In the general election of 1900 the Minis terial candidates received only 611,425 votes. Of the different opposition parties, the Mon archists received 303,891. Radicals 110.208, Re publicans 119,645 and Socialists 251,841 votes.
The Socialist vote had doubled in less than three years and the Socialist members of Par liament had increased to 30. As soon as Parlia ment met the Conservative Ministry fell, and was succeeded by the Zanardelli-Giolitti coali tion cabinet under which the Socialist party had such triumph, such influence and such dis sension. Together with the Republicans and Radicals they formed the Estrema Sinistra, whose support was indispensable to the Minis try. But though when in the minority these components of the Estrema Sinistra showed ability and power in harassing the government; when, as a part of the majority supporting the new Ministry they attempted to pass from de structive criticism to constructive legislation, they showed pitiful inaptitude and quickly de veloped dissensions. Thus originated that crisis under which the Socialist party is still laboring.
The intense individualism and impatience of restraint inherent in the Italian nature must always be reckoned with in Italian political parties. No sooner is an Italian Cabinet formed, no sooner does an Italian political party become powerful, than distrust and jealousy enter in, and the process of disintegration be gins. Though the strike in the mine districts in 1901 was largely successful and greatly in creased wages and though the railway employees in 1902, by threatening strike, obtained their demands, and though every dictate of prudence suggested that the Socialist party should unite in support of the Zanardelli-Giollitti Cabinet, they quarreled among themselves. Enrico Ferri be came the leader of the Socialist malcontents. The dissenting faction refused financial sup port to the Socialist newspaper Avanti because it supported the Ministry, and the director of that paper, Leonida Bissolati, resigned. Enrico Fern immediately took his place. This divi• sion within the party was really a personal rivalry between leaders. The moderate Social ists were defeated in the Bologna Congress of 1904. In vain did they point out that the
bourgeoisie had recovered from panic and could now fight their battles without government sup port. In vain did the moderates urge that the party rest content with a program of gradual reform. But the revolutionaries would have none of this. Bloody conflicts with the police broke out in South Italy followed by a general strike all over the country, which soon degen erated into deplorable excesses. As a conse quence, at the next general election the Social ists lost several parhamentary seats, and in the strike of railway employees in 1905, promoted by revolutionary group, the strikers were entirely defeated.
In consequence of the agitation resulting in this defeat of the railway strikers, the more belligerent faction of the Socialist party adopted the latest conception of French socialism as presented by Sorel, known as Such conception implies that subordinating the' purely political agitation, the proletarian move-• ment should become a vast association exclu sively confined to workingmen and rejecting, assistance from "the classes?' Syndicalism ex pects the working class to oppose actively both, capitalism and all government favorable to cap-i italism. This sentiment of Syndicalism became stronger because it was a protest within party against the alliance of Enrico Ferri, and the Ferrists with the Sonnino Ministry which ruse and fell in March and April 1906. The situation became intolerable and a National So cialist Congress was called in September 1906 to discuss the situation. In this congress it was discovered that the Reformists and the new section of socialism, calling itself were equally averse to the revolutionary policy of the trade unionism advocated by the Syn dicalists. The newspaper published in Rome by the Syndicalists (L'Acione) violently attacked the party organ (L'Avanti), while the Integral ists and Reformists in combination defeated the Syndicalist policy of trade-unionism. The flourishing condition of Italian industry and commerce undoubtedly hindered (before the participation of Italy in the European War) the spread of socialism and soothed the asperity between capital and labor.