Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

What more did he do, gentlemen? He agreed at that time that he would refund to John W. Dorsey all the money he had expended. That amount was about ten thousand dollars. It was nine thousand and something. He also agreed that he would refund to John M. Peck, who is now dead, the money he had expended, which was between nine and ten thousand dollars. He also agreed that he would take the routes for the money he had expended, and that was between sixteen and eighteen thousand dollars. So, when those routes were turned over to him they were taken in full of over sixteen thousand dollars advanced by him, ten thousand dollars that he was to give to his brother, and ten thousand dollars that he was to give to John M. Peck--in the neighborhood of thirty-eight thousand dollars in all. Speaking of the sum without interest it amounted to thirty-six thousand dollars. Those routes were turned over to him. Gentlemen, it was not done in secret. When that division was made, the law having provided no way for A to assign a contract to B, that assignment had to be accomplished by a subcontract, and consequently subcontracts had to be given to Vaile, subcontracts to John R. Miner, and subcontracts to S. W. Dorsey, and yet the original contractor was still held by the Government. When the subcontract was made, it was for the entire amount of the pay; not one dollar remained for the original contractor. Now, I want to state to you what we are going to prove about that. After the division was made, to show you the interest taken by the arch-conspirator, we will prove these facts: That when the routes awarded to him by chance, on the 6th day of April, 1879, had been awarded, he left the city of Washington in a few days, and went to New Mexico; that he returned here on the 15th or 16th of May; that he left again on the 19th of May, and went to Arkansas; that from Arkansas he went to New Mexico, and returned to Washington on the 21st day of June, and that on the 27th of June he left for New Mexico. The next time he visited Washington was in July of the following year, 1880. He remained here one day, left and returned again to witness the inauguration of General Garfield. From June 27, 1879, up to the present hour I challenge these gentlemen to show that Stephen W. Dorsey ever wrote one line, one word, one letter, to any officer of the Post-Office Department. I challenge them to show that he ever took the slightest interest in any star route, or said one word to any human being about that business, except in explanation when attacked by the Government or in the newspapers. Now, gentlemen, after the division of these routes what did Stephen W. Dorsey do? This is a story, complicated, it may seem, perfectly plain when you understand the surroundings. It is a story necessary for you to know. After he got these routes what did he do? Did he want them? Did he want to engage in carrying the mail of the United States? Was that his business? At that time he had a ranch in New Mexico where he was raising cattle. That was his business, and is up to to-day. Did he want to stay here? Did he want to attend to these contracts? That is for you to determine. Did he want to enter into some partnership by which the Government was to be fleeced? That is for you to say. I tell you he had another business. I tell you he had a ranch in New Mexico, and we will prove it to you, and that ranch was of more importance to him than all the star routes in the United States. We will show you that at that time he could not have afforded to waste his time on these routes; that the business he was then engaged in was too profitable to waste any time in the mail business. Profitable as these gentlemen appear to think it was, what did he do? Just as soon as he could make the arrangement he went to a gentleman living in Pennsylvania by the name of James W. Bosler. Who is Bosler? He is a man well acquainted with the business of contracting with the Government. He has been in that business for years and years. He is a man of ample fortune, excellent reputation, considered by his friends and neighbors to be a gentleman and an honest man. He went to him. That we will show you. He said to Mr. Bosler, "I have advanced money by the indorsement of a note. I am in a business that I do not understand. We have had to divide the routes in order for me to have security for my debt. I want to turn these routes over to you. I am not acquainted with the business of carrying the mail. I know absolutely nothing about it. I want you to take it." How did he turn it over? We will show. He said to Mr. Bosler, "You take all the routes that have been given to me; every one. You run them and you pay me back my money, and then we will divide the profit." Mr. Bosler said he was not very well acquainted with post-office business, but he understood how to transact any ordinary business, and he would take them. That is all there is to it. He took the routes; every one. I believe that he took absolute control within a few months of the 6th day of April. I do not know but the warrants for the first quarter were paid or came in some way to S. W. Dorsey. But for the second quarter Mr. Bosler took them, and from that day to this Mr. Bosler has controlled those routes. He has carried every mail or has contracted with the man who did carry it. Every solitary thing that has been done from that day to this has been done by him. Every dollar has been collected by Mr. Bosler, and every dollar has been disbursed by Mr. Bosler. And before we get through I am going to tell you how all the routes that were given to Mr. S. W. Dorsey came out. Let me tell you how they came out. Mr. Bosler has carried the mail, paid the expenses, kept the accounts, and, gentlemen, I am going to tell you how much he made out of this vast conspiracy that has convulsed that part of the moral world that has been hired and paid to be convulsed. I am going to tell you exactly how we came out on all this business. I will give you the product of all this rascality, of all this conspiracy, of all the written and spoken lies; I will tell you our joint profit on this entire business; a business that promised to change the administration of this Government; a business about which reputations have been lost, and no reputations will be won; counting it all, every dollar, and taking into consideration the midnight meetings, the whisperings in alleys, the strange grips and signs that we have had to invent and practice, you will wonder at the amount. I will give it to you all. Mr. Bosler has kept the books, has expended every dollar, collected every warrant, and I say to you to-day that the entire profit has been less than ten thousand dollars, not enough to pay ten witnesses of the Government. Our profits have not been one-fiftieth of the expense of the Government in this prosecution--not one-fiftieth, and I say this, gentlemen, knowing what I am saying. It is charged by the Government that these gentlemen were conspirators; that they dragged the robes of office in the mire of rascality; that they swore lies; that they made false petitions; that they forged the names of citizens; that they did all this for the paltry profit of ten thousand dollars. That is what we will show you. And the moment this reform administration swept into power they cut down the service on these routes. They not only did that, but they refused to pay the month's extra pay, and they committed all this villainy in the name of reform. And do you know some of the meanest things in this world have been done in the name of reform? They used to say that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel. I think reform is. And whenever I hear a small politician talking about reform, borrowing soap to wash his official hands, with his mouth full and his memory glutted with the rascality of somebody else I begin to suspect him; I begin to think that that gentleman is preparing to steal something. So much, then, for the conspiracy up to this point, up to the division of these routes in 1879. Now recollect it.

