CHAPTER XII. RAILWAY AND EXPRESS RAIDERS.

I intended to take up here the railway mail-pay and postal car rental steal and then the infringement by express companies on the postal service and its revenues. However, since I have quoted Section 181 of the federal statutes governing, I think it as well, or better, here to take notice of the express companies’ raiding into the postal revenues—raidings into the field of service which the law specifically reserved for the operation of the nation’s Postoffice Department.

Let me ask the reader to turn back a few pages and read again that Section 181 of the federal statutes. Let me ask him also to think a moment about the character of small parcels and packages the express companies carry. To help our memories a little, let us note a few items.

The express companies carry and deliver for the general public money remittance for any sum. For carrying sealed remittance of a hundred dollars or less—for the carriage and delivery of which the government has provided in its postal money order regulations—the express companies are criminals under that Section 181.

Had the express company “influence” not reached federal legislators, it is not only highly probable, but almost a certainty, that our postal service would today be both prepared and permitted to transmit and deliver sums of money to any amount and at rates lower than now charged by the express companies.

If a publisher has ten or a hundred thousand copies of a book to deliver to mail-order purchasers, some express company steps in and makes him an offer for delivery, a trifle lower than the 8-cent-a-pound rate charged by the Postoffice Department for the same service.

In such instance, the express company making such tender of delivery on any “post route” is a criminal, under the specific wording of that Section 181.

In previous pages of this volume the reader will find testimony of people and of firms that pay large carriage bills for second-class matter. Among this testimony are found statements (some of them under jurat), that the express companies carry periodicals in bulk of[256] five to ten pounds and upward from New York to Chicago, and to other points equally distant from office of publication, at a rate materially below the cent-a-pound rate charged by the government for postal carriage.

In one instance, it is known that one express company has offered to contract to carry periodicals from New York to Chicago over a certain connecting railroad at a rate of one-half cent a pound.

What does that mean?

It means simply this:—The railroad handling such express business hauls express cars en train with the United States mail, and the railroad handling such express consignments of periodical mail matter makes the New York-Chicago haul at somewhere around one-fourth of a cent a pound. That is, it is somewhere around one-fourth cent a pound unless the carrying road takes more than half the express company’s contract charge.

“What more?”

The express company contracting such business and the railroad handling it are criminals under that Section 181 of the federal statutes.

In this connection I wish to say that under a strict—yes, under a just—construction of that Section 181, I am not sure but that the publishers party to such contracts are not also parties to the crime.

From the letter of that section, I confess an inability to see any other construction of it than that previously stated. The United States government, or at least its legislative department, in 1845, intended that all such matter—letters (sealed matter), “packets,” or packages and parcels, should be turned over to the Postoffice Department for transportation, handling and delivery.

Why has not the intent of that law been carried out?

Why are the express companies permitted, and for years been permitted, so brazenly to perpetrate criminal violations of that postal statute? Why and how does it chance that they (the express companies), can violate the law for years and go unscathed—go unchastized for plain, open, brazen violation of that Section 181 of the federal statutes? Yes, why?

There is but one answer; there can be but one answer.

Federal executives, federal legislators and federal judicial officials have connived with private individuals and interests to nullify or make abortive that Section 181.

[257]

Have you ever read any of Allan A. Benson’s writings? “No?” Then you have missed something you should never miss again, should opportunity perambulate around your way. Allan A. Benson says something when he writes—says it blunt, plain and hard—says it in language that guarantees its own truth—says it in an open, broad way in which no man, “even though a fool” or a joy-rider, can go astray. In both the February and the March, 1911, numbers of Pearson’s Magazine, Mr. Benson writes on the parcels post as a subject. I shall probably quote from him extendedly when I reach that division of our general subject in this volume. Mr. Benson knows his subject. And what is didactically of more importance, he makes the reader know he knows it.

Well, even with a fear that I may here reprint from him some paragraphs for which I may have a greater need later, I cannot refrain from quoting him in answer to those several “whys” I have just written, anent the violations of that Section 181 of the postal statutes.

Following his quotation of that section of the federal statutes, Mr. Benson says:

The purpose of this law was to give the United States government a monopoly of the mail-carrying privilege. The law was first enacted in 1845, and, although the statutes have been revised from time to time, it stands today in precisely the form herein given.

On the face of the law the express companies are law-breakers. But it is not enough to look at the face of a law. Everybody except the government is prohibited from carrying letters and packets—but what are “packets?” A letter is a letter; but what is a packet?

Foolish question? Yes, it ought to be—but it isn’t. The whole express business rests upon the answer to this question. When the law was enacted, there was no doubt about the meaning of the word packet, because there were no express companies to raise the question, and everybody knew that packet was a synonym, used more frequently then than now, for “parcel.” Express companies did not come along to raise the question until forty years ago.

Even the express companies, when they began business, had no doubt about the meaning of the word “packet.” This is proved by the fact that whenever they handled packets, they required shippers to affix postage stamps. But recognition of the government’s mail monopoly had a strong tendency to curtail express business, and there came a time when the express companies decided to evade the law, leave off the stamps and openly compete with the government.

See how ridiculous the express companies have since made your government. In 1883, a mail carrier who had stolen tea from a packet, made the defense at his trial that since a packet of tea was neither a letter nor a parcel, the law which prohibited tampering with sealed letters or parcels could not be invoked against[258] him. United States Judge McCreary, who sat in the case, was not so minded. He told the jury to disregard the prisoner’s defense. In other words, a package was not only a parcel, but presumably a packet. The judge split no hairs about definitions. The mail carrier had stolen tea. That was enough. He was sent to prison.

See how another judge, years later, construed “packet.” Nathan B. Williams, of Fayetteville, Ark., brought suit in the United States Circuit Court to prevent express companies from carrying packets. When the last judge had had his guess about the conundrum, Mr. Williams was judicially informed that the government mail monopoly, so far as packets are concerned, extends only to “packets of letters.” In other words, a packet is a packet of letters; that and nothing more. Here are the judge’s words:

“While Congress has full constitutional powers to reserve to the postal department a monopoly of the business of receiving, transporting and delivering mails, and, in the exercise of such rights, may enact such laws, regulations and rules as will effectively preserve its monopoly, yet this monopoly is intended (see the Judge read the mind of the Congress of 1845), to extend only to letters, packets of letters, and the like mailable matter, and Congress has never attempted to extend this monopoly to the transportation of merchandise in parcels weighing less than four pounds, nor to prohibit express companies from making regular trips over established post routes, or from engaging in the business of carrying such parcels for hire.”

That is what the court says—and what the court says goes. Here is what the present Attorney General of the United States says—and what the Attorney General says does not go. The Receivers’ and Shippers’ Association of Cincinnati asked the Attorney General to join in Mr. Williams’ suit, which the Attorney General declined to do for this reason:

“The department has made a very complete study of the proposition and agrees with Mr. Williams upon the law, except as to the one point, namely, that there has been an administrative construction against the proposition for over forty years, and the chances are that a suit will be defeated on that ground.”

In other words while the Attorney General believes the express companies have been and are violating the law, the postoffice department, for forty years, has let them do it, and it seems useless to try to enforce the law.

Here, then, is the absurd situation with regard to packets into which the express companies have forced the United States government:

If a packet contains tea, and a mail carrier steals some of it, it is a packet without doubt, and the mail carrier is sent to prison.

If an express company carries a packet of tea, the packet is not a packet, because a packet is only a packet of letters.

But a mail carrier will find out rather quickly, whether a packet of tea weighing less than four pounds, is a packet or not, if he carry the packet for his own profit instead of turning over to the government the amount of the postage. Let the fact become known to the government, and he will be arrested as quickly as an officer can reach him.

[259]

Now: Is or is not this juggling with the law? If it is not juggling with the law, what, in your opinion, would be juggling with the law? If the foregoing decisions sound like good law to you, perhaps you ought to be upon the federal bench. You might shine as a judge. You don’t shine as a voter. You think, but you don’t act. You don’t put your thought behind your ballot. You let somebody else put his thought behind your ballot.

That is pretty plain talk—talk which should do us readers some good. It should, at least, enlighten us as to these facts.

First: The express companies have been criminally trenching upon and into the service of the Postoffice Department for forty years or more—have been raiding what were originally intended to be the legitimate and legally protected revenues of that department.

Second: Such raidings have been winked at by our federal legislators and condoned, and the raiders exonerated by juridic opinions which were so bald, bare, brazen and cheap that they would make a practiced confidence or get-rich-quick man blush.

I intended to write further here about this raid of the express companies on postal revenues, but have concluded to defer much of what I intended to say in handling this phase of our general subject to the closing division of this volume—the parcels post. One reason for doing so is that today it is not the express companies which command and direct the raidings that express business is making, and for some years has made, into what rightly and legally should be the field of postal revenue gathering. Twenty years ago, a trifle more or less, when John Wanamaker was Postmaster General, he stated to a committee or delegation calling on him, that there were four insuperable objections to the establishment of a parcels post at that time. He named the four objections. They were, if I remember rightly, “The Adams Express Company, the American Express Company, the Wells-Fargo Express Company and the United States Express Company.” It may be he named the Southern or some other express company instead of the United States Express Company. I cannot remember. At any rate he named four express companies as the “insuperable objections” to the establishment of a parcels post.

