The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume X Part 37

Postmaster-General; every one of you. If you do not know all about this subject, you never will.

The Foreman (Mr. Crane). We ought to be good lawyers, too.

Mr. Ingersoll. You also ought to be good lawyers, at least on this subject! I do not know that you have all the testimony in your minds, as there have been so many misstatements made, but if you ever are to know anything on this subject you know something now; and if you, Mr.

Foreman, or you Mr Renshaw, were to-morrow to go to work to bid on some star routes you would bid on the longest routes, on the slowest time, and with the most infrequent trips. You would do that. Then would you say, "That is evidence that we have conspired"? Has a man got to be so stupid that he will not take advantage of a perfectly plain thing in order to escape the charge of conspiracy? If you were to put your money in land in the Western country you would not go where the country was settled up, and give one hundred dollars an acre for land. You would go where you could get laud for two, or three, or four, or five dollars an acre, and say, "There is a chance for land to rise." That is not conspiracy. So if you were going to bid on mail service you would bid where the time is slow, or the route long, and the service once a week.

Then you would say that the country might grow, that railroads might be built and that they might get the service up to seven trips a week; and that instead of going on two miles an hour may be they would want to make it seven miles an hour. That is the service to make money on. Is it a crime to make money? Is it a crime to make a good bargain with the Government? I suppose these gentlemen of the prosecution made the best bargain they could with the Government themselves. Is it a crime? I say no. Is a man to be regarded as a conspirator because some outsider thinks he got too good a bargain? That will not do. Boone says he always did that. Of course he did. He says another thing. These gentlemen say that we did not go above three trips, and that is another evidence of fraud. They say we did not bid on any route with more than three trips a week. Mr. Boone tells you, on page 1565, that the department never advertised for four trips a week. That is the reason I think they did not bid on any of these. He also swears that they never advertised for five trips. That is a good reason for our not taking any routes with five trips, is it not? There were not any advertised. The Government did not offer to let us have any. That is a good reason for not taking any of them. The Government had not any of that kind. After you get beyond three trips Boone swears that the next number is six or seven; never four, never five. Don't you see? And yet it is a very suspicious circ.u.mstance that we did not bid on any four-trip routes, or any five-trip routes; that we stopped at three. Why did we stop at three?

Because if we had not stopped at three we would have had to go to six.

Why did we not go to six? Because at six trips a week we would have been obliged to put up too much money, and to put up too many certified checks. It required too many men to go on the bonds. That is the reason.

Gentlemen, if there had been a conspiracy it would have been just about as well for us to bid on six or seven trips to get the expedition of time. If there had been a conspiracy to make money, and it had been understood by the Second a.s.sistant Postmaster-General, he could have just as well given us routes with seven trips a week, and put the service up to seven, eight, nine, or ten miles an hour, and he could have done that in the thickly-populated parts of the country; if it had been the result of a conspiracy.

Let me read more from what Mr. Boone says on page 1565:

The proposals that I destroyed were upon routes of at least six times per week.

How did he come to destroy them? Another suspicious circ.u.mstance against Dorsey! Boone said when he went into the business he just took the bidding-book and commenced at A, and was going right straight through to X, Y, and Z, and make a bid, I believe, on every route that was in the book. I think that is his testimony. Boone says:

I was going on without instructions. I was going on without authority from anybody, working on the bids.

He thinks it was the same day that Miner got here, or the day afterwards, and he--I suppose meaning Dorsey--came up to the room and saw what the witness was doing. He was making up bids for every route in the advertis.e.m.e.nt, going right along with big and little, when Dorsey said there was a mistake. No proposals were to be made for over three times a week or for routes under fifty miles. When Miner came into the room witness asked what was the reason of that. I say upon this point that Stephen W. Dorsey never said a word about it, and that Boone is mistaken. But he says he asked Miner the reason. What did Miner say?

Did he say to him, "It is because we have got a conspiracy? We have got it fixed with the Second a.s.sistant Postmaster-General"? No. He said this, he said for fear of failure in getting bonds; that they could not get the bonds for all the service and could not get certified checks for all the service. Boone was going clear through the book from preface to finis. They could not get bonds for all the service and could not get certified checks for all the service. You remember that for all the service over five thousand dollars they had to put up five per cent., I think, in certified checks. Now, there was an immense volume, of three or four thousand routes and he was going to put in a bid on every one of them. That is what Boone was going to do. He did not understand the conspiracy at that time. Miner explained to him, "We cannot get the certified checks. We cannot get the bondsmen." He did not tell him, "Good Lord, my friend, you don't understand the terms of the conspiracy.

