The Co-opolitan: A Story of the Co-operative Commonwealth of Idaho

by Zebina Forbush

The first provided that the Association borrow $5,000,000.00 for the purpose of constructing a transcontinental railroad and issue bonds on such road bearing three per cent interest per annum and running for twenty years. The second recited the moral obligation of the Association to assume certain municipal bonds which had become valueless and to pay for the same, setting forth also the fact that as long as these bonds remained unpaid the territory formerly occupied by the cities of Lewiston, Boise, Ketchem, Shoshone and several others would be valueless. It then provided that the Association pay for these bonds at the rate of fifty cents on the dollar in five years from the passage of the law. The third provided that all industrial orders be retired and that all labor be paid for after January 1st, 1907, by labor checks which would be non-transferable.

While these three laws were to be submitted separately for the voters to pass upon, they were attached to one petition. The law permitted this action at that time, but as soon as possible after this abuse was discovered the Legislative Council corrected the plain defect so that each law must be supported by a separate petition in order to obtain a reference to the people, and the correction was so obviously proper that it has ever since remained the law.

I made no doubt when I saw this petition that the white saint-like personage, Lester Hickman, was an agent of some English syndicate, and that this whole scheme had been set on foot by him to get the municipal bonds of these several cities paid.

Some time after I learned that I was correct in this surmise. His syndicate had procured the bonds referred to for a mere nominal sum, and hit upon the plan of loaning the Association $5,000,000.00 and getting the bonds paid at the same time. As for the proposed loan, it would have been as safe as the bonds of the nation, and the entire financial world so regarded it. Why not? The Co-opolitan Association was absolutely solvent and was looked upon as enormously rich.

Hickman was a shrewd agent. He had amassed great wealth for himself, and was as artful as any living man in inducing men to part with the fruits of their industry without receiving due compensation. In approaching the Co-opolitan Association he donned the sheep’s clothing of an adviser and advocate of co-operation, and went immediately to the ministry and preached morality. With them he succeeded.

Those who best understood the theory of morals and could preach it in all its purity were least able to discriminate between the spurious and the real. Hickman belonged to a class of artful tempters who have done more to enslave mankind and degrade morals than any other. Members of this class go forth daily from our great cities to lobby in legislative bodies, bribe judges, corrupt city councils and induce the representatives of the people to give away valuable public privileges or part with public utilities.

In Co-opolis Hickman enlisted the clergy by making large donations to the churches, talking to them about a high standard of morality which he professed, claiming to be entirely disinterested and assuming a modest and retiring piety. He was a financial Talleyrand.

The result of Hickman’s efforts was that after he was gone, and almost before we knew what was going on, the petition containing thirty thousand names of members of the Association was sent to the President. This was not twenty per cent of the population of the state, but at that time all Co-operators were not members of the Co-opolitan Association. There were several distinct associations, embracing in their membership a total of nearly forty thousand. There were, besides, some thirty thousand who were not members of any association. Three years later all co-operative associations in the state were received into the Co-opolitan Association, and the individualists who still declined to become identified with our organization were few. But at the time the petitions in question were presented the thirty thousand names affixed to them constituted twenty per cent of the total vote of the Co-opolitan Association.

Here then issue was joined. However impatient our chief officers might feel with the Co-operators who had imprudently and unwisely raised these serious questions, or at least the bond and credit questions, there was no alternative and the duty to refer them to the popular vote was imperative. Some of us felt that it was a great misfortune, and I confess that I trembled for the result. Let me say now, as a candid man, that I have never been very sanguine of the success of any issue which was left to the popular decision, except on the one occasion when I felt faith in the successful establishment of the co-operative programme in 1902.

My faith even then rested upon a theory that the masses will sometimes do right impulsively and err when they stop to deliberate. As a candid man, I am also bound to say that experience proves my suspicions to have been unfounded in every instance. Our referendum law was, and is, in one respect, superior to that of Switzerland. It provided then, as now, that proposed laws should be published for a period of six weeks at least, but, in addition, it very wisely denied to any member the right to vote unless he had attended three public debates in which the law to be voted on was discussed. Our method then, as now, was to appoint certain days for such discussions, and we selected the ablest disputants on both sides of the question at issue to fully present the arguments on their respective sides in joint debate. In this manner the people became fully informed. These disputants were generally recommended then, as now, by the partisans of one or the other theory, but if no recommendation was made the Association appointed an able and learned man to represent the defaulting side.