Well, he was right for the period in which he spoke. But twenty years is a long time in a swift, governmentally aided get-rich-quick age or country like ours. There are some dozen or more express companies now—a dozen or more on paper—quasi-express companies.

[260]

The railroad companies and railroad officials control the express companies and the express business of this country today.

A departmental report of the government showed, as stated in the Saturday Evening Post of May 27, 1911, “that the four principal express companies have thirty-seven directors, of whom thirty-two are residents of New York, two are residents of Chicago and three of San Francisco. These express directors are also directors in twenty-five of the leading railroad systems of the United States.”

So, today, if Mr. Wanamaker were inclined to do so, he would probably revise his statement of twenty or more years ago. He would probably say that the railroads of this country stood as the insuperable objection or obstruction to the establishment and operation of an efficient, cheap and serviceable parcels post—the failure or neglect to do which is running one of the greatest raids into postal revenues this or any other nation has ever known.

Mr. Albert W. Atwood in writing to this point under the general caption “The Great Express Companies,” in the American Magazine, February, 1911, issue, says:

Perhaps you have thought of all this before, but do you also know that the six largest express companies are among our greatest bankers? With them, in one year, the public has deposited $352,590,814 and their transactions in money orders, travelers’ checks, letters of credit and bills of exchange rival those of the most powerful banks. This business, unlike any other form of banking is under no governmental jurisdiction and goes untaxed. It is made possible only by using the machinery of the regular banks, although to these the express companies pay no revenue. In the money-order line, express companies compete with the postoffice and do about one-third as much business as the government. The American Express alone has handled nearly 17,000,000 money orders in one year. That the public has confidence in the safety of the express companies as banks admits of no doubt, and it has been credibly reported that in the panic of 1907 money was withdrawn from banks, which the people did not trust, and invested in express money orders.

Transportation in a multitude of forms and branch banking do not comprise the sum total of express activities. The surplus funds of these huge institutions have grown large enough to require constant investment, and the express companies form a close second to the savings banks and insurance companies as the most dependable, regular and important class of investors in railroad securities. Diversified as the functions of the express companies have become, success has more than kept pace with their extension into varied fields, and a keen, wideawake public interest in the express business is demanded, not alone by the public and necessary character of the business itself, but still more by the extraordinary return which the companies receive for service performed.

[261]

Six companies control more than 90% of the country’s express business, and of these the Adams is one of the oldest and most powerful. Organized more than fifty-six years ago, its capital stock had grown to $10,000,000 by 1866, in which year the members of the association, as the shareholders are called, received a stock dividend of $2,000,000. The $10,000,000 of stock itself did not represent shares issued for cash. According to the company’s own reports, no shares were ever issued for cash. The 100,000 shares were given to members of the association to represent each member’s pro rata ownership in the assets which had accumulated from earnings. As late as 1890, according to the census figures, the company had an actual investment in property employed in its business of but $1,128,195. Yet it had been paying 8% dividends for many years, or 80% on the actual value of the property in use. In 1898 it distributed $12,000,000 of its own bonds to stockholders, these bonds to be secured by the deposit in trust of the surplus funds not used in the express business. At this time the company reduced its dividend rate to 4%, but as 4% was also paid on the bonds, the stockholders did not suffer any loss of income. By 1904 the dividend rate had mounted to 10%, the bond interest remaining at 4%. In 1907, $24,000,000 additional bonds were given to the stockholders, likewise secured by another fat surplus, and like the first issue, paying 4% in interest. Dividends on the stock have since been maintained at 12% and there has grown up another surplus of nearly $25,000,000 which must soon be disbursed. Meanwhile the property actually employed for express purposes has grown to but something more than $6,000,000.

Moreover, there is another large fund slowly but surely accumulating in connection with the 1907 bond distribution. This 1907 gift to the shareholders was in the form of a bond issue secured by the deposit of stocks and bonds of other corporations formerly owned by the company itself. The deed of trust provides that if the income from these stocks and bonds is more than enough to pay interest of 4% a year on the $24,000,000 of Adams Express bonds, the surplus shall accrue and be distributed in 1947 among the holders of the Adams Express bonds. As a matter of fact there is a computed excess income derived in this way of $151,517.50 a year and by 1947 this will have mounted up to more than $6,000,000, not allowing for compound interest. Here is a 50% extra dividend being nourished along toward maturity. If there is any better example of being able to eat one’s cake and have it too, I have yet to hear of it.

At the outbreak of the civil war the Adams Express Company turned its routes in the Southern States, in which it had enjoyed a complete monopoly, over to the Adams-Southern Express Company, created by the Georgia courts for the purpose of assuming this business. The property of the association was to be represented by 5,000 shares, of which 558 were then issued. The Adams Express Company has held to the present day a dominant interest in this association, which it created to facilitate business during the war. After hostilities ceased, it resumed some of its Southern routes by agreement with the Adams-Southern Express Company, whose name had meanwhile been changed to the Southern[262] Express Co. The two companies still work in common and use the same wagons and offices in many places.

But close as the Southern Express is to its parent company, it has a separate enough existence to justify a separate account of its money-making capabilities. Referring to the original 558 shares of stock, the secretary and treasurer of the Southern Express says: “None of the original twenty-four stockholders are living and there is no existing record to show how much was realized from the distribution.” This does not help us much, but in another report to the Interstate Commerce Commission the company appears to know what these records showed, for it says “none of its stock was ever issued for real property, equipment, acquisition of securities, or for any other purpose in the sense in which the issuance of stock is understood in connection with corporations.” But we do find that in 1866 the number of shares was increased to 30,000 and distributed to the owners as a stock dividend. Plainly, the civil war did not impoverish the express carriers. Then in 1886 enough more new stock was created to give the owners five shares in place of every three which they already held, so that there are now 50,000 shares.

Five hundred and fifty-eight shares of stock, the circumstances of whose issue are known to no one living, have sprouted into 50,000 shares by the mere process of paying stock dividends. Dividends of 8%, or $400,000 a year, are now paid upon the 50,000 shares, although the entire value of the company’s property, real estate, buildings, equipment, furniture, etc., was only $944,179 on June 30, 1909. Here are dividends of 8% on $5,000,000 stock, or more than 40% on the value of the property employed in the business. And this is not all. The Southern Express Company owns high-grade stocks and bonds valued at almost $4,000,000, which may some fine day form the basis of another melon.

If the Adams Express Company and its Southern associate were the only ones to shower their members with unheard-of profits we might be inclined to think they had been visited with peculiar and exceptional good fortune. Such is far from being the case. Let us proceed alphabetically and see how the members of the American Express Company have fared.

The Adams and American are easily the two most important of the express companies, and control, or have controlled at various times, all the other important companies with the exception of the Pacific. Since 1868 the capital of the American has stood at $18,000,000, this stock having been issued in exchange for the shares of the original American Express Company and the Merchants’ union Express Company, under articles of merger and association dated November 25, 1868. The company’s books show that $5,300,000 was the value of the assets taken over at that time. There was $183,819 in cash; $1,261,023 in securities; $2,200,300 in real estate, less a mortgage of $505,143; and $1,260,000 in equipment; making a total of $4,400,000. New stock was sold which realized $900,000 in cash, making a total of $5,300,000 in assets for the $18,000,000 of stock. No new stock has been issued since 1868 and no further cash has been paid into the treasury except from earnings.

From its own balance sheet we find the company now has less than $10,000,000 in real property and equipment, all of which does not represent property[263] employed in the service, because the item “real property” includes real estate investments.

With an original investment in cash and property of but one-third the par value of its capital stock, the American Express Company now pays dividends on this stock of 12% a year and for many years paid 6, 8 and 10%. Moreover, it has accumulated from its earnings a fund of more than $20,000,000 which is invested in readily negotiable stocks and bonds, the yearly income on which amounted to $1,178,000 in 1909. Among these securities are such high-grade railroad stocks as Chicago and Northwestern, Northern Pacific, New Haven, New York Central and union Pacific.

Six years ago (1904-5), the substantial assets of the American Express Company had grown from $5,300,000, the amount fixed in the articles of association, to six times that amount. These assets, let me repeat, did not represent new capital put into the business, for none whatever was put in, but were accumulations of earnings over and above funds required to carry on the business and pay dividends of 8% upon $18,000,000 of stock. Even the association’s own shareholders failed to see the need of such a treasure and in 1906 a committee representing them addressed the officers of the company thus: “It is evident the management has faith in its ability to conserve the vast fund so accumulated beyond the needs of the business, without wasting the same or embarking it in new and dangerous ventures, and while we personally neither criticise them nor express any want of confidence in them, still it is our opinion, and that of many representative holders of long standing, experience and means, that this immense fund should not be further rapidly increased to become a source of temptation to the possible weakness or a snare to the possible inexperience of their successors.”

