Fuller Lives

Nearly two years before French workers won the 40-hr. week under Socialist Premier Leon Blum (TIME, June 29, 1936 et ante), Italian workers had received the 40-hr, week under Fascist Premier Benito Mussolini. Joseph Stalin has given Soviet toilers a system of Five-Year-Planned vacations and holiday trips. German workers are provided by Adolf Hitler with lavish "Strength Through Joy" cruises on specially constructed Nazi liners built for the exclusive fun of the proletariat. Last week in Rome some of the strides which European workmen are making toward an easier and more varied life--irrespective of what kind of regime they toil under-- brought into genial conference the chief exponents of Fascist and Nazi labor: for Italy, Grand Councilman Tullio Cianetti, president of the Fascist Confederation of Industrial Workers; for Germany, Labor Front Leader Dr. Robert Ley.

President Cianetti was born and reared a soil-grubbing peasant, while Dr. Ley worked originally as a chemist. Cianetti is ebullient, fiery, humorous--Ley full of German mysticism and plodding pugnacity. In a recent two-hour address to proletarians at Hamburg, Labor's Ley key- noted : "Those German employers who dare to rate machines higher than men are going to be given plenty of opportunity to arrive at a contrary opinion in concentration camps!" In Italy's present production spurt toward rearmament, Labor's Cianetti dashes incessantly about the kingdom, addressing workers' meetings, hearing grievances and badgering big Italian employers like the Agnelli ("Ford of Italy") family in Turin whose members huff at mention of his name.

Last week Germany's Ley and Italy's Cianetti met to sign the first pact between Nazi and Fascist labor organizations. They denied they were founding a "Fascist Labor International'' but the alignment of their followers along the Hitler-Mussolini "Axis" was patent.

Under the terms of the Labor Pact, officially recognized last week by the Italian and German Governments, immediate exchange will begin between the two countries of workmen, labor leaders and foremen to mingle and study each other's methods. Italians will show off their nation-wide Dopolavoro ("After Work") organization with its traveling theatres, touring movie projection units and sport recreation centres of all sorts for Fascist workers. In Germany the similar organization has been copying the Italian model fast, outstripping it in the matter of proletarian pleasure cruise ships now slated to take the unprecedented number of 12.000 German toilers clear around to Tokyo in 1940 just to cheer German athletes in the Olympic Games. Announced Cianetti & Ley: "Our two labor fronts have agreed to consult each other before taking any international action, to recognize labor organizations affiliated with each other, and to exchange information and data."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.