course, the whole process not taking three minutes. I was informed that
the annual credit of the adult citizen for that year was $4,000, and that
the portion due me for the remainder of the year, it being the latter
part of September, was $1,075.41. Taking vouchers to the amount of $300,
I left the rest on deposit precisely as I should have done at one of the
nineteenth-century banks in drawing money for present use. The
transaction concluded, Mr. Chapin, the superintendent, invited me into
his office.

"How does our banking system strike you as compared with that of your
day?" he asked.

"It has one manifest advantage from the point of view of a penniless
_revenant_ like myself," I said--"namely, that one receives a credit
without having made a deposit; otherwise I scarcely know enough of it to
give an opinion."

"When you come to be more familiar with our banking methods," said the
superintendent. "I think you will be struck with their similarity to your
own. Of course, we have no money and nothing answering to money, but the
whole science of banking from its inception was preparing the way for the
abolition of money. The only way, really, in which our system differs
from yours is that every one starts the year with the same balance to his
credit and that this credit is not transferable. As to requiring deposits
before accounts are opened, we are necessarily quite as strict as your
bankers were, only in our case the people, collectively, make the deposit
for all at once. This collective deposit is made up of such provisions of
different commodities and such installations for the various public
services as are expected to be necessary. Prices or cost estimates are
put on these commodities and services, and the aggregate sum of the