The Messenger and Publishing department, as I have previously stated, was under my especial charge. Up to the time Miss Woodberry, now Mrs. Braden, had given permission to have her novel submitted to a Co-opolitan committee, and that committee had reported favorably upon the proposition to publish it, I had conducted this department upon the most conservative lines. I confess that, even then, the vastness of the power of co-operative labor to overcome all obstacles was not fully comprehended by me. I had as yet but dimly recognized that the combined strength of labor directed to the accomplishment of a definite purpose was simply irresistible. Business in the competitive world which involves the sale and delivery of large accumulations of property, real or fictitious, is transacted upon a ridiculously narrow financial basis, and must necessarily be conducted with extreme caution. But where the fiction of money is abolished and the intercourse among men rests upon the basis of labor exchange, which is as broad as the earth itself, and as fair as perfect justice, there need be no fear of setting in motion every productive energy available. Too much of what men need or ought to have can never impoverish them. My wife’s novel was placed upon the market for sale in due season. The Daily Co-opolitan announced its appearance and contained an able and very flattering criticism of it from the pen of Mr. Edmunds. The first was a cheap edition of twenty thousand copies, and so great was the pride of all Idaho in this first literary work in the line of fiction which could be considered distinctively Co-opolitan that the entire edition was exhausted before any could be shipped out of the state. This edition was sold for twenty cents a copy in labor-credit checks or industrial orders or money. But the demand was so great from the Brotherhood all over the country for this novel that I was compelled to have another edition of 100,000 copies struck off, and this was gotten up with so much greater ornamentation and in so much better style that I thought proper to have the price fixed at fifty cents a copy. The book had been commented upon favorably by all the newspapers and magazines of the United States and England, and not only the Brotherhood but the entire literary world was anxious to read it. The time was especially favorable to render it exceedingly popular. It was just beginning to dawn upon civilized humanity that Idaho was producing marvels in co-operative industry, and that a new civilization was born. “The West Parish” was a masterly presentation of the Co-operator’s case against the competitor and had a powerful effect in convicting the latter, before the tribunal of Christian civilization, of high crimes and misdemeanors. The second edition was exhausted as swiftly, almost, as water sinks in sand. Again I was called upon to supply the unsatisfied demand of the American reader. Its high literary merit, the picture it