Co-operation must enter the lists with means and weapons similar to its opponents, or else it will fail. Therefore the writer proposes that the profits of co-operation be matched against the profits of competition, and if co-operation can “win out” then the profit system is dead. Let us raise the cry of Industrial Co-operation against Industrial Competition, and then go to work. When we are strong enough we will do what Industrial Competition in the form of corporations and syndicates has done. We will become political. Industrially we can grow as all industrial institutions have, and when we are grown to a magnitude which forces recognition, the world is ours and again belongs, not to a few, but to all of us. This little volume is designed to show, in part, what an opportunity we have to plant the flag of Industrial Co-operation on American soil and defend it as it cannot be defended in any other country. Yours Fraternally, THE AUTHOR. THE CO-OPOLITAN. [Illustration] CHAPTER I. THE YEAR 1897. During the entire existence of the great American republic no year seemed more hopeless to the masses of its people than the year 1897. It is true that the dark hours of conflict, when separation from Great Britain was sought at the cannon’s mouth, and later, when civil strife nearly rent the nation in twain, seemed, to superficial observers, to be more fraught with danger. But the problems of those times could be and were readily understood. Success to the arms of the patriots, in the one case, and the Unionists in the other, was a simple solution, although distressing in its pursuit and difficult of achievement. But this year was one which was the culmination of many years of singular abundance, blessed by nature in almost every conceivable way, and yet by a strange contradiction of circumstances full of sorrow, distress, hunger and poverty. The wealth of this, the richest country in the world, was made valueless by reason of the belief on the part of its people that it must borrow the right to use that wealth from other nations. The supplies of food, clothing and materials of all kinds were vast, and yet the inhabitants for some cause were not able to obtain them, although their needs were great. There were now a few rich and many—very many—extremely poor.