lp4guld

Over all this the great Russian bolshevist revolution had thrustits ominous shadow. Partly out of the dislocations and price chaos ofthe war and partly promoted by revolutionary spirit, a wave ofstrikes swept over the country. In the four years preceding the war,strikes had caused the loss of 4,000,000 man-hours. In 1919 theycaused the loss of 22,000,000. In 1920 it was 30,000,000. They involvedover a million workers in industry and as many in agriculture.The climax came in September 1920. A dispute over wages in themachinery industry of the north brought the threat of a lockout bythe employers. The union officials ordered the workers to remain inthe factories. Half a million men in 600 plants held possession oftheir shops. They seized the plants, hoisted the Red flag, and proceededto operate the plants. Everywhere this was looked upon asthe long-awaited revolution in Italy.The enraged industrialists urged Giolitti to use the army. But hemerely waited. Wiser than they, he knew that these suddenly socializedfactories, without credit, cash, materials, power, or sales force,could not operate in an environment that was wholly capitalist. Theeconomic system simply closed in around them, isolated them utterly.In a few days their ill-advised experiment collapsed. And with it theRed terror in Italy collapsed.The enemies of communism made a powerful use of the whole Redepisode and particularly this event. Liberal chroniclers of the periodbrand the anti-Red agitation of the conservatives as fraudulent. Butit would not be true to say that the fear of bolshevism had departed.What had happened once might happen again. The socialists werestill in power. We have but to observe the situation in America. Withnot a single avowed communist in Congress, with no communists inour state legislatures, with the party itself a diminutive fraction ofthe electorate, we manage to keep alive a pretty active anticommunistterror. At the very moment when Italy was passingthrough these disorders, the presence of three moderate socialistsin our New York legislature produced an unseemly furor and theejection of the socialists even against the protests of Al Smith. Whatgerated picture of the extent of the deficits. What the real deficits were we have no wayof knowing, save that even after these corrections they were enormous and resulted fromexpenditures which, however necessary, performed the service of swelling national incomeand mitigating the difficulties of the Giolitti regime.43