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road work in the early nineties referred to gave a powerful fillip to 

 the movement.* Labour of every description was at the time in a 

 terribly depressed — rather oppressed and neglected — condition in 

 Italy. Labour societies, agricultural as well as industrial, have by 

 the present time become distinct favourites with the authorities ; 

 but at the period spoken of, and up to some little time after 1898 — 

 when that fierce crusade was let loose against organised Labour, 

 with that hard measure for poor working folk, the domicilio coatto, 

 employed as a means of arbitrary punishment — even those who now 

 rank as its declared protectors looked upon it askance and with 

 suspicion. In the mid-nineties it was considered an " awful " 

 warning, that there were already as many as five Socialists in the 

 Italian Chamber. The neglect which labour experienced at the 

 hands of the Legislature, and the upper class altogether, naturally 

 evoked bitter discontent, and secured a willing ear to Socialist 

 oratory— which was not wanting. Labour of all classes formed a 

 determined resolve that what was amiss should be set right. Strike 

 work they could not, because they were too abjectly poor and 

 dependent upon their daily wage. It is only well paid labourers 

 who can indulge in the luxury of strikes. So the Italian working 

 men determined to see what they could accomplish through co- 

 operation, the labourers' truest friend — co-operation, which in their 

 case meant pinching and denying themselves even almost the 

 necessaries of life, to a degree, of which our working men, who insist 

 upon being well paid under all circumstances, have no conception. 

 But both in Italy and in France it was only on the steep steps of 

 pinching, hard work and self-denial, that labour could climb up to 

 liberty and independence. And labour proved equal to the ordeal. 

 There were good men — for the task — to take the lead. At all points of 

 the labour-employing economic system working men exerted them- 

 selves to organise for self-employment. That was their declared 

 aim, not merely a Gibeonite demand for higher wages and shorter 

 hours. They formed their co-operative productive societies of all 

 descriptions — some stonemasons and builders in the van — and 

 they have achieved signal success. But there were cabinet makers, 

 type founders, picture frame makers, and on the river boat and 

 barge men, carmen, barrowers ; all over the labour-employing world 

 there was action, at first on a small scale, but action which led to 

 results. 

 Notable among this host of labouring folk so organising were the 



* For particulars Bee my article " The Autonomy of Labour,'" in the 

 Contemporary Review of August, 1896. 



