— 11 —
Then, as there was no reason why, if the peasants are given the land, the workmen should not own the factories, the tenants the houses, public servants the various public undertakings with which they are connected, and so on, these other proposals came up for discussion and were more or less put into practise, although it was evident that such a movement was bound to result in that disatrous suspension of economic life of which Russia had already provided a tangible demonstration.
Thus we have had proposals embodied in Parliamentary bills and actually voted by municipal councils, whereby all increases of rent should be paid into the State or the municipal treasury, in order that houses might be built which would be collective property and reserved for the proletariat. A resolution in this sense was, for instance, submitted to the Rome Municpal Council in April 1921, and reported in the press not as a preposterous fallacy to be uncompromisingly rejected, but as a serious proposal, almost savouring of genius. You will likewise remember what was said at the time about the «railways to the railwaymen»; only at a certain