Now, the next charge that is made against us, and it is a terrific one, is that these defendants, my clients, have filled the Post-Office Department with petitions--false petitions; forged petitions. I want to tell you here to-day that these gentlemen will never present any petitions upon any route upon which my clients are interested that they will claim was forged--not one. Have we not the right, gentlemen, to petition? Has not the humblest man in the United States a right to send a petition to Congress? Has not the smallest man--I will go further--has not the meanest man the right to petition Congress? Why, it is considered one of our Constitutional rights not only, but a right back of the Constitution, to make known your grievances to the governing power. Every man always had a right to petition the king. There is no government so absolutely devoid of the spirit of liberty that the meanest subject in it has not the right to express his opinion to the king--to the czar. Upon what meat do these officers feed that they are grown so great that an ordinary citizen may not address a petition to one of them? Now, I ask you, if you were living in Colorado and could get a mail once a week, have you not the right to petition your member of Congress to have it three times a week? Do you not know that every member of Congress from every State, every delegate from every Territory, is judged by his constitutents by the standard of what he does. By what he does for whom? By what he does for them. They send a man to Congress to help them, and they expect that man to get them a mail just as often as any other member of Congress gets his people a mail, do they not? And if he cannot do that they will leave that young gentleman at home. They will find another man. It is the boast of a member of Congress when he returns to his constitutents, "I have done something for you. You only had a mail here once a week. I have got it four times a week, gentlemen." "Here is a river that was navigable. I have got a custom house." "Here is a great district in which the United States holds a court and I have an appropriation for a court-house." Up will go the caps; they will say, "He is the man we want to represent us next session." But if he sneaks back and says, "Gentlemen, you do not need a court-house, you have mails often enough," the reply of the people is, "And you have been to Congress often enough." That is nature, and no matter how highly we are civilized when you scratch through the varnish you find a natural man.

Now, then, every member of Congress felt it was his duty, his privilege, and his leverage, to have the mails established, and when the people got up petitions he would indorse them. He would look at the petitions. There was the principal man, you know, in his town. He would look down a little farther. There was a fellow that had an idea of running against him. He would look down a little farther, and there was the man who presented his name at the last convention; there is the fellow who subscribed three hundred dollars towards the expenses of the campaign. That is enough. He turns it right over--"I most earnestly recommend that this petition be granted. So and so, M. C." Then he would put it in his coat-pocket, and he would march down to General Brady with a smile on his face as broad as the horizon of his countenance. He would just explain to the gentleman that there are miner's camps springing up all over that country, towns growing in a night like mushrooms, Providence just throwing prosperity away in that valley; that they have to have a daily mail then and there, and he would show this petition. In three weeks more there would come fifty others, and it would be granted. Why, even the counsel for the prosecution would have done the same, strange as it may appear. They would have done just the same--maybe worse, maybe better. The Post-Office officials might have granted more to them.

