Hopes

Outside Rome's most elegant hotel last week a tattered legion of would-be emigrants kept watch by one of Europe's few exits. When Juan Peron's Government announced that Argentina wanted manual workers (TIME Jan. 27), hundreds of Italians streamed through the plushy corridors of the Grand Hotel, where the immigration commission was set up. After a few days of this, the management brushed them out through the revolving door towards the rainy Piazza, dell' Esedra. Here, under the pampered ilex trees, they waited their turn, munched bread and cheese, lounged against the new Buicks and Chryslers of hotel patrons who found Europe comfortable enough.

Ploughmen, Yes. Leather-skinned Fausto Marcelli is a ploughman. He has eleven children, born with annual regularity over eleven years. Fausto likes big families--"It's good to have lots of workers"--but there has to be work to do. "Our plot at Frosinone is pretty good earth, but I'd need a lot more to feed 13 people. They have told me that the earth in Argentina is good--as black as a pair of new boots"--and Fausto rubs together his calloused, white-knuckled fingers as if feeling the black earth there in his hands.

Economists, No. The ploughman has a better chance than the lean, tired man who says apologetically: "I think I could learn how to prune vines or do some kind of farm work. I haven't had the experience, of course, because I have always been a professor of economics."

Argentina has sent the Rev. Jose Clemente Silva to screen the applicants. He takes former Fascists, provided they have no criminal records, but rejects Communists. Last week, irritated by this discrimination, the Communist-dominated Italian Labor Federation demanded the right to select the emigrants and asked for guarantees of labor conditions in Argentina. Father Silva threatened to call the whole thing off.

Frustration and anger swelled through the Piazza dell' Esedra. Well-dressed Federation representatives explained that they sought only to defend the workers' interests, but the indignant workers shouted back: "We can take care of ourselves. If I want to break my own arm, it's my own right. Keep your protection."

The Piazza's mood was bitter toward everything official in Italy. Told that the Italian Government would straighten out matters "tomorrow," the demonstrators cried: "Why not today? Why must we always wait for a tomorrow?"

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