From Elena Doni and Manuela Fulgenzi: Il Secolo delle Donne. L' Italia nel Novecento al Femminile. Women's Century. Italy in the Nineteen Hundreds in Woman. The extremely hard working conditions of rice workers became known when 180,000 women from the areas of Novara and Vercelli went on strike (and strikes had been outlawed by the fascist regime) to protest against cuts in salaries, to sustain the eight hour workday and to insure more humane food and places to live for themselves.What follows is a song they sung: Dear mother, come here/ since I have so many things to tell/ things that make me shake when I speak/ the awful life I have lived./ The awful life I have lived/ there in the moving and cutting/ my beautiful round face/you'll never see again like before./ In the morning those little flies/ that sucked all our blood/and at midday that awful sun/ that made us roast/at midday beans and rice/in the evening rice and beans/and that unnatural bread/that would take our hunger away./And at nine we'd retire/and at ten the inspection/the boss's inspection/all of us resting on bedsprings.