I would like to quote further from both Mr. Benson and Mr. Atwood. The former writes two articles which appeared in Pearson’s Magazine in February and March, 1911, clearly showing not only why we have no parcels post, but, to some extent, the raid which the express companies have made and are making on postal service revenues that rightfully and legally should accrue to the government. The latter, Mr. Atwood, speaks in three splendid articles in the American Magazine (February, March and April), under the caption, “The Great Express Monopoly.” Each of the gentlemen handles his subject masterfully. Each of them set forth facts which every American citizen should know and, knowing, should go after every public official who has ignorantly permitted or knowingly condoned, aided or cloaked the criminal raiding into the legitimate field of the postal service and revenues. Every one who can should get hold of and read the five articles referred to. I shall probably quote further from them in the closing division of this volume, but to appreciate them fully one should read them entire and connectedly.

[264]

Sufficient has here been said, however, to show any fair-minded reader that our express companies, or the railways which use the express companies merely as pinch-bars to pry into our postal revenues on the one hand and as cloaks for excessive rates to the general public for handling light or parcels freight on the other, are illegally taking millions of dollars annually for a service which should be, and which was originally intended to be, rendered by the Postoffice Department.

I say that the express companies, or the railroads over which they operate and which, today, virtually own and control them, are doing an illegal business—a business carried on in flat contravention and defiance of the plain letter of the federal statutes.

I say further: The contravention of law which makes this vast lootage—steal—possible has no other basis for its past and present raiding of the field of postal revenues than corrupted federal legislators and, either corrupted or loose screwed, juridic opinions which are permitted to stand in place of the plainly worded statute of 1845.

And there is a colossal irony in the brazen effrontery with which this raiding of the postal revenues by the express companies has been, and is, carried on.

On the one hand, we have public officials cackling about its costing the government 4 to 9 cents a pound to transport and handle second-class mail matter—rather, making voluble and voluminous guesses that it costs from 4 to 9 cents a pound—while on the other hand, the express companies enter into contracts with publishers to carry and deliver at line stations that same second-class matter at one-half cent a pound.

When it is remembered that the express companies must “split” with the transporting railroad to the extent of 40 to 63 per cent of their gross haulage and delivery charge, the talk of its costing the government 4 to 9 cents to do what the express companies do for a half-cent—in some cases possibly, for less even than that—passes, from the domain of irony and becomes disgusting twaddle.

The postal rate for carrying merchandise parcels not exceeding four pounds is 16 cents a pound. That rate is, as previously stated, outrageously high and the maximum weight of four pounds is almost as outrageously low. Both the postal weight and rate have been held for years at the figures named, it has been numerously asserted[265] and is generally believed, by the “influence” of express company and railroad lobbying in Congress. The result is that by far the larger portion of light or parcels shipments go by express instead of by mail, as it was clearly intended in the law of 1845 they should go.

To get this business, the express companies cut under the government charge of 16 cents a pound, as they can both easily and profitably do.

Nor do they hold the shipper to a maximum of four pounds for any single package or parcel. In fact, they set up practically no maximum parcels weight, and they deliver at any postoffice or station along their lines of service. In fact, again, the express companies now have, it is asserted, a sort of compensating agreement by which the company collecting the business can have another company make deliveries, each company taking its prorated share of the profit on the carriage and handling of the parcel or consignment.

Such arrangement, it will readily be seen, enables the express company to accept package consignments for delivery at almost any point in the country, if on a railroad, or for delivery at some rail point near the addressed destination of the parcel.

Then, too, as Mr. Benson points out, the railroads and railroad officials and owners are also controlling owners of the express companies. Being so, they do not hesitate virtually to “club” the public into shipping its parcels freight by express. They do this by fixing a minimum weight in their freight tariffs. That minimum is 100 pounds. That is, it will cost the shipper as much to send a four or ten pound package to destination by fast freight as it would cost him to send 100 pounds.

The foregoing is sufficient to show the reader that the express companies are permitted to raid the legitimate business of the Postoffice Department—or what should be and, under the law, was intended to be the business of the Postoffice Department.

The express companies, or their railroad control—which amounts to the same thing—also forage the field of third-class matter which, by law, was made a preserve of the Postoffice Department.

The postal rate for third-class mail matter is eight cents per pound. That rate is, of course, away too high. With The Man on the Ladder the conviction remains, as it has been a conviction for twenty or more years, that the postal rate of eight cents per pound[266] for third-class matter is three times what that rate should be—easily double the charge that should be made to cover the legitimate cost to the government for handling it, which cost is all that the department should seek or be permitted to collect.

Trusting that the reader will find excuse for me, I desire to repeat here what, in substance, I have written into an earlier page:

The postal service of the nation should not be made a revenue-producing service, any more than the War, Navy, Interior, Justice or other departments of the federal service should be made revenue-producers.

If the people pay—have paid and are willing to pay—the actual cost of an efficient, honestly administered and managed postal service, that is all they should be asked or expected to pay.

But returning to the express companies’ raidings into the postoffice revenues, let me here assert what every observant citizen of intelligence knows: The express companies are today carrying millions of pounds of books—leather, cloth and paper bound books—at a rate for carriage and delivery materially below the government’s excessive rate of eight cents a pound.

These same express companies are today carrying thousands of tons of catalogues, pamphlets, business, political and other circulars, color prints of apparel fabrics, etc., etc., which the Postoffice Department ought to handle—and, under the law, should handle, and, but for that extortionate rate of eight cents a pound would handle.

It has been repeatedly asserted by persons who are familiar with carriage and handling costs, both in the postal and private service, that the postal rate of 8 cents a pound for third-class mail matter has been maintained—and is maintained—by reason of corrupt and corrupting influences (the coat-pocket “dropped roll,” the “job” bribe, the “deposit slip,” etc., etc.), which express and railway interests have liberally exerted upon federal legislators and upon executive and judicial officeholders—exerted upon “public servants.”

However, that may be, the facts today are that the postal service rate of 8 cents a pound for third-class matter is so excessive—so conspicuously above the cost of the service rendered—that the express companies find no difficulty in under-cutting it—in many cases, more than cutting it in half—and still reap millions of profit from the handling of such matter.

[267]

If a publisher has an edition of five, ten or one hundred thousand of a book to be delivered in piece, or single copies, an express company representative will see him at once—often see him before the book is from the press. If the publisher is doing a large and general business in book publishing or the book trade, the express companies have already seen him, by representative, and a carriage and handling charge agreed upon, under which the contracting or agreeing express company will handle any or all the publisher’s books, both single copies and trade shipments, at a rate much below the government’s postage rate of eight cents a pound.

If a publisher brings out a book which weighs, when wrapped or jacketed for mailing, say one pound on which the mailing charge would be 8 cents, the express company tenders a rate of 7 cents. If the edition of the book is a large one the express company will tender a rate of 6 cents or even a rate as low as 5 cents or 4 cents.

In performing such service the express company is a violator of law—a brazen outlaw. Yet the government not only permits this outlawry, but, by maintaining that excessive rate of 8 cents a pound, the government virtually invites it.

What I have above said applies with equal or even greater force to the transportation and distribution of mercantile and other catalogues, and of descriptive pamphlets, etc. However, I think sufficient has been said to cover the point raised.

The government persists in charging a third-class rate which virtually drives thousands of tons of third-class matter to the express companies. The express companies handle this vast tonnage at a cost charge to the sender or shipper, ranging from 16? per cent to 50 per cent below the government’s mail rate.

The express companies roll up millions—many millions—of profits every year, while at the higher rate, the government officials (some of them), slash up the ambient with rapier verbiage about “deficits” and make extension-ladder guesses at what it “actually costs” the Postoffice Department to carry and handle a pound of third, or some other, class of mail matter.

Another raid upon the postal revenues—and the raid is by the oldest gang of looters in the game—or graft—is the railroads.

For lo, these many years, the railroads have carried the mails at a carriage charge of $21.37 a ton per annum per line mile of haul.[268][9] That is $21.37 is allowed on “dense” traffic lines where the daily mail weight is above 5,000 pounds. On lines where the daily weight is 5,000 lbs., the rate is $171.00 per annum per line mile of haul. For mail weights less than 5,000 pounds the rate of pay varies, the ton-mile rate increasing from 21.37 cents for a weight above 5,000 pounds, to $1.17 per ton-mile for an average weight of 200 pounds.

Following are tabulations showing the scale of mail pay and also the postoffice car rental pay. I get them from the Wolcott Commission report made in 1901. The tables and accompanying paragraphs form part of the testimony of Mr. Marshall M. Kirkman, who at the time of the Wolcott Commission hearings was Second Vice-President of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. The rates of pay may have been modified in some slight degree since 1901. If so, I have not learned of the fact. I am of the opinion that the figures given by Mr. Kirkman still govern as rates of mail pay and car rentals, and as Mr. Kirkman was speaking for the railroads the reader may depend upon it that the case of the railroads—especially of the Chicago and Northwestern, then a system of about 5,000 miles of trackage—was presented in as favorable a light as the governing facts would permit:

RATES BASED ON THE WEIGHT OF THE MAILS.[10]
Average daily weight of mails over whole route.     Present pay
per mile
per annum.     Present rate
per ton
per mile.[11]     Present rate
per hundred
pounds per
mile.[12]
            Cents
200 pounds     $42.75     $1.170     5.85
500 pounds     64.12     .700     3.50
1,000 pounds     85.50     .468     2.34
2,000 pounds     128.25     .351     1.75
4,000 pounds     156.46     .214     1.07
5,000 pounds     171.00     .187     .96
Each 2,000 pounds in excess of 5,000 pounds     21.37     .058     .29

[269]

The most striking feature of this table is the rapid decline in the rates paid with an increase of weight.