Now, I have always had the idea that it was one of my rights to sign a petition; that no man in this country could grow so great that I had not the right just to hand the gentleman a paper with my opinion on it. Do you know I do not think anybody can get so big that an American citizen cannot send a letter to him if he pays the postage, and in that letter he can give him his opinion. There is no fraud about that; not the slightest. These men all out through the mountains, men that went out there, you know, to hunt for silver and for gold, live in little camps of not more than twenty or thirty, maybe, but they wanted to hear from home just as bad as though there had been five hundred in that very place. And a fellow that had dug in the ground about eleven feet and had found some rock with a little stain on it and had had the stain assayed, wanted to hear from home right off. He stayed there and dreamed about fortune, palaces, pictures, carriages, statues, and the whole future was simply an avenue of joy upon which he and his wife and the children would ride up and down. He wanted to write a letter right off. He wanted to tell the folks how he felt. Do you think that man would not sign a petition for another mail? Do you think that fellow would vote to send a stupid man to Congress who could not get another mail? He felt rich; he was sleeping right over a hole that had millions in it, and he had not much respect for a Government that could not afford to send a millionaire a letter.

Now, Mr. Bliss tells you that we forged petitions, and in only a few moments, as the Court will remember, he had the kindness to say that anybody in the world would sign a petition for anything, and the question arises if people are so glad to sign petitions why should we forge their names. Do you not see that doctrine kind of swallows itself. You certainly would not forge the name of a man to a note who was hunting you up to sign it. And yet the doctrine of the Government is that while the whole West rose en masse, each man with a pen in his hand and inquiring for a petition, these defendants deliberately went to work and forged it. It won't do, gentlemen. Oh, my Lord, what a thing a little common sense is when you come to think about it, when you come to place it before your mind.

Now, the next great trouble in this case, gentlemen, is that we bid on routes that were not productive. When you remember that Congress made all these routes--now Congress did it; we did not do it--you will protect us. We did not make a solitary route upon which we bid, strange as it may appear. Congress, with the map of the Territories and the States of the Union before it, marked out all the routes. Congress determined where these routes should run. And yet this case has been tried as though in reality we were the parties who determined it.

Now, let me say something right here. It is for Congress to determine first of all on what routes the mail shall be carried. I want you to understand that, to get it into your heads, way in, that Congress determined that question, and that there has to be a law passed that the mail shall be carried from Toquerville to Adairville, from Rawlins to White River. That law has to be passed first, and Congress has to say that that route shall be established. Now, get that in your minds. I give you my word we never established a mail on the earth. That was done by Congress, and the moment Congress establishes a route it becomes the duty of the Second Assistant Postmaster-General to put the service upon that route, and the duty of the First Assistant Postmaster-General to name the offices on that route. Is not that true? That is the doctrine. Now, that had all been done before we entered into a conspiracy. These routes had not only been established, but the Government had advertised for service on these routes, and we bid. That was our crime.

These gentlemen said, I believe, at one time, that they were about to lift a little of the curtain, to expose the action of Congress. You see this suit has threatened the whole Government. If the Constitution weathers this storm it will be in luck. They were going to raise the curtain. They were going to be like children hanging around a circus tent. One lifts it up and hallooes to another, "Come quick, I see a horse's foot." They said that they were going to show the rascality of Congress. They have never done it. I suppose the reason may be that their pay depends upon an act of Congress, but they let that alone. Now, they say that Congress committed a great mistake. Why, they say they were routes that were not productive, and we knew it, and that when the people asked for expedition and increase on a route that was not productive we were guilty of fraud.

