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tigate a plan to deliver mail on rural delivery routes to our farmers and country residents. The law was treated about as respectfully as the long-headed Jesse Hawley who wrote a series of articles advocating the building of the Erie Canal; a certain paper printed a few of them, but the editor sent the remainder back saying he could not use them—they were making his sheet an object of ridicule. Eighteen years later the canal was built and in the first year brought in a revenue of $492,664. So with the first Rural Free Delivery appropriation—the postmaster general to whose hands that first $50,000 was entrusted for experimental purposes, refused to try it and sent the money back to the treasury. Today the Rural Free Delivery is an established fact, of immeasurable benefit; and if any of the appropriations for it are not expended it is not because they are being sent back to the treasury by scrupulous officials. Rural delivery routes diverge from our towns and cities and give the country people the advantages of a splendid post office system. Good roads to these cities would give them a score of advan-