THE GAPORETTO OF SOCIALISM 185
national conscience '. Separation was thus achieved without
the Fascist Party being directly affected.
While the Confederation was lighting the sacra larnpa^
thtfasci were pursuing and intensifying the struggle on its
own ground of syndical organization. Here the economic
crisis helped them. The number of unemployed, only
102,156 at the end of 1920, quickly rose to 388,744 in July
1921, 512,260 in December, and 606,819 in January 1922.
The industrialists and landowners now had the whip hand
and did not hesitate to act. The Confederation was
paralysed in many country districts by the fascist occupation,
and fell back on the defensive. On October 9, 1921, one
year after the factory occupations which were to have
inaugurated workers' control and begun c a new epoch 3,
the administrative council of the Confederation proposed a
suspension of the agitations caused by employers' efforts to
reduce salaries and the setting up of a commission of inquiry,
composed of state representatives, employers and workmen,
to investigate conditions in various industries, causes of the
rise in the cost of living and the possibility of an adjustment
in wages. The government accepted the proposal, the Con-
federation of Industry opposed it. Postponement of the
revision of wage rates until spring 1922 was, however, won
in Lombardy by means of negotiation, and in Liguria as
the result of a general strike. All the same it was obvious
that the tables had been turned. The c control of industry y
which was to have given the working class a aew place in
production, and had been hailed by some as a beginning of
expropriation and socialization, turned out to be nothing
but a means of defence against an excessive reduction of
wages, already enforced in some places by the joint pressure
of the crisis and fascist intimidation. The few steps
taken towards the transformation of * wage-earners' into
c producers 3 were lost; once more they were simply wage-
earners, their wage their only connection with the producer's
world.
Free syndical association was no longer the church
triumphant, whose every move was crowned with success ;
it was only the church militant, whose service was hard and
defences uncertain. Here and there the fascists were