is a cant of the Middle Ages, and a cant of ``joy in
labor,'' but it were better, perhaps, to risk that cant
than to reconcile ourselves forever to the philosophy of
Capitalism and of Collectivism, which declares that work
is a necessary evil never to be made pleasant, and that
the workers' only hope is a leisure which shall be longer,
richer, and well adorned with municipal amenities.[37]


[37] ``The Guild Idea,'' No. 2 of the Pamphlets of the National
Guilds League, p. 17.



Whatever may be thought of the practicability
of Syndicalism, there is no doubt that the ideas which
it has put into the world have done a great deal
to revive the labor movement and to recall it to certain
things of fundamental importance which it had
been in danger of forgetting. Syndicalists consider
man as producer rather than consumer. They are
more concerned to procure freedom in work than to
increase material well-being. They have revived the
quest for liberty, which was growing somewhat
dimmed under the regime of Parliamentary Socialism,
and they have reminded men that what our modern
society needs is not a little tinkering here and there,
nor the kind of minor readjustments to which the
existing holders of power may readily consent, but
a fundamental reconstruction, a sweeping away of