In addition to the above payments based upon weight there is an additional allowance when full-sized postoffice cars are provided, the Postoffice Department deciding when these are necessary. The rates of pay for these cars are as follows:

RATES ALLOWABLE FOR FULL-SIZED POSTOFFICE CARS.[13]
Length of car.     Rate per
mile of track
per annum.     Rate per mile
run by cars.
        Cents
40 feet     $25.00     3.424
45 feet     27.50     3.786
50 feet     32.50     4.471
55 to 60 feet     40.00     5.498

The first column, which shows the rate paid per mile of track per annum, is likely to be misunderstood. The compensation seems very liberal, and it would be so in fact if it were as large as it appears to be. To gain $25 per mile per annum a 40-foot car must make a round trip over each mile of road per day. If it only makes one trip over the road each day, it will earn but $12.50 per mile per annum, as it would be but half of what is known as a line. The statute reads:

“That … pay may be allowed for every line comprising a daily trip each way of railway postoffice cars, at a rate not exceeding twenty-five dollars per mile per annum for cars forty feet in length.…”

Let us here take note what the foregoing tabulated figures mean—figures which Mr. Kirkman argued, if I read his testimony correctly, are too low[14]. I have read the testimony of numerous other railroad representatives, testimony before the Loud Commission, 1898, the Wolcott Commission, 1901, the Penrose-Overstreet Commission, 1907, and before the Hughes Commission, whose report is not yet compiled for publication. Each and all of them, so far as I have read their testimony, argue eloquently that the present rates of railway mail-pay and car rentals are, if unfair at all, unfair to the railroads—that the rates of pay are too low.

In this connection a most peculiar, if not indeed a peculiarly[270] suggestive, harmony of opinion appears to have existed between the special pleaders for the railroads in this matter of railway mail-pay and government officials—both executive and legislative—who have had most to do with fixing railway pay rates. The government has spent millions of dollars for investigations by commissions, by Senate and House committees, by inspectors, special agents, etc. Each commission has heard numerously from the railways. Twenty-seven of them were in hearing before the Wolcott Commission. The testimony of Mr. Kirkman, from whom I quote the preceding tabulations, while varying in phase, phrase and verbiage from the other railroad representatives, has two essential features common to them all, or, I should say, three features common to them all.

1. The railroad representatives unanimously oppose any reduction in the rates for railway mail pay (weights pay), and mail car rentals—“space charge,” they call it.

2. They are a unit in declaring that the present rates are too low, but they as unitedly express a willingness to continue business at the old rates rather than to contemplate the possibility of a reduction in them, or even squarely to argue the justice and fairness of such a reduction.

3. When forced down to “tacks”—down to specific facts—by some interrogating member of the commission before which they are testifying, these railroad representatives again have a marked similarity as to “form.” Each comes eloquently forward with his own set or sets of figures and proceeds to make his own application of them. But when some commissioner asks for information and enlightenment as to “net cost,” “relative cost,” etc., of mail carriage as compared with the cost of express, freight or passenger handling, the railroad representatives, almost to a man, at once begin to display a dense denseness that is marvelously wondrous or wonderously marvelous, as the reader may choose to word it.

The peculiar or suggestive harmony between the opinions of these railway representatives and the controlling executive and legislative officials of the Federal Government, is especially conspicuous under point 2 as numbered above. The railway people plead that the ruling rates are too low, but are willing to stand for them. However, they do not want the rates lowered.

The peculiar harmony of opinions just adverted to is ample[271] evidence, or so it appears to The Man on the Ladder, of this one fact:

The present rates of pay for railway mail weight carriage are the rates fixed by the act of 1879. Freight, express and passenger rates or tariffs have been changed—have been lowered. The railways did not want the mail rates lowered and the governmental powers that be, and have been, were apparently at least, quite willing to take their view of the matter, even if they did not concur in the numerous half-baked, threadbare arguments advanced by the railroad people in support.

The rates of railway mail pay have remained the same for thirty-three years—until 1908.

Comment is unnecessary.

As evidence in support of points 1 and 3 as above numbered, points on which railroad representatives so uniformly agree in support of, or, with equal uniformity, display concurring lapses of memory or lack of knowledge relating to, I shall here quote further from Mr. Kirkman’s testimony before the Wolcott Commission. In electing to quote from Mr. Kirkman rather than from another to evidence points 1 and 3, I am influenced only by the fact that I have the report of the Wolcott Commission before me at the moment, and to the further fact that Mr. Kirkman’s testimony appears to me cogently illustrative of the points to which I have called the reader’s attention.

In closing his prepared or written testimony (page 208 of the report), Mr. Kirkman says:

In conclusion, it may be stated that the compensation afforded this railroad for carrying the mail is not now in excess of what it should be. It is not improper, therefore, for us to beg, if rates can not be increased, that no further reductions may be made; also, that the practice of fixing the compensation paid for mail service on the basis of the weight carried at the commencement of the four-year periods (instead of on the weights carried in the middle of the periods), may be abandoned in favor of a more equitable system.

From the above it will be seen that this witness states with confidence that the compensation his road (the Chicago and Northwestern) receives “is not now in excess of what it should be” and begs that, “if the rates cannot be increased, that no further reductions be made.”

[272]

I shall now reprint a few pages from the report of Mr. Kirkman’s oral testimony as illustrative of point 3:

By Mr. Catchings:

Q. What did you state were the gross receipts from your whole system for carrying the mails?—A. About $800,000.

Q. Now, can you state to this commission what your net profit was for carrying that amount over your system?—A. I do not know.

Q. Can you make any estimate?—A. No, sir.

Q. You heard the testimony of Mr. Simpson (representing the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad), did you not?—A. Yes, sir.

Q. He stated that his road carried the mails at a dead loss. What that loss was he was unable to give us. I understand you to say that you do make a profit out of carrying the mails?—A. I beg your pardon. I said that, because we got approximately the same rate per ton per mile for carrying the mails as for express (and that the express rate had been a matter of careful negotiation as between our company and the express company); I have reason to believe that we would not have taken the express business unless we derived a profit from it, and therefore I think it is reasonable to suppose that we must derive a profit from the postoffice business.

Q. Do you mean to tell me that you have no estimate as to the cost of carrying this mail matter?—A. Not to my knowledge. We have taken what the Government gave us. As I have shown you, they have never pretended to remunerate us for many services rendered.

Q. If you are unable to say what your profit was for carrying this mail, how can you complain that you are not being properly compensated for the service rendered?—A. Because we render so many services today that we did not formerly when the rate was fixed.

Q. I understand; but, so far as we know from your testimony, you may be amply compensated for it.—A. We receive, as I said before, a certain rate from the express company for analogous service, and do not render them anything like the equivalent that we render the Postoffice Department, so that we must derive a great deal more profit from the express business than we do from the postoffice.

Q. Still, it would not follow that you were not deriving proper compensation for carrying the mail, would it?—A. It would not follow that we do not derive some compensation from it.

Q. Unless you are prepared to tell us what your profit is, or your loss, as the case may be, of course you can not expect us to know it, and, unless we know it, you can not expect us to sympathize with the complaint.—A. We are not making complaint about the compensation we receive, but the threat held over our heads that our compensation would be cut down. When they cut us down on the land-grant roads they did not make it a matter of negotiation at all; they just simply took off 20 per cent.

Q. Do you not think that the best way to prove this complaint would be to show that you are not receiving due compensation?—A. If I was keeping a boarding house and you came to me and I agreed to give you two meals a day, and[273] you afterwards exacted four, because you are mightier than I in forcing it, would it be necessary for me to prove that I was giving you something that you were not entitled to under your contract?

Q. You ought to show us what your net profits are.—A. It is impossible.

By the Chairman:

Q. General Catchings calls your attention to this: In your direct examination I asked you if you had any suggestions to make to this commission in the matter of changes of law. You said you thought the law should be so changed as to increase your compensation to an adequate sum. Now, in answer to General Catchings, you say that it is remunerative; he asks you how much you make, and you can not tell; then he asks you why you recommend a change in the law if you will not tell the commission what you are now making by it, and if you can tell what your profits in carrying the mail are. That is what General Catchings is anxious to have you tell.

By Mr. Catchings:

Q. I would like very much to know if we are under-paying these roads; we would like to pay them.—A. You ask a question that there is nobody but Omniscience could answer, because there is no possible method by which you can determine accurately what the cost is of carrying traffic. The Government did pretend at one time to divide the expense of operating as between passenger and freight, but finally abandoned it. Now, if you can not determine the cost between passenger and freight, how can you determine it between mail and other kinds?

Q. There is one thing certain; if the roads can not determine it, the Government can not.—A. Is it not true that, in matters of this kind, no one would expect anything definite in the absence of definite information?

