The Co-opolitan: A Story of the Co-operative Commonwealth of Idaho

The Great Council of 1904 readjusted our legal system to conform to the new constitution and the co-operative programme. The political subdivision of the state into counties was not disturbed and local government of these was delegated to county commissioners. What had been variously denominated home rule and local option was, however, greatly extended.

Counties were permitted to determine for themselves many questions which by the old system were within the exclusive province of the Legislature. No county or other subdivision of the state was permitted to issue bonds for any purpose nor to expend in any one year more than the total amount received in taxes. But each county had the option to pay the state tax in money or in the products of labor. Where a county voted to pay taxes in the products of labor it was required to maintain as many store houses as were necessary to properly and securely store its receipts.

The law provided that the Great Council should annually elect a commission consisting of five members, whose duty it was to meet at the capital city in October of each year and determine the value of the various products of the state. The cereals, for instance, were to be valued at so much per bushel, vegetables and fruit at so much per pound, precious metals at so much per ounce, wool, hides, furs and other raw material at such prices as were fixed in the schedule prepared by the commission. All articles named in the schedule were to be received in lieu of money and at the prices fixed, so long as that schedule remained in force.

This plan would have been impracticable had it not been for the fact that the Legislative Council of Co-opolis agreed to take all produce so received for taxes at the schedule price therefor. The latter, for its own protection, placed a department store in every county seat, where, under its contract, it reserved all perishable property and either sold it in the proper department of its local store or shipped it at once to a suitable market. The schedule prices were sufficiently low to protect the Co-opolitan Association from loss. As for hides, furs, wool and other raw material, and staple agricultural products, they were carefully inspected by Co-opolitan commissioners at the receiving department store or warehouse, and, if not of schedule standard, were not accepted. In this manner and by this system all producers were able to pay their taxes without being compelled to borrow money and in the very wealth which their industry produced.

All public expenses were defrayed and all salaries were paid in the products of labor. The salary of a judge, for instance, amounting to twelve hundred dollars per annum, neither more nor less than a Co-opolitan received as his annual dividend, was paid by the state in orders or credit checks for goods or whatever the Co-opolitan Association had to sell. Such orders were of various denominations and in the following form:

Deliver to the bearer hereof goods, wares, merchandise, entertainment or services of the value of one dollar and charge the same to the State of Idaho.

This method of collecting taxes and paying state expenses proved fully equal to the emergency. The Co-opolitan Association lost nothing by it. All schedule prices were fixed, as I have already stated, at a figure which was slightly lower than the cash market price for non-perishable and staple products and still lower for produce generally considered perishable.

But the producer also found his advantage to consist in the facility with which it enabled him to meet his public dues at all times promptly, thus avoiding penalties, interest and expenses. The system had not been long in operation before a question arose, concerning these orders, with the Federal authorities, who, at first, pronounced the Co-opolitan Association a kind of a banking institution, and the state orders upon it devices in the nature of state-bank issues. The effort was then made to compel the Co-opolitan Association to pay the ten per cent tax imposed by the Federal law on such issues.

The question was never brought into the courts, because the most eminent and expert lawyers in the Union agreed that such orders could no more be regarded as money than the checks of business men upon their bank deposits, the promissory notes of debtors, the tickets of transportation companies and the time checks of mining and other large corporations controlling labor.

Another question arose of a more serious character upon the right of the state to emit “Bills of Credit.” This the Federal constitution prohibited. A test case was made upon one of the state orders and taken to the United States Supreme Court. The decision of that tribunal was rendered by a divided court, a majority being of opinion that they could not be regarded as coming within the prohibition of the constitution referred to. These orders, the court held, were not designed to circulate as money, because they were directed to a private association of individuals designated as the Co-opolitan Association, and simply directed such association to deliver goods to the bearer. It was not a promise on the part of the state to pay money, nor to deliver goods. It was to be honored on demand, and when received by the Association in question was forthwith canceled. Evidence was offered by the parties seeking to void the orders that as a matter of fact they did circulate as money. This was held to be immaterial, for the reason that the fact, if shown, would not tend to prove that such was the intention of the state. The truth was that very few of the state orders so circulated. They were usually presented to the Co-opolitan store at any county seat without intermediate transfer, and a labor-credit check or industrial orders were issued instead.

