The early history of the Italian American syndicalist movement is that of a transnational community in formation. In its first years, the FSI, like the Italian American Left in general, was an outpost of the Italian Left.¹ Even its intense factionalism was often rooted in conflicts between radicals in their homeland. Its members had contact with various American Leftists, but were wary of affiliating themselves with any of them. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the FSI—and syndicalism—had become the dominant force on the Italian American Left. The Federation remained connected to Italian...

In October 1889, Italian Prime Minister Francesco Crispi was growing worried about the number of Italians migrating to other countries. Southern Italian immigration to the United States and South America was becoming a national problem. Crispi suggested in a speech that month in Palermo, the capital of his native Sicily, that Africa could be the solution to Italy’s loss of population. He focused on Ethiopia, which he described as a country with “vast zones of cultiv[at]able land which will offer an outlet in the near future to that overflowing Italian fecundity which now goes to other civilized countries . ....

When Carlo Tresca arrived in Lawrence in May 1912, he was elated by the possibilities that the strike waged by unskilled immigrants and the defense campaign to free imprisoned strike leaders seemed to offer. Tresca, soon known as the “Bull of Lawrence” because of his tenacity and courage, declared, “To me Lawrence was the beginning of a new era; with Lawrence I joined the army of revolutionary workers for a real and greater struggle. With Lawrence I found a better place in the great trench of class war.”¹

Tresca’s expectations were more than shared by syndicalists in the FSI. Still...

In April 1915, Edmondo Rossoni issued a call to action to syndicalists in the FSI. He declared, “[I]n this Springtime of rebirth, there is . . . a more useful activity that calls to us and seems pressing, and it is in this field that we must not be sluggards, lukewarm and barren of enthusiasm and faith, armchair [philosophers].”¹ It was just two years after the syndicalists’ enormous victories in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the wave of strikes by immigrant workers in the United States showed no signs of abating. But the “more useful activity” Rossoni was referring to was not...

In the summer of 1916, the FSI was eager to put the intervention debate behind it and return to organizing workers. As one Federation member noted, there was ample opportunity to do so—workers everywhere were initiating strikes. He wrote, “[T]he workers have now returned to face their enemy: capitalism. The strikes . . . have been going on in a most unusual manner—assuming a character of open rebellion at times. . . . The agitations are becoming more intense; there is a little discontent everywhere. The time is now—so what are we waiting for”¹ His impatience was...

In April 1923, soon after Mussolini rose to power in Italy, Arturo Giovannitti called for unity at a New York meeting hall packed with Italian American radicals and workers. “Supported by the full resources of Italy’s black shirts who control all areas of the Italian government, and encouraged by the instigators of reaction in America,” he entreated the crowd, “the fascists in America can be beaten only by a solid organization of the liberal, radical and constructive work force in America,”¹ At this meeting of Italian American syndicalists, socialists, Communists, and unionists—a room full of former adversaries—Giovannitti articulated...