. IV.-ECONOMIC POLICY •. (A) State Intervention in Private Enterprise. Mussolini, as leader of the Fascists, defined the Fascist programme as follows in his first speech to the Chamber, on June 21, 1921 : ''The State must be restriGted to its purely juridical and pol,itical functions. The State should give us a police, a system of justice, an army, a foreign policy. All the rest, even secondary education, must be restored to the field of activity of the individual . . . We have enough. State Socialism already.'' And one of Signor Mussolini's Under-Secretaries, expounding the· Government programme on February 4, 1923, declared that- "The Government will bring back our financial legislation within the bounds of its classic· content, which excludes dange~ous interventions in private enterprise and at the same time closes· the State treasury· to the unending swarm of parasites who in these latter years have been emptying it. '1 The actions of the Fascist Government have not corresponded to its professions, as the following examples show. (a) The Salving of the Ansaldo Firm. The decree la':Vof June 14, 1923, sanctioned the agreement between the Government and the Ansaldo Company, concluded in February, under which public funds were applied to the refioating of this private enterprise, whose speculations and sunk capital had been the principal cause of the crash of the Banca di Sconto, which was allowed to go into liquidation. The chief ·result was the breaking up of the vertical concern built up by the Ansaldo Company, which had included the mines of Cogne, the works at Cornigliano, and the firm's shipyards. Rival groups- were thus. enabled· to gain control of the various sections of the concern, to the advantage of rival companies and banks. Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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