FROM MALTHUS TO MUSSOLINI: The Italian Eugenics Moveillent and Fascist Population Policy, 1890-1938 Maria Sophia Quine University College London This thesis Is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of London Autumn Term 1990 ( ABSTRACT This thesis examines the origins and impact of fascist population policy. The 'battle for the birthrate' inspired major social and institutional reforms under the dictatorship. Yet the question of why the regime should embark upon a pronatalist campaign remains largely unexplored. The study traces the origins of Mussolini's demographic campaign to the eugenics movement, This thesis begins with an analysis of the meaning of race in Italian scientific culture. A central concern is to show how the debates of prewar science shaped the agenda set by the fascist regime. The first part of this thesis is devoted to a discussion of the theories of prominent eugenicists. Their arguments provide the key to understanding the wider aims of the Duce's plans for state intervention to boost the birthrate. The thesis then proceeds to an examination of policy implemen- tation. Welfare programmes stood at the centre of fascist population policy. The regime sought to provide encouragements to Italians to increase their reproductive output in the form of substantial health reforms. The second part of the thesis explores the Institutional development of the National Organisation f or the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy. Created In 1925, ONMI established Italy's first comprehensive national health service for women and children. This section seeks to assess whether the regime built a viable and efficient state apparatus for the mass organisation of welfare. The third part of this thesis takes a closer look at public provision. As a considerable part of ONMI's budget was spent on a campaign to reduce levels of maternal abandonment, this section explores the impact of illegitimacy policy. To assess more fully the achievements of fascist welfare policy, the thesis attempts to describe the continuities and changes in state administration of social assistance from liberalism to fascism. One aim Is to uncover the legacy of Church charity in a Catholic country with a rich beneficent heritage. The transformation of pious institutions into a system of public welfare proceeded very haphazardly in Italy. The liberal state proved too timid a force for the unruly network of private charities which proliferated throughout the kingdom. This thesis will argue that fascism failed to consolidate this inheri- tance into a tight and efficient system of social services. The pattern of welfare development during the fascist period shows how uneasy and uneven institutional growth remained even under a centralising and inodernising dictatorship. CONTENTS Abstract 2 Contents 4 Abbreviations 5 Introduction 7 PART I. EUGENICS 1. The Italian Race 16 2. Population and Progress 40 3. The Degeneration of Italian Motherhood 57 PART II. TIlE WELFARE REVOLUTION IN LAW AND PRACTICE 4. ONMI Legislation: 1925-1934 71 5. Women, Work, and Welfare in Fascist Italy 93 6. Women Agricultural Workers and Welfare Provision: The 'battaglia del riso', 1927-1938 120 PART III. FROM CHURCH CHARITY TO STATE WELFARE: THE ILLEGITIMACY QUESTION, 1890-1938 7. IllegitImate Infants and the Liberal State 152 8. Unwed Mothers and Foundling Home Reform 171 9. The Illegitimacy Campaign under Fascism: 1923-1930 192 Epilogue 246 Bibliography 255 ABBREV I ATI ONS I. Archival Sources ACR, ASS Archlvio del Comune di Rome, Assistenza e Servizi Sociali ACS Archivio Centrale dello Stato ASA Archivio di Stato di Alessandria ASCP Archlvio Storico Civico, Comune di Pavia ASCR Archlvio Storico Capitolino, Comune di Rome ASF Archivio di Stato di Ferrara ASM Archivio di Stato di Milano ASH Archivlo di Stato di Novara AST Archivlo di Steto di Torino ASV Archivio di Stato di Vercelli IPAI I Archivio dells Istituto Provinciale di Assistenza all'Infanzia Illegittima, Provincia di Rome WI The Weilcome Institute for the History of Medicine A. References to single holdings and their sub-divisions by category In the Archivio Centrale dello Stato and elsewhere: AA Atti Amministrativi AC Atti Contabili AG Affari Generali B Benef icenza Co Carteggio Ordinarlo CR Cartegglo Riservato CS Cartelle Speciali D Direttorlo Nazionale DGP Direzione Generale del Personale G Gabinetto GP Gabinetto della Prefettura op Opere Pie P Prefet tura PG Pratiche Generali Q Questura SA Servizi Amministrativi SCN Senatori a Consiglieri Nazionali B. The archives and official publications of public institutions and political organisations: Kin. MC Ministero di Agricoltura, Industria e Commercio Kin. GG Ministero di Grazia e Giustizia Kin. Interno Ministero dell'Interno, GB