Now, gentlemen, let us see: There are not a great many productive post-offices in the United States. They say that a post-office that is not productive should be wiped out. Let me say to you, you cut off the post-offices that are not productive and you will have thousands the next day that are not productive. It is the unproductive offices that make others productive. You cut off those that are not productive and you will have double the number that are not productive. You cut off all those that are unproductive and you will have nothing left but the mail line. You might say that there is not a spring that flows into the Mississippi that is navigable. Let us cut off the springs. Then what becomes of the Mississippi? That is not navigable either. It is on account of the streams not navigable, emptying into one, that the one into which they empty, becomes navigable. And yet, these gentlemen say in the interest of navigation, "Let us stop the springs because you cannot run a boat up them." That is their doctrine. There is no sense in that. You have got to treat this country as one country. You have got to treat the post-offices business as a unit for an entire country. You have got to say that wherever the flag floats the mail shall be carried, wherever American citizens live they shall be visited with the intelligence of the nineteenth century. That is what you have got to say. You have got to get up on a good high plane, and you have got to run a great Government like this that dominates the fortune of a continent, and you have got to run it like great men. There has got to be some genius in this thing and not little bits of suspicion.

Productiveness! Let us see. We are informed by Mr. Bliss, who is paid for saying it, otherwise he would not, that the West is perfectly willing to have mail facilities at the expense of the East. I do not think the gentleman comprehends the West. There is nothing so laughable, and sometimes there is nothing so contemptible, as the egotism of a little fellow who lives in a big town. Some people really think that New York supports this country, and probably it never entered the mind of Mr. Bliss that this country supported New York. But it does. All the clerks in that city do not make anything, they do not manufacture anything, they do not add to the wealth of this world. I tell you, the men who add to the wealth of this world are the men who dig in the ground. The men who walk between the rows of corn, the men who delve in the mines, the men who wrestle with the winds and waves of the wide sea, the men on whose faces you find the glare of forges and furnaces, the men who get something out of the ground, and the men who take something rude and raw in nature and fashion it into form for the use and convenience of men, are the men who add to the wealth of this world. All the merchants in this world would not support this country. My Lord! you could not get lawyers enough on a continent to run one town. And yet, Mr. Bliss talks as though he thought that all the mutton and beef of the United States were raised in Central Park, as though we got all our wool from shearing lambs in Wall Street. It won't do, gentlemen. There is a great deal produced in the Western country. I was out there a few years ago, and found a little town like Minneapolis with fifteen thousand people, and everybody dead-broke. I went there the other day and found eighty thousand people, and visited one man who grinds five thousand bushels of flour each day. I found there the Falls of Saint Anthony doing work for a continent without having any back to ache, grinding thirty thousand bushels of flour daily. Just think of the immense power it is. Millions of feet of lumber in this very country, and Dakota, over which some of these routes run, yielding a hundred million bushels of wheat. Only a few years ago I was there and passed over an absolute desert, a wilderness, and on this second visit found towns of five and six and seven thousand inhabitants. There is not a man on this jury, there is not a man in this house with imagination enough to prophesy the growth of the great West, and before I get through I will show you that we have helped to do something for that great country.

Productiveness! Let me tell you where that idea of productiveness was hatched, where it was born, the egg out of which it came. It was by the act of March 2, 1799, just after the Revolution, and just after our forefathers had refused to pay their debts, just after they had repudiated the debt of the Confederation, just after they had allowed money to turn to ashes in the pockets of the hero of Yorktown, or had allowed it to become worthless in the hand of the widow and the orphan. In 1799, the time when economy trod upon the heels almost of larceny, our Congress provided that the Postmaster-General should report to Congress after the second year of its establishment every post-road which should not have produced one-third the expense of carrying the mail. Recollect it, and I want you to recollect in this connection that we never established a post-route in the world. We will show that, anyway, if we show nothing else. By the act of 1825 a route was discontinued within three years that did not produce a fourth of the expenses. Now, when those laws were in force the postage was collected at the place of delivery.

But in old times, gentlemen, in Illinois, in 1843, it was considered a misfortune to receive a letter. The neighbors sympathized with a man who got a letter. He had to pay twenty-five cents for it. It took five bushels of corn at that time, five bushels of oats, four bushels of potatoes, ten dozen eggs to get one letter. I have myself seen a farmer in a perturbed state of mind, going from neighbor to neighbor telling of his distress because there was a letter in the post-office for him. In 1851 the postage was reduced to three cents when it was prepaid, and the law provided that the diminution of income should not discontinue any route, neither should it affect the establishment of new routes, and for the first time in the history of our Government the idea of productiveness was abandoned. It was not a question of whether we would make money by it or not; the question was, did the people deserve a mail and was it to the interest of the Government to carry that mail? I am a believer in the diffusion of intelligence. I believe in frequent mails. I believe in keeping every part of this vast Republic together by a knowledge of the same ideas, by a knowledge of the same facts, by becoming acquainted with the same thoughts. If there is anything that is to perpetuate this Republic it is the distribution of intelligence from one end to the other. Just as soon as you stop that we grow provincial; we get little, mean, narrow prejudices; we begin to hate people because we do not know them; we begin to ascribe all our faults to other folks. I believe in the diffusion of intelligence everywhere. I want to give to every man and to every woman the opportunity to know what is happening in the world of thought.

