Harvest of Hate

The rich, black loam of Italy's Po River Valley is fertile soil for the seeds of discontent. There, in a densely overpopulated farmland whose every square mile must support 470 people, 80,000 field hands seek work on a puny 132,000 acres of farmland, get their wages--if any--in the wheat and sugar-beet yield of the land itself. With holdings averaging 20 acres or less apiece, the farmers are themselves poor, bitter, hard pressed. For years the richest harvest reaped in the Valley has been one of violence, distrust and hatred.

Last April, seeking a likely spot to resow the seeds of class warfare after their failures in industry, Italy's Communists turned their attention to the Po Valley farm workers. "Why should you leave the land where you were born?" they asked. "Stay and fight for your heritage!"

Flaming Haystacks. The Red leaders put their ink-stained thumbs down firmly on all plans to relieve the valley's troubles by mechanization, industrialization and population shifting, instead urged a plan by which local "Chambers of Labor" would control the crops planted by the farmers, and assign the men to seed, cultivate and harvest them. "If we agree to this," protested the landholders, "the Communists will run our farms."

By way of argument, the Red activists tossed flaming Molotov cocktails into the farmers' haystacks, poisoned their cattle's water with creosote. By the end of April three-fourths of the farm hands in the district were refusing to work, either in sympathy with the Communist cause or in fear of Communist bullyboys. Red big shots poured into the district to pour oratorical fuel on the flames. Czechoslovakia's Prague radio chimed in across the air waves urging the Po strikers on.

Each dawn the valley's farmers awoke to find their vines and fruit trees cut down. Hundreds of cattle lay dead. Tons of hay were ruined. The total damage over two months was estimated at more than $5,000,000. When the police tried to stop the violence, Communist Deputies in Rome complained about "government repression of working-class aspirations," and the police solved the problem by refusing to let even willing workers go to work.

Capitulation. Fortnight ago, with some 60% of their beet crop already lost, a large group of local landowners were summoned to the city hall in Red-controlled Stienta and, with an angry mob howling outside, they capitulated to the Communist terms. By last week most of the farmers in the district had done the same, despite the organized holders' Farm Association warning that all such individually signed agreements were void. The farmers were all but bankrupt. The valley workers had lost more in crop shares than they could hope to regain in years of unremitting effort with hoe and spade. But the Communists had won their strike and reaped their harvest of hate. Crowed the Italian party organ Unita: "We have entered a new phase of major labor warfare."

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