VII
THE c POSTHUMOUS AND PREVENTIVE'
COUNTER-REVOLUTION
THE end of the factory occupations left both the
workers and the employers with the feeling that they
had been beaten. In addition to the collective
agreement the workers had gained c syndical control of
industry'. But what was this vague committee set up by
the September 15 decree in comparison with the mirage
they had seen during the weeks spent in the occupied
factories ? The employers had been forced to give in
without a soldier or a gendarme stirring to dislodge the
workers from the factories ; they had been made to sign
blindly an agreement which they had recently refused to
discuss, and submit by Giolitti's orders to the control of
industry. Both sides were disgruntled and saw no hope in
the future, but the industrialists and landowners were
livid with rage and ready for anything, willing to sell their
souls for revenge, The bloodshed and the fires which were
to destroy the offices of hundreds of working-class and
socialist organizations and the homes of e red * and even
* white * workers seemed to them the ritual of an atonement
ceremony, necessary to purify the violated temple of property.
Giolitti ignored the abuse that was heaped on him and
set about making the best use of a situation which, so he
thought, favoured his designs. A bourgeois bloc was formed,
based on patriotic sentiment, and on November 4, 1920,
for the first time since the armistice, victory celebrations,
unbroken by any disturbance, took place in Rome and all
the big cities. At the administrative elections, which took
place soon after, the bourgeois parties fought nearly every-
where on a• * national bloc * platform. The Popolan9. on the
other hand, decided to form a separate list, but the Vatican
'