[According to the ordinance adopted by the Board of Ethical Control, February 10, 1945, since he died a member of the Board, his family will have a pension of $15,000 per annum in gold for twenty-five years and the use of his house for the same time. The Board will fill the vacancy next week.—Editor of this paper.]
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The Text-book of Coöperation, ordained by the Board of Ethical Control for schools, is reviewed as follows:
This book is an authoritative exposition of the Coöperative Commonwealth in the commune form. It is to supersede all other books except the primer, writing-book, and elementary arithmetic. We have done with all the ancient rubbish. All the books which have not been destroyed are under the control of the Board of Ethical Control. Especially we are now rid of all pernicious trash about history, law, and political economy. The present book contains all that a good coöperator needs to know. Its tone is strictly ethical. By separating all children of incorrigibles and survivals from their parents and educating them on this book, we may soon hope to bring all capitalistic tradition to an end.
It is plainly proved here that the first right of every man and woman is the right to capital. This right is valid up to the time when he or she gets capital, when it becomes ethically subject to the similar right of someone else, who has no capital as yet, to have some. This principle carried out is the guarantee of justice and equality and is the fundamental principle of the Coöperative Commonwealth in the middle of the twentieth century.
The text-book describes the organization of our Commonwealth, with the duties of coöperators, and gives a list of the ordinances of the Board of Control.
There are now 1000 members of the Board of Ethical Control and 10,000 agents in their employ, chosen by lot monthly from all coöperators. The Board is divided into ten Boards of 100 each for various branches of duty. The members receive no salary but are remunerated by fees. They enjoy no privileges or rights in the Commonwealth, but have the duty of regulating all coöperative affairs according to their conscientious convictions of justice. The ten chairmen of Boards form an exclusive commission which decrees boycotts and plans of campaign. There are no laws or lawyers in the system and no courts or juries of the ancient type, now happily almost forgotten. There are no police, no detectives, no army, no militia, and no prisons. The ancient prison at Sing Sing, which is now within the limits of this commune, is turned into a Coöperators’ Retreat. Under this happy régime no coöperator can do wrong. Our only culprits are recalcitrants, suspects, incorrigibles, survivals, and other would-be perpetuators of the old régime of monoply and capitalistic extortion. Such persons are compelled to expiate their selfishness and incivism by hard labor, but they are taken for this purpose into the households or factories of the members of the Board of Ethical Control, where they are subject to ethical discipline and produce those things which are essential to the community and which the Board of Ethical Control contracts to provide. The employments are such as free coöperators consider disagreeable, unhealthy, or degrading.
The Committee of Inquiry into Incivism is a committee of the Board of Ethical Control and has the high and important duty of watching over coöperative duties. Its number and members are unknown, lest they should be objects of malice. Its sessions and procedure are secret. It employs 100 agents but has a right to command the services at any time of all coöperators. Complaints of incivism may be lodged night or day by any coöperator in the lion’s mouth in the court of the Coöperative Hall (ancient United States postoffice).
The Committee proceeds against persons guilty of incivism by boycotts chiefly. This measure puts the culprit outside the pale of the Commonwealth which he has maligned or in which he has refused to take his share. Such persons become vagabonds, and disappear or perish.
The chapter on coöperative religion is in the form of a catechism and is to be thoroughly learned by heart by all pupils. It inculcates the doctrines of our social creed by which each one is bound to serve the health, wealth, and happiness of every other. Those who have the means of material enjoyment shall put them at the disposition and use of those who have them not. It impresses above all the great duty of civism, or conformity to coöperative organization and obedience to the Board of Ethical Control.