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G. F.M. C. Lasalle Brown last evening gave a grand ball and housewarming in his new house on Fifth Avenue. By demolishing and removing the unsightly ruined houses in the neighborhood, a beautiful park and garden have been added to this fine tenement. It was illuminated last evening by thousands of lamps and torches carried by the convicts who are under discipline in the household of the G. F.M. C. The guests were members of the Board of Ethical Control and their families, some of whom, remembering their own antecedents, observed with interest amongst the convicts sons and daughters of ancient monopolists, and in some cases white-haired survivals from the age of bankers, railroad kings, and merchant princes. Such are the revenges of history!
One hundred new carriages (l) for the Board of Ethical Control have just arrived. They are of the most superb workmanship and cost $5000 in gold each. They belong, of course, to the Commonwealth and can only be used under permission of the Board of Ethical Control. They have been put, one each, under the care of separate members of the Board, as no private individual is allowed to violate equality by owning a carriage. We noticed with pleasure yesterday the families of Grand Cooperators in these carriages in the park.
Nonconformists and others like them outside the pale of the Commonwealth have, of late years, when they found their position disagreeable, adopted the plan of attaching themselves voluntarily as retainers or vassals to cooperators, especially to the leading members of the Board of Ethical Control. In this way they secure some of the advantages of cooperation. In order to show their position and relationship, they wear special tokens or marks. The clients of the newly inaugurated G. P. M. C. have just been put into uniform or livery. They attended him in a body on his recent visit to his country seat at Riverdale, where they did guard duty. Added to his personal bodyguard of cooperators and friends, they made an imposing body. This country seat, by the way, has just been surrounded by a high stone wall.
G. C. Brissot Cunningham died at 01 Fifth Avenue on Wednesday last. He was born May 16, 1905 and was educated for a lawyer. In 1930, putting himself in the foremost rank of the cooperative movement and identifying himself with the most radical section, he was admitted to the bar. By the abolition of inheritance, he found himself, on the death of his father in the following year, thrown entirely on his own resources. He then passed through some years of obscurity and great poverty, which taught him to feel for the poor.
Allying himself with the noble band which supported our present G. P. M. C., he helped to bring about the foundation of the cooperation in 1940 and was elected member of the Board of Ethical Control. In the Board he filled many of the most important and responsible positions on the several committees and was regularly reelected. He devoted himself to securing the Commonwealth, flinching from no measure to establish it. He believed thoroughly in the motto "Enjoy." After he became a member of the Board of Ethical Control, the former mansion of the --- s on Fifth Avenue was allotted to him and furnished from the Commonwealth storehouse of forfeited property. He there kept up a munificent hospitality on the most altruistic principles. He neither cared to know whence his income came nor whither it went. In the spirit of a true cooperator, whatever belonged to the Commonwealth was his and whatever was his was free to any cooperator. His popularity with the masses was shown yesterday when they turned out in a body for his funeral. The non-cooperators who had felt his scourge were naturally absent. A few of them who could not conceal their joy at his death were summarily corrected by the cooperators. By his death at the early age of forty-five, our Commonwealth has lost a valuable supporter. (m)
[According to the ordinance adopted by the Board of Ethical Control, February 101 1945, since he died a member of the Board, his family will have a pension of $15,000 per annum in gold for twenty-five years and the use of his house for the same time. The Board will fill the vacancy next week. - Editor of this paper.]
This book is an authoritative exposition of the Cooperative Commonwealth in the commune form. It is to supersede all other books except the primer, writing-book, and elementary arithmetic. We have done with all the ancient rubbish. All the books which have not been destroyed are under the control of the Board of Ethical Control. Especially we are now rid of all pernicious trash about history, law, and political economy. The present book contains all that a good cooperator needs to know. Its tone is strictly ethical. By separating all children of incorrigibles and survivals from their parents and educating them on this book, we may soon hope to bring all capitalistic tradition to an end.
It is plainly proved here that the first right of every man and woman is the right to capital. This right is valid up to the time when he or she gets capital, when it becomes ethically subject to the similar right of someone else, who has no capital as yet, to have some. This principle carried out is the guarantee of justice and equality and is the fundamental principle of the Cooperative Commonwealth in the middle of the twentieth century.
