Wheat Up, Skirts Down

In Rome last week Prime Minister Benito Mussolini raised the duty on imported wheat to 140 gold lire ($7) per metric ton. This tariff is nearly 100% higher than the rate effective in September of last year. Good news for Italy's wheat growers, it was sad news for bread-eaters and macaroni men; particularly sad for U. S. and Canadian farmers, who are still racing to dispose of surplus wheat crops (TIME, May 13). To Prime Minister Mussolini the development of wheat growing is more immediately important than cheap flour for his people. Half of Italy's trade deficit in 1928 was due to wheat imports, which amounted to three billion lire.

Having settled the wheat problem Il

Duce turned next to the serious matter of beauty contests. Acting in his capacity as Minister of the Interior (one of his 8-out-of-13 Cabinet positions) he notified all prefects of Italian provinces that "beauty contests, with their consequent naming of 'queens' and 'princesses,' lower the moral standard of communities, and tend to dangerous exaltation of feminine vanity as well as constituting a parody on very serious matters." Therefore, let there be no more beauty contests. The "parody on serious matters" phrase was merely fresh evidence of how jealously Fascist Italy guards the dignity of State pomps and ceremonies. Correspondents in Rome learned other more practical reasons for the new prohibition. After two years of competing in these strange international competitions, it has been noticed that Italy invariably loses. Any competition in which Italy loses is not one to be encouraged by the Fascist State. "Foreigners might get the impression," explained a Blackshirt chieftain gravely, "that there are no pretty girls in Italy!" No hint of this eminently practical point reached the Fascist masses. The official Vatican paper, Osservatore Romano, thundered weightily against the degrading spectacle of beauty contests. Immediately following Prime Minister Mussolini's circular to the Italian prefects came an order from the Secretary General of the Fascist party, Signor Augusto Turati. Last month, he had ordered all "young and even little" Italian girls to have their skirts at least two fingers' lengths below their knees. Last week he altered his order to apply to all females, regardless of age, and specified a reasonable two inches for the below-knee limit required to give the proper external impression of Fascism's internal seriousness.