Then, there are those rural carriers who refused to do as Mr. DeGraw, Fourth Assistant Postmaster General, told them to do. You read the papers of course, and--you believe them, of course, though most of you say, “Of course, I don’t believe ’em.” Well, it was broadly published that the _Rural Free Delivery News_ had the temerity to publish--not merely to insinuate, mind you--that Mr. Hitchcock’s showing of a little $220,000 surplus for the year ended June 30, 1911, was made possible only _by the failure of the Postoffice Department to make a plain, valid charge of $7,201,149.64 expenditures for that same fiscal year of 1911_! Those are _not_ the exact words used in giving publicity to the asserted fact by the _Rural Free Delivery News_, but that is the meat in the nut the publication cracked. It appears that the published statement was closely contiguous to the facts. At any rate, its nestling juxtaposition to the truth was such that it appears to have neither looked nor listened well to the department. There is a presidential campaign on the speedway at this time, with all its usual concomitants of cackle, clack, cluck and other atmospheric disturbances. Such a published truth--if truth it is, and it certainly displays a marked resemblance in both form and feature to that article so extremely rare in campaign clutter--the appearance of such a truth on the speedway has a tendency to “blanket” some candidate or jockey him into the fence. With a view no doubt, to guarding against such possibility, that machine so much used in recent years to smooth down the rough places in administration roadways was turned onto the track. A hostile opposition, always somewhat harsh and careless in its language, calls it “the steam roller.” So the steam roller, with Fourth Assistant Postmaster General DeGraw at the wheel and manipulating the levers, rolled out among the rural carriers. But it appears that it did not roll over them. There are forty-odd thousand rural carriers and, of course, it would have to be some “steam roller” to mutilate or seriously dent the ranks of so numerous a body of men; especially of men who travel about with the fragrance of the clover blossom and the corn bloom in their nostrils. They just wouldn’t be rolled and, it is reported they so informed Mr. DeGraw in very polite and easily understood language. They would not demand of the publisher of their association organ that he retract and, to date, the _Rural Free Delivery News_ has, so far as I have seen, shown no sign of either intention or inclination to back away from or in any way modify its charge which, in effect, was that the showing of a surplus--of even a little “runabout” surplus of $220,000 for the fiscal year of 1911--is a “faked” showing--a showing made possible only by carrying $7,201,149.64 of 1911 expenditures over to 1912 account. May the _Rural Free Delivery News_ live long in the land and flourish.