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.