Closely allied with the religious spirit was that of good-fellowship and
merrymaking. Every sort of feast and game and pageant was a part of the
guild system, as it was indeed of life generally at this time when men
did not have to depend upon hired professional purveyors of amusement
for their edification. What they wanted they did themselves, and this
community in worship and community in merrymaking did more even than the
merging of common material interests, to knit the whole body together
into a living organism.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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