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Transcriber’s Note: Punctuation and typographical errors have been
corrected without note. A list of the more substantial amendments made to
the text appears at the end.




[Illustration: “The primary step in connection with second-class mail
is 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 presupposition that the
person who reads it has not only the essentially necessary equipment to
do his own thinking, but also a more or less practiced habit of doing it.
It is upon such foundation the superstructure of this volume was built.
It is written in the hope of promoting, or provoking, thought on certain
subjects, along certain lines--not to create or school thinkers. So, if
the reader lacks the necessary cranial furnishing to do his own thinking,
or, if having that, he has a cultivated habit of letting other people do
his hard thinking and an ingrown desire to let them continue doing so,
such reader may as well stop at this period. In fact, he would better
do so. The man who has his thinking done by proxy is possibly as happy
and comfortable on a siding as he would be anywhere--as he is capable
of being. I have no desire to disturb his state or condition of static
felicity. Besides, such a man might “run wild” or otherwise interfere
with the traffic if switched onto the main line.

Emerson has somewheres said, “Beware when God turns a thinker loose in
the world.” Of course Emerson cautioned about constructive and fighting
thinkers, not thinkers who think they know because somebody told them so,
or who think they have thought till they know all about some unknowable
thing--the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of the circle, how
to construct two hills without a valley between, to build a bunghole
bigger than the barrel, and the like.

There are thinkers and thinkers. Emerson had the distinction between
them clearly in mind no doubt when he wrote that quoted warning. So,
also, has the thinking reader. It is for him this volume is planned;
to him its arguments and statements of fact are intended to appeal.
Its chapters have been hurriedly written--some of them written under
conditions of physical distress. The attempts at humor may be attempts
only; the irony may be misplaced or misapplied; the spade-is-a-spade
style may be blunt, harsh or even coarse to the point of offensiveness.
Still, if its reading provokes or otherwise induces thought, the purpose
of its writing, at least in some degree, will have been attained. It is
not asked that the reader agree with the conclusions of the text. If he
read the facts stated and thinks--_thinks for himself_--he will reach
right conclusions. The facts are of easy comprehension. It requires no
superior academic knowledge nor experience of years to understand them
and their significance--their lesson.

Just read and think. Do not let any “official” noise nor breakfast-food
rhetoric so syncopate and segregate your thought as to derail it from
the main line of facts. Lofty, persuasive eloquence is often but the
attractive drapery of planned falsehood, and the beautifully rounded
period is often but a “steer” for an ulterior motive--a “tout” for a
marked-card game. Do not be a “come-on” for any verbal psychic work
or worker. Just stubbornly persist in doing your own thinking, ever
remembering that in this vale of tears, “Plain hoss sense’ll pull you
through when ther’s nothin’ else’ll do.”

As a thinker, you will now have lots of company, and they are still
coming in droves. Respectable company, too. Mr. Roosevelt suddenly
_arrived_ a few days since at Columbus, Ohio. Then there is Mr. Carnegie
and Judge Gary. The senior Mr. Rockefeller, also, has announced, through
a representative, that he is on the way. These latter, of course, have
been thinkers for many years--thinkers on personal service lines chiefly,
it has been numerously asserted. Now, however, if press accounts are
true, they have begun to think, a little at least, about the general
welfare, about the common good--about the other fellow.

Whether this change in mental effort and direction, if change it be, has
followed upon a more careful study of conditions which have so long,
so wastefully, or ruthlessly and viciously governed, or results from
the fact that the advancing years have brought these gentlemen so near
Jericho that they see a gleam of the clearer light and occasionally hear
the “rustle of a wing,” I do not know. Nor need one know nor care. That
they come to join the rapidly-growing company of thinkers is sufficient.

CHICAGO, March 1, 1912.




Postal Riders and Raiders




CHAPTER I.

MAL-ADMINISTRATION RUN RIOT.


This is nice winter weather. However, as The Man on the Ladder was born
some distance prior to the week before last, there’s a tang and chill
in the breezes up here about the ladder top which makes the temperature
decidedly less congenial than is the atmosphere in the editorial rooms of
my publisher.

But, say, the view from this elevation is mighty interesting. The
mobilization of the United States soldiery far to the Southwest; the
breaking up of corrals and herds to the West; the starting of activities
about mining camps in the West and Northwest; the lumber jacks and teams
in the spruce forests of the north are indeed inspiring things to look
upon; and over the eastern horizon, there in the lumber sections of New
England and to the Southeast, in the soft maple, the cottonwood and
basswood districts, the people appear to be industriously and happily
active; away to the South----

Say! What’s that excitement over there at Washington, D. C.?

