In how far the old system can be revived and put into operation is a question.  Certainly it cannot be adopted as a fad and imposed on an unwilling society as a clever archaeological restoration.  It will have to grow naturally out of life itself and along lines at present hardly predicable.  There are many evidences that just this spontaneous generation is taking place.  The guild system is being preached widely in England where the defects of the present scheme are more obvious and the resulting labour situation—­or rather social situation—­is more fraught with danger than elsewhere, and already the restoration seems to have made considerable headway.  I am convinced, however, that the vital aspects of the case are primarily due to the interior working of a new spirit born of disillusionment and the undying fire in man that flames always towards regeneration; what the ardent preaching of the enthusiastic protagonists of the crusade best accomplishes is the creation in the minds of those not directly associated with the movement of a readiness to give sympathy and support to the actual accomplishment when it manifests itself.  Recently I have come in contact here in America with several cases where the workmen themselves have broken away from the old ways and have actually established what are to all intents and purposes craft-guilds, without in the least realizing that they were doing this.

I think the process is bound to continue, for the old order has broken down and is so thoroughly discredited it can hardly be restored.  If time is granted us, great things must follow, but it is increasingly doubtful if this necessary element of time can be counted on.  Daily the situation grows more menacing.  Capital, which so long exploited labour to its own fabulous profit, is not disposed to sit quiet while the fruits of its labours and all prospects of future emoluments are being dissipated, and it is hard at work striving to effect a “return to normalcy.”  In this it is being unconsciously aided by the bulk of union labour which, encouraged by the paramount position it achieved during the war, influenced by an avarice it may well have learned from its former masters, as narrow in its vision as they, and increasingly subservient to a leadership which is frequently cynical and unscrupulous and always of an order of character and intelligence which is tending to lower and lower levels, is alienating sympathy and bringing unionism into disrepute.  In the United States the tendency is steadily towards a very dangerous reactionism, with a corresponding strengthening of the radical element which aims at revolution, and that impossible thing, a proletarian dictatorship.  It is this latter which is rampant and at present unchecked in Europe, and this also is a constant menace to the success of those sane and righteous movements which take their lead from the guild system of the Middle Ages.  A third danger, but one which is constantly on the decline at present, partly because of the general