I want to carry the mail to the hut as well as to the palace. I want to carry the mail to the cabin of the white man or the colored man, no matter whether in Georgia, Alabama, or in the Territories. I want to carry him the mail and hand it to him as I hand it to a Vanderbilt or to a Jay Gould. That is my doctrine. The law of 1851 did away with your productiveness nonsense, and when the mails were first put upon railways in the year 1838, the law made a limit, not on account of productiveness, but a limit of cost, and said the mail should not cost to exceed three hundred dollars a mile. Let me correct myself. In 1838 a law was passed that the mails might be carried by railroad provided they did not cost in excess of twenty-five per cent, over the cost of mail coaches. In 1839 that law was repealed, and the law then provided that the pay on railways should be limited to three hundred dollars a mile. So you see how much productiveness has to do with this business. In 1861 Congress provided for an overland mail. Did they look out for productiveness? The overland mail in 1861 was a little golden thread by which the Pacific and the Atlantic could be united through the great war. Just a mail, carrying now and then a letter in 1861, and they were allowed, I think, twenty or thirty days to cross. Was productiveness thought of? Congress provided that they might pay for that service eight hundred thousand dollars a year. The mail did not exceed a thousand pounds. Including everything. Some letters that were carried from this side to the other cost the Government three hundred dollars apiece. What was the object? It was simply that the hearts of the Atlantic and the Pacific might feel each other's throb through the great war. That is all. Suppose some poor misguided attorney had stood up at that time and commenced talking about productiveness. In the presence of these great national objects the cost fades, sinks. It is absolutely lost. Wherever our flag flies I want to see the mail under it. After awhile we established what is known as the free-delivery system. That was first established on the idea of productiveness. Whenever you start a new idea, as a rule, you have to appeal to all the meanness that is in conservatism. Before you can induce conservatives to do a decent action you have to prove to them that it will pay at least ten per cent. So they started that way. They said, "We will only have this free delivery system where it pays." We went on and found the system desirable, and that many people wanted it, and that the revenues of the Post-Office Department were so great that we could afford it, and we commenced having it where it did not pay. Right here in the city of Washington, right here in the capital of the great Republic, we have the free delivery system. Is it productive? Last year we lost twenty-one thousand dollars distributing letters to the attorneys for the prosecution and others. And yet now this District has the impudence to talk about productiveness. If anybody wants to find that fact it can be found on pages 42 and 45 of the Postmaster-General's report. Productiveness! We have now a railway service in the United States. I want to know if that is calculated upon the basis of productiveness. A car starts from the city of New York, and runs twelve hours ahead of the ordinary time to the city of Chicago for the simple purpose of carrying the mail, stopping only where the engine needs water, only when the monster whose bones are steel and whose breath is flame, is tired. Do you suppose that pays? You could scarcely put letters enough into the cars at three cents apiece to pay for the trip. At last we regard this whole country as a unit for this business. We say the American people are to be supplied. We do not care whether they live in New York or in Durango; we do not care whether they are among the steeples of the East or the crags of the West; we do not care whether they live in the villages of New England or whether they are staked out on the plains of New Mexico. For the purpose of the distribution of intelligence this great country is one. Do you see what a big idea that is? When it gets into the heads of some people you have no idea how uncomfortable they feel. I have as much interest in this country as anybody, just exactly, and I am willing to subscribe my share to have this mail carried so that the man on the very western extreme, on the hem of the national garment, may have just as much as the man who lives here in the shadow of the Capitol. You see whenever a man gets to the height where he does not want anything that he is not willing to give somebody else, then he first begins to appreciate what a gentleman is and what an American should be. Productiveness! I say that all the State and Territorial lines have been brushed aside. We do not carry the mail in a State because it pays. We carry it because there are people there; because there are American citizens there; not because it pays. The post-office is not a miser; it is a national benefactor. There are only seventeen States in this Union where the income of the Post-Office Department is equal to the outlay; only seventeen States in this Union. There are twenty-one States in which the mail is carried at a loss. There are ten Territories in which we receive substantially nothing in return for carrying the mail, and there is one District, the District of Columbia. I do not know how many miles square this magnificent territory is; I guess about six. Thirty-six square miles. How much is the loss in this District per annum? About one thousand five hundred dollars a square mile. The annual loss right here in this District is fifty-eight thousand dollars, and yet the citizens of this town are rascally enough to receive the mail, according to the prosecution. Why is it not stopped? Why is not the Postmaster-General indicted for a conspiracy with some one? This little territory, six miles square has a loss of fifty-eight thousand dollars.