The text-book describes the organization of our Commonwealth, with the duties of cooperators, and gives a list of the ordinances of the Board of Control.
There are now 1000 members of the Board of Ethical Control and 10,000 agents in their employ, chosen by lot monthly from all cooperators. The Board is divided into ten Boards of 100 each for various branches of duty. The members receive no salary but are remunerated by fees. They enjoy no privileges or rights in the Commonwealth, but have the duty of regulating all cooperative affairs according to their conscientious convictions of justice. The ten chairmen of Boards form an exclusive commission which decrees boycotts and plans of campaign. There are no laws or lawyers in the system and no courts or juries of the ancient type, now happily almost forgotten. There are no police, no detectives, no army, no militia, and no prisons. The ancient prison at Sing Sing, which is now within the limits of this commune, is turned into a Cooperators' Retreat. Under this happy regime no cooperator can do wrong. Our only culprits are recalcitrants, suspects, incorrigibles, survivals, and other would-be perpetrator of the old regime of monopoly and capitalistic extortion. Such persons are compelled to expiate their selfishness and incivism by hard labor, but they are taken for this purpose into the households or factories of the members of the Board of Ethical Control, where they are subject to ethical discipline and produce those things which are essential to the community and which the Board of Ethical Control contracts to provide. The employments are such as free cooperators consider disagreeable, unhealthy, or degrading.
The Committee of Inquiry into Incivism is a committee of the Board of Ethical Control and has the high and important duty of watching over cooperative duties. Its number and members are unknown, lest they should be objects of malice. Its sessions and procedure are secret. It employs 100 agents but has a right to command the services at any time of all cooperators. Complaints of incivism may be lodged night or day by any cooperator in the lion's mouth in the court of the Cooperative Hall (ancient United States post office).
The Committee proceeds against persons guilty of incivism by boycotts chiefly. This measure puts the culprit outside the pale of the Commonwealth which he has maligned or in which he has refused to take his share. Such persons become vagabonds, and disappear or perish.
The chapter on cooperative religion is in the form of a catechism and is to be thoroughly learned by heart by all pupils. It inculcates the doctrines of our social creed by which each one is bound to serve the health, wealth, and happiness of every other. Those who have the means of material enjoyment shall put them at the disposition and use of those who have them not. It impresses above all the great duty of civism, or conformity to cooperative organization and obedience to the Board of Ethical Control.
There is complete equality and no distinction of class in the Cooperative Commonwealth. Every man, woman, and child is eligible to the Board of Ethical Control. The only distinction is of merit and service to the Commonwealth. In this the members of the Board of Ethical Control stand first. There is no second. Outside of the Cooperative Committee are, in order of demerit and detestation, probationers, cooperators who have forfeited their cooperative tickets for fault but who may be restored to membership), survivals (employers, capitalists, landlords, usurers, subject to the Commonwealth and continuing the ancient functions of such persons), nonconformists (stubborn persons who refuse to conform to the new order), recalcitrants (any of the former who have been subject to discipline five times), incorrigibles (after twenty cases of discipline), suspects (so decreed if charged but not convicted of incivism), reactionists (once cooperators but convicted of disorganization) and convicts (under boycott or plan of campaign). Every person must be registered and have always on his person a brass medal hung by a chain about his neck, bearing his designation and number, with the letters designating his group, domicile, also district, ward, and arrondissement. This constitutes his social designation. These medals are given out by the Board of Ethical Supervision. The fee is 1000 cooperative units, repeated each time that the person is reclassified and a new medal issued.
John Moon, licensed to sell pistols and ammunition. A few revolvers newly imported from the commune of Hartford at great difficulty and expense. Bliss Bldg
Henry Black, pistols and bowie-knives. Sales strictly within the ordinances. Every purchaser required to show cooperator's ticket, and sales registered. 268 Felicity Boulevard.
Elias Israel, pawn broker, loans at 10% per month on cooperative private property only. Sales of forfeited goods every Sunday. 618 Joy Avenue.
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Here ends part III of the Cooperative Commonwealth by Dr. William Graham Sumner.
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