The Ideal State 275 



struggle awaked the conscience of workers in all 

 directions. For example, glass blowers the world over 

 are heavy drinkers, but these men gave up drinking. 

 Their life being filled with an ideal, a social purpose, 

 and a continuous concentration on various problems, 

 they find pleasure in it, and have no need to drink for 

 solace." They renounced their legitimate dividends, 

 accepting the same wages as their comrades working 

 for capitalist concerns, and turned over all the net 

 profits of their co-operation to mutual aid funds. 

 They have no intention of becoming capitalists. They 

 want to free themselves from capitalism and to set an 

 example to other workers. With the profits of their 

 enterprise they help the Socialist and Labour move- 

 ments, they provide schools for their own children and 

 for the children of other workers, and were actually the 

 first to adopt the now famous Montessori system of 

 kindergarten education. They built workmen's houses, 

 providing better homes, better nucleuses for the new 

 social life. Their factories are model factories in the 

 industry ; they are the best equipped in the world 

 with labour-saving machinery, labour-protecting de- 

 vices, hygienic arrangements, and they are prepared to 

 introduce any new technical or financial method in 

 their industry. Experts from all countries come to 

 them to learn and profit by their experience. ... In 

 short, they have improved the conditions of their own 

 life and work, making both healthier and less irksome, 

 accomplishing their higher duty to themselves, since 

 a revolutionary working-class must elevate its material 

 level in order to make itself fit for fulfilling its social 

 mission. " This movement, then, represents the new 

 fact of Syndicalism in operation. An industrial union 

 of workers has found within itself all the necessary 

 elements for resistance against organised capital and 

 all the necessary factors of progressing towards the 



