“Each family of a community buys for its own use whatever it needs, such articles as dry goods, groceries, furniture, etc., and the individuals buy at the family stores. The storekeeper buys for the store what he thinks the people may want. So we see that each individual buys and sells with his own money, such articles as clothing, meals, railroad tickets, barber and laundry tickets, furniture for his private apartment, private luxuries, and all other things that he appropriates for his private use. The individual has no dictator; no censor. “We have no such a thing as profit in our mercantile system, or any other of our systems. Every article is sold at cost, including, of course, the cost of buying and selling; and nothing but _productive labor_ will buy it. Profit is wrong because it is always _paid by_ a person who receives nothing for it; and it is paid _to_ the person who does nothing for it. Of course, we have no _law_ prohibiting the taking of profit, but under a _healthy, free_ competition, profit is gradually and entirely eliminated by the practically equal opportunity enjoyed by each individual and by each community. No individual or community holds any monopolistic advantages over another. A stranger can buy as cheaply in any family store as a member of the community can. Prices, including transportation charges, are nearly uniform, not only all over the same country, but all over the surface of Mars. You also want to bear in mind that under keen, _free_ competition and a comparatively uniform supply, prices rarely ever fluctuate. Thus you see we have no place for a speculator and a schemer. He would not make enough, with his profession, in ten years to buy a meal. Nothing less than a fair, honest share of productive labor receives the approval of one’s companions; and no person would want to bear the burden of public contempt in order to avoid his fair share of the labor, when a day’s labor is so short, the labor so easy and pleasant, the compensation so abundant. “Every ‘big-house’ has a mercantile department, as I have already explained, in which nearly all kinds of goods, such as an individual wants, are kept for sale. The men, women and children who work in the sales department receive wages, or pay, the same as a miner, a farmer or a conductor. They are not interested whether they sell or not. They derive no benefit from misrepresenting goods. It is the same to them whether they sell a cheap article or a high priced one. They derive no benefit from lying, from suppressing the truth, or from otherwise deceiving or persuading a customer to buy an article he really does not want.