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 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_.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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 16⅔ 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.[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]

-----------------------------------+--------+---------+---------

|Present |Present |Present

|pay per |rate per |rate per

Average daily weight of mails |mile per|ton per |hundred

over whole route. |annum. |mile.[11]|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

-----------------------------------+--------+---------+---------

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]

---------------+-----------+----------

| Rate per | Rate per

| mile of | mile run

Length of car. | track per | by cars.

| annum. |

---------------+-----------+----------

| | _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

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 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_.”

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 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.

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 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._

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 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 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 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 3½ 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 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?

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.

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 (2½ 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.”

_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.

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 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 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.…

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 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 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.