ATDTDA 724-747 Italy

[Glenn Scheper]

Part 8 of 9.

The closing of the French market to Sicilian produce, the devastation wrought by 
the phylloxera and the decrease of the sulphur trade had combined to produce in 
Sicily a discontent of which Socialist agitators took advantage to organize the 
workmen of the towns and the peasants of the country into groups known as fasci. 
The movement had no well-defined object. Here and there it was based upon a 
bastard | Socialism, ~ in other places it was made a means of municipal ~ party 
warfare under the guidance of the local mafia, and in some districts it was 
simply popular effervescence against the local octrois on. bread and flour.

The return of Crispi to powera return imposed by public opinion as that of the 
only man capable of dealing with the desperate situationmarked the turning-point 
of the crisis. Intimately acquainted with the conditions of his native island, 
Crispi adopted efficacious remedies. The fasci were suppressed, Sicily was 
filled with troops, the reserves were called out, a state of siege proclaimed, 
military courts instituted and the whole movement crushed in a few weeks. The 
chief agitators were either sentenced to heavy terms of imprisonment or were 
compelled to flee the country. A simultaneous insurrection at Massa - Carrara 
was crushed with similar vigour.

While engaged in restoring order and in supporting Sonninos courageous struggle 
against bankruptcy, Crispi became the ~ object of fierce attacks from the 
Radicals, Socialists on~rispi. and anarchists. On the 16th of June an attempt by 
an anarchist named Lega was made on Crispis life; on the 24th of June President 
Carnot was assassinated by the anarchist Caserio; and on the 3oth of June an 
Italian journalist was murdered at Leghorn for a newspaper attack upon anarchism 
a series of outrages which led the government to frame and parliament to adopt 
(11th July) a Public Safety Bill for the prevention of anarchist propaganda and 
crime.

Actuated by rancour against Crispi, he, on the 29th of April 1896, authorized I 
the publication of a Green Book on Abyssinian affairs, in which, without the 
consent of Great Britain, the confidential AngloItalian negotiations in regard 
to the Abyssinian war were disclosed. This publication, which amounted to a 
gross breach I of diplomatic confidence, might have endangered the cordiality of 
Anglo-Italian relations, had not the esteem of the British government for 
General Ferrero, Italian ambassador in London, induced it to overleok the 
incident.

True, the commission proposed and the Chamber adopted a vote of censure upon 
Crispis conduct in 1894, when, as premier and minister of the interior, he had 
borrowed ~1 2,000 from Favilla to replenish the secret service fund, and had 
subsequently repaid the money as instalments for secret service were in due 
course furnished by the treasury. Though irregular, his action was to some 
extent justified by the depletion of the secret service fund under Giolitti and 
by the abnormal circumstances prevailing in 1893-1894, when he had been obliged 
to quell the insurrections in Sicily and Massa-Carrara.

Pressed by Cavallotti, Rudini in March 1897 dissolved the Chamber and conducted 
the general election in such a way as to crush by government pressure the 
partisans of Crispi, and greatly to strengthen the (Socialist, Republican and 
Radical) revolutionary parties. More than ever at the mercy of the Radicals and 
of their revolutionary allies, Rudini continued so to administer public affairs 
that subversive propaganda and associations obtained unprecedented extension. 
The effect was seen in May 1898, when, in consequence of a rise in the price of 
bread, disturbances occurred in southern Italy. The corn duty was reduced to 
meet the emergency, but the disturbed area extended to Naples, Foggia, Ban, 
MinervinoRiots of Murge, Molfetta and thence along the line of railway 1898. 
which skirts the Adriatic coast.

At Faenza, Piacenza, Cremona, Pavia and Milan, where subversive associa tions 
were stronger, it assumed the complexion of a political revolt. From the 7th to 
the 9th of May Milan remained practically in Lhe hands of the mob. A palace was 
sacked, barricades were ~rected and for forty-eight hours the troops under 
General Bava-Beccaris, notwithstanding the employment of artillery, were unable 
to restore order. In. view of these occurrences, Rudini authorized the 
proclamation of a state of siege at Milan, Florence, Leghorn and Naples, 
delegating the suppression of disorder to special military commissioners. By 
these means order was restored, though not without considerable loss of life at 
Milan. and elsewhere. At Milan alone the official returns confessed to eighty 
killed and several hundred wounded, a total generally considered below the real 
figures.

As in 1894, excessively severe sentences were passed by the military tribunals 
upon revolutionary leaders and other persons considered to have been implicated 
in the outbreak, but successive royal amnesties obliterated these condemnations 
within three years.

