Word: land
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...past twelvemonth the nation's psychological climate had changed significantly. A bustle of hopeful activity hummed up & down Petrarch', "fair land which Apennines cut in twain "' seas and Alps surround." After a worrisome winter drought, the cypress groves of Tuscany and the rocky pastures of the south were turning a promising green under welcome rains. Along the Via Appia, middle-class families spread picnic lunches of bread, salami and strong red wine. From Venice to Capri hotels and restaurants looked forward to a season of 2,000,000 tourists, bringing American dollars and British pounds. The springtime...
...latifondiari (.08% of landholders own 22% of Italy's arable land) are an anachronistic obstacle in democracy's advance. But they are only one aspect of land reform. Two years ago the late idealistic Prince Gioacchino Ruffo of Naples sold plots from his estate, at nominal prices, to former tenants. Today, like Scafarella's peasants, they too break arid, gullied soil with picks. They have no cash for better tools, insecticides and fertilizers. Without these necessities they can reap only four bushels of wheat per hectare. The only hunger that has been satisfied has been their hunger...
...Communists have exploited the peasants' land hunger for political ends. De Gasperi has countered with the slogan, "We must have land reform, but first we must develop our land." Last summer ECAgriculturists revived the old Fascist program of land reclamation (as it was carried out in the Pontine Marshes) as a sensible way to more productivity and less agrarian discontent. With U.S. prodding and financial help, three districts are being reclaimed; eventually they will account for one-third of the nation's arable land, provide cheap plots for the landless...
Reclamation is not the answer as far as the moderate Socialists in De Gasperi's government are concerned. Led by highbrowed Giuseppe Saragat, this faction has pressured the Christian Democrats toward a new plan of land redistribution by progressive stages. Some 8,760 landholders would be affected. The state would buy up to 50% of the big holdings for resale, on easy terms, to small peasants. In the face of latifondiari resistance, the program will be hard to put over...
What to do? Character Wylie reflects that all these human misfits are signs of "the land I love deteriorating, the world I adore growing ever more miserable." He feels "lonelier than God," exhausted by his "endless efforts to put a simple idea in some form that would perfuse skulls hardened against it." It is a rough weekend for a man who thinks he is dying: Yvonne, fired by her instincts, hammers incessantly on his bedroom door; Marcia leaves Paul, and he poises himself on the terrace ledge and threatens a 16-story jump into Madison Avenue...