“Hello, Central! Hello! Yes, this is The Man on the Ladder.”

“Get me Washington, D. C., on the L.-D. in a hurry--and get Congressman
Blank on that end of the wire. The House is in session, and certainly he
ought to be found in not more than five minutes.”

It is something unusually gratifying to see that activity about that
sleepy group of capitol buildings--the “House of Dollars,” the house of
the _hoi polloi_, and the White House--a scene that will linger in the
freshness and fragrance of my remembrance until the faculty of memory
fades away. There are messengers and pages flitting about from house to
house as if the prairies were afire behind them. Excited Congressmen are
in heated discourse on the esplanade, on the capitol steps and in the
corridors and cloak rooms. And there are numerous groups of Senators,
each a kingly specimen of what might be a _real man_ if there was not so
much pickled dignity oozing from his stilted countenance and pose. There
now go four of them to the White House, probably to see the President,
our smiling William. I wonder what they are after. I wonder----

“Yes, yes! Hello! Is that you, Congressman Jim?” “Yes? What can I do for
you?”

“Well, this is The Man on the Ladder, Jim, and I want to know in the
name of heaven--any other spot you can think of quickly will do as
well--what’s the occasion and cause for all that external excitement and
activity I see around the capitol building? There must be a superthermic
atmosphere inside both the Senate and House to drive so many of our
statesmen to the open air and jolt them into a quickstep in their
movements. Now go on and tell, and tell me straight.”

Well, Well! If I did not know my Congressman friend so well, I would
scarcely be persuaded to believe what he has just phoned me.

It appears that a _conspiracy_--yes, I mean just that--a conspiracy has
been entered into between our Chief Executive, a coterie of Senators,
possibly a Congressman or two and a numerous gang of corporate and vested
interests, cappers and beneficiaries, to penalize various independent
weekly and monthly periodicals. Penalize is what I said. But that word
is by no means strong enough. The intent of the conspirators was--and
_is--to put certain periodicals out of business and to establish a press
censorship in the person of the Postmaster General as will enable him to
put any periodical out of existence which does not print what it is told
to publish_.

It would seem that when the Postoffice appropriation bill left the House,
where all revenue measures must originate, it was a fairly clean bill,
carrying some $258,000,000 of the people’s money _for the legitimate
service of the people_. Of course it carried many service excesses,
just as it has carried in each of the past thirty or forty years, and
several of those _looting_ excesses so conspicuous in every one of the
immediately past fifteen years.

But otherwise, it may be stated, the House approval carried this
bill to the Senate in its usual normal cleanliness. It was referred
to the Senate Committee on Postoffices and Postroads, the members of
which, _after conference with the President_, annexed to it an alleged
_revenue-producing_ “rider.”

This rider I will later on discuss for the information of my readers.
Here I desire only to call the reader’s attention to the fact that under
the Constitution of the United States the United States Senate has no
more right or authority to originate legislation for producing federal
revenues than has the Hamilton Club of Chicago or the Golf Club at Possum
Run, Kentucky. But the conspirators--I still use the milder term, though
I feel like telling the truth, which could be expressed only by some term
that would class their action as that of _assassinating education_ in
this country. These conspirators, I say, did not hesitate to exceed and
violate their constitutional obligations and prerogatives. They added a
revenue-producing “rider” to House resolution 31,539. The rider was to
raise certain kinds of second-class matter from a one-cent per pound rate
to a four-cent per pound rate. Not only that, but they managed to induce
Postmaster General Hitchcock to push into the Senate several _ulterior
motive_ reports and letters to boost the outlawry to successful passage.
But, more of this later.

My friend Congressman Jim has just informed me that the conspirators were
beginning to fear their ability even to get their “rider” to the post for
a start; that many members and representatives of the Periodical Press
Association of New York City, as well as those of other branches of the
printing industry, hearing of the attempt to put this confiscatory rider
over in the closing hours--the crooked hours--of Congress, hurried to
Washington and sought to inform Senators and members of the House of the
_truth about second-class mail matter_. Congressman Jim also informed me
that a delegation representing the publishing interests of Chicago had
arrived a few hours before and were scarcely on the ground before “things
began to happen.” “People talk about Chicagoans making a noise,” said Jim
in his L.-D. message, “but when it comes to doing things you can count on
them to go to it suddenly, squarely and effectively. That delegation is
one of the causes of the excitement which you notice here. Good-by.”

