The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume X Part 14

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 pa.s.sed that the mail shall be carried from Toquerville to Adairville, from Rawlins to White River. That law has to be pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sistant Postmaster-General to put the service upon that route, and the duty of the First a.s.sistant 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 Const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstance 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sistant 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sistant 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts for this service are not made the day the service is wanted. These advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 a.s.sistant 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.

Now, it is in that provided that if they call on him for double service he is ent.i.tled to double pay. That is the law, and it has been the practice, gentlemen, since we have had a Post-Office Department. And why? Let me show you. Here is a man who carries a mail from A to Y.

There are supposed to be some commercial transactions between those two places. It is supposed that now and then a human being goes from one of those places to the other, and the man who carries the mail, as a rule carries pa.s.sengers and does the local business. Now, do you suppose that he would agree with the Government that he would carry the mail once a week for a thousand dollars a year, and that they might hire another man to carry it once a week for a thousand dollars a year, and maybe that other man take all his pa.s.sengers and all his business. The understanding is that when I bid a thousand dollars a year for once a week, if you put it to three times a week I am to have three thousand dollars; four times a week, four thousand dollars; seven times a week, seven thousand dollars, and that has been the unbroken practice of this Government from the establishment of the Post-Office Department until to-day. You can see the absolute propriety of it, and you can see that any man would be almost crazy to take a contract on any other terms, and that contract is this: "I will carry for you so much a trip, and if you want more trips you can have them at the same price as that fixed." That is fair. That is what we did.

So much for that badge of fraud. What is the next one? It is that the pay was increased twice as much by the increase, and, as I said, that is the law.

Now let us see what is the next great badge of fraud. That we received the pay when the mail was not carried. I deny it, and we will show in this case, gentlemen, that we never received pay except when the mail was carried. And how do I know? Because General Brady established a system of way-bills, so that a way-bill would accompany every pouch in which letters were, and they would put on that way-bill the time that it got to the post-office, and when that way-bill got to the terminal point it was sent here to Washington and filed away, and at the end of every quarter a report was made, and if a mail was behind at any post-office you would find it on that way-bill, and if they had not made the trip then they were fined. That way-bill system was inaugurated by General Brady, and under that way-bill system we carried the mail, and we could not get pay unless we had carried the mail. I call them way-bills. They are mail-bills that go with the pouch and give a history of each mail that is carried. That is all.

Now another great badge of fraud. The first was that he was to impose no fines when the mail was not carried. The next was that he was to impose fines and then take the fines off for half--fifty per cent. Now, would not that be an intelligent contract? I carry the mails. You are the Second a.s.sistant Postmaster-General. I agree with you that if you fine me and then will take the fine off I will give you half of it. About how long would it take you to break me up? And yet that is honestly and solemnly put forward here as a fact in the case. They tell a story of a man who was bitten by a dog. Another man said to him, "I'll tell you what to do. You just sop some bread in that blood and give it to the dog; it will cure you." "Oh, my G.o.d!" says he, "if the other dogs hear of it they will eat me up." And here it is, without a smile, urged before this jury that we made a bargain that a fellow might fine us for the halves. Well, there may be twelve men in this world who believe that. They are unfortunate.

The next charge is that a subcontract was made for less than the original contract. Well, that is where most of the money in this world is made. Thousands and millions of men have made fortunes by buying corn at sixty cents a bushel to be delivered next February, and selling the same corn for seventy cents. There is where fortunes live. The difference between a contract and a subcontract is the territory of profit in which every American loves to settle. You make a contract with the Government to furnish, say, a thousand horses of a certain kind for one hundred and fifty dollars apiece. You go and make a subcontract with some one to furnish you those same horses for one hundred and twenty-five dollars apiece. Is that a fraud? You have taken upon yourself the responsibility and if your subcontractor fails you must make it good. There is no harm in that.

Suppose I agree with you to-morrow that if you will furnish me one thousand bushels of wheat on the first day of January, I will give you one thousand five hundred dollars, and I find out that you made a bargain with another fellow to do it for a thousand dollars. If I am an honest man I suppose I will jump the contract, won't I? Not much. If I am an honest man I will say, "Well, you made five hundred dollars; I am glad of it; good for you." But the idea of the prosecution is that the moment Brady saw a subcontract for less than the original contract he should have had a moral spasm, and said, "I won't carry out the contract; I will swindle you, I will rob you, and I will do it in the name of virtue." And that is the meanest way a man ever did rob--in the name of virtue, reform. So much for that. But if you ever make a contract with this Government and can make a subcontract at the same price you do it as quick as you can.

The next is, that whenever he discontinued a route or any part of a route, rather, he gave us a month's extra pay; you heard that, did you not? He was on that subject about a half a day. How did he come to do that? I will tell you. There is nothing like looking:

And in case of decrease, curtailment, or discontinuance of service, as a full indemnity to said contractor one month's extra pay on the amount of service dispensed with.