We are taking no such service as that. We are taking none over three times a week, because, don't you see, we want the chance for increase.

We want the lowest. If we can find any service where the horses agree to stand still, that is the service to take. You must look over the terms of the conspiracy and have some sense about it."

Boone says he was starting in, taking the advertis.e.m.e.nts, going right through the territory, all over that country, and bidding on every route, not missing one. He never saw Stephen W. Dorsey do any work on the bids. The proposals sent down to the postmasters in Arkansas, including those to Clendenning, he (Boone) fixed himself and sealed them. Gentlemen, there is no evidence that Mr. Dorsey, as I understand it, ever saw one of those papers, but simply the form that was written out by Boone that was sent to Clendenning with instructions what to do with the proposals. That I understand to be the evidence. They proved by Boone that Dorsey never saw them; never wrote them; never ordered them to be written; never ordered a blank to be left unfilled. And yet, gentlemen, he was the man whom they say had brooded over this conspiracy; the man that gave to it life and form. He is the man that used Boone and John W. Dorsey and Peck and Miner as instrumentalities and tools.

What more? Did Boone take those bonds up to Dorsey and show them to him?

He says that he did not open them; that he did not show them to Dorsey.

That is what Mr. Boone swears. Surely Mr. Boone is an honorable man, stamped with the seal of the Department of Justice. He did not even show them to Dorsey. Dorsey never saw anything except the form after Boone had made it out. I showed you that form on yesterday, I think, marked 16 X. That is the only thing that Dorsey saw. He did not know what blanks were left in the bonds, or whether any were left. He never gave any orders about them, and never saw them. Yet the prosecution want you to hold him responsible as a conspirator for those bonds.

What more, gentlemen? Those bonds were never used. n.o.body was ever defrauded. Not a proposal was put in the Post-Office Department. They never came to life. Dead! No contract, says Mr. Boone, was ever awarded on those proposals, even the proposals sent back, unless it was a contract to him, Boone. That is what he swears. And yet Dorsey is to be held responsible.

Let us hurry along, gentlemen. See how Dorsey came to do this. How did that arch-conspirator, as they claim him to be, happen to write that letter to Clendenning? On page 1567 Boone says that he suggested to Dorsey that he had better send a note with the proposals to Clendenning.

Boone suggested it. He was not a conspirator, but he suggested it.

Dorsey was the conspirator, but never dreamed of it. How fortunate for a conspirator to have an innocent man think of the means of carrying out a conspiracy; never thinking of crime, but having it all suggested by perfect innocence and then crime taking advantage of it. That is the position! He suggested that Dorsey would better send a note with the proposals to Clendenning. I will read from page 1568:

Q. Was there not danger that he would be declared a failing contractor?

Was it at that time the practice of the department if a man, for instance, had fifty contracts and failed on one to declare him a failing contractor on all?--A. No, sir; but they would declare him a failing contractor on that one route and suspend his pay until he paid up the loss to the Government--just my case now, exactly.

Q. That was one of the reasons that you had. Now, you were informed at that time that they had not the money to carry this on.

When, as a matter of fact, did you go out of the concern?--A. The 8th day of August, 1878.

Q. Was S. W. Dorsey then in Washington?--A. No, sir; he was not. He had been gone ten or twelve days.

Now, then, we come to August 7, 1878, the time that Mr. Boone went out.

He did it for the purpose of saving a failure on the routes in the names of Miner, Peck, Dorsey, and himself. That is what he went out for, and that is his only reason. On page 1570 Mr. Boone swears that so far as he knows neither John W. Dorsey, John R. Miner, John M. Peck, nor Stephen W. Dorsey had any arrangement with the Second a.s.sistant Postmaster-General to increase the service; none whatever.

Boone went out on the 7th day of August, 1878. S. W. Dorsey was in New Mexico. He did not return here until about the time Congress a.s.sembled in December. Boone swears that he then learned from S. W. Dorsey that he, Dorsey, did not know that Boone was out of the concern; did not know that he had left on the 7th day of August, 1878. Now, gentlemen, if Stephen W. Dorsey was the main conspirator, if he was doing this entire business, is it possible that A. E. Boone went out on the 7th day of August, that John W. Dorsey a.s.signed his interest in all the routes mentioned in the agreement, and John R. Miner took in Vaile, and the service was put on those routes by the money furnished by Vaile, that all that was done and yet Stephen W. Dorsey never heard of it and did not even know that Boone was out, did not even know that Vaile was in?

