Transcriber’s Note: Punctuation and typographicalerrors have been corrected without note. A list of the more substantialamendments made to the text appears at the end.
“The primary step in connection with second-class mailis taken in the forests of the American continent.”—Senator J. P.Dolliver.
Postal Riders and Raiders
Are we fools? If we are not fools, why then continue to
act foolishly, thus inviting railroad, express company
and postoffice officials to treat
us as if we were fools?
By The Man On The Ladder
(W. H. GANTZ)
Issued By The Independent Postal League
CHICAGO, U. S. A.
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE AUTHOR
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Price $1.50, Prepaid to Any Address.
Independent Postal League,
No. 5037 Indiana Ave.,
Chicago
FOREWORD TO THE READER.
The mud-sills of this book are hewn from the presuppositionthat the person who reads it has not only the essentiallynecessary equipment to do his own thinking, butalso a more or less practiced habit of doing it. It is uponsuch foundation the superstructure of this volume wasbuilt. It is written in the hope of promoting, or provoking,thought on certain subjects, along certain lines—not tocreate or school thinkers. So, if the reader lacks thenecessary cranial furnishing to do his own thinking, or, ifhaving that, he has a cultivated habit of letting other peopledo his hard thinking and an ingrown desire to let themcontinue doing so, such reader may as well stop at thisperiod. In fact, he would better do so. The man whohas his thinking done by proxy is possibly as happy andcomfortable on a siding as he would be anywhere—as heis capable of being. I have no desire to disturb his stateor condition of static felicity. Besides, such a man might“run wild” or otherwise interfere with the traffic ifswitched onto the main line.
Emerson has somewheres said, “Beware when Godturns a thinker loose in the world.” Of course Emersoncautioned about constructive and fighting thinkers, notthinkers who think they know because somebody told themso, or who think they have thought till they know all aboutsome unknowable thing—the ratio of the diameter to thecircumference of the circle, how to construct two hillswithout a valley between, to build a bunghole bigger thanthe barrel, and the like.
There are thinkers and thinkers. Emerson had the[6]distinction between them clearly in mind no doubt whenhe wrote that quoted warning. So, also, has the thinkingreader. It is for him this volume is planned; to him itsarguments and statements of fact are intended to appeal.Its chapters have been hurriedly written—some of themwritten under conditions of physical distress. Theattempts at humor may be attempts only; the irony may bemisplaced or misapplied; the spade-is-a-spade style maybe blunt, harsh