8O	THE   RISE   OF   ITALIAN   FASCISM
How and why did such a phenomenon occur ? Because
the occupation of the factories gave the bourgeoisie a psycho-
logical shock, which explains their fury and guided their
successive steps. The sense of property and the authority
of the industrialists was hit; evicted from their factories,
they saw work going on, for better or for worse, in their
absence. Now that the shadow of death had passed away,
life flowed back into them. After a few days of bitterness
and uncertainty, during which their chief feeling was a
deep grudge against Giolitti,1 who c had failed to back them
up ' and had forced control of their industries on them by
decree, their reaction took the form of a fight to the death
against the working class and the ' liberal state '.
But the so-called victors were demoralized. After super-
human efforts they had tasted the joys of free production,
only to find themselves no better off than they were before,
and, worse still, with no prospect of improving their lot.
The arms manufactured or brought into the factories during
the occupation were gradually all found and confiscated
by the police. Nothing seemed changed ; work was
resumed and the F.I.O.M. had signed its c better agree-
ment ', while the workers' factory committees were the same
as those which had managed production. But the barriers
between workers and employers had broken clown, and
neither side could resume work on the old footing. The
employers felt the occupations as a blot on their escutcheon.
The factories were haunted by evil spirits which must be
exorcized. At Turin Senator Agnelli, chairman of Fiat,
hoped to do so by arranging a co-operative administration
of the factory with the employees. Similar schemes put
forward nearly everywhere came to nothing. The F.I.O.M.
1 On September 15, seeing that * the General Confederation of Labour has
demanded the modification of existing relations between employers and
workers, in order that the latter, acting through their syndicates, should
achieve the possibility of some form of control in industry \ that the Con-
federation * by means of this control * was proposing * to secure an improvement
in disciplinary arrangements between employers and workers and an increase
in production, upon which the whole economic revival of the country depends %
Giolitti issued a decree forming a commission on which both sides were equally
represented, to draft * proposals on which a government bill might be based
for the reorganization of industry, to provide for the participation of the
workers both in technical and financial control and in the general administra-
tion of firms'.