ABSTRACT
AFTER the armistice, and particularly after the elections of November 1919, there was a rush to join the ‘red’ General Confederation of Labour, which swept in all classes of labour, including private employees, skilled labourers, state employees, and in many districts the local societies of small shop-keepers. The 321,000 members of the General Confederation of Labour at the beginning of the war had increased to 2,200,000 by the end of 1920. The same thing was happening in every country. In France the Confédération Générale du Travail, from a million members in 1914, reckoned 2,400,000 early in 1920; in Germany the two and a half millions of 1913 leapt to eight millions in 1920; even in England the careful calculations of the Trade Unions showed over the same period an increase of 1,572,391 to 4,317,537 in their membership. An epidemic of strikes broke out and reached its peak in 1920 in Italy as elsewhere, although it was soon put an end to by the cold douche of the economic crisis.1
