The Giolitti era, 1900–14

The elections of June 1900 marked the defeat of the Pelloux government and of attempts to impose illiberal laws. The following month King Umberto I was assassinated by an Italian anarchist, Gaetano Bresci, who had returned from the United States to “avenge” the victims of the 1898 repression. The new king, Victor Emmanuel III, favoured a return to constitutional government, as did the governments led by Pelloux’s successors, Giuseppe Saracco, Giuseppe Zanardelli, and Giovanni Giolitti, the last of whom was the most frequent holder of the office of prime minister between 1903 and 1914. Giolitti sought to defuse popular discontent by social reforms, the gradual extension of the right to vote, and public works and to conciliate the major organized opposition groups in the country, the Socialists and the Roman Catholics. In 1912 suffrage was extended to nearly the entire adult male population, from 3.3 to 8.6 million men.

In the south, however, Giolitti’s government was less accommodating and often resorted to old-style repression in the face of protest, as in 1903 and 1904. The historian and Socialist Gaetano Salvemini, the fiercest critic of Giolitti’s strategy toward the south, accused the government of corruption and of doing nothing to alleviate poverty. Salvemini’s pamphlet, first published in 1909 and later collected as Il ministro della mala vita (1919; “The Ministry of Evil”), encapsulated this position. Giolitti also embarked on a colonialist war with Turkey in 1911, with the support of the church and the new nationalist movement. Italy conquered Libya and the Greek-speaking Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea. Both territories became Italian possessions in 1912 and remained so until World War II.

Domestic policies

The social reforms passed in these years included laws that prohibited child labour, established a compulsory maternity fund and compulsory rest days, and limited the working day of women to 11 hours. Central governments also subsidized municipal welfare schemes such as orphanages and senior citizen housing and encouraged municipal transport, housing, and water and sewage schemes—especially in northern Italy, where the municipalities could afford such innovations. Often these schemes were pioneered by Catholic- or Socialist-dominated local councils, which entrusted the management to their own cooperatives; government approval of “municipal socialism” was much resented by local businessmen, shopkeepers, and others. Moreover, Giolitti’s governments allowed trade unions to operate in relative freedom and generally avoided interfering in private-sector labour disputes. The government’s tolerance of labour organizations was another source of middle-class resentment.

Giolitti enjoyed Radical support, and his governments often included Radical deputies. He also received the tacit support of moderate Socialist deputies and union leaders. Giolitti’s accommodation of labour and Socialists was his way of co-opting the socialist movement and, as he put it, placing “Marx in the attic.” Trade unionism grew rapidly in the new atmosphere after 1900, not only in industry but among the agricultural labourers of the Po valley and Puglia. A land-workers union, the Federation of Agricultural Labourers (Federterra), was formed in 1901, and the various Socialist-led unions formed a confederation of labour in 1906. Some unions depended heavily on public works schemes subsidized by government. Others, such as Federterra, relied on Giolitti’s reform legislation favouring cooperatives and on contracts provided by Socialist councils. All the major Socialist institutions became reliant on government willingness not to repress them. In turn, they abandoned any effort to overthrow the government. However, revolutionary views dominated the Socialist Party membership from 1904 to 1908, which was always more militant than its leaders, especially those in parliament. Moreover, there was also a powerful group of revolutionary syndicalists, who broke away from the Socialist Party in 1907 but retained control of many unions, especially in Liguria and Puglia. This popular militancy ensured that Socialist deputies could not compromise too openly with Giolitti or accept posts in his governments.

Nor could the organized Roman Catholic movement easily make open arrangements with the Giolitti government. The Catholics too had founded trade unions and workers’ cooperatives, as well as mutual aid societies and rural banks, throughout northern Italy in the 1890s. This development followed Pope Leo XIII’s embrace of social concerns in his encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891). In opposition both to socialism and the “excesses of capitalism,” Rerum Novarum called for the organization of Catholics in economic and political life, class conciliation, the creation of small farms, limits on weekend work, and the defense of female workers. Catholic associations were particularly strong among the peasantry of Lombardy, Piedmont, and the Veneto and among the largely female textile workers, and they controlled many local councils. In 1897–98 the Rudinì government dissolved most Catholic associations, but later governments permitted their reestablishment in return for tacit support against socialism. This support even became overt at parliamentary elections; in 1904 and 1909 the papal prohibition on Catholics voting (non expedit) was lifted in many constituencies, and Catholics were permitted to vote for Liberal candidates in order to keep Socialists out. In 1913 antisocialists signed a secret electoral agreement known as the Gentiloni pact, named for the president of the Catholic Electoral Union, Vincenzo Ottorino Gentiloni. The old “intransigents” of the Opera dei Congressi, deeply hostile to a united Italy, were replaced early in the century by a new generation of moderate Catholic leaders favoured by Pius X, who even dissolved the Opera dei Congressi in 1904 and brought the Catholic lay movement under the bishops. The Catholic moderates gave Giolitti their support, but they could not enter government or even operate as a lay party independent of the bishops or the Vatican.