Gabinetto Buffarini CR Conunissioni Reall, Inchieste DGAC Direzione Generale dell'Aniministrazione Civile DGSP Direzione Generale della Sanità Pubblica Kin. LPS Ministero del Lavoro e Prevldenza Sociale PCM Presldenza del Consiglio del Ministri PNF Partito Nazionale Fascista SPD Segreteria Particolare del Duce, 1922-1943 b. box; f. folder; m. bundle (mazzo); P. protocol; p. pack (pacco); sf. sub-file II. Government Bodies and Interest Groups CI SP Comitato Italiano per lo Studio dei Problemi della Popolaz lone ENRISI Ente Nazionale Risi I STAT Istituto Centrale di Statistica del Regno d'Italia ONMI Opera Nazionale per la Protezione della Maternit& e deli' Infanzla III. References to Journals Aac Arch! yb di Antropolog!a Criminale Ps!chiatria e Medicina Legale (second series, 1909-1949) MI Maternità ed Infanz!a IV. Parliamentary Series ApC Atti parlamenari, Camera del Deputati ApS Atti parlamentari, Seriato Leg is. Legislatura Sess. Sessiorie 7 INTRODUCTION The Ascension Day Speech of 26 May 1927 marked the foundation of fascist dictatorship in Italy. In this parliamentary address, Mussolini defined the objectives of his regime. The Duce promised to "cure the race" of all its "symptoms of moral and physical decadence". He proclaimed himself to be the nation's "physican" who had a therapeutic mission to regenerate the race. Chief among his ambitions stood the goal of population increase. Italy's "cribs lay empty", he pronounced, "while the country's cemetaries grow full". He placed the kingdom's vital statistics on a demographic battlefield with those of his European neighbours. Forty million Italians compared unfavourably with 90 million Germans and 200 million Sla ys. France loomed as a mighty military power with a combined colonial and Indigeneous population which numbered over 130 million people. And the British ruled over a huge empire whose combined force of almost 500 million inhabitants could be inobilised to defend the realm. 1 The sheer size of the armies other nations could muster proved a disquieting thought for a dictator with expansionist aims. The Duce planned to increase the population to 60 million by the year 1950. Mussolini had formerly believed in the doctrine of overpopulation, espoused by Italian followers of Thomas Robert Malthus. 2 He explained to those assembled to celebrate the "birth" of fascism in March 1919 that continued population increase would cause misery and hunger because of the poverty of Italy's economic endowments. 3 As late as December 1924, Mussolini complained of the nation's deficiencies of land and resources as a natural hindrance to demographic increment. A poor country unable to feed and employ its people, Italy could ill afford to sustain an annual increase of over 440,000 people, he asserted to the Senate.4 In his address on Ascension Day in 1927, Mussolini repudiated these earlier statements. He now argued that a nation transformed by fascism could comfortably accommodate at least ten million more citizens. Rural development schemes would make Italy "unrecognisable in ten years' time". Reclamation projects to clear cultivable soil and agrarian reform to modernise the mezzadria would propel agricultural output and lead to national self-sufficiency in food production. And a future empire would absorb any excess population In colonial 8 settlements. & In his famous essay entitled Numbers as Force, which first appeared in Gerarchia In September 1928, Mussolini continued his attacks on "maithusianism". Contrary to the outmoded ideas of an Anglican clergyman who wrote over a century ago, he argued, population increment would not cause unemployment to rise or famine to ensue. In his estimation, fewer workers spelled economic stagnation and industrial decline. One of the most troubling weaknesses of the Italian economy, chronic underconsumption, Mussolini claimed, was a symptom of the failure of demographic expansion to keep pace with economic progress. While the nation's factories reeled off goods at a quickening rate, a sullen birthrate stunted the growth of a home market. On the question of living standards, the Duce remarked that Italy's 42 million people now lived better and longer in 1928 than the country's 27 million residents had done back in 1871. By increasing national wealth and manufacturing productivity, sustained population growth, Mussolini affirmed confidently, would generate progressive improvements in the health and welfare of all Italians.5 The Duce matched these optimistic appraisals of the impact of population growth with a gloomy outlook on actual demographic trends. Although still vigorous and virile, he warned, Italians showed symptoms of demographic degeneration in a waning birthrate. The fall of great civilisations in history, he commented, almost always