Besides that, gentlemen, as I told you, Dorsey was not here. He was in New Mexico. He was in utter ignorance of this entire business, and yet they claim that he was the directing spirit.

Mr. Boone further testifies, on page 1571, that Brady showed him a telegram from the postmistress at The Dalles, saying that the service was down. When I read that I thought may be that was where Moore got his hint to swear that he telegraphed to find out what was done with that service. Boone further swears that Brady said that it must be put on; that he said it could not be put on at the contract price, and that Brady told him, "I advise you to telegraph and put it on at any price,"

and that unless all the service was on by the 15th day of August he would declare the contractor a failing contractor on every route the service was down upon. That is what Brady told him. Stephen W. Dorsey was not here. According to the testimony of Moore he knew when he went away that the service in Oregon was not put on, but he abandoned it, and paid no attention to it. He happened to meet Miner at Saint Louis, and told him, I believe, "There are my notes for eight thousand five hundred dollars. That is all I will do. I am through! I have already advanced thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars. I will not advance another dollar." Why did not Miner tell him, "If you are not going on with this conspiracy I am going home"? Why didn't Miner tell him then, "What did you get up a conspiracy like this for, just to abandon it"? Why did not Miner say to him, "This is your child. I became a criminal at your suggestion. I entered into this conspiracy because you urged me to, and now after we have got the routes, you are going to abandon it"? Why did he not say to him, "Dorsey, if you are not going on with this conspiracy I am going back to Sandusky"? Did Dorsey at Saint Louis treat it as his bantling? or did he say to Miner, "This is all I will do"? Did he mean for himself? No. "All I will do for you."

Certainly he would not have made the threat to Miner that he would not do anything more for himself. He then said to Miner, "I am through!"

Miner knew at that time that Stephen W. Dorsey had not the interest of one solitary dollar except the money he had advanced. Stephen W. Dorsey, according to the testimony of this prosecution, knew when he left this city that the routes were not in operation in Eastern Oregon. He went away knowing that J. W. Dorsey and John R. Miner and John M. Peck were in danger of being declared failing contractors. Yet he never even called on Brady to see about it. He never asked to have the time extended a minute. He never took the least interest in the business. He started for New Mexico, and went by way of Oberlin, Ohio. He happened to meet Miner in Saint Louis, and for Miner's sake, for Peck's sake, for John W. Dorsey's sake, and not for his own sake, he gave them some notes to the extent of eight thousand five hundred dollars that they could have discounted, and said to Miner then and there. "That is the last dollar. That is the last cent." What more did he do? He abandoned the whole business. He went to New Mexico. He never wrote about it; he never spoke about it; he never received a dispatch concerning it until the following December, when he came back to Washington, and then for the first time found that Boone had gone out and that Vaile had come in.

What more? Although he was interested to the extent of thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars, he did not know until he came back in December that his security had been rendered worthless. He found that out then for the first time. That is a fine model of a conspirator.

Reading again from Boone's testimony, on page 1371:

Fully a month and a half of the time had been taken up by the Congressional investigation, and we--That is to say, Miner, Peck, Boone, and the rest--did not know what to do with the service. We dared not to move. We expected that the contracts would be taken from us.

Do you tell me that under such circ.u.mstances, if Stephen W. Dorsey had conceived this thing, he would have gone off and left it? Do you tell me, with the entire business trembling in the balance, without the money to put the service on, at the mercy of Thomas J. Brady, that if Stephen W. Dorsey had gotten up that conspiracy, and also put in thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars, he would have gone away and left it, and told Miner and the others, "I will have no more to do with it," and leave it so effectually and so perfectly that he did not even know that Boone had gone out and Vaile had come in until the following December, when he came here to take his seat in the Senate?

On page 1580, again quoting from Mr. Boone:

The fact--Here is something that rises like the Rock of Gibraltar. It is one of those indications of truth that rascality never had ingenuity enough to invent:

The fact that Dorsey refused to advance any more money on account of this business was taken into consideration by me when I made up my mind to go out.

