I. SCOPE OF THIS PAMPHLET.
The Committee on Railway Mail Pay, representing railways whose lines include ninety-two per cent. of the aggregate length of all railway mail routes in the United States, believes that the payments to the railways for the services and facilities furnished by them to the Post Office Department are, and for a long time have been, unjustly low. This pamphlet contains a concise statement of the facts which prove that this belief is warranted and, incidentally, a refutation of the estimates made by the Postmaster-General, and reported to the Congress (House Document No. 105, Sixty-second Congress, first session), which led him to conclude that the basis of payment could now properly be changed so as to accomplish a present reduction of about twenty per cent. It will be shown that although the insufficient data and the erroneous methods employed by the Postmaster-General resulted in his making estimates of cost to the railways that are far below the real cost, his own figures and calculations, when properly analyzed and supplemented, demonstrate that the mail service has not been fairly remunerative to the railways.
Before proceeding to this demonstration it should, however, be noted that—
II. RAILWAY MAIL PAY IS ABOUT TO BE FORCED STILL FURTHER BELOW THE LEVEL OF JUST COMPENSATION, UNLESS PAYMENTS ARE PROMPTLY READJUSTED, ON ACCOUNT OF THE ADDITIONAL VOLUME OF MAIL THAT WILL RESULT FROM THE INAUGURATION, ON JANUARY 1, 1913, OF THE PARCELS POST.
Congress has provided for a vast and incalculable extension of mail traffic by creating a "Parcels Post," to be inaugurated on January 1, 1913, which, by opening the mails to many articles not previously accepted at the post-offices and by materially reducing the rates on mailed merchandise, is expected enormously to increase the volume of the shipments which it covers. The Government seems to have assumed that, under existing contracts, which were made before the meaning of the word "mail" was thus extended, the railways can be compelled, until these contracts expire, to carry this great additional volume of mail traffic WITHOUT ANY COMPENSATION WHATEVER. If the former practice of the Post Office Department is followed, no new contracts will be made until after the next quadrennial weighings in each of the four weighing sections, so that the position of the Government amounts to an assertion that the whole added volume of the Parcels Post mails will have to be carried without any compensation by the railways of New England for four years and six months (these railways are in the first weighing section but the weighing for the adjustment to be made on July 1, 1913, has begun and will be completed before the Parcels Post is inaugurated), by those of the second weighing section for three years and six months, by those of the third weighing section for two years and six months, by those of the fourth weighing section for one year and six months, and by those of the first weighing section, not located in New England, for six months. No presentation of the injustice of the mail pay received in former years suggests even the approximate extent of the losses which the railways will thus incur in the next four and one-half years, unless readjustments are promptly made on account of the Parcels Post.