Chapter XX: Section 181 (2)

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.

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; 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 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 2½ 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 2½ and 24 tons and $19.24 for each ton above 24 tons.