Word: bill
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Like Enemy Airplanes. Bordello-keepers united against the anti-brothel bill and raised a 60 million lire ($96,000) fighting fund. In one house in Milan, any customer signing a petition against the bill was awarded one free visit. The girls and the worried madam in a swank Naples house appealed to venerable Senator Benedetto Croce, Italy's foremost philosopher, to block the bill "so that they too might have a prosperous holy year." Letters against the bill poured in on Senator Merlin, who had herself toured Rome's brothels to collect ammunition for her side...
...soon, political factions lined up alongside Crusader Merlin. The Moscowliners, claiming that the bill was all their own idea, ordered all left-wingers to vote against "a typical plague of bourgeois society." The Communists found allies in their old adversaries the Christian Democrats. "We can't afford," said one Christian Democratic politician, "to give the Communists an opportunity to attack us on moral grounds." Of all the senators, only dissident Socialist Pieraccini spoke out against abolition with any real vehemence. "[The bill] would turn all Italy into the sex jungle of Europe," he roared. "We are all senators here...
...noisy try, but it failed. Interior Minister Mario Scelba himself rose to present the government's hearty endorsement of the Merlin bill. For the first time in anybody's memory the Communists joined in enthusiastic applause for a Scelba speech. The united front against vice would not be split. When the vote was taken, abolition of prostitution passed by a thumping 187 to 67. Passage by Italy's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, is expected within a few months...
...free and once more competitive economy, Big Steel had a perfect right to raise its prices. But with the steel shortage over, it might not get away with it. Big Steel's customers certainly would not like the $80 million-a-year increase in their steel bill, especially in the light of steel profits. In the first nine months of 1949, U.S. Steel netted $133 million, 50% more than in the same period in 1948. And so far as Ben Fairless could see last week, the future looked rosy. Operations of Big Steel, he said, should continue...
...Married. Bill Holland, 40, husky Philadelphian who went from speed skating to auto racing, won this year's 500-mile classic at Indianapolis; and Ruth Dannie Asmussen, 22; in Miami...