It proved impossible to carry out the scheme; the laborers were too many and too cunning to be crushed.
I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road.
In August there were strikes among the dock laborers of Genoa and the iron workers of Florence; the latter agitation developed into a general strike in that city, which aroused widespread indignation among the orderly part of the population and ended without any definite result.
In June and July 1907 there were again disturbances among the agricultural laborers of Ferrala and Rovigo, and a widespread strike organized by the leg/fe throughout those provinces caused very serious losses to all concerned.
In some cases there was foundation for the laborers claims, but unfortunately the movement got into the hands of professional agitators and common swindlers, and the leader, a certain Giampetruzzi, who at one time seemed to be a worthy colleague of Marcelin Albert, was afterwards tried and condemned for having cheated his own followers.