796 Ch. 20 • Responses to a Changing World
Italy, Italian anarchists participated in the waves of strikes and insurrections
in Sicily in 1893-1894. In Milan in 1898, fighting pitted the industrial sub
urbs against soldiers, and nearly 200 workers were killed and hundreds were
wounded. Violent disturbances during “Red Week” shook the Italian Adriatic
town of Ancona in June 1914 after police shot two people to death while pre
venting a crowd leaving an anti-militarist demonstration from marching into
the downtown area. Even the normally peaceful Swedish capital of Stock
holm was stirred by a general strike in 1909. It failed.
Anarcho-syndicalists dominated the labor movement in Barcelona, par
ticularly among dockworkers, who confronted brutal police repression
orchestrated from Madrid. Waves of strikes took place in Catalonia in 1902,
1906, and 1909, the latter followed by a bloody insurrection (“Tragic Week”).
But gradually, revolutionary rhetoric gave way to the pursuit of concrete
economic gains, particularly in Italy and France. In the end, at least in
Western Europe, reformism won out.
The Quest for Women's Rights
Everywhere in Europe, women remained subordinate to men in legal rights.
They were excluded from most universities, could not vote (in contrast,
several U.S. states gave women the vote before 1914), and had limited or
no control over family financial resources. Women made very little progress
entering the professions because some men feared the advent of the “new
woman,” who demanded the same access to education and opportunity as
men. The term “new woman” came from the title of a lecture given by the
Italian feminist Maria Montessori (1870-1952), a doctor and originator of
innovative schools (which still exist) that stress the encouragement of cre
ativity in children. Still, the beginnings were difficult. When a female
Greek scientist gave her inaugural lecture at the University of Athens,
male students disrupted her lecture with shouts of “Back to the kitchen!”
Women demanding equal rights faced daunting opposition. Queen Victo
ria of England called demands by women for equal rights “on which her
poor feeble sex is bent... a mad, wicked folly... forgetting every sense of
womanly feeling and propriety.” The biologist T. H. Huxley (1825-1895)
insisted that women were less intelligent than men. The claims of such
bad science bolstered opposition to the women’s movement.
Right-wing political parties opposed women’s suffrage on principle. Mod
erate republicans claimed that women could not understand political issues.
Socialists in Catholic countries feared that if women had the right to vote,
they would support clerical candidates, although socialist parties and unions
threw their support to women workers laboring for better wages and condi
tions. However, some women contended that social reforms would be inade
quate as long as women were without the right to enter universities or vote.
The feminist movement (a name that only gradually took hold in Europe
and the United States) developed very slowly in Europe. It was most active