Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
THE CO-OPOLITAN
A Story of the Co-operative Commonwealth of Idaho.
PREFACE.
This volume is given to the public without other excusethan the simple fact that it has been written. If it is readit may do some good, but in any event it cannot do injury.If it is not read the hour which knew it will pass withit, and countless hours, like waves in Time’s ocean, willroll on multitudinously, with their burdens of good andevil, and pass also.
Because the writer believed he had a thought to express,which, if heeded, would help, in some slight degree, toright human wrongs, he ventured to offer it in this form.He had discovered by experience that no radical and permanentreform can be successfully effected without theconsent of what are called “the substantial business interests”of the established system.
He has also observed that the system now in operationis constantly undergoing changes, and that our predecessorsin its control, of a quarter of a century ago, wouldscarcely recognize the system by which we live to-day.These changes have been accomplished through evolutiononly. Numbers count for nothing. Millions submit readilyto the will of one.
Education counts for everything, and if we had beentaught that to stand on our heads an hour a day was essentialto salvation most of us would observe that form withoutquestion. Some, however, are superior to error andare strong enough to be and to do right. But these arescattered. They argue with their unthinking neighbors4and are ridiculed for their pains. Such methods never didsucceed and the world is as much out of gear with righteousnessto-day as it was in the dark ages.
This is the trouble with political Co-operation. It cannotsucceed except in a very slight measure. Why? Becauseindustrial and commercial education are against it.Because the Industrial System is against it. Because thegreat, the powerful and strong are against it. Political Co-operationhas no money with which to compete with thecompetitive system. Righteousness without money is awill-o’-the-wisp as against Mephisto, with millions in thecompetitive system.
Co-operation must ent