t deny that from the narrower business point of view of running a
Post Office the way some women would run--or rather used to run a parlor
store--with a bell on the door, there is something to be said for Mr.
Burleson's philosophy. Nor do I deny that a store can be run and run
successfully and rightly on how much of its customer's money it can save
on each purchase.

But the point is that if I go into a store in Northampton and cannot get
the things I want there I go into some other store.

I cannot go out from our Post Office in Northampton and go over and get
what I want at some other Post Office a little further down the street.

When I and people in fifty-three thousand Post Offices, say Aouch! Mr.
Burleson says Pooh!

Business correspondence between Washington and New York which used to be
a twenty-four hour affair is now half a week.

Letters thousands of men in New York used to receive in their offices in
the early morning before interviews began and when they had time to read
letters and to jot an answer to them at the foot of the page, are not
received and placed before them for their answers until the late morning
or early afternoon when they have other things to do and cannot even read
them.

So one's letters wait over a day--a night and a day, or until one gets
back from Chicago.

Why is it Mr. Burleson takes millions of dollars' worth a day out of the
convenience, out of the profit and out of the efficiency of business in
America and then with a huge national swoop of compliment to himself
points out to people how he has saved them fifty cents?

Why is it that Mr. Burleson charges us a thousand dollars apiece, in our
own private business, to save us fifty cents apiece in public?

Who asked him to?

It is true that there are people in America who really prefer to do
business at a puttering kind of a store no matter how much time it costs
them. They take naturally to a cash and carry store or to a store that
lovingly saves one forty cents' worth of money by taking four dollars'
worth of one's time.

It is probably true that some people want a cash and carry freight-car
Post Office and want Mr. Burleson to save their money for them. Millions
of people would make more money by not having their Post Office save
money for them. Mr. Burleson insists his business is to save people's
money for them whether they can afford to have him save it or not.

The first cause of Mr. Burleson's being fooled about