Do you want any better testimony than that, that Dorsey did refuse to advance any more money?

Don't you see how everything fits together when you get at the facts?

How naturally they all blend and harmonize when you get at the facts.

Now, here is some more from Mr. Boone:

If I had not gone out the service would have undoubtedly failed, unless they got the money to put it on. When Mr. Dorsey declined to furnish any more money or to indorse any more notes, there was nothing else to do but for me to go out and let somebody else come in who had the money.

That is a witness for the Government, and yet at the time that happened they say there was a great conspiracy; that the Second a.s.sistant Postmaster-General was in it; that a Senator of the United States was in it; and that these other men were simply tools. It will not do, gentlemen. If that had been the case Stephen W. Dorsey would have remained here. He would have gone to Mr. Brady and said, "I must have time," and Mr. Brady would have given him all the time he desired, because, according to this prosecution, it was their partnership business. Brady had ten times as great an interest as Stephen W. Dorsey.

According to the testimony of Mr. Rerdell, Brady had an interest of thirty-three and one-third per cent., and according to the testimony of Rerdell and Boone, Dorsey only had an interest of seven-eighths of one per cent.

That means, as I understand it, according to their testimony, thirty-three and one-third per cent, of the gross expedition; not profits, but of the gross expedition. That is what they swear. When he gave on a route an expedition of, say, six thousand dollars, two thousand dollars would go to Brady each year. In other words, thirty-three and one-third per cent, of the money paid for expedition went to Brady.

Mr. Walsh testified and gave the exact figures, and called the amount, if the Court will recollect, sixty thousand dollars, and twenty per cent, he said of that is twelve thousand dollars. That had to run, he says, for three years, and that made thirty-six thousand dollars. That is the testimony in this case, gentlemen. If you should have a row of men as long as the row of kings that Banquo saw, stretching out "to the crack of doom," and they should swear to it, I should still die an unbeliever; but that is their testimony. Dorsey ran away and left his conspiracy and Brady would not attend to his own business. Now, I read again from Boone:

With regard to the preparation of circulars, the sending of them to postmasters, the printing of proposals, the printing of bonds and subcontracts, there was nothing done differently from what I had always done before.

Recollect that. He is a Government witness. Dorsey in a conspiracy got Boone to help him, and in helping him Boone did nothing different from what he had always done before. There is not much left of this case, gentlemen, but I will keep going on just the same. Mr. Boone swears that he followed the regular custom and practice of doing business.

Then, there is another suspicious circ.u.mstance. At the bottom of the contracts published by the Government, for the purpose of informing contractors as to how the bonds or contracts are to be signed, and exactly what is to be done by each person, there are a lot of instructions.

Mr. Carpenter. On the proposals.

Mr. Ingersoll. On the proposals. When they got up the proposals of their own, they, understanding the business, left off all those directions that the Government put upon its forms. Why? Those directions were put there for the benefit of men who did not understand the business. These men did understand the business, and consequently it was nonsense for them if they had to have the printing done, to put on the bottom of the contracts two or three paragraphs of directions to themselves. They understood exactly how to do it without the directions.

Who left them off? Stephen W. Dorsey? No. John W. Dorsey? No. He had nothing to do with it. Miner? No. He had nothing to do with it. Who left them off? Boone says he did. Was he instructed to do it? No. Did it take a conspiracy to leave them off? No. He left them off for two reasons, and good ones, too. One was to save the expense of printing. That was a good reason. There was no conspiracy needed for that. The other was, that knowing how to perfect the proposals, and understanding all those instructions, there was no need of having them printed for their benefit.

Next, on page 1582. What instructions as a matter of fact did Mr. Boone receive from Mr. Dorsey, if he received any? The question arises, upon what subject? In reference to what particular point? Boone says on this page that he received no instructions from Dorsey in reference to the business except in regard to the subcontract blanks.

That is the one subject on which he received any instructions from S. W.

Dorsey. I have shown you that those instructions were in the interests of honesty and fair dealing. Those were the only instructions he received. On every other subject there is not a word. Why? Here Boone gives the reason. "I did not require any." Why? Because he understood the business himself. What else? "I was to go ahead and do whatever was necessary to be done." He did it without consulting anybody. He did it in his own way. He did it as he thought best for all concerned. Now, gentlemen, there will be an effort made to convince you that Stephen W.