In Turin, Milan, and Genoa, the occupation grew into a mass popular movement. It by turns captured, riveted, and alarmed the Italian public. It bubbled with novelty. Neither FIOM nor the industrialists had in any way intended or accounted for their industrial confrontation to spiral into an unexpected revolutionary experiment: the enthusiasm of the rank and fi le was about to produce something unimaginable.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 551