It is true that such industrial orders so circulated and were treated as money by the people of Idaho, but the practice was not encouraged by Co-operators, because it was an incident of individualism and not of co-operation. Their circulation could not be prevented so long as the co-operative plan embraced the purchase of all property owned or produced by individualists in the state, and payment on goods or property as represented by these orders. In 1904 more than one-half of the people of the state were members of the Co-opolitan Association, and great numbers of those who were not members were daily becoming so. It was believed that in time our industrial orders would cease to circulate and perhaps be entirely superseded by the labor-credit check. It should be borne in mind that the labor-credit check, not being transferable, never passed out of the hands of its owner.

The policy of Idaho and the Co-opolitan Association was to prevent, as far as possible, the circulation of money in the state. It was treated as if it were a kind of poison which produced among men most dreadful diseases, and at the same time was an instrument of moral, financial and social ruin. We were fully convinced, when Co-opolis was founded, that if co-operation was to succeed some system must be applied which would exclude money from use among Co-operators. But it was recognized that outside of Idaho money was and must continue to remain king, as long as the industrial competitive and individualist system governed their affairs. For this reason the Co-opolitan Legislative Council accepted money, but sought in every possible way to prevent its circulation.

All money obtained by the sale of surplus products, manufactures or property of any kind in other states, or which might come into the co-operative stores, was immediately turned over to the Legislative Council and by it deposited in a strong safe in the basement of the Council Hall. Here it was guarded as if it were a deadly peril to the public weal.

The safe in which it rested was opened by a combination known only to the President, and it stood in an iron chamber whose great lock was turned by a key held by one of the Council. This was enclosed in another iron chamber which was opened only by a different key held by another member of the Council. There were twenty-six chambers of different sizes, the smaller enclosed within the larger, and twenty-six locks opened by as many different keys, each councilor holding one and no more. It took twenty-six councilors and twenty-six keys to reach the safe, and no money could be taken from it except in the presence of at least one-half of the members of the Legislative Council. But it was a rule of the Association that if any person living in the state desired money with which to travel outside of the state he should make his affidavit to that effect setting forth the amount he desired, and upon his application for such an amount, if the Council were satisfied that it was made in good faith and that the money would not be expended in the state, the application was granted. Articles which the Department of Commerce were compelled to import from other states or countries were also paid for from the accumulation in the safe.

After disposing of the question of how taxes and public expenses could be discharged the first Great Council took up the question of what property should be taxable. Among the private individualist enterprises in Idaho mining and grazing predominated. Both the mine owners and cattle men, whose herds were permitted to wander at will on the ranges, were expert “tax dodgers.” How to reach them and compel them to pay their just and fair proportion of the expense of running the state and maintaining the schools was an important question. It was decided that all taxes should be levied on land values. In other words, what is sometimes called the Single-Tax system was adopted.

Wherever cattle men occupied a range together the total number of cattle upon it was determined, owners’ names were obtained and the value of the range per acre was estimated upon the basis of its use for grazing purposes. Each owner was then made liable for the tax on the total acreage of the range occupied, and the proportion each was bound to pay was no question for the state, but was a question for the cattle men to determine for and among themselves. Cattle men now found it impossible to escape their taxes as formerly, each being zealous to require his neighbor to pay his part, and it must be confessed that they showed a strong disposition to leave the state, so that the ranges abandoned by them were left for the use of our herds.

