XIV HONEST MONEY

THE money of the future will, no doubt, be Labor Checks, which every man, woman and child worker will personally draw for the co-operative labor each performs for the Association or Co-partnership, whether that labor be industrial, domestic or maternal.

Such money is the only really honest and convenient money, because it naturally flows into the hands of the men, women and children workers who produce the wealth which the money represents, and the basis of it is labor, the very thing which produces all wealth—food, raiment, shelter and luxuries. Small children and disabled persons receive pension money from the Association.

Hence, every man, woman and child personally draws his or her own pay checks, and pays his or her own bills for meals, clothes, personal ornaments, etc. These denominational Labor 57Checks can be issued monthly or quarterly, but children should be paid immediately after the work is done, for they need an immediate stimulus for inducing them to work, when they want money.

Anyone that has this time money—minutes, hours, days and weeks, labor checks—can buy in the fine Department Store of the Co-operative Mansion at cost, but always for cash, the same as in our post office, and when the clerk in the Department Store receives the money, he or she immediately cancels it, the same as the postmaster cancels postage stamps, and the next payday new money (new labor checks) is issued, and the remuneration for labor is proportional to the distastefulness of the particular kind of labor performed. The harder and the more undesirable the labor the higher the pay, so that all can work where and when they wish; at easy jobs for less pay or at more undesirable jobs for higher pay.

This time money—labor checks—could be put up in neat, convenient little booklets, something like postage stamp booklets, so that the different denominations of minutes, hours, days and weeks can be paid out conveniently. No valuable metals will then be stamped into cumbrous coins.

58In Modern Paradise, children feel proud of supporting themselves at the age of 8 or 10 years. Before that age, children live on pension money issued by the Modern Paradise at large to the mother for the support of the child before the child is born, on the theory that we have all received care, nurture and support during our infancy, and that we in turn should do as much for some other infants no matter whether we are parents or not. We owe that bill to the rising generation, and if we do not pay that bill in a similar manner to other infants and helpless children, we die shirks and slackers.

Such a system of Money which always flows into the hands of the men, women and children that produce the wealth is not only honest, cheap and convenient, but also justifies the husband to draw a sigh of great relief that he is once for all rid of paying the bills of his wife and children personally, and the wife is even more pleased with the privilege of drawing her own pay checks for the labor she performs instead of begging her pittance from her “hard up” husband, and the children are also joyous for having always a rich, open opportunity to earn in an easy way at any time all the spending money they want instead of trying to beg it from usually poor, reluctant and often abusive parents.

59As before intimated, begging, whether for money or jobs, is always humiliating to refined men, women and children, and charity never goes to the root of the evil; for charity, even at its best, is only a necessary evil in a discordant world. For righting things, we need justice.

Such a system of money is not only honest, cheap, stable and convenient, but also makes every man, woman and child completely free and independent financially, industrially, domestically, socially and parentally; and any system of money that does not do these desirable things is not a good system of money for an intelligent people.