We were able during the fifteen
years before the war to balance the budget always with a surplus." Mr. Constantine
McGuire gives the following figure as the over-all deficit for the years 1898 to 1914:
Revenues, 31,991,000,000 lire; expenditures, 36,804,000,000, a deficit for the sixteen years
of 4,813,000,000 lire. The budget was balanced from 1898 to 1910. But this record ended
in 1911 and was not resumed for another fifteen years. In the fifteen years before Italy
entered the war the budget was balanced ten times and unbalanced five times.
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