ig8 THE RISE OF ITALIAN FASCISM
entitled lodo Bianchi, after its chairman, a professor who
held an c itinerant chair of agriculture ', a first-class tech-
nical expert. It recommended the creation of c an agricul-
tural administrative body based on the participation of the
workers in the results of enterprise, collective participation
with accounts to be settled yearly and at the end of the
lease5 (R. Bachi. U Italia Economica ml 1921). Immediately
on publication c this scheme of organization was recognized
as technically efficient, and was praised by experts '. The
principles were fundamentally the same as those of the
Popolari: a share in profits for the workers, and the con-
version of wage-earners into small-holders/ a policy which
the fascists had revived in their 1919 programme and which
aimed at the * abolition of the wage-earner '. There was
nothing c bolshevik' about it, since such principles were
diametrically opposite to the e proletarianization' and
4 socialization' aimed at by the socialists. But the land-
owners of the province of Cremona went to law to evade the
findings of the committee of arbitration, and when their
action failed they simply refused, in January 1922, to abide
by them. At this point 80 per cent of them combined in a
fascist syndicate, as a prelude to the open attack that they
were planning against the lodo Bianchi. c The landowners,'
Chiurco says, ' banded round the deputy Farinacci and
fascism, rejected arbitration/ The fascists of the province
went into a state of permanent mobilization ; the govern-
ment gave way, and in May the prefect authorized a new
committee to draw up another contract. The findings of the
first commission and the decisions of the magistrates having
been allowed to lapse, the new contract was imposed by law,
and the landowners let themselves be bound by their
signatures the moment they had a satisfactory verdict. The
lodo Bianchi was thus safely buried.
The joint advance of fascism and c agrarian slavery ' went
1 At the end of June the fascist Federation of the province of Modena
passed a resolution against a bill dealing with agricultural contracts sponsored
by the Popolare deputy, BertinL This bill aimed at establishing a term of three
years for^mezzadria contracts, introducing the notion of * just cause * for the
cancellation of contracts, and creating special arbitration machinery for the
settlement of collective labour disputes. It was not the fascist ' syndicates'
in this case so much as the political organization of thefasd which opposed all
legal intervention for the reform of agricultural contracts.