Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/44

 In scores of localities the workers' representatives were thus driven from political office by the Fascisti and their positions turned over to reactionaries.

Naturally the labor unions also suffered heavy attack in the general campaign of oppression. Their strikes were fought with unparalleled bitterness and their militant members fiercely persecuted. This was particularly the case in the smaller localities, although even in the larger cities, such as Milan, Turin, Bologna, Florence, Modena, Parma, etc., the movement suffered greatly. In many places the Fascisti actually compelled the unions' officers to resign: then, after electing tools of their own, they would affiliate the devitalized organizations to their national yellow labor movement. The same general tactics were used against the cooperatives, which had their property burned or stolen, their officers persecuted and ousted, and their organizations either broken up or absorbed by the Fascisti. The latter are actually building up their own "patriotic" trade union and cooperative movementswith remnants of organizations literally carved out of the body of Organized Labor.

The labor press, notably the "Avanti!" of Milan, was a special object of attack by the Fascisti. The methods employed varied, including the burning of the newspaper plants, the destruction of the presses, the intimidation of newsdealers for handling the papers, the stationing of Fascisti in the post offices who forced the workers, under pain of dire vengeance, to return their papers and to cancel their subscriptions, etc. Recently the "Avanti!" published a long list of newsdealers who had been compelled to stop handling their journal, and also tables showing thousands of subscribers who had been made to give up the paper. The following letter indicates a typical condition in the Fascisti war against the labor press:

"Editor 'Avanti!',

"I must inform you that on the eighth of the current