At the 1910 biennial party congress in Florence, delegates elected Zuccarini general secretary of the party's "Social Action Committee", a new body which had been created at Zuccarini's own instigation. With Italy undergoing rapid industrialisation and a correspondingly rapid growth in factory work at the expense of farm labour, the Social Action Committee was a timely initiative which attracted new support to the party from working class members who would otherwise have been "lost" (as many still were) to socialism. Over the next couple of years Zuccarini and Conti, supported by like-minded party colleagues, were able to consolidate their influence with party cadres, encouraging support for the party's Mazzinian ideals and opposing the government's colonialist "Libyan enterprise". Increasingly the two men came to be seen as leaders of what some characterised as the party's "intransigent faction", in opposition to a more cautious and moderate wing represented by men such as (also a freemason).