We are riding through the business section of the city first. Here the streets are about five hundred feet wide, paved with white coral and very smooth. Down the center of the street is a six foot strip planted with beautiful flowers of delicate shades and quite fine in texture. These are planted in designs depicting various forms of nature found on planet Mars as well as many within the universal vastness. This strip acts as a dividing lane for traffic travelling in opposite directions.
Greyish blue coral curbings frame this flowering strip and similar ones two feet wide between the sidewalks and the street.
The sidewalks, like the streets, are made of white coral. They are ten feet wide.
The buildings are masterpieces of art and engineering. Designed with modern and Mosaic architecture combined, they tower twenty-two stories and up. Some of them have flat roofs while others have spear-like towers on them, acting as standards for huge flood lights which illumine this section of the city as sunlight, when necessary.
Amazing as it may sound, both the shopping rooms and factories are housed in these large buildings, yet no noise of machinery can be heard nor is there smoke or any kind of fumes. Workers here only put in three hours each day in business, and the different industries operate at different times of the day, thereby giving all workers an opportunity to shop and have their needs fulfilled, it was explained to us.
The shop windows are filled with beautiful displays of Martonian designed clothing for all occasions, household articles to fill every need, games and amusements of all sorts, and foods for every taste.
Admiring these exquisite displays and having already been told of the short working hours, Johnny was curious to know what method of exchange was used here on Mars to enable the people to obtain these articles.
We are told that all people on the planet are considered as children of the Father, that they are equally treated as such, and all equally produced for the wealth or good of all alike. Therefore, they have an access to goods as they need them. While the servant in one of the shops serves them, he too is in need of things which are not in the shop in which he serves. So all things that serve in channels in which he has a need, give unto him. In that way, the labor of the planet is done for the good of the planet without distinction of profession, for the necessity is all that is recognized. In this way, the man who brings forth the coral rock of which the streets, sidewalks and curbings are made is as important and great as the man who paints the mural of the Creator upon the walls within the buildings and temples or the scientist who brings forth the blessings of the planet or the one who teaches the way of life unto the people. Everybody has equally with plenty of everything, so envy or wants are unknown among the people. Instead, absolute certainty, on Earth known as security, is realized by all.
For the convenience of pedestrians desiring to cross from one side of the street to the other, there are underground tunnels with conveyor system which takes them across.
Traffic is heavy in this section of the city, yet there is no congestion nor confusion and the air is permeated with the sweet fragrance of the flowers growing down the center and on each side of the streets.