If there was a corresponding loss in Kansas, Nebraska, California, Dakota, and Idaho, it would take more than the national debt to run the mail every year. And yet here in thirty-six square miles comes the wail of non-productiveness. It is almost a joke. We are carrying the mail in Kansas at a loss of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and yet Kansas has a hundred million bushels of wheat for sale. Good! I am willing to send letters to such people. It is a vast and thriving country. It contains men who have laid the foundation of future empires. I want people big enough and broad enough and wide enough to understand that the valley of the Mississippi will support five hundred millions of people. Let us get some ideas, gentlemen. Let us get some sense. There is nothing like it. We pay five hundred thousand dollars a year for the privilege of carrying the mail in Nebraska. Do you know I am willing to pay my share. Any man who will go out to Nebraska and just let the wind blow on him deserves to have plenty of mail. You do not know here what wind is. You have never felt anything but a zephyr. You have never felt anything but an atmospheric caress. Go and try Nebraska. The wind there will blow a hole out of the ground. Go out there and try one blizzard, a fellow that robs the north pole and comes down on you, and you will be willing to carry the mail to any man that will stay there and plow a hundred and sixty acres of land. When I see a post-office clerk sitting in a good warm room and making a fuss about a chap in Nebraska for not carrying the mail against a blizzard, I have my sentiments. I know what I think of the man. In the Territory of Utah we pay two hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year for the privilege of carrying the mails, and the males in that country are mostly polygamists. I want you to get an idea of this country. In the State of California, that State of gold, that State of wheat, the State that has added more to the metallic wealth of this nation than all others combined, an empire of magnificence, we pay five hundred thousand dollars a year for the privilege of distributing the mail. I am glad of it. I want the pioneer fostered. I want the pioneer to feel the throb of national generosity. I want him to feel that this is his country. You see the post-office is about the only blessing he has. Every other visitor that comes from the General Government wants taxes. The Post-Office Department is the only evidence we possess of national beneficence. It is the only thing that comes from the General Government that has not a warrant, that does not intend to arrest us. In Texas, which is an empire of two hundred and seventy-three thousand square miles, a territory greater than the French empire, which at one time conquered Europe, we pay four hundred and fifty-nine thousand dollars for the privilege of distributing the mail. I am glad of it. It will not be long before that State will have millions of people and give us back millions of dollars each year, and with that surplus we will carry the mail to other Territories. A man who has not pretty big ideas has no business in this country; not a bit. We pay one hundred and eighty-nine thousand dollars for the sake of carrying letters and papers around Arkansas; one hundred and eighty-three thousand dollars for the privilege of wandering up and down Alabama; one hundred and seven thousand dollars in Missouri; two hundred and forty thousand dollars in Ohio; two hundred and eight thousand dollars in Georgia; three hundred and twelve thousand dollars in old Virginia. When I first went to Illinois the Government had to pay for the privilege of carrying the mail in that State. Now Illinois turns around and hands six hundred and sixty thousand dollars of profit to the United States each year. She says, "You carry the mail to the other fellows that cannot afford it just the same as you carried it for us. You rocked our cradle, and we will pay for rocking somebody else's cradle." That is sense. In other words, in seventeen States we have a profit of seven million dollars. In twenty-one States, ten Territories, and the District of Columbia we have a loss of five million dollars. When we regard the country as a unit, then we make money out of the whole business. That is good. We have in the United States about a hundred and ten thousand miles of railroad now, and we pay about two hundred dollars a mile for carrying the mail on those railroads. We have two hundred and twenty-seven thousand miles of star routes, and we pay on them between twenty and thirty dollars a mile. I want you to think about it. In looking over the Post-master-General's report I accidentally came across this fact. You know, gentlemen, the present period is a paroxysmal period of reform. We are having what is known as a virtuous spasm. We have that every little while. It is a kind of fiscal mumps or whooping-cough. I find by this report that a mail averaging twenty pounds carried in a baggage-car from Connellsville to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, is paid for at the rate of forty-two dollars and seventy-two cents a mile. Under General Brady the star routes cost between twenty and thirty dollars a mile.

