“Stop knocking, my son,” has become common in paternal counsel. “Sit into the game and get money. Of course, ‘get it honestly if you can, but get it.’”
“And if I fail,” asks the boy.
“Well, my son, unless you are careful to salt away in some place secure from assessors and raiders as well as from thieves, the chips I have raked in, your best course is to get on the payroll of the gamesters.”
A recent reading says, in effect, that there are dropped into the life of every man moments in which “he has the chance to act the hypocrite or to act the scoundrel.” But when aided and abetted by the law, such “chances” are not merely for the moment. They extend through days and years, and those so aided and abetted usually take both chances—act both the hypocrite and the scoundrel, and to the time limit of their protected opportunity.
But that is neither all nor the worst of it.
This legalized hypocrisy and scoundrelism is now widely known to the honest, productive citizenship of the country, and it is daily becoming better known. What is the result? Simply this:
The law and government administrators are, in permitting such injustices, not only creating class distinction by the enrichment of a few of our citizens and holding the millions to the subsistence level—hundreds of thousands of them to the “bread-line”—not only that, but legalized and protected injustice is dignifying hypocrisy and scoundrelism. It is sapping the moral foundations of a worthy manhood as well as robbing it of its material wealth and earnings.
But what has this sermonizing to do with the parcels post question, some one asks? It has this to do with it!
Of the numerous array of law enriched hypocrites and scoundrels in this country, nowhere can be found more of them to the lineal or square rod than can be counted in the ranks of the favored beneficiaries of existing postal laws and regulations—in the ranks of the opponents to cheapening and bettering the parcels carriage service.