"symbol of our traditional ideals," might help to dramatize the need for a more comprehensive industrial policy. Perhaps he also hoped that the symbolism of the Sherman Act would clothe the new ideal of industrial efficiency with "the mystery, the romance and magic" formerly associated with competition and free trade. If efficiency itself was a little drab, a crusade against "conspiracies in restraint of trade" might supply some of the missing excitement. Enforcement of the Sherman Act seems to have commended itself to Arnold, in 1938, as a way of resolving the "troubling paradox" he had examined in The Symbols of Government. "Social institutions require faiths and dreams to give them morale. They need to escape from these faiths and dreams in order to progress." A carefully orchestrated campaign against monopolies, conducted by a skeptic who nevertheless appreciated the public's longing to believe in something, would serve both needs at once.

Those who had been advocating a return to small-scale production welcomed Arnold's revival of trust-busting, but he failed to galvanize the general public. ^* Labor remained dubious about the antitrust laws, which could easily be turned against unions. Small businessmen hated anything connected with the New Deal, even when it served their interests. Consumers might have supported a policy that held out the hope of lower prices, but they had no way of expressing themselves politically. No organized and powerful constituency, as Ellis Hawley has pointed out, had a stake in the enforcement of the antitrust laws. It is also possible that people sensed the satirical overtones in Arnold's antitrust crusade. "Disillusioned men," as he himself had written, "do not make effective leaders." No matter how much he dwelled on their symbolic importance, he did not believe in what the antitrust laws symbolized. He did not believe that

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G. D. H. Cole and Bertrand Russell, as we have seen, objected to Sorel's myth of the general strike on the grounds that workers would never rally to syndicalism if it was presented to them merely as a "myth." As Sorel thought of it, however, mythology embodied truths that could not be expressed in any other way. Arnold, on the other hand, saw myths as useful untruths, to be circulated among the credulous by leaders who knew better. This contrast helps to explain why syndicalism evoked so much enthusiasm among workers, in spite of the misgivings expressed by Cole and Russell, while Arnold's antitrust campaign fell flat.

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