been exaggerated", and Roberto P. Korzeniewicz contends "that anarchism was not as prevalent within the labour movement in Argentina around the turn of the century as studies of the period have generally maintained", although he concedes that "anarchism achieved greater labour support during the early 1900s". In any case, there was considerable anarchist union activity in the 1890s. Most of the European immigration to South America as a whole came from Spain and Italy, the two European countries in which anarchism was most influential. These immigrants included anarchists forced to flee their native countries for political reasons. The working class was hardly integrated into the political system at the time, with 70% of the adult males in Buenos Aires disenfranchised as foreigners in 1912. Formation and early years On May 25 and 26 and June 2, 1901, fifty delegates, both anarchists and socialists, representing between twenty-seven and thirty-five unions met at a congress in the capital to form the Argentine Workers' Federation (FOA), with no more than 10,000 members initially. Most of the unions that joined the FOA came from construction or professions mainly practiced in small artisans' workshops such as bakers or furniture makers. Modern industrial workers were absent, while some came from the transport sector and ports. During the congress, socialists and pro-organization anarchists, particularly Gori and Pellicer Paraire, repeatedly disagreed on several issues, with the latter in a stronger position. The organization's founding principles reflected this. The principles proclaimed working class solidarity to be the only means of liberating workers, with the general strike their ultimate weapon in their fight against capital. Accordingly, the principles rejected party politics as a means of abolishing capitalism. However, they also accepted collective bargaining and arbitration, but not by the government, for settling labor disputes and pushing for labor legislation. The unionists decided that May 1 would be observed as a day of protest. The congress elected a ten-headed administrative committee composed of six anarchists, two socialists, one member who only declared himself an anarchist in 1902, and another delegate who did not commit to a particular ideology. During the first year of the FOA's existence, disagreements between socialists and anarchists continued. The founding congress had decided that La Organización was to serve as the Federation's official organ, but then the newspaper's socialist editors refused to allow this. In September, the twelve socialist-oriented unions in charge of the newspaper declared that