The 49th State

It was wacky and it was wistful, like a beggar's dream. Cried sallow Santi Paladino, Italy's newest peddler of political nostrums: "With a federation of the United States, Italy and some other nations, and a lot of atomic bombs, there would be no wars. This would solve all of Italy's problems."

For almost two years Paladino had preached a simple discourse to his nation's harried little men. In a big-power world, he said, the lesser powers must gravitate toward the U.S. or toward the U.S.S.R. Communist partisans everywhere were working toward union with the Soviet Republics. American sympathizers everywhere should strive for incorporation with the American republic, and Italy must take the lead by becoming the 49th American State.

Himself a little man, born at Scylla, not far from mythical Charybdis, in the Straits of Messina, he had long tossed between the rock of poverty and the whirlpool of Fascist repression. Until the blackshirts fell, he had eked out an existence as a statistician. Then, on Columbus Day, 1944, he had rediscovered America for his countrymen.

His Santa Maria, Niña and Pinta, were a new political party, the Movimento Unionista Italiano (Italian Unionist Movement). Its emblem was the Stars & Stripes, the Italian flag and a world map. The word spread through the fishing villages, vineyards and olive groves of southern Italy and Sicily, where almost every ragged family has a relative in the U.S. In last month's municipal elections, the Unionists won four local governments, elected a total of 227 aldermen. Last week jubilant Paladino announced that his followers now numbered 875,000 and that his party would run a full slate in the June national elections.

Wonderful Things. In a little office in Rome, dark-browed, bright-eyed Paladino spoke like a man with a mission. At 42, he is still a lean and impecunious clerk; what his party lacks in funds is made up by individual zeal. "Except for a few hours for eating and sleeping," he says, "I dedicate every minute in which I am free from statistics to the movement. . . ."

Paladino has never visited the U.S., though his wife Francesca lived 24 years in The Bronx. But he is very conscious of the part Italians have played in U.S. history. "It has already been proved on the American continent," he says, "that American capital and Italian labor together can achieve wonderful things. . . . I believe we can make a substantial contribution. . . ."

"You see," says Paladino dreamily, "we do not ask for an alliance with America, as a beggar would."