That is first the law, secondly the contract, and thirdly it was made in the interest of the United States. And why? Suppose the United States made a contract with a man to carry a mail from New York to Liverpool, and in consequence of that contract the man bought steamships to perform the service, and then the United States made up its mind not to carry the mail. That man might get damages to the amount of hundreds and thousands of dollars. Therefore the United States endeavored to protect itself and say the limit of damage shall be one month's pay, and that has been the law for years, and that law has been pa.s.sed upon by the Supreme Court of the United States. It was pa.s.sed upon in the case of Garfielde against the United States, where he claimed greater damages because he had all the steamships to carry the mail from San Francisco to Portland, and the Supreme Court said it made no difference what his expense had been. He was bound by the letter of the law and the contract, and could have only one month's extra pay as his entire damage.

Now, these gentlemen bring forward a law to protect the United States Government, and they bring that forward as an evidence of conspiracy, as evidence of a fraud. Nothing could be more unfair, nothing on earth could show a greater want of character. Now, let us see what else.

The next great charge is false affidavits. They tell you that we made lots of them; that we just had them for sale. False affidavits! And that Mr. John W. Dorsey made two false affidavits in two cases. The evidence will show that he did not. The evidence will show that he made only one in each case, when we come to it. But I want to call your attention to this fact, that in one case one affidavit was made where it said the number of men and horses then necessary was eight, that on the expedited schedule it would be twenty-four. Three times eight are twenty-four. The second affidavit said the number of men and horses then was fifteen, and the number on expedition and increase would be forty-five. Three times fifteen are forty-five. So that the amount taken from the Government would be exactly the same on both affidavits. You understand that. For instance, if it took five horses and men to do the then business, and would require fifteen to do the expedited and increased business, then you would be ent.i.tled to three times the amount of pay. So in this case one affidavit said it took eight and would take twenty-four, the other affidavit said it took fifteen and would take forty-five. Three times eight are twenty-four. Three times fifteen are forty-five. So that the amount of money taken from the Government would be exactly the same under each affidavit. Now, that is all there is of that.

In the next case, where he made two affidavits, I find that by the second affidavit it took, I think, thirteen thousand dollars less from the Government, and yet they call the second affidavit a piece of perjury. And here is one thing that I want to impress upon all your minds. Where you not only carry the mail but carry pa.s.sengers, it is an exceedingly difficult problem to say just how many horses and men it requires to carry the mail, and then how many men and horses it requires to carry the pa.s.sengers. It is hard to make the divide you understand--very hard. You can tell, for instance, the cost of mounting a railroad for a hundred miles, but it is very difficult to tell the cost of the bridges or what the spikes cost or what the deep cuts cost.

You can take the whole together and say it cost so much a year. So in this case we can say it requires so many men and horses doing the business that we are doing, but it is almost impossible for the brain to separate exactly the pa.s.sengers, the package business, from simply carrying the mail. As I said before, men will differ in opinion. Some men will say it will take ten horses, others twenty, others twenty-five, and then the next question arises, and I want to call particular attention to that question, and that is, whether the law means only the horses absolutely carrying the mail; whether the law means by carriers only the men who ride the horses or drive the wagons. Now, I will tell you what I mean. I undertake to carry the mail, we will say from Omaha to San Francisco. How many men will it take? Now, I will count all the men who are driving the stages, all the men who are gathering forage, all the men who are attending to that business in any way, and if on the way I have blacksmiths' shops where my horses are shod I will count those men. If I have men engaged in drawing wood a hundred miles, I will count those men. In other words, I will count all the men I pay, no matter whether they are keeping books in New York or carrying the mail across the desert. I will count all the men I pay; so will you. What horses will you count? All the horses engaged in the business; those that are drawing corn for the others, as well as the rest, will you not?

There is an old fable that a trumpeter was captured in the war and he said to his captor, "I am not a soldier, I never shot anybody." "Ah,"

they said, "but you incited others to shoot, and you are as much a soldier as anybody; we want you."

Now, I say that we are ent.i.tled to count every man who carries the mail, and every man necessary to perform that service. So do you. Now, there we divide. The Government says we shall count simply the men carrying the mail, n.o.body else, and we shall count simply the horses in actual service. That is nonsense. For instance, you have got to have thirty horses. They are going all the time. Do you depend on just that thirty?

No, sir. If one gets lame you cannot carry the mail. You have got to have twenty or thirty horses in your corral, in the stables, so that if one of the others gives out you will have enough. That is one great question in this case, gentlemen. What I say to you now is that on every one of these routes in which my clients are interested, or, I may say, in which anybody is interested, the evidence will be that the affidavits were substantially correct. In many cases there was a far greater difference between the men and horses then used and the men and horses that were afterwards necessary.

You must take another thing into consideration. In a country where there are Indian depredations one man will not stay at a station by himself.