Q. I do not see why you can not figure as well the cost of carrying these mails as you can the cost of carrying the express packages. I do not see why it ought to be more difficult for you to determine that.—A. There is not any single thing that a railroad carries, from a first class passenger to a cord of stone, that it can tell accurately what the cost is. Tariffs are a matter of evolution.

Q. At least, your road is better off than the Flint and Pere Marquette, for they carry at a loss and you carry at a profit—A. I did not say we carry at a profit; but I say that is my judgment, sir.

Q. I believe something has been said about the extraordinary cost at which these railroads handle these postal cars. I would like to have you help me reach a conclusion from that. How many railway postal cars have you on your system?—A. I do not know how many we do have.

By the Chairman:

Q. Does your statement show?—A. No, sir; it does not.

By Mr. Catchings:

Q. How much do you receive from the government for the railway postal cars?—A. We receive certain compensation for cars over a given length.

Q. You stated, I believe, the gross revenue to you for these cars?—A. We have a great many that we do not receive any revenue from the government for their use.

[274]

Q. I want to know what your revenue is from the postal cars?—A. I can not tell you.

Q. You can furnish that amount?—A. Yes, sir.

Q. I wish you would furnish this commission a statement showing the gross revenue to your system of road derived from these postal cars; and then I wish you would furnish a statement showing what the cost to you is of maintaining those cars, keeping them in repair, what the estimated cost to you is of hauling them, and the number of cars?—A. I will give you all that you desire so far as I can.

By Mr. Loud:

Q. You stated, Mr Kirkman, that you were Vice-President of the Chicago and Northwestern?—A. Yes, sir.

Q. Are you General Manager?—A. No, sir.

Q. What is your particular business in connection with the railroad?—A. I have charge of the local finances and accounts of the company.

Q. You are not prepared to answer technically, then, questions that might be propounded to you, as has been developed in the examination by Mr. Catchings, about the cost of the operation of a car and the cost of the transportation of a ton of freight, passengers, etc?—A. I am as well prepared to answer the question as anyone. There is no one, as I said before, who knows what the cost is or can tell you definitely, simply for the reason that it is utterly impossible to fix the cost as between passengers and freight, for instance.

Q. What is the use of our investigation, then?—A. I am here before this commission; my time here, perhaps, represents ten dollars or ten cents. What am I going to charge it to? In this case perhaps to mail. In many expenses of railroads there are questions impossible to determine as to what expenditures should be charged to. You may make, as the General has, a comparison between the Flint and Pere Marquette, what he thinks is an approximate statement of cost; it may be more, and it may not. For instance, the Government of the United States requires that the mail shall be carried on fast trains—

Q You are going into quite an argument. You ought to be able to tell what it cost to haul the mail.—A. No, sir; I can not.

Q. You can not tell?—A. No, sir; nobody can tell.

Q. Could not your General Manager give us some information on that subject?

Mr. Chandler. He can tell how much their gross receipts are and what the gross expenditures are, and he can tell whether their whole business is done at a profit or not; but I do not understand that the railroads can subdivide their receipts and expenditures so as to tell whether any particular branch of it actually pays a profit or not. The previous witness undertook to do it, and I noticed, as he went on, that it was mere guesswork. Mr. Kirkman says he never has done it.

The Witness. I want to say, Mr. Loud, that this question of division of cost has been up before railroads and experts for forty years, and here is what the chief engineer of the Pennsylvania says in regard to it. He estimates that the[275] cost, for instance, of maintenance of track and machinery increases with the square of the velocity.

By the Chairman:

Q. How much do you charge this maintenance of way?—A. What is the wear and tear of machinery and track from the passage of a particular train? No one can tell nor guess approximately. In an examination of this question I gave it, probably, the most exhaustive study that I have given any subject in my life, because so much depended on it—I searched all the records of Scotland and England and of the United States to determine, but unavailingly—

By Mr. Loud:

Q. Could you not put a train of five cars on and run it from Chicago to Council Bluffs and give approximately what that train would cost to operate and the approximate cost of wear and tear to your rails?—A. I can determine all those things that are apparent; that is, the cost—

Q. That is all we expect; what is reasonable.—A. But then there is the question of interest and the wear and tear of machinery and track.

Q. Let us discard the interest. You ought to be able to get at the cost of operation.—A. That train so run has to receive the constant attention of station men, of track men, the whole length. If you will give it a moment’s reflection you will see how utterly impossible it is to determine it accurately enough to state here to this commission.

Q. Approximately, it ought to be a perfectly easy matter. It seems to be to other railroad men.—A. I do not think there is any railroad man who has given it any more attention than I have and no railroad man understanding the subject will do more than guess at it.

Q. I will ask you a few questions. If you can answer them I wish you would. How many miles of land-grant railroad have you?—A. My impression is that we have about 600.

Q. Out of your total of 5,000 miles?—A. Yes, sir.

Q. What is the average charge on your road for freight per ton mile?—A. Last year ninety-nine one-hundredths of a cent per ton mile.

Q. You do not know how much it costs? That is correct, is it not? You do not know how much it costs?—A. That is correct.

Q. You do not know how much it costs to operate a 40 or 60 foot mail car?—A. No, sir; only approximately.

Q. Can you say, approximately, how much?—A. No, sir. It will afford me great pleasure to give you all this information that can be determined if you desire, but it is valueless in itself.

Q. Can you say approximately?—A. I can not. I would be very glad to furnish you all the figures, but such questions, like the cost of the velocity with which we send trains across the country, are unknown.

Q. Does it cost a dollar a mile as the outside?—A. I could not——

Q. Would it not?—A. I would not want to pay you the disrespect of saying a thing that I know nothing about.

[276]

The foregoing testimony appears on pages 213-216 of the Wolcott report. The italics are mine. When so well informed a railroad man as Mr. Kirkman answers questions—questions covering that which appears, to a layman at least, to be essential in successful railway management—as he is reported in the foregoing, what is to be thought of such testimony? With all due respect to Mr. Kirkman, it may be said that his apparently frank confession of ignorance as to several points made subject of inquiry by the commissioners in the part of his testimony quoted, many readers of it are left with more or less valid grounds for doubt—grounds for asking more or less offensive questions: “Was the witness telling the truth or equivocating—stalling for time?” If he told the truth—if his acknowledged ignorance was genuine—as to several essential factors in the successful management and financing of a railroad—then of what value are his—or any other railroad man’s—statistics and tabulations of cost, profits, losses, rates, tariffs, “cost of velocity,” etc., etc.?

Mr. Kirkman’s reputation for truth and veracity, I believe, is as high as that of any other railroad man’s in the country, yet on several basic factors in the problem which the Wolcott Commission was, presumably at least, trying to solve, he confessed an ignorance as profound as its members and the officials of the Postoffice Department acknowledge. If, as Mr. Kirkman virtually testifies, the information sought is beyond the ken of man, then why persist in spending thousands—yes millions—of money trying to run it down?

If these railroad men do not know the things which it is necessary to know to arrive at a solution of this railway mail carrying problem—to arrive at a just, equitable rate of pay for the service rendered—why waste more time on them?

That question brings us back to the rails again.

Why do not our postal officials and commissions reach out to Cornville and summon a few eighth-grade nubbins? Then turn over to them the wastefully collected and collated statistics, data and talk which the Postoffice Department has in cold storage and tell them to “go to it” at, say, $25 per week?

Yes, why not?

Skilled lawyers, reputed “experts,” men of “experience” and “students,” it would seem, have told all they know about this railway mail cost problem—told the truth or equivocated or lied about it, to[277] the best of their ability and in full accord and harmony with their several “standards” of veracity. Still they have failed to uncover or to divulge the essential and governing factors in the problem—failed for thirty or forty years. Is it not about time, then, for sensible people, I would ask, to enter the plea of the Master and say, “Suffer little children to come unto me?”

Any average “shock” of eighth-grade nubbins from Cornville, or from other hamlets where the “little red school house” has been in fairly active operation, will “figger” the cost—the cost to the railroads—of mail haulage and handling, in not to exceed four weeks.

That is, such a bunch of eighth graders will arrive at a dependable solution of this forty-year-old problem in four weeks, if they are given the plain, bald facts upon which a correct solution depends, and not turned loose on a lot of befuddling, alleged data and accepted “testimony.”

As I must necessarily touch upon the raid of the railroads into postal revenues when I reach the closing division of this volume, I shall not comment further here on the testimony and special pleadings presented by railroad representatives to the several postal commissions that have sat and sat and then “reported.” The commissions probably—possibly, if not probably—reported the best they could on the evidence presented to them. Certain it is, their reports present much valuable—much informative—data of which neither Congress nor the Postoffice Department appears to have made any constructive or corrective use.

Before quitting this railway pay raid, however, it may be well to do a little figuring—basing our figures on Mr. Kirkman’s tabulations of rates, printed some pages back. The tables of rates are correct. They ought to be. If rate-tables could vote the youngest of the two was entitled to the suffrage many years since.[15] But let us look into and over them in a little-red-school-house way.

