We sold daily the best wares and produce which we could manufacture or
procure. The excellence of our stocks, together with the smallness of
our prices, was our recommendation.
We intensified by our establishment in Boise City the well-known effects
of the department store in competitive cities.
All the trade came to us.
Nothing could compete with our system, and merchants and hotel men were
compelled to assign for the benefit of creditors, join the Co-operative
Commonwealth or depart from the state.
When our new constitution was adopted the Co-opolitan Legislative
Council made a rule that all persons who were citizens of the state at
that time should be eligible for membership on the same terms as all
other members of the National Brotherhood. Most of the merchants and
hotel men in Boise City whose occupations were gone chose to join our
body and were assigned to positions in the Co-opolitan store or some
suitable department at Co-opolis.
Lawyers being largely creatures of competition, nearly all disappeared,
and the few who remained either joined us and were assigned to the Legal
department or if they remained and did not join engaged in the
precarious business of settling up bankrupt estates.
The Association had, with the opening of spring, purchased a pleasantly
located tract of land adjoining the city, laid it out on the plan of
Co-opolis as nearly as could be done, constructed elegant brick hotel
and department store buildings, built a large number of cottages similar
to those in Co-opolis, and a commodious school building, and provided
water, gas, electric and steam-heating plants. About November 1st, 1903,
the entire Co-opolitan plant in Boise City, including the industrial
force employed, removed to the new town and old Boise was well nigh
deserted.
The reason for this move is apparent.
Old Boise was burdened by debt which it was no part of the design or
duty of the Co-operative Commonwealth or of the Co-opolitan colony to
pay.
There was a large bonded municipal debt, a large bonded water debt and
another large school debt.
The gas and electric plants were also bonded, but those were private
debts payable only by such as availed themselves of their advantages.
There was no way to avoid assuming these public debts if we continued in
the old city.
Some of our enemies, later on, set up a howl against what they termed
our immorality in running away from these obligations. But they were not
our obligations. We did not make them and we certainly had a right to
live outside of the territory affected by them if we chose. In
competitive cities business enterprises and persons of integrity and
fortune usually locate where the public burdens are least likely to rest
heavily upon them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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