But Wages Have Increased With The Prices And Rents
And Taxes, And In A Country Where Every Ounce Of Coal That Drives A
Wheel Of Production Or Transportation Has To Be Brought A Thousand Miles
Manufactures And Railroads Have Been Multiplied.
The state has now taken over the roads and has added their cost to that
of its expensive army and navy, but no reasonable witness can doubt that
the Italians will be equal to this as well as their other national
undertakings.
These in Rome are peculiarly difficult and onerous,
because they must be commensurate with the scale of antiquity. In a city
surviving amid the colossal ruins of the past it would be grotesque to
build anything of the modest modern dimensions such as would satisfy the
eye in other capitals. The Palace of Finance, at a time when Italian
paper was at a discount almost equal to that of American paper during
the Civil War, had to be prophetic of the present solvency in size. The
yet-unfinished Palace of Justice (one dare not recognize its beauty
above one's breath) must be planned so huge that the highest story had
to be left off if the foundations were to support the superstructure;
the memorial of Victor Emmanuel II. must be of a vastness in keeping
with the monuments of imperial Rome, some of which it will partly
obscure. Yet as the nation has grown in strength under burdens and
duties, it will doubtless prove adequate to the colossal architectural
enterprises of its capital.
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