Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/42

 weak and inconspicuous, until after the metal workers' strike. Then the frightened and belligerent employers seized upon it as just the weapon they needed, forced it into a mushroom growth, and launchdlaunched [sic] it in a deluge of blood and iron upon the devoted heads of the workers. Thus they inaugurated one of the most astonishing campaigns of oppression and bloodshed in modern history.

The method of the Fascisti is calculated, organized terrorism. They aim to paralyze the workers with naked fear and to destroy every semblance of organization and independence among them. Murder, arson, rape, kidnapping, and the systematic violation of every right, human and civil of the workers, are the means they use in their work of destruction. One of their favorite tactics is the so-called "punitive expedition." Commonly this horror developed as follows: for some real or fancied grievance, the Fascisti would decide to punish the workers in a certain town. To this end they would assemble their cohorts from the surrounding country, sometimes to the number of many thousands, and then make an armed, automobile raid in force upon the ill-fated community. Then they would proceed to brutally shoot and beat men and women, destroy working-class property, and generally act as thugs until their fine "patriotic" instincts were satisfied. When the invaders departed usually there would not be a stick or a stone of anything relating to Labor left standing. Such “punitive expeditions" happened in scores, if not hundreds of Italian cities and towns, particularly in the industrial north. They have resulted in the death of large numbers of workers and the destruction of many labor temples, cooperatives, newspaper plants, etc. A recent estimate calculated the ravages of the Fascisti as follows: workers killed 400, wounded 3500, labor temples, etc., destroyed 150.

The following experience of the town of Argenta is typical of what happened to many others: