THE CO-OPOLITAN ❧ A Story of the Co-operative Commonwealth of Idaho. BY ZEBINA FORBUSH. “’Tis coming up the Steep of Time And this old World is growing brighter.” —_Gerald Massey._ CHICAGO: CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY. 1898. Copyright 1898 By CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY. Library of Progress. No. 26. Quarterly. $1.00 a year. February, 1898. Entered at the Postoffice, Chicago, as second-class matter. PREFACE. This volume is given to the public without other excuse than the simple fact that it has been written. If it is read it may do some good, but in any event it cannot do injury. If it is not read the hour which knew it will pass with it, and countless hours, like waves in Time’s ocean, will roll on multitudinously, with their burdens of good and evil, and pass also. Because the writer believed he had a thought to express, which, if heeded, would help, in some slight degree, to right human wrongs, he ventured to offer it in this form. He had discovered by experience that no radical and permanent reform can be successfully effected without the consent of what are called “the substantial business interests” of the established system. He has also observed that the system now in operation is constantly undergoing changes, and that our predecessors in its control, of a quarter of a century ago, would scarcely recognize the system by which we live to-day. These changes have been accomplished through evolution only. Numbers count for nothing. Millions submit readily to the will of one. Education counts for everything, and if we had been taught that to stand on our heads an hour a day was essential to salvation most of us would observe that form without question. Some, however, are superior to error and are strong enough to be and to do right. But these are scattered. They argue with their unthinking neighbors and are ridiculed for their pains. Such methods never did succeed and the world is as much out of gear with righteousness to-day as it was in the dark ages. This is the trouble with political Co-operation. It cannot succeed except in a very slight measure. Why? Because industrial and commercial education are against it. Because the Industrial System is against it. Because the great, the powerful and strong are against it. Political Co-operation has no money with which to compete with the competitive system. Righteousness without money is a will-o’-the-wisp as against Mephisto, with millions in the competitive system.