It is true indeed that the Constitution empowers Congress, a creature of the People, "_to establish Post Offices and Post Roads_"; but the purpose of this was _political_, and not pecuniary; it was to bind all the States together in one Union of intelligence and intercourse; it was to keep the outlying and distant parts in touch with the central and seaboard; it is not in any sense a "business" enterprise; the department of the mails is not now and never has been, for any length of time, self-supporting; and it illustrates through and through in its "Star route frauds" and other contracts, in its appointment and removal of postmasters, and in the sickening dependence of primal Service of the people on partisan and corrupting impulses, many of them inherent evils of the much-vaunted Nationalism. But besides all these vital and political objections to the assumption on the part of government of any direct industrial functions whatever, there remains two other fundamental objections, of which the first is, that our national government has received no powers to any such end, and is emphatically prohibited in the Constitution itself from exercising them:--"THE POWERS NOT DELEGATED TO THE UNITED STATES BY THE CONSTITUTION, NOR PROHIBITED BY IT TO THE STATES, ARE RESERVED TO THE STATES RESPECTIVELY OR TO THE PEOPLE." (2) The second remaining objection is, that such proposed action of government could have no tendency at all either to enlarge the Wages-portion, or to increase the industrial efficiency of the laborers, or to diminish the number of competitors at any one point of the wages-scale. As a matter of fact, such governmental action would have precisely the opposite effect at each of these three vital points of wages: employers would have less motive to swell the wages-portion, laborers less motive to improve their capacity, and more motive to congregate locally. Suppose, that at some given point in the scale of wages, free and intelligent competition has been had on both sides, and that the average rate of wages as thus determined proves one dollar per day for each laborer. Suppose further, that everybody outside the employers thinks this is quite too little, and that government accordingly issues a decree that wages at that point must be thereafter one dollar and a half per day. That decree can have no tendency at all to enlarge the _wages-portion_ of those particular employers, because _that_ has already been determined for the next industrial cycle by the general productiveness of the cycle last past, and by the last division under free competition between wages and profits; if, therefore, the decree were carried out, as it never practically could be, the result would be that only two-thirds of the laborers previously employed could be employed then at all, and the remaining third would certainly be worse off than before; and besides the Division of Labor being necessarily lessened, production would be