It was therefore decided that each member should receive wages, to be established upon the basis of a distribution of sixty per cent of all the society produced, equally divided among all persons above the age of twenty-one, whether male or female. The forty per cent undistributed was to be used to purchase money for the use of the department store; in other words, sold for cash. These wages were to be paid in orders on the treasurer, signed by the president. They were required to read as follows: “To the Treasurer of the Co-opolitan Association: Deliver to John Jenkins, Foreman of Company Number One of the Industrial Army, one (or any denomination) dollar’s worth of any product, convenience, privilege or license at your disposal. Signed, John Thompson, President.” These orders were to be delivered to the foreman only and it was the foreman’s duty to endorse or stamp his name on the back so that, when once so endorsed or stamped, they became current as a medium of exchange, but not as a measure of value. The foreman’s duty was to pay his men with these orders and he was held to the strictest account for the disposition made of each order. Whenever an order was received in any department it was stamped canceled and never again issued. Most of our members for the first three years preferred the check. As time passed, however, the credit labor check became more and more popular and in time crowded out the circulating orders entirely. CHAPTER VII. CO-OPOLIS A CONVENTION CITY—A MENACE TO LIBERTY. It was a bright day in the latter part of June, 1902, that the first state convention of the Co-operative Commonwealth met in our city of Co-opolis to place in nomination a full state ticket for the state of Idaho. It was considered that the co-operators were strong enough to take possession of the political machinery of the state. The National Brotherhood, using Co-opolis as a basis for its operations in the state, had directed many colonies to Co-opolis and we had taken charge of them as they came, absorbed most of them in our own Industrial Army, and others we had assisted to establish themselves in some fertile valley in the state where they could put their own peculiar ideas and methods of co-operation into practice. We now had fifty thousand male and female voters, upon whose solid support we could count to carry out our designs. Most of this population was settled through the southern, central and western part of the state, and there were at least forty cities and villages entirely devoted to our cause. Co-opolis contained a population of fifteen thousand souls—men, women and children. Its Industrial Army was 7,000 strong, and its members, working not more than seven hours a day, accomplished the most remarkable results.