"All the people who were doing their buying and selling through these exchanges were regularly supplied with carefully prepared literature on economic questions and business methods, and of general information as to the trend of current events, the progress of the new order which placed business on an ethical basis and all matters of advantage for an independent, cultured citizenship to understand. Then for the first time, the multitudes began to realize the weakness of the fragile thread by which they had been bound to the triumphal car of Capitalism. Their experience gave them confidence. They used the same business methods for the benefit of the many that had enabled the few to concentrate in their own hands four-fifths of the wealth of the country. It was therefore no untried experiment. They were only exercising the same kind of business sagacity that had been used by the money kings to financially conquer the world. Just in proportion as they decreased the demand for money, it flowed in upon them in exchange for their products at a steadily increasing price. They had established a DEBT-PAYING instead of a DEBT-CREATING system of business, and in the course of time their debts were all paid, the necessity for legal money had disappeared, the people were free from its exactions, and all they had to do was to produce what they consumed and consume what they produced, exchanging equivalent for equivalent for the equal benefit of all. And thus the world had been saved from its thralldom to Greed by the establishment of the 'Kingdom of God and His Righteousness' as had been enjoined by Krystus at the beginning of the old religious system two thousand years before. This which was enjoined at the beginning of the Dispensation was REALIZED at its close and hence the FIRST BECAME THE LAST, because the LAST was THE FIRST REDUCED TO PRACTICE IN HUMAN AFFAIRS." CHAPTER XIII. BONA DEA--MATRON'S HOME--PRE-NATAL INFLUENCES--IMPROVING THE AIRSHIPS--BATTELL EXPLAINS--PLANS FOR THE FUTURE--MUSEUM OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY--RELICS OF THE PAST--BUILDING TOWARD OUR IDEALS--LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS--PRESAGING THE FUTURE--PROFIT CAUSES POVERTY--EQUITABLE EXCHANGE THE REMEDY. [Illustration] AS I listened to Norrena's description of the financial and commercial system which had once existed in Altruria, I could not help but notice its close similarity to the system which prevailed in the outer world. As he elucidated the international and seemingly unlimited power that had been exercised by the owners of gold, and how it would take all the gold in the world to pay a small fraction of the annual interest on the obligations held against the people, my heart sank within me at the utter hopelessness of their condition.