“Now we will turn to the financial incentive to labor. I have already remarked that a child, as soon as born, receives a book number and is thereby represented in the commercial department of the family and community. Before birth, as I have already stated elsewhere, the child receives from the community a quantity of _green_ money, with which the mother, father or nurse pays all the child’s bills. At the age of about five or six our children are generally able to write quite well. At this age they also begin to do little, easy chores--such as picking strawberries, currants, weeding small patches of vegetables in the garden and greenhouse, etc.; also performing little jobs of work in the house and elsewhere. All this easy work which children can do is so divided off and paid for by the piece, quart, etc., that a child can do it and receive the same pay for it as a grown person would. This encourages the children to work, because they are paid for it as soon as the money is issued. Children, the same as adults, always like to receive and own money which they can handle to suit themselves. It also encourages them to write, because, under the supervision of the mother, parent, the commercial librarian, or some one else, they keep a record of labor performed in their time-book. It further encourages them to labor, because, at the end of each month, they receive _additional_ money for labor performed. Of course, the money children receive for labor performed is not of a green color, like that which was given them at birth. Children always feel proud of the idea that they are big, that they can support themselves, and that they need not live on _green_ money any longer. To handle a pocket-book and money seems a big thing for a child, and money can be obtained only by productive labor; if the child wants money for itself it has to earn it, for we, as _individuals_, all make a practice of not giving any money to children, because it tends to make beggars, idlers and dependent beings of them. All we do is to give them plenty of fine opportunity and then let them earn all they want.” “Do you let young children spend the money they earn just as they wish?” asked Viola.