Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/36

 seized and occupied every metal works in the city, some 300 in all. Then the employers ordered a general lock-out throughout Italy for the next day. But again the alert metal workers outplayed them; they promptly took charge of every steel works, iron foundry, machine shop, etc., in the entire country. Then they mounted machine guns on them, hoisted red flags, and prepared to defend themselves. The 500,000 metal workers were in open revolt against their would-be masters.

Almost instantly these stirring events precipitated Italy into an intense revolutionary crisis. Everywhere the workers, their imagination and enthusiasm set on fire, rose in their might. They could see the great revolution close at hand. The industrial workers seized factories in many industries, and the peasants began to confiscate the land. As for the ruling class, they were stricken with the paralysis that came to their likes in Russia and Germany during the mass-uprisings in those countries, and which always comes to the exploiters in true revolutionary situations. They could do nothing—the Government was powerless, and the army likely to go over to the workers at any moment. The red flag flew over hundreds of towns and thousands of factories. Italy was on the very verge of the social revolution.

Such a tremendous situation, growing out of their simple wage movement, was of course far beyond the jurisdiction of the metal workers alone; hence Organized Labor as a whole, political and industrial, immediately took a hand in the matter. On September 9th, the Executive Bureaus of the Socialist Party and the General Confederation of Labor met in Milan to see what should be done next. But they could come to no agreement, and the whole problem was referred to the meeting next day of the entire Executive Committee of the General Confederation of Labor, which is composed of delegates from all the affiliated national unions and central labor councils, The represen-