Pine Bluff daily graphic. (Pine Bluff, Ark.) 1893-1942, 1919-09-06
need FOR FOOTWEAR
IS THEME IN ITALY
FOR new INFERNO
Admission to Shops is as Dear
as Are Tickets to World
Series.

Florence, Italy, Aug. 1S.-(Corres-
pondence of the Associated Press.)-
If Dante Alighieri lived in Florence
today he might be inspired to write
another Inferno" with shoes as the
prime cause of evil. Nothing has
been so evident during these post
war DAYS as the need of Italians for
footwear.
The recent public demonstrations
backed by the Camera del Lavoro, or
chambers of labor" where stocks of
goods of all descriptions in the hands
of profiteers in many cities were
Communicated and ordered sold at
reduced prices, precipitated unusual
somersaults of trade but the widest
scrambles were in the shoe stores.
Here the demand for shoes produced
scenes of the widest disorder.
In Rome, Milan, Forli, Bologna
and Naples the search for shoes con-
tinued many days. The struggles in
each city were so great that few law
abiding persons tried to procure
shoes. There appeared to be no pre-
text for fitting anyone. Shoes were
handed out in boxes and the buyers
took them seemingly not caring
whether they fitted or not just SO
they were on the basis of a fifty
per cent reduction in price. 1t was a
common sight to see man loaded up
with shoes for his entire family.
Ransack Stores.
To obtain admission to a shoe
store was fully as difficult as buying
a ticket for a world series baseball
game. For hours, the shoe-hunters
would wait in long lines guarded by
soldiers and police before they were
finally admitted into the storerooms
Shoe merchants fixed two hours in
the morning and two hours in the
: afternoon for the opening of their
stores but the long line was waiting
for shoes several hours before the
scheduled time arrived.
Impotence on the part of the
crowds caused, in most cases, the
summary Selling of goods and the re-
sort to ransacking. Food stores were
treated first in this way but the law
lessness soon spread to clothing and
shoe shops. Stores ransacked would
be depleted of every commodity eat
able, wearable or portable There
were examples in Spezia Of carrying
out all the commodities, loading them
in motor truck, and taking them
some four or five miles outside the
city for distribution. Whole hogs
heads of wine were rolled out of the
city in this way and distributed.
1t seemed as if the mobs had desig-
mated for them the stores to be loot
ed. There were apparently the most
systematic pillaging of those accused
of war profiteering. Merchants
known to have violated governmental
regulations by selling prohibited arti-
cles during the war, were treated in
the same Wav- ~
Guards Salvage Too.
Soldiers sent to restore order in
some cases were charged with accept
ing gifts from the rioters and at
other times filling their pockets with
eatables including biscuits, fruits,
nuts and chocolate.
The new situation created by the
arbitrary commandeerings and fix
ing of prices is now beginning to re-
act. Storekeepers are refusing to
run their business on the new basis
while there is evidently a general
shortage throughout the various
cities affected by the new economic
changes. Many well-to-do families
who have always been law-abiding
have found themselves suddenly un-
able to buy food. Some merchants
have closed their shops and gone to
summer resorts in the hope that when
summer ends, the eruption will have
subsidized and there will be return
to normal conditions.