Now, gentlemen, I have told you our connection with the star-route business. I have told it all to you freely, frankly, and fully. Some charges have been made against us, and I want to speak to you about them. You understand that it often takes quite awhile to explain a charge that is made in only a few words. One man can say another did so and so. It is only a lie, and yet it may take pages for the accused man to make his explanation. The worst lie in the world is a lie which is partly true. You understand that. When you explain a lie that has a little circumstance going along with it, certifying to it, and attesting to its truth, it takes you a great deal longer to explain it than it did to tell it. The first great charge is that for us--and I limit myself to my clients--orders were antedated. That is one great charge. Let me tell you just how that was. Mr. Bliss calls attention to the fact that Mr. Brady made orders relating back, and in one case he alleged that the order was made, for the benefit of my clients, to take effect six weeks prior to its being issued. I want to explain that. A railroad was being constructed along the line of one of these routes. It may be well enough for me to say that it was the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. The points from which the mail was carried had to be changed as the road progressed. As it grew Mr. Brady increased the service on the route to seven times a week. He increased it from the end of the railroad, and he made it seven times a week because the mail on the railroad was seven times a week. We were to carry the mail from the end of the railroad, wherever that end might be. He increased the service on this route from the end of the railroad to the other terminal point; that is, he made it a daily mail so as to connect with the daily trains on the railroad. At the time the seven trips were to be put on, distance tables were sent out to postmasters at the terminal points to get the distances. Let me tell you what a distance table is. The names of the post-offices are on a circular, and the Post-Office Department sends that circular to the postmasters along the route and they are asked to return it with the distance from each station to every other marked upon it. Now, until that table is returned it is impossible for the Second Assistant Postmaster-General to tell how far they carry the mail. This railroad was progressing every month, and as the railroad advanced the distance from the end of the railroad to the other terminal point decreased. Now, the Postmaster-General or the Second Assistant cannot fix that pay until he has a return of the distance table. But before he has that return he can order the contractor to carry the mail, and after the distance table is returned then he can make up the formal order and have that order entered upon the records of the department. That is all he ever did. I want you to understand that perfectly. It might be four weeks after the contractor was ordered to carry the mail from the termination of the railroad, or it might be five or six weeks before the distance tables were returned and the distance calculated. But do you not see it made no difference? There was first an order either by telegraph or a short order, and after the distance tables were returned then the distance was calculated, the amount of money calculated, and the regular order written up and made of record, and a warrant drawn for payment. That is all there is to it. And yet this is what Mr. Bliss calls defrauding the Government. We are charged on that kind of evidence with having defrauded the United States. We will show you that no order of that kind was made except when the distance was unknown; and that when the distance was ascertained, the formal order was made, another order having been made before that time. Let me say right here that orders of a similar nature have been made in the Post-Office Department since its establishment. Since the construction of railways there has not a month passed in that department--certainly not a year--when such orders have not been made. And yet for the first time in the history of the Government it is brought forward against us as an evidence of fraud. We will show that the order was made exactly as I have stated.

The next badge of fraud that is charged is that after a route had been awarded to us it was increased or expedited, or both, before the stock was put on. Well, I will tell you just how that is, because you want to know. This case, apparently complicated, is infinitely simple when it is understood. There are in the United States, I believe, some ten thousand of these star routes. They are all or nearly all in some way connected. One depends upon another. It is a web woven over the entire West, and how you run a mail here depends upon how one is run there, and the effort is to have all these mails connect in a certain harmony so that time will not be lost, and so that each letter will get to its destination in the shortest possible time, and it requires not only a great deal of experience, but it requires a great deal of ingenuity. It requires a great deal of study and strict attention for a man so to arrange the routes and the time in the United States that the letters can be gotten to their destination in the shortest possible time. And yet that is the object. You can see that. Now, you may be looking at the route from A to B, and say that there is no sense in having it in that time; but if you will look at the time of other routes, if you see with what routes that connects you will say that it is sensible. Now, you go on to another route, and, gentlemen, you see that every solitary route is touched, is compromised, is affected by every other route. That is what I want you to understand.