The first mail rail-haul weight is 200 pounds. That weight of mail is carried on some cornfield railroad—“a feeder.” It is all bundled or sacked, if “free in country” or other second-class matter, sacked or pouched if first or third-class, and, also, if valuable fourth-class. Some of the fourth-class, if large in dimension of package, may, of course, be loose. But whatever their class, character, pouching, sacking, casing, or jacketing, that estimated weight (estimated[278] once every four years), is received by the railroad and dumped into a corner of a “general utility” car. By that I mean a car used for carrying baggage and express matter, between stations—jars, buckets, boxes, bags, etc., of local “favors” or shipments; such as jam, fruits, eggs, butter, and even “line loafers” who are going to mother, uncle, or friend for a few days feed, or—sometimes—going to the local metropolis for a “good time.”

But let us, for the moment, stick to that quadrenially estimated 200 pounds of mail. At the several stations along the cornfield or “feeder” railroad the packages, sacks and pouches of mail are tossed off to the station agent. Coops of chickens, cases of eggs, tubs or jars of butter and crates of fruit or vegetables are taken on.

Have you, the reader, ever traveled on a “cornfield line?” Have you ever “got off to stretch your limbs” at some station between start or “change” to destination? Have you, while stretching those limbs of yours, ever noticed or taken note of the miscellaneous and promiscuous sort of goods—merchandise and human adipose tissue—that get into companionship, into carriage or housed connection, with that “estimated” 200 pounds of United States mail?

Well, if you have, no argument is necessary to convince you that the “railway mail pay” rate on that cornfield line is from two to five times the rate paid for any other weight (tonnage) carried.

Turn back and look at the table of railway mail-pay (weight). Look at the rate per 100 pound per mile haul—5.85 cents, or eleven and seven-tenths cents for carrying 200 pounds one mile.

Do you weigh 200 pounds? If not, our President and several other gentlemen in this country do, and you, the President, or the other gentlemen, will be carried—and for thirty or more years have been carried on any railroad east of the “Rockies”—for three cents a mile.

Now, you, the President, or other gentlemen, pay only two cents a mile for rail haulage on most all of the cornfield or “feeder” lines (and on “trunk” lines as well), east of the Rocky Mountains.

You see the joke of it? The postal revenue raid in it?

Two hundred pounds of United States mail is railroaded in a general—a catch-all or pick-up—car at a government charge of 11.7 cents per mile, while you, the President, or other gentlemen, pay but 3 cents! You, and the other fellows as well, have an upholstered seat, have watering and toilet facilities and accommodations, have[279] smoking, “pitch,” “high-five,” “cinch,” “euchre” and, maybe, even “poker” as divertisements—with palatable “wets” on the side!

You, the President, and the other gentlemen, have all this sumptuous haulage for three (or two) cents a mile, while the 200 pounds (averaged every four years) of United States mail, handled as junk or dunnage, pays 11.7 cents a mile.

Does it not look—look to you—somewhat off at the corners somewhere? Does it not look as if that railway “system” feeder line was getting robustly large pay for the service rendered?

Well, if it does not so appear to you, it appears to me that you should, at your earliest convenience, consult some qualified and competent alienist, or drop into a “rest resort” for six months or more.

As to the other weights given in that tabulation—500, 1,000 and up to 5,000—nothing here needs be said. They are all below the “postoffice car” weights. At the weights, 5,000 pounds per day of mail-haul, the student of this rail-mail pay raid should sit up and begin to observe his nurse and the attending physician.

Before I further inflict the reader with personal comments, it might be of mutual advantage to quote a recognized authority on the weights actually carried in postal mail cars—weights of actual mail.

I take the following from the official report of the Penrose-Overstreet Commission, pages 30-31.

“It is stated in the report of Dr. Henry C. Adams to the former Commission (Vol. II, 233), that—

“The average loading of the postoffice car, according to the testimony before the Commission is 2 tons. It must be admitted, in view of the great weight of these cars, that such loading pays little regard to the requirements of economy. It is doubtful if, on the basis of such loading, the railways could afford to carry mail at a rate much cheaper than it is now carried. On the other hand, if cars were loaded with 3? tons, which Mr. Davis says is an easy load, or should the average load go as high as 6 tons, which, according to testimony, is accomplished on the Pennsylvania Railroad by a special train, I am confident that railways operate upon a margin of profit in carrying mail that warrants a reduction in pay.

“For the purpose of emphasizing the importance of loading as essential to the determination of railway mail compensation, as well as to suggest the line of desired improvement in the present railway mail service, it may be added that were it possible to load 5 tons in a car, the expense would be reduced to $1,766 per mile of line; that is to say, a sum less than one-half the amount actually paid.”

Dr. Adams in the foregoing was presenting a judgmental[280] summary, or digest, of the testimony before the Wolcott Commission on this “railway-mail-pay” question. His opinion, or conclusion, as to the dominant factors involved, has been recognized as authority—if not final authority—on the points to which he spoke.

Now, let us figure a little more. I’m not much at “ciferin.” Maybe the reader can help me along. Let’s get properly started.

Those rail “postoffice cars,” of which Dr. Adams spoke, are from 40 to 55 feet or more in length. They must weigh, empty, or “stripped,” figuring running trucks, body, etc., forty to one-hundred or more thousand pounds. So, according to Dr. Adams, this twenty to fifty ton vehicle is sent hurtling over a hundred or a five-hundred mile run on a steel track with finest and most modern engine or motive power, baggage and express cars ahead, and sleepers, buffet, diner and observation cars trailing, to carry two tons of United States mail in each mail car in the train.

Oh yes, I know that Dr. Adams spoke some years ago (1901, I believe), and spoke of the “average load” of mail carried by mail cars then. I also know that our present Postmaster General has “gone after” this railway mail car raiding—has made them carry more load. All praise to him for doing so. It was an action which any of his predecessors had the power to have taken, and which should save millions of postal revenues.

The department report for 1910 (P157), states, there were 1,114 full and 3,208 apartment postal cars in service—rented cars—while there were 206 of the former and 559 of the latter (a total of 765), kept in “reserve.” That makes a total of 5,087 postal cars for which the government pays rent.

There is, however, another strong presumption—with some very robust facts which investigation has uncovered—that a considerable number of the so-called “reserve” cars are in the hospitals about railroad shops, where such patients receive little but “open air treatment.” In “emergencies” it is legitimate, of course, to presume that the division traffic manager may order out or put on the rails any of these hospital cars, “full” or “apartment,” as first aids to the injured. And it is right that he does so.

But why, in the name of George Washington, should all these hospital cars be charged up to the Postoffice Department? Yes, why?

[281]

Oh, yes, I know that they are all in “service” or “reserve”—all subject to department orders. But when one looks down from the ladder top into these shop-hospital yards for car patients, he not unfrequently sees, unless he is freakishly nearsighted or a victim of a new brand of strabismus, an old “flat-wheeler” which bears a marked resemblance to one that he used to, in days agone (long agone), pause, while husking the “down-row,” and gaze at in admiration as well as wonderment. Of course, it did not wear “flat wheels” then. It also carries some mars and scars of time, just as The Man on the Ladder carries marks which did not stand out so conspicuously then as now. But there, on its sides, appears, somewhat dimmed by age, that patriotic, stirring designation: U. S. Mail Car.

This is not intended as a criticism. It is merely a suggestion as to where the present or some future Second Assistant Postmaster General may find additional raiding into the postal revenues.

A few years since, Professor Parsons asserted, (so the public press declared—I have not the document by me and am writing hurriedly—the Professor will, therefore, excuse me if I mis-spell or misquote. Corrections will be made in later editions) that the railway mail pay and car rental raid amounted to something like $24,000,000 a year.

Speaking again from press reports, Mr. Hitchcock seems to have been going after those raiders. At any rate he appears to have stopped that graft sluiceway to the extent—reports vary—of from nine to fourteen millions of dollars a year.

Again, Mr. Hitchcock, we say, may your tribe increase—on this line of action.

Now let us return and do a little “red-school-house” figuring on this railroad pay raid. Some pages back, we reprinted Mr. Kirkman’s tables of weight and car rental pay to the railways. You can glance back and verify the figures when you deem necessary. Here “orders” force me to hurry. But in spite of orders a few generalizations in “cipherin,” have to be made.

Many pages back, the Postoffice Department’s own distribution of mail weights for 1907 (the last preceding “weighing period”), was printed. For ready reference, we will here reprint it.

[282]
    Per Cent.
First-class matter     7.29
Second-class matter     36.38
Third-class matter     8.32
Fourth-class matter     2.73
Franked matter     .21
Penalty matter     1.99
Equipment carried in connection therewith     38.12
Empty equipment dispatched     4.96
Total     100.00

A few pages back we figured out how a 200-pound mail weight haul stacks against, around and up-to a 200-pound human avoirdupois haul, assuming, of course, that the aforesaid avoirdupois is not casketed with the mail, express or baggage in front. Well, with that understanding, the reader may take my previous statements anent those 200 pounds of U. S. mail matter and human avoirdupois—whether citizen or imported—as made. He should also understand that what was then said fits, of course with a varying application, to the wheatfield, cornfield, oilfield, cottonfield, timber, tobacco and other “feeder” fields, which carry our mails at varying rates of pay for varying weights up to 5,000 pounds.

