With his articles, Mussolini, by leveraging on his popularity inside the socialist movement and on the great diffusion of the newspaper, forced the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGdL) to declare a general strike, an instrument which stopped every activity in the country and that the labour union believed it had to be used only in exceptional circumstances. Mussolini exploited the popular revolts for political purposes within the socialist movement: leadership of PSI was in the hands of revolutionary maximalists after the congress of Ancona, but reformist were still the majority in the parliamentary group and in CGdL.