Thinker from Ivrea

In Turin's palatial Hotel Principi di Piemonte, a short, stocky man in a rum pled suit analyzed Italy's current and long-range troubles. "The real problem," he said, "lies in the decadence of the ruling class -- both in politics and business . . . This class no longer has the energy or the intelligence to cope with the situation." The speaker was Adriano Olivetti, boss of Italy's big Olivetti company, makers of everything from typewriters to machine tools, with a worldwide business of more than $30 million a year.

At 53, Adriano Olivetti is one of Italy's most successful businessmen. When he took over the business from his father in 1932, Olivetti had 1,200 employees and one plant. Now, from his main office at Ivrea, 29 miles from Turin, Adriano Olivetti heads a company with 11,000 workers, six manufacturing plants (four in Italy, one each in Spain and Scotland). His products, used in dozens of countries, are so handsomely designed that they have been displayed at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. In 1953, Olivetti machines earned Italy more dollars ($2,400,000 ) than any other mechanical export except Necchi sewing machines, and demand for his famed Lettera 22 portable typewriter still outstrips production.

Profits & the Left. Olivetti runs his business in a way that shocks many Italian industrialists. By his example, he tries to demonstrate the widespread changes he feels are needed if democracy is to survive. The bankruptcy of the managerial class has gone so far, says he, that the big monopolies cannot reform, should gradually be transformed into joint stock companies owned by local communities and by such foundations as workers' and technicians' cooperatives.

As proof, Olivetti cites the Marshall Plan. In four years, U.S. aid helped in crease industrial production 46%, raised the national income 36%. But workers' real wages increased less than 18%. Says Olivetti: "U.S. funds were channeled through the very monopolies and bureaucracy that had accepted Fascism and are responsible for the country's maladies.

They deftly quashed reforms the Americans hopefully introduced." The result, says Olivetti: "A majority of workers turned to the parties of the left." What Italian industry needs most, he argues, is to copy not only U.S. production methods but the sense of community responsibility that U.S. businessmen have developed. At Olivetti, the theory has been put into practice, and it has worked.

Instead of the old piecework system, Olivetti has introduced a faster, less tire some production-line process. His workers have a time-incentive program which boosted production 62%, wages 30% dur ing the first year of operation. Further more, when Olivetti decided to build a new plant in 1950, he built it in Pozzuoli near Naples because he felt that the creation of jobs in the depressed south was more important than the economic ad vantage of locating it near his main plant.

Olivetti's workers in Ivrea get low-cost meals in a company cafeteria, free med ical care, have summer camps and a kindergarten for their children. A substantial number (15%) live in trim, modern Olivetti housing projects; their wages (average: $80 a month), while low by U.S. standards, are among the highest in Italian industry.

Houses & Water. Olivetti carries his ideas outside his business. He lives simply, dresses more like a struggling bookkeeper than a captain of industry, and spends every free hour working on social projects. A large chunk of his personal income each year goes to a pet project called the Comunitd, which is dedicated to improving social and political conditions throughout Italy. Most Italian industrialists dismiss such schemes as Utopian, but Adriano's growing Comurdtd has already set up cultural centers in 30 northern villages with books on art, politics and music. It is now planning a cooperative project for irrigation of 2,000 acres of unproductive land in Piedmont's Canavese section.

The projects take up almost half of Adriano Olivetti's time. Some of his lieutenants in Ivrea think the company would grow even faster if the boss spent more time behind his desk. When he is there, Olivetti is a hardheaded businessman who knows how to crack a whip.

Last week Olivetti was getting a new dictating machine ready for market by April, hurrying work on a new adding machine for next summer. But as soon as the work is done, and he has a spare minute, his executives know he will start talking about Italy's troubles and figuring out ways to solve them. To Adriano Olivetti, the problem is as simple and direct as the machines he makes. "Democracy, liberalism and socialism must find a new, vital and harmonious language. Otherwise, our society will passively accept an omnipotent state, whether Communist or Fascist, within ten years."

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