Now, at the weight of 5,000 pounds (2? tons), is about where the “postoffice car” enters, and it is to the mail-carriage-pay the railways get for this postoffice car service we wish here to “cipher” on a little. As a start, however, the “example” must be “set.” To do that a little preliminary figuring must be done.

The quadrennial weighing of the mails is now in progress. The last preceding weighing was in 1907. In the interim, however, Mr. Hitchcock, has made some special or test weighing—a good and commendable business movement—of second-class mail.

From these weighings the department, I take it, has arrived at estimated results more or less satisfactory—to itself at least. The 1910 report presents a tabulated tonnage of second-class matter on page 329. A prolix discussion of the cost of handling second-class mail appears on immediately associated pages. The discussion is a masterly, a forensic, production, and, outside of Indiana, the habitat of experts, it may stand out in fair form as a literary production. Our Third Assistant Postmaster General must, though, have got the wires crossed or the gear jammed on his comptometer to have reached those two “answers.”

[283]

Sixty-two and a fraction per cent of the total mail is second class.

To haul and handle a pound of second-class mail costs the government nine and a fraction cents.
SOME LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE FIGURING.

Now, let us sit down on the veranda, bring out the little red school house slates and do some figuring on this railway pay problem, question, proposition, or whatever the “experts” may choose to call it.

First, there, on page 329 of the 1910 report, it states, “estimated” on the basis of those 1907 “special weighings,” that there were 873,412,077 pounds of second-class mail carried and handled.

Let’s see! Yes, of course, how simple it is. There’s that 1907 table of percentages, a page or so back.

As it was “figured out” in 1907 by the people who did the weighing, or who bossed it, we may consider it as dependable as the Third Assistant Postmaster General’s figures on page 329 of the department’s 1910 report.

The reader will please understand me. I do not mean to say that either the 1907 or 1910 reports are dependable.

I wish the reader to understand that I understand, or believe, them both to be merely guesses—guesses more or less mis-stitched in the knitting and more or less frazzled and threadbare by reason of long service.

But they are what we have to “figger” from.

Page 329 of the 1910 report says:

Total mailings (second-class), 873,412,077 pounds.

The 1907 tabulation of distributed mail weights (see table a few pages back) says that second-class mail, in carriage, is 36.39 per cent of the total mail weight.

Here’s where we put our slates into service.

We’ll first divide (look back at that 1907 table), 873,412,077 pounds by .3638—that being the percentage of second-class to the total of mail carried, as reported in the “special weighing” of 1907.

Well, .3638 into 873,412,077 gives us 2,400,802,850 pounds as the gross mail weight carriage in 1910.

That does not look near so large, nor so questionably peculiar, as does some other “answers” we are figuring out on our little red school-house slates.

[284]

Looking back to that 1907 tabulated estimate, we find that, of the total weight carried—and paid for as mail—.4308 of that total for which we patriotic, likewise confiding, kitchen-garden citizens pay is not mail at all.

A glance at that 1907 tabulation will show us that 43.08 per cent. of the total mail weight for which the government pays is for “equipment” and “empty equipment dispatched.”

Now let’s take our slates again and multiply that total weight 2,400,802,850 pounds by .4308. “Well, what’s your answer?”

One billion, thirty-four million, two hundred forty-five thousand, eight hundred and sixty-eight pounds!

Well, that’s some tonnage, is it not? Of course, as the reader will readily grab hold of, that tonnage is not, in itself, staged as a “feature” in this “ciphering.” This is a big country and its tonnages are big, whether of wheat, corn, pigs, fools, or mail. It is a “curtain” comparison we desire to have noticed and studied. Look at it, study it prayerfully, then put your thinker to work for about thirty seconds.

According to the Postoffice Department’s own figures and estimates, it appears that a total tonnage of 2,400,000,000 pounds (omitting the tail figures), were handled, and the cost of all paid for by this grand old government of ours.

Next, let us notice that 1,034,000,000 pounds (tail figures again omitted), was not mail at all—sacks, fixtures, etc., etc.

Now, look at it—the result.

Railroads were paid for carrying 2,400,000,000 pounds of mail.

Of that total weight 1,034,000,000 (nearly half) was “equipment” and “empty” equipment “dispatched.”

Beyond the showing of these figures, comment is scarcely necessary for anyone at all familiar with railway traffic methods and costs—whether the haulage is by slow or fast freight or by express—anyone will see the raid in it.

Look at that haulage of “equipment,” which the postoffice revenues pay for! Pay for as mail. Look it over, and over again and then sit up and do a little hard thinking.

Waters Pearse, of Pearseville, Texas, ships, say ten or twenty coops of chickens to Chicago. He may ship by express or by fast freight—the latter of course, if “Wat” and his friends have been able to make up a carload. “Wat” consigns his chickens to some Commission[285] house in Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago or elsewhere. Wherever our friend “Wat” of Pearceville, Texas, ships, or whether he ships by express or by fast freight, his empty coops will be returned to him without charge.

If Steve Gingham, in Southern Illinois—“Egypt”—has a hen range and his hens have been busy, Steve will have several cases of eggs to ship every week or ten days. Well, all Steve has to do is to take his cases of eggs over to the railroad station. Some express company will pick them up and take them to Chicago, to St. Louis, to Cincinnati, or other market. In a few days, about the time Steve gets the check for his eggs, he’ll find the cases on the station platform returned to him, without charge.

What we’ve said about our friends, Wat down in Texas, and Steve in “Egypt,” is equally true of any shipment of any sort of specially crated fruit or vegetables, of boxed, bucketed or canned fish, milk, etc., etc. The shipping cases, buckets, boxes or cans are returned to the shipper without charge. Yet here is this great government of ours paying the railways for nearly one ton of fixtures and equipment for every ton of mail (all classes), carried. Fixtures, equipment, etc., aggregated, in the weighing of 1907 (see tabulation a page or two back), 43.08 per cent of the total weight for which the government has paid mail-weight rates for four years—paid for hauling those racks, frames, sacks, etc., etc., back and forth over the rail-line haul every day of the four years.

Railroad people and their representatives have written voluminously, likewise fetchingly, to prove to an easily “bubbled” public that the government has been paying too little rather than too much for the rail carriage of its mails. I have read numerous such vestibuled productions. They were all good; top-branch verbiage and rhetoric, so smooth, noiseless and jarless in coupling that the uncritical reader’s sympathies are often aroused, and his conviction or belief enlisted by the sheer massive grandeur of the terminology used. Try almost any of these promotion railway mail-pay talkers and throw the belt on your own thought-mill while you read. Four times in five the ulterior-motive writer or speaker will have you rolling into the roundhouse or repair shop before you know you have even been coupled onto the train. When you emerge, if your thinker is still off its belt, you will find yourself about ready to “argue” that the railroads are very much[286] underpaid, if, indeed, not grossly wronged by the government. I would like to quote some of the picture arguments from several of these railway studios but cannot. As illustrative of the general ensemble of these forensic art productions, I will, however, reproduce here a gem from one of them—a bit of verbal canvas so generic and homelike as to class as a bit of real genre.

The reader will find it in Pearson’s Magazine for June, 1911. Who personally perpetrated it, I know not, and the magazine sayeth not. The editor of Pearson’s, however, assures us that the article from which the following excerpt is made, was “prepared” by the authority and under the direction of the Committee on Railway Mail Pay, and as prominent members of said committee the editor gives the names of Julius Kruttschnitt, Director of Maintenance and Operation, union and Southern Pacific Systems; Ralph Peters, President and General Manager, Long Island Railroad; Charles A. Wickersham, President and General Manager, Western Railway of Alabama; W. W. Baldwin, Vice-President, C. B. & Q. Railroad; Frank Barr, Third Vice-President and General Manager of the Boston and Maine Railroad.

That is certainly a representative quintette of railway artists and generally recognized as qualified to produce—verbally—almost anything in railway art, from a freehand tariff to a “car shortage” done in oil while the crops ought to be moving. Am sorry I cannot quote more extendedly. The following, however, will give the reader a sample of the “style” and also of the “argument” common to most of the protective and promotive railway word pictures:

If, as has been reported, a certain railroad president ever did utter the famous phrase attributed to him, “the public be damned,” the public has more than gotten even. It does the damning itself nowadays instead, and so effective is its verdict that we are even confronted with the spectacle of the government itself bowing to the popular prejudice irrespective of the facts in the case. Undoubtedly we have become a nation of stone-throwers. To a certain extent this has worked for the public benefit. Every deserved stone has worked for the correction of admitted evils. But so rapidly has the public taken to the lately discovered pastime of stone-throwing that it not infrequently uses its strength like a giant, and that, we have been told, is tyrannous. Let a corporation raise its head nowadays and it is greeted by a shower of stones of which perhaps not ten per cent. are intelligently cast. The only thing to do in such a case is to “duck;” argument becomes futile in the heat of battle.…

[287]

That is sufficient to show the “style.” The article then proceeds to give some mail-service history and to cite a few points wherein by “arbitrary” rulings the government is grievously wronging the railroads in under-paying them for the carrying of the mails. The following is one of the strong points or arguments presented:

Furthermore, the railroads hold that an additional injustice was done in this connection in the adoption of the present methods of determining the weights. In addition to the several reductions from the act of 1873 above mentioned, and in spite of the fact that various government committees admitted their injustice, a singular order amounting practically to a juggling of weights in favor of the government was issued under the date of June 7, 1907.

