Keeping that in mind, suppose the Postmaster General discovered that on a good many mail runs--“lines” or “half-lines”--suppose that the chief of the department discovered a condition on many mail runs similar to that I personally know to have existed on a few, in years 1907 and prior. That was, briefly stated, this: The contract called for a _daily_ carriage of so much mail weight and the government _paid_ for that per diem carriage, the days of unavoidable interferences and interruptions included. Suppose that the postoffice authorities discovered that, by reason of the diversion of the mails to other lines, the _daily_ mail service was not rendered; or discovered, as in at least one instance I discovered, that the contracting road (or roads) gave little consideration to the _daily_ service clause save during the _weighing period_, dropping the mail from train--skipping a day’s service--whenever it was to their interests to do so, and often assigning the most flimsy reasons for so doing or assigning no reasons at all? That order of June 7, 1907, would have a tendency to stop that sort of disrespect and abuse of contract stipulations, would it not? Fifth: The writer of the article from which we have quoted appears to have got himself somewhat twisted in his consideration of that order of March 2, 1907. It seems that (see first paragraph of quotation) he would have the reader class it among those several forced reductions which “various government committees” had called unjust. But, further along, it is stated that “surely there could be no other fairer basis of determining the average weight” than that furnished in that order of March 2. I wonder why the railroad lobby so strenuously opposed that order of March, 1907--connived and schemed for its rescinding, until the order of June 7, 1907, gave the gang of corruptionists something still more objectionable to the interests they served? Yes, I wonder why they so hotly opposed that order of March 2? If there could be “no other fairer basis of determining the average weight” in June, 1911 (the publication date of the article from which we have quoted), why was it not fair in March, 1907? And why was it not a fair and just basis for arriving at the average daily mail weights for many weighing periods prior to 1907? Did anyone ever hear any railway man advocating the “fair basis” provided in that order of March? Most certainly The Man on the Ladder never heard of such advocacy. The railway people did not advocate such a “fair” method of ascertaining the average daily mail weight their roads carried during a period of fifteen weeks--or during any other period--_because they were beneficiaries of some very unfair methods and practices which gave them pay for mail weights their roads did not carry_.