“Before I shall be able to give you a clear understanding of our money, or medium of exchange, I shall have to give you a description of another public apartment in the ‘big-house,’ for this commercial apartment, as we call it, is intimately connected with our monetary system; in fact, it is so closely connected with it that you can not understand our money system without a knowledge of the function of this apartment. “The wall and partitions of this commercial apartment are all furnished with fine book-shelves. The shelves are set off so closely by vertical partitions that only one large blank book fits in each division, which are numbered consecutively. Every man, woman and child of the family is represented in this commercial apartment by one of these time-books, in which each records the time of his or her labor performed. On the back of each book is the owner’s name, and a number corresponding to the shelf-division. In this manner each individual has his own book, and each book its own shelf-division. “Let me tell you right here that we have no surnames, as you call them. We have only what you call Christian names; such as John, James, Mary, Viola, etc., the philosophy of which you will see hereafter. But, in our system of naming, every individual can be so described that it can mean no other person than the one intended. For instance, Mary, B 4, F 23, C 84 of Goben. Mary is her name; B 4 means that she keeps her record of labor in book No. 4 in the commercial apartment; F 6 stands for family number 6 of a certain community; C 84 stands for community number 84 of the country of Goben. There can be but one person in our world that answers to this description. “This commercial apartment contains all the conveniences for book-keeping, fine desks, counters, chairs of all kinds, writing material and everything one may want to keep a neat, first-class record. “As I have said, each individual keeps his own record in his own book, of all the labor he performs for the community; also the kind (the labor census is compiled from this record) of labor, and the date when he performs it. The record-books are large enough to contain the labor-record of a person’s whole lifetime. This labor-record, kept in this commercial apartment, is the basis upon which we issue our money, or labor checks, or medium of exchange, or whatever else you may call it. We have seen that all wealth is produced by productive labor, and a day’s, or an hour’s, or a minute’s productive labor produces, in an average, so much wealth; and the individual who performs the labor should receive _all_ the money or labor checks, which represent the wealth he has produced. I might say right here that we have no coin; this fact, stated in the beginning, might aid you in better understanding of what follows, for as a rule the vast majority of the people seem to think that coin is absolutely necessary to a successful medium of exchange, but this you will find to be an error.