The general election of June 1900 not only failed to reinforce the cabinet, but 
largely increased the strength of the extreme parties (Radicals, Republicans and 
Socialists), who in the new Chamber numbered nearly 100 out of a total of 508. 
General Pelloux therefore resigned, and on the 24th of June a moderate Liberal 
cabinet was formed by the aged Signor Saracco, president of the senate. Within 
five weeks of its formation King Humbert was shot by an anarchist assassin named 
Bresci while leaving an athletic festival at Monza, where his Majesty had 
distributed the prizes (2Qth July 1900). The death of the unfortunate monarch, 
against whom an attempt had previously been made by the anarchist Accianito (2 
2nd April Death 1897), caused an outburst of profound sorrow and indignation. 
Though not a great monarch, King Humbert had, by his unfailing generosity and 
personal courage, won the esteem and affection of his people. During the cholera 
epidemic at Naples and Busca in 1884, and the Ischia earthquake of 1885, he, 
regardless of danger, brought relief and encouragement to sufferers, and rescued 
many lives.

In December 1898 he convoked a diplomatic conference in Rome to discuss secret 
means for the repression of anarchist propaganda and crime in view of the 
assassination of the empress of Austria by an Italian anarchist (Luccheni), but 
it is doubtful whether results of practical value were achieved. The action of 
the tsar of Russia in convening the Peace Conference at The Hague in May 1900 
gave rise to a question as to the right of the Vatican to be officially 
represented, and Admiral Canevaro, supported by Great Britain and Germany, 
succeeded in prevent~ ing the invitation of a papal delegate.

Shortly afterwards his term of office was brought to a close by the failure of 
an attempt to secure for Italy a coaling station at Sanmen and a sphere of 
influence in China; but his policy of active participation in Chinese affairs 
was continued in a modified form by his successor, the Marquis Visconti Venosta, 
who, entering the reconstructed Pelloux cabinet in May 1899, retained the 
portfolio of foreign affairs in the ensuing Saracco administration, and secured 
the despatch of an Italian expedition, 2000 strong, to aid in repressing the 
Chinese outbreak and in protecting Italian interests in the Far East (July 
1900).

The Saracco administration, formed after the obstructionist crisis of 1899190o 
as a cabinet of transition and pacification, was ganar- overthrown in February 
1901 in consequence of its dciii-. vacillating conduct towards a dock strike at 
Genoa.
thoiitti It was succeeded by a Zanardelli cabinet, in which the cabinet, 
portfolio of the interior was allotted to Giolitti. Com posed mainly of elements 
drawn from the Left, and dependent for a majority upon the support of the 
subversive groups of the Extreme Left, the formation of this cabinet gave the 
signal for a vast working-class movement, during which the Socialist party 
sought to extend its political influence by means of strikes and the 
organization of labor leagues among agricultural laborers and artisans. The 
movement was confined chiefly to the northern and central provinces. During the 
first six months of 1901 the strikes numbered 600, and involved more than 
1,000,000 workmen. (H. W. S.)

In 1901-1902 the social economic condition of Italy was a matter of grave 
concern. The strikes and other economic agitations at this time may be divided 
roughly into three groups: strikes in industrial centres for higher wages, 
shorter hours and better labor conditions generally; strikes of agricultural 
laborers in northern Italy for better contracts with the landlords; disturbances 
among the south Italian peasantry due to low wages, unemployment (particularly 
in Apulia), and the claims of the laborers to public land occupied illegally by 
the landlords, combined with local feuds and the struggle for power of the 
various influential families. The prime cause in most cases was the 
unsatisfactory economic condition of the working classes, which they realized 
all the more vividly for the very improvements that had been made in it, while 
education and better communications enabled them to organize themselves.

Unfortunately these genuine grievai~ces were taken advantage of by the 
Socialists for their own purposes, and strikes and disorders were sometimes 
promoted without cause and conciliation impeded by outsiders who acted from 
motives of personal ambition or profit. Moreover, while many strikes were quite 
orderly, the turbulent character of a part of the Italian people and their 
hatred of authority often converted peaceful demands for better conditions into 
dangerous riots, in which the dregs of the urban population (known as teppisti 
or the mala vita) joined.

Whereas in the past the strikes had been purely local and due to local 
conditions, they now appeared of more general and political character, and the 
sympathy strike came to be a frequent and undesirable addition to the ordinary 
economic agitation. The most serious movement at this time was that of the 
railway servants. The agitation had begun some fifteen years before, and the men 
had at various times demanded better pay and shorter hours, often with success. 
The next demand was for greater fixity of tenure and more regular promotion, as 
well as for the recognition by the companies of the railwaymens union. On the 
4th of January 1902, the employees of the Mediterranean railway advanced these 
demands at a meeting at Turin, and threatened to strike if they were not 
satisfied.

Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
Copyleft(!) Forward freely.