Il corriere della sera, a mainstream Italian newspaper, vividly captured the improvised and vibrant beginnings of the Milanese occupation: "the factories yesterday evening presented a singular spectacle. One reached them through crowds of women and children, coming and going with dinners for strikers, voluntary prisoners of the factories . . . entrances were strictly guarded by groups of workers. Not the ghost of an offi cial or a police offi cer in sight. Th e strikers were complete masters of the fi eld. Whoever passed, in car or cab, was subjected to control as if he were crossing the frontier, control exercised by vigilance squads of workers and their enthusiastic companions" (Il corriere della sera [August 31, 1920]; reprinted in Spriano 1975, 54).

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 552