It ought to be said, however, that the cattle owners did not abandon the state without a fight. They resisted the collection of taxes, claiming the system to be unjust and against public policy. One of the trial courts decided in their favor, but the case was appealed to the Great Council, which, it will be remembered, retained the Supreme Judicial authority in itself. The matter was referred by this body to six of its members, all lawyers, and indeed the only lawyers in the Great Council, all of whom were Co-operators, and the trial court was reversed. There was also an armed resistance to the collection of the tax, but the cattle men were speedily put to rout, the state militia suffering no other loss than three men wounded. The newspaper press throughout the Union, however, took sides with the cattle men, claiming that the system of taxation had been adopted for the sole purpose of driving these “honest” men from the state and taking possession of “their” ranges. The truth was that the men who left the state on account of this law did so to escape honest burdens and went where the laws were more unjust, or if not unjust not effectual to prevent the shifting of such burdens dishonestly to other shoulders which ought not to bear them. We offered no encouragement to dishonest practices, and if our failure to do so was an advantage to some other state which did, we certainly had no occasion to feel envious.

Mining property owned by corporations or associations was valued at the full par of its capital stock and assessed accordingly.

It was the policy of the state not to encourage the mining of the precious minerals by private enterprise. The miners of the state were fast becoming absorbed in our Co-opolitan Association and wages had risen to nearly four dollars per day for skilled or unskilled workers, because a membership in the Co-opolitan Association or its Industrial Army paid that amount annually.

Mine owners sought to obviate what they called the evil of high wages by importing cheaper labor. At first they attempted the introduction of Chinese miners and later an ignorant class of Italians, Hungarians and Slavonians. Our Great Council prohibited aliens from owning, holding or acquiring real estate or making investments of any kind within the state on and after the date of the passage of a law to that effect. It also prohibited the importation of aliens into the state as laborers, or the employment of any such by any person, association or corporation.

These laws were all held to be valid and constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, which some years after their passage had occasion to pass upon them.

The result was that capital engaged in mining in Idaho withdrew and some of the mines were purchased at a low figure and operated by the Co-opolitan Association.

Here again the press of the United States denounced the immorality of the Co-operative Commonwealth, because of its oppressive conduct toward capital. Immoral indeed!

Idaho simply made laws which in other states or countries have never been disapproved as immoral.

The Co-opolitan Association gave to labor the same high wages in all its departments, and in that manner made laborers anxious to join the Association. This left the mine owner to do his own work or pay as much as the worker could earn as a Co-operator.

The capitalist could not compete in the labor market with labor itself, when labor employed its skill and force in its own behalf. If the mine which was made to produce wealth for capital and peril, distress and death for labor, became valueless, because there was no longer a force to work it, whose fault was that?

We did not steal the gold which glistened in its dark caverns!

We did not rob the capitalist of the labor which he owned!

The labor of men and women was not his vested right, like his mine. He had preached the merits of competition and we had simply competed for and won the labor force that dug his mine.

Now the mine was worthless because the men who made it would no longer work it. What did the Co-opolitan Association do which was immoral? Having taken its labor force and set it at work for itself, this mine had no value except if the labor force could be restored to it.

Capital could not do it. The Co-opolitan Association could. We purchased it for what it was worth without the labor force, which nobody owned. We could never have done this if capital had been able to work that same force and steal its products. Yet the newspaper press of that day denounced us as immoral and was effusive in its praise of the competitive system.

The Great Council at this session provided for a Supreme Judicial Court and as many County Courts as there were counties. The purpose of this system was to secure the proper administration of justice.

The Supreme Court was not authorized to decide any question of the constitutionality of a law enacted by the Great Council adversely, but if in their opinion such law was unconstitutional they were required to certify the same, with their reasons, to the Great Council for review. The jury system was preserved, with the exception that in civil cases a majority of the jury decided. Many radical changes were effected by this Great Council, but those mentioned were the most sweeping.

The Great Council of 1904, perhaps because it was unhandicapped by precedents, was the most memorable, for the swiftness and merit of its legislative work, of any session which has occurred since. Its successors had been, in a very marked degree, required by public sentiment to conform to its standards.

Humanity, as all history proves, when once it accepts a system, whether good or bad, is loath to abandon it, and permits it to be changed only when the necessity for change is made apparent by experiences often of the most distressing nature. For this reason revolution has rarely ever produced lasting results except in the mere form, and not in the substance and spirit of things. If it be contended that society has undergone great changes in those respects let it be remembered that evolution, not revolution, did it.