Now, then, Mr. Bliss says that it was a badge of fraud to increase the time and the service on a route before the stock was put on. Now let me show you. Here you have your scheme. Here is the route, we will say, from A to E. You let that for a weekly route, once a week. How fast? A hundred hours. When you get the other routes and look at this business you see that that crosses several places where the mail is lost. That is where a day is lost, and you see, if instead of that being a hundred hours it were seventy-five hours the mail at many stations would save one day or two days. Now, then, the law vests in you the power before a solitary horse or carriage goes upon that route to say to the man to whom the contract was awarded, "You must carry that in seventy-five hours instead of one hundred hours, and you must carry it four times a week instead of once a week." If you take that power from the Postmaster-General and from the Second Assistant those offices become useless. It is impossible for any human intellect to take into consideration all the facts growing out of this service.

There is another thing, gentlemen, which you must remember, and that is that these advertisements for this service are not made the day the service is wanted. These advertisements are put out six months before there is to be any such service.

It is sometimes a year before that service is wanted, and if you know anything about the West you know that in one year the whole thing may change. That where there was not a city there may be a city, and where there was a city nothing but desolation. Now, then, the law very wisely has vested the power in the Second Assistant and the Postmaster-General to rectify all the mistakes made either by themselves or by time, and to call for faster time or for slower, that is, for less frequent trips. Now, then, you see that that is no badge of fraud, do you not? If, before you put a man or a horse on that route, the Government finds it wants twice as many trips there is no fraud in saying so, and if they find they want to go in fifty hours instead of a hundred hours there would be fraud in not saying so. That has been the practice since this was a Government.

Now, what is the next? The next great charge against us, gentlemen, is that when they agreed to carry a greater number of trips, or any swifter time for money, Mr. Brady did not make us give an additional bond, and Mr. Bliss talked about that I should think about a day. Nearly all the time I heard him he was on that subject. "Why did they not when they were to carry additional trips give a new bond?" Well, I will tell you why: Because there is no law for it. There never was a law for it--never. And Mr. Brady had no right to demand a bond unless the statute provided for it. When I give a bond to carry the mail once a week, and the Government finds that it wants it carried three times a week, the Government cannot make me give an additional bond. Why? Because the statute does not provide for it, and Mr. Brady had not the power to enact new laws. That is all. Why, there never was such a bond given, and any bond that is given under duress, by compulsion, not having the foundation of a statute, is absolutely null and void. Everybody knows it that knows anything. And yet the gentleman comes before you and says it is a sign of fraud that we did not give an additional bond. There never was such a bond given in the history of this Government--never; and in all probability never will be unless these gentlemen get into Congress. You know the law prescribes every bond that the contractor must give, and it is bad enough without ever being increased during the contract term.

So much now for that frightful badge of fraud. I want to make this statement so you will understand it. They have the unfairness, they have the lack of candor to tell you that it is one of the evidences that we are scoundrels, that we failed to give an additional bond, and when they made that statement they knew that by law we could not give an additional bond, and they knew that if we had given an additional bond it would not have been worth the paper upon which it was written. And yet they lack candor to that degree that they come into this court and tell you that that is one of the evidences that we have conspired against the United States. It won't do.

What is the next badge of fraud? And I want to tell you this is a case of badges, and patches, and ravelings, and remnants, and rags. It is a kind of a mental garret, full of odd boots, and strange cats, thrown at us, and altogether it is called a case of conspiracy. Another badge of fraud is that whenever we carried the mail one trip a week, and it was increased to two trips a week, Brady was such a villain that he gave us double pay; and Mr. Bliss informed the jury that they knew just as well as he did that it did not cost twice as much to give two trips a week as it did to give one. Well, who said it did? And yet they say that is an evidence of fraud. Well, let us see. There is nothing like finding the evidence.

Now, when we come to this case we will introduce a bond that we gave at that time, and when the jury read that bond they will find this, or substantially this:

It is hereby agreed by the said contractor and his sureties that the Postmaster-General may discontinue or extend this contract, change the schedule, alter, increase, or extend the service, he allowing not to exceed a pro rata increase of compensation for any additional service thereby required, or for increased speed if the employment of additional stock or carriers is rendered necessary, and in case of decrease, curtailment, or discontinuance, as a full indemnity to said contractor, one month's extra pay on the account of service dispensed with, and not to exceed a pro rata compensation for the service retained: Provided, however, That in case of increased expedition the contractor may, upon timely notice, relinquish his contract.