He wants somebody with him; he wants two or three with him, and the more frightened he is the more men he will want. On that route from Bismarck to Tongue River, as to which it was sworn it would take a hundred and fifty men, the statement was made at a time when the men would not stay separately; that they wanted five or six together at one station; that they wanted men out on guard and watch. You will find before we get through, gentlemen, that the affidavits do not overstate the number. You will find in addition that these pet.i.tions were signed by the best men; that that service was asked for by the best men, not simply in the Territories, but by some of the best men in the United States; by members of Congress, by Senators, by generals, by great and splendid men, men of national reputation. So when we come to that we will show to you that the affidavits made were substantially true. There is another charge that has been made, and that is that the affidavits in Mr. Peck's name were not made by him; that he never signed these affidavits.

Yet, gentlemen, we will prove to you as the Government once proved by Mr. Taylor, a notary public in New Mexico, that Mr. Peck appeared personally before him; that he was personally acquainted with Mr. Peck, and that he signed and swore to those affidavits in his presence. That we will substantiate in this trial as the Government substantiated it in the other. These gentlemen, are among the charges that have been made against us. I say to you to-day they will not be able to show that we ever put upon the files of the Post-Office Department a solitary letter, a solitary pet.i.tion, a solitary communication that was not genuine and true. Not one. They cannot do it. They never will do it. You will be astonished when you hear these pet.i.tions to find the Government admitting that they are true. If they do not read them we will read them. That is all.

Now, I have stated to you a few of the charges made against my clients up to this point. I want to keep it in your mind. I want each man on this jury to understand exactly what I say. Let us go over this ground a little. I want to be sure you remember it. In the first place, S. W.

Dorsey was not interested in these routes. All the bids were made by John W. Dorsey, John M. Peck, John R. Miner, and a man by the name of Boone. All the information was gathered by Mr. Boone by sending circulars to every postmaster on the routes. Upon that information John W. Dorsey, John M. Peck, and John R. Miner made their calculations and made their bids, numbering in all about twelve hundred. Of that number they had awarded to them a hundred and thirty-four contracts. Recollect that. After those contracts were awarded to them they were without the money to put the stock on all the routes, because more contracts were awarded than they expected. Thereupon John R. Miner borrowed some money from Stephen W. Dorsey and kept up that borrowing until the amount reached some sixteen or eighteen thousand dollars. Don't forget it.

After it got to that point Mr. Dorsey started for New Mexico. At Saint Louis he met John R. Miner, then coming from Montana, and John R. Miner said to him, "We have got to have some more money of you;" and Dorsey replied, "I have no more money to give you." Miner then said, "You give your note or indorse mine for nine or ten thousand dollars." Dorsey replied, "If you will give me post-office orders and drafts, not only to secure the note I am about to indorse or make for you, but also to the amount of the money I have advanced for you, I will give the note." That was agreed upon. Thereupon he gave the note. It was discounted in the German-American National Bank, and Mr. Miner deposited with the note the orders on the Post-Office Department, not only to secure the note, but the sixteen thousand dollars that Dorsey had before that time advanced.

Dorsey went on to New Mexico, and in May or July of that year another law was pa.s.sed, allowing a subcontractor to put his subcontract on file.

After he had advanced that money and indorsed or signed the note, they made the contract with Mr. Vaile, turning these routes over to him and giving him subcontracts on all these routes. When Stephen W. Dorsey came back from New Mexico in December of that year he found that the note at the German-American National Bank had been protested, and that his collateral security was at that time worthless, because the subcontracts had been filed and these subcontracts cut out the post-office orders or drafts. Thereupon he wanted a settlement. Matters drifted along until April, 1879, and a settlement was made. I have told you that from the time the routes were given to Mr. Vaile until that time n.o.body had the slightest thing to do with them except Mr. Vaile; that in April, 1879, the division was made; that Mr. Vaile paid the note at the German-American National Bank; that the division was made, as I told you, by Mr. Vaile drawing one route, Mr. Dorsey one, and Mr. Miner one, and keeping that up until they were all drawn. I forgot to tell you before that Mr. S. W. Dorsey had sixteen thousand dollars, to which, if you add the interest, it would be about eighteen thousand dollars; that John W. Dorsey had ten thousand dollars and John M. Peck had ten thousand dollars, and when that division was made Stephen W. Dorsey agreed to pay John W. Dorsey ten thousand dollars, and to pay John M.

Peck ten thousand dollars for his interest. Gentlemen, he did pay John W. Dorsey ten thousand dollars, and he did pay the same amount to Peck, and from that day to this John W. Dorsey has never had the interest of one solitary cent in any one of these routes. He was simply paid back the money that he expended. Not another cent. John M. Peck never made by this business one solitary dollar. He simply received back the money he had expended. After he had paid back that money to both of these men, Stephen W. Dorsey took these routes with a debt to him of between sixteen and eighteen thousand dollars. Now, as to Mr. Rerdell. They say he was the private secretary of Stephen W. Dorsey. He never was; not for a moment, not for a single moment He attended to some of this business.

I have no doubt that the Government imagine they can debauch somebody in order to get information. I give them notice now--GO on. There is no living man whose testimony we fear. There is no living lawyer who has the genius to make perjury do us harm. I want you to understand it.

And I want them to understand that I know precisely what they are endeavoring to do. There is only one way for them to surprise me, and that is for them to do a kind thing.