The history of the Snake River region since then has been one of the most startling illustrations of the power of co-operation and the quantity of literature devoted to the description of the valley, its people, its productivity, its cities, roads, system and methods in all the countries and languages of the civilized world show how deep an impression this magnificent product of co-operation has made. But the wealth which this valley added each year to the Co-opolitan Association enabled us to carry the industrial war forward with a celerity not anticipated. The Agricultural department now—1909—had under its control three million five hundred thousand acres of land devoted to agriculture, five hundred thousand acres devoted to fruit and at least eight million devoted to grazing.
The Co-opolitan Association was and is the most successful farmer in the world! No wonder! There stand between it and the consumer no middleman and no manufacturer. Its own labor manufactures most of its own farm tools and machinery. It feeds, clothes and shelters its own farm hands, and both produces and manufactures food and clothing. All represent to it the cost of labor only. The wheat produced cost the Association in 1909 only about five cents per bushel to produce. This estimate is based upon the cost of machinery imported from other states and paid for with metallic money. But even this was too high an estimate, because when a machine was once imported our mechanics kept it in constant repair, while other farmers using machinery are continually paying out money to keep it in serviceable condition.
We paid nothing but labor. Other farmers were compelled to sell their wheat at the lowest cash price paid by traders and speculators, who invariably received a large profit. We obtained that profit ourselves. Other farmers saw their wheat ground into flour and sold at a profit by the manufacturer to the wholesale dealer, who again sold at a profit to the retailer, and the retailer added a profit and sold to the farmer. We received all this profit. The only cost to us of a barrel of flour was the cost of such machinery as I have described and the cost of transportation. The Brotherhood stores at that time sold all our surplus on commission. At the time of writing this—1917—the cost of producing a barrel of flour at the great Shoshone flour mills is, of course, nothing, the farm machinery, mill machinery and all devices used in connection with such manufacture being manufactured by the Association.
The facts which I have thus briefly stated must make it apparent that we were, as early as 1909, and even before that time, in a position which was entirely unassailable by competitors who had not placed themselves on a similar foundation. Our system was in a condition to challenge the whole industrial world in a free and fair field. We could and did undersell every business house in all Idaho and the competitive system, unable to compete against us, had fled from the state. Its case was hopeless. It had no footing, and never could have. It recognized capital as master and labor as its humble servant. Our system reversed the order and recognized labor as master and capital as its creature and its obedient servant. For this reason labor came to us and capital without labor was powerless. Already this condition in Idaho was affecting all adjoining states. The Co-operative system was, after ten years of honest trial, so strong, and so wondrously beautiful in its strength, that, overleaping the bounds of the co-operative state, it was infecting Oregon and Washington, and colonies framed upon the model of the Co-opolitan Association were pouring into those states. But of that I have something to say in a subsequent chapter.
CHAPTER XVIII.
PUBLICATION OF MRS. BRADEN’S NOVEL—THE PROFITS OF THE ASSOCIATION AND REWARD OF THE AUTHOR—THE PUBLISHING DEPARTMENT EXTENDS ITS SPHERE.
The Messenger and Publishing department, as I have previously stated, was under my especial charge. Up to the time Miss Woodberry, now Mrs. Braden, had given permission to have her novel submitted to a Co-opolitan committee, and that committee had reported favorably upon the proposition to publish it, I had conducted this department upon the most conservative lines. I confess that, even then, the vastness of the power of co-operative labor to overcome all obstacles was not fully comprehended by me. I had as yet but dimly recognized that the combined strength of labor directed to the accomplishment of a definite purpose was simply irresistible. Business in the competitive world which involves the sale and delivery of large accumulations of property, real or fictitious, is transacted upon a ridiculously narrow financial basis, and must necessarily be conducted with extreme caution. But where the fiction of money is abolished and the intercourse among men rests upon the basis of labor exchange, which is as broad as the earth itself, and as fair as perfect justice, there need be no fear of setting in motion every productive energy available. Too much of what men need or ought to have can never impoverish them.
My wife’s novel was placed upon the market for sale in due season. The Daily Co-opolitan announced its appearance and contained an able and very flattering criticism of it from the pen of Mr. Edmunds. The first was a cheap edition of twenty thousand copies, and so great was the pride of all Idaho in this first literary work in the line of fiction which could be considered distinctively Co-opolitan that the entire edition was exhausted before any could be shipped out of the state. This edition was sold for twenty cents a copy in labor-credit checks or industrial orders or money. But the demand was so great from the Brotherhood all over the country for this novel that I was compelled to have another edition of 100,000 copies struck off, and this was gotten up with so much greater ornamentation and in so much better style that I thought proper to have the price fixed at fifty cents a copy. The book had been commented upon favorably by all the newspapers and magazines of the United States and England, and not only the Brotherhood but the entire literary world was anxious to read it. The time was especially favorable to render it exceedingly popular. It was just beginning to dawn upon civilized humanity that Idaho was producing marvels in co-operative industry, and that a new civilization was born. “The West Parish” was a masterly presentation of the Co-operator’s case against the competitor and had a powerful effect in convicting the latter, before the tribunal of Christian civilization, of high crimes and misdemeanors. The second edition was exhausted as swiftly, almost, as water sinks in sand. Again I was called upon to supply the unsatisfied demand of the American reader. Its high literary merit, the picture it drew of Utopia realized, the remedy it pointed out from the standard of an actual modern experience, the relief it offered to millions of starving men and women made it the sensation of the day. All classes read it. Even the conservative business man who, twenty years before, had, rather vainly, boasted that he had escaped reading “Looking Backward,” quietly bought a copy of “The West Parish,” and, after reading it, handed it, without comment, to his neighbor.
I now found that these two editions of the first publication of my department, in the book line, had added $40,000.00 in United States money to the accumulations of my department, and this I turned over to the Legislative Council, according to law. Again I printed an edition of one million copies. This was prepared in much cheaper style, and by advice of our Legislative Council, whose advice I had asked, I placed this edition in every book store and on every news stand in the United States at five cents a copy. This I did because it was now apparent that it was producing a great awakening among the people, and I desired, or rather, I should say, we desired, that the poor who had no means might also read. But we realized a profit even at that price, and we knew no better way to destroy the profit system than to take its profit.
We fought the devil with fire, and had a theory that if we could gain control of his fire we could extinguish it.
The million edition of “The West Parish” was taken rapidly by the class for which it was intended and the Publishing department realized the sum of $30,000.00 from that source after paying cost of transportation. I now placed an edition upon the market for standard use consisting of twenty thousand copies, finely illustrated and elegantly printed and bound. This was sold at one dollar per copy, although in the competitive system it would have been difficult for the publisher to have sold that edition on the market for three dollars a volume and to have realized a profit.