Twenty years from now a retired reporter takes time off from cultivating his petunias and his perennial border to write of his own experiences during the dark days after peace, when American civilization seemed about to crack up for good. The "myth of internationalism" had infected big business with a bad case of economic imperialism. But synthetic revolutions in industrial chemistry soon fixed things so foreign nations didn't need a thing we could sell them. Depression, unemployment, bankruptcies, hatred and fear plagued the country. The business-controlled Government was swept out of office by a labor popular front. But things got worse instead of better. ... ()hile Americans everywhere sank into fatalistic apathy, a new hope was born in the desert town of Indian Pass in Texas, where the Trans-Pecos Chemical Commonwealth was making a plastic substitute for copper wire that was much cheaper and much better than copper. The significance lay in a new concept of ownership. ... The commonwealth idea got rid of all owners of property and also paid no wages, only shares in the earnings. The employees had no participation in the concern. The harder they worked and the more money the commonwealth made, the larger was their share of the earnings. Every foreman was subject to dismissal by a majority vote of the workers under him. Any lazy or inefficient worker was thrown out on his ear by his comrades. Efficiency was wonderful, morale perfect.〔