In Co-opolis Hickman enlisted the clergy by making large donations to the churches, talking to them about a high standard of morality which he professed, claiming to be entirely disinterested and assuming a modest and retiring piety. He was a financial Talleyrand. The result of Hickman’s efforts was that after he was gone, and almost before we knew what was going on, the petition containing thirty thousand names of members of the Association was sent to the President. This was not twenty per cent of the population of the state, but at that time all Co-operators were not members of the Co-opolitan Association. There were several distinct associations, embracing in their membership a total of nearly forty thousand. There were, besides, some thirty thousand who were not members of any association. Three years later all co-operative associations in the state were received into the Co-opolitan Association, and the individualists who still declined to become identified with our organization were few. But at the time the petitions in question were presented the thirty thousand names affixed to them constituted twenty per cent of the total vote of the Co-opolitan Association. Here then issue was joined. However impatient our chief officers might feel with the Co-operators who had imprudently and unwisely raised these serious questions, or at least the bond and credit questions, there was no alternative and the duty to refer them to the popular vote was imperative. Some of us felt that it was a great misfortune, and I confess that I trembled for the result. Let me say now, as a candid man, that I have never been very sanguine of the success of any issue which was left to the popular decision, except on the one occasion when I felt faith in the successful establishment of the co-operative programme in 1902. My faith even then rested upon a theory that the masses will sometimes do right impulsively and err when they stop to deliberate. As a candid man, I am also bound to say that experience proves my suspicions to have been unfounded in every instance. Our referendum law was, and is, in one respect, superior to that of Switzerland. It provided then, as now, that proposed laws should be published for a period of six weeks at least, but, in addition, it very wisely denied to any member the right to vote unless he had attended three public debates in which the law to be voted on was discussed. Our method then, as now, was to appoint certain days for such discussions, and we selected the ablest disputants on both sides of the question at issue to fully present the arguments on their respective sides in joint debate. In this manner the people became fully informed. These disputants were generally recommended then, as now, by the partisans of one or the other theory, but if no recommendation was made the Association appointed an able and learned man to represent the defaulting side.