Under the date of March 2, 1907, the following order was issued:

“When the weight of mail is taken on the railway routes, the whole number of days the mails are weighed shall be used as a divisor for obtaining the weight per day.”

But under date of June 7, 1907, a surprising order was issued reading as follows:

“When the weight of mail is taken on railway routes, the whole number of days included in the weighing period should be used as a divisor for obtaining the average weight per day.”

Certainly this is a startling change of methods on the part of a government which has been attempting to establish a high standard of integrity in the conduct of all business. Slight as the difference in the wording of the two orders may seem upon a casual reading, the actual effect is drastic. Under the order of March 2, 1907, the total amount of mail weighed to obtain the average daily weight was to be divided by the total number of days on which it was handled. Surely there could be no other fairer basis of determining the average weight. But under date of June 7, 1907, the system of weighing was changed, so that to determine the daily average weight of mail the total weight should be divided, not by the number of days on which it was weighed, but by the whole number of days included in the weighing period irrespective of whether mails were handled daily during the whole period or not. As a matter of fact in many cases they were not, and this arbitrary “change of divisor,” as it is called, further reduced the pay of the railroads for the transportation of mails by about 12 per cent in addition to the reductions above mentioned which congressional committees had previously characterized as unfair.

There, now. Is not that profoundly and beautifully conclusive? The strictures, hard and unjust regulations and arbitrary impositions of the government in the matter of railway mail weights is working great wrong to the roads; is, in fact, so cutting into their earnings as to jeopardize their solvency or to force them to raise freight and passenger rates in order to continue business.

Very sad, very sad, indeed! And how unjust it is for the Postmaster General so to cut down railway mail pay as possibly to cut[288] down the dividends the railroads have been paying the “widows and orphans” who own stock in the roads—stocks and bonds aggregating two or three times their tangible value. Especially wrong was it for the Postmaster General to issue and enforce such drastic orders after “congressional committees” had declared any reduction of the weight-pay rate “unfair.”

I shall not impose on the reader any extended discussion or consideration of the quoted bubble talk. A few comments I will make—comments which it is hoped will peel off sufficient of the rhetorical coloring to let the reader see at least enough of the real subject (the points involved), as will enable him to make a robust and correct guess at the “ground-plan” of both the sub and the superstructure the railway talkers and speakers are trying to erect.

First: Every right-minded citizen should—and when he rightly understands the matter, I believe, will—give the Postmaster General unstinted praise and commendation for the issuance and enforcement of the two orders which the railway men quote and complain about.

Second: The rail people say the last order (see quotation), “reduced the pay of the railroads by about 12 per cent.”

Without questioning the veracity of the gentlemen under whose “authority” that statement is made, The Man on the Ladder, as a judgmental precaution, shall line up with the folks “from Missouri” until that 12 per cent is set forth in fuller relief—until he is shown. The reader will observe that the railroad authorities quoted merely say that the “arbitrary change of divisor further reduced the pay of the railroads.” Whether or not the pay received by the roads before that order was issued was too low, low enough or too high is not directly stated by the writer or writers. That it is designed to have the reader draw the conclusion that the rate was low enough or too low before that second order was issued is made evident by the reference to the expressed opinions of “congressional committees”—opinions to the effect that the “reductions” forced by the first order were “unfair.”

Third: The names of many men of both ability and of integrity have appeared upon the rosters of the Committees on Postoffices and Postroads of both the Senate and the House during the past forty years. In face of that fact stands forth in bold relief a fact so bare and bald—and so suggestive of wrongs done and doing by the rail[289] people—as to remove it from the field of serious debate. That fact is: For forty or more years the railroad men and allied interests have by lobbies, or other persuasive means, got the Congressional Committees (Senate, House and joint), to do about what they wanted done in the matter of rail carriage and pay for handling the mails, or to prevent the committees from doing things they did not want done.

Fourth: That “change of divisor,” covered in the order of June 27, 1907, and which these railroad men accuse of causing a shrinkage of 12 per cent in the mail-weight pay the roads were receiving under the order of March 2, 1907, and prior, possibly was based on some valid reasons or grounds, or upon grounds the then Postmaster General believed to be valid. I have not before me, at the moment, any written data or information as to the reasons assigned by the postal authorities for that “change of divisor”, or whether they assigned any reasons for the order making the change. I know, however, of one very good reason there was for making such a change on several railroads or divisions of roads.

The weighing of the mails was formerly made during a period of 90 to 105 days, or fifteen weeks, once every four years. The law now permits the Postoffice Department to make special weighings, I believe. On the average daily mail weight for those 105 days the postal department based its contract with the roads for carrying the mails for four years.

Now notice this: The terms of such contracts not only implied but specifically required a daily carriage of the mail weight for the number of days designated, allowing, of course, for wrecks, washouts and other unavoidable interruptions in the movements of trains.

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;[290] 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.

As I refer later to some of the practices indulged in the weighing periods, I will here mention only a method used for years prior to the issuance of that order in March, 1907—a method of arriving at the “average daily weight” for the carriage of which the railroad was to be paid for a period of four years. That method was, though I have been[291] unable to learn that it was ever officially authorized by the Postoffice Department, to find the daily average for each week covered in the weighing period and then arrive at the average for the whole period by dividing the sum of the weekly averages by the number of weeks in which the mail was weighed.

Nothing wrong with that is there? Should work out fair and square, should it not? Well, it did not. The method was all right in theory and in letter, but a crooked practice was worked into its application—worked into it by collusion between crooked railway and public officials. And the crookedness of the practice was very plain and bold and bald. It was what in street parlance would be called “raw.” Here it is in figures:

Take a “heavy” mail line. Say the total mail weight for a week was, using a round figure, 840,000 pounds or 420 tons. Now dividing that total by 7, the number of days in a week and the number of days also on which the mail was weighed, would give a daily average of 120,000 pounds, or 60 tons. That is all clear and straight, is it not? Most certainly it is.

But the crooked application of the method divided the week’s total by 6 instead of by 7—divided the total of seven days’ weights by six. The railway people, you see, were great respecters of the Sabbath. They would run trains on Sunday to accommodate the public and to meet the necessities of their business, which was, and is, perfectly proper. They would also carry the mails for your Uncle Sam, which was also right and proper. But their lofty respect for the Holy Sabbath, or the high esteem in which they held our much loved and much abused Uncle, was such as induced them to hold up said Uncle as a respecter of the Sabbath, or seventh day, while they “held him up” in averaging his mail weights.

In the illustrative example we have put on the slate, the “hold up” would amount to—let’s see: 840,000 pounds, or 420 tons, divided by 6 gives us 70 tons as the daily average for the week, instead of 60 tons, as the actual average was. That is a “hold up” for pay for ten tons a day—for 10 tons not carried.

“What did the hold-up amount to in cash?”

Yes, it might be well to follow our hypothetical or illustrative example to its cash terminal. Well, that is easily and quickly done.

The rate of pay per ton mile per year on daily weights above[292] 2? tons is $21.37.[16] That ten tons added to the daily average would give to the railroads, then, just $213.70 in unearned cash each day.

If the contract stood for full four years on such false average, the railroad would pull down just 1,460 times $213.70 of unearned money or a total of $312,002 in the four years.

I would, of course, not have the reader understand that our hypothetical example would fit all railroads. Many, in fact most, of the mail-carrying roads average in mail weight much below sixty tons per day—even below ten tons per day. Some roads were and are paid for an average above sixty tons. Nor would I have the reader understand that the crooked practice just mentioned was common to all mail-carrying roads. There were possibly—yes, probably, some exceptions—some roads that carried so little mail as not to make a steal of a sixth of its weight-pay worth while.

I would, however, have the reader understand that I mean to assert that most of the mail-carrying roads were parties to the crooked method here described and that the hypothetical figures here given applied, proportionally, to any average per diem weight of mail covered in the carriage contract, whether it was one ton or a hundred tons.

I would also have the reader understand me to assert that, so far as information has reached me, no railroad man, or man representing the rail mail-carrying interests, ever questioned the “fairness” of the crooked practice just described—a practice which looted the government of millions of dollars.

As a raider into postal revenues, this thieving practice, it must be admitted, deserves conspicuous mention—more extended notice than I have given it.
FOOTNOTES

[9] 5,000 to 48,000 pounds, $20.30 per ton. Above 48,000 pounds, $19.24 per ton.

[10] Land grant roads receive but 80 per cent of these rates.

[11] This is the rate received for carrying each ton handled 1 mile, and is obtained by dividing the yearly compensation by 365 and then dividing the daily compensation thus obtained by the number of tons carried 1 mile each day.

[12] This rate was obtained in the same manner as the ton-mile rate.

[13] By full-sized cars is meant cars 40 feet or more in length and wholly devoted to mail.

[14] Car and mile-run rates corrected for 1908 and since.

[15] Tables corrected for 1908.

[16] The rate 1907 and prior. Now the rate is $20.30 for tonnages between 2? and 24 tons and $19.24 for each ton above 24 tons.