Friend Jim, being a Chicago boy, may be pardoned even when a little
profuse or over-confident in speaking of what his townsmen can do,
but Congressman Jim is a live-wire Congressman, and has been able to
do several things himself while on his legislative job, even against
stacked-up opposition.

While reporting on Congressman Jim’s message from Washington, I phoned
the leading features to the office and have just received peremptory
orders to write up not only this attempt but other attempts to raid the
postal revenues of the country by means of crooked riders and otherwise.
So there is nothing to do but go to it.

Incidentally, my editor, knowing my tendency to write with a club,
cautions me to adopt the dignified style of composition while writing
upon this subject. I assure my readers that I shall be as dignified as
the heritage of my nature will allow and the subject warrants. If I
occasionally fall from the expected dignified altitude I trust the reader
will be indulgent, will charge the fault, in part at least, to my remote
Alsatian ancestor. He fought with a club. I have therefore an inherited
tendency to write (fight), with a club. So here goes.

In opening on this important subject, for vastly important it is from
whatever angle one views it, I wish first to speak of the governmental
postoffice department and then of Postmaster Generals.

First I will say that this government has not had, at least within
the range of my mature recollection, any business management of its
postoffice department above the level of that given to Reuben’s country
store of Reubenville, Arkansas.

The second fact I desire to put forward is that since the days of
Benjamin Franklin there have been but few, a possible three or four,
Postmaster Generals who had any qualifications whatsoever, business
or other, to direct the management of so large a business as that
comprehended in the federal postal service. Not only are the chiefs,
the Postmaster Generals, largely or wholly lacking in business and
executive ability to manage so large an industrial and public service,
but their chosen assistants (Second, Third and on up to the Fourth or
Fifth “Assistant Postmaster Generals”), have been and _are_ likewise
lacking in most or _all_ of the essential qualifications fundamentally
necessary to the management and direction of large industrial or service
business enterprises. I venture to say that none of them have read, and
few of them even heard of, the splendid book written by Mr. Frederick
W. Taylor explaining, really giving the A, B, C of the “Science of
Business Management,” which for several years has been so beneficial in
the business and industrial methods in this country as almost to have
worked an economic revolution. I equally doubt if they have even read the
series of articles in one of the monthly periodicals, which Postmaster
General Hitchcock and his coterie of conspirators tried to stab in the
back with that Senate “rider” on the postoffice appropriation bill. Yet
Mr. Taylor wrote these articles, and Mr. Taylor must _know_ a great deal
about economic, scientific business management. _He must know_, otherwise
the Steel Corporation, the great packing concerns, several railroads,
the Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company, the Link Belt Company and
a number of other large concerns, as well as the trained editors of
several engineering and industrial journals, would not have so generally,
likewise profitably, adopted and approved his recommendations and
directions.

Yet while most of these “Assistant Postmaster Generals” and _their_
subassistants have been glaringly--yes, discouragingly--incompetent
to manage and direct the work of their divisions, some of them have
shown an elegance of aptitude, a finished adroitness in using their
official positions to misappropriate, _likewise to appropriate to their
own coffers_, the funds and revenues of the Postoffice Department.
Reference needs only to be made to the grace and deftness displayed by
August W. Machen, George W. Beavers and their copartners. The one was
Superintendent of Free Delivery, the other Superintendent of Salaries
and Allowances, and the way they, for several years, made the postoffice
funds and revenues “come across” beat any get-rich-quick concern about
forty rods in any mile heat that was reported in the sporting columns of
the daily press.

General Leonard Wood, Congressman Loud and a few other reputable
officials induced President Roosevelt to institute an investigation. The
investigation was made under the direction of Joseph L. Bristow. Then
things were uncovered; that is, some things were uncovered. In speaking
of the nastiness disclosed William Allen White in 1904 wrote, in part, as
follows:

“Most of the Congressmen knew there was something wrong in Beaver’s
department; and Beaver knew of their suspicions; so Congressmen generally
got from him what they _went after_, and the crookedness thrived.

“When it was stopped by President Roosevelt, this crookedness was so
far-reaching that when a citizen went to the postoffice to buy a stamp
the cash register which gave him his change was full of graft, the