The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Complete Contents / Dresden Edition—Twelve Volumes

by Robert Green Ingersoll

It is further stipulated and agreed that such annulment shall not impair the right to claim damages from said contractor and his sureties under this contract; but such damages may, for the purpose of set-off or counter-claim in the settlement of any claim of said contractor or his sureties against the United States, whether arising under this contract or otherwise, be assessed and liquidated by the Auditor of the Treasury for the Post-Office Department.

And it is further stipulated and agreed by the said contractor and his sureties that the contract may, in the discretion of the Postmaster-General, be continued in force beyond its express terms for a period not exceeding six months. You will see, gentlemen, how perfectly, how absolutely, the contractor is in the power of the department. The Government enforces its contracts. No matter how many years may elapse they are still after the sureties and are still after the principal. Nothing relieves a man but, death. Only a little while ago a case was decided in the Supreme Court of which I will speak to you. An importer of sugar gave the importers' bond to pay the duty upon that sugar. By the custom of trade, sugar is sold in bond.

The importer sold to a third person and the third person went to get the sugar. By law he could only take it after paying the tax; and yet one of the officers of the Government, contrary to law, allowed him to take the sugar without paying the tax. The Supreme Court has just held that the original importer and his sureties are liable to pay that tax—the man who took the sugar out having become bankrupt—although the sugar was given to the second party simply by a violation of law, and that law was violated by one of the officers of the custom-house without the knowledge or consent of the original importer. I tell you, gentlemen, whenever a man gives a bond to this Government the Government stays with him. The Government does not die; the Government does not get tired; the Government does not get weary. The Government can afford to wait, and the poor man with the bond hanging over him cannot go into business, cannot get credit, but just lingers out a life of expectation, of hope, and of disappointment. I trust none of you will ever sign a bond to the Government. There is another thing, gentlemen. If you bid on a hundred routes and they are given to you and you put the service on ninety-nine of the routes and carry it in accordance with the contract, and yet fail on the hundredth route, the Postmaster-General has a right to declare you a failing contractor. A failing contractor on the hundredth route? Yes. On any more? Yes; on every one. And whoever is declared a failing contractor on one route is by virtue of that declaration a failing contractor on all. They are all taken from him. So that when a man bids for more than one route, for instance, a hundred or a thousand, and gets them and carries them all absolutely according to his contract but one, he can be declared a failing contractor on all. What does that mean? It means not simply ruin to him, but ruin to every one of his sureties, unless they are in a condition to go on and carry the mail. I want you to understand something of the obligation of a contractor with the Government of the United States.

Now, I come to the bidding. These bids were made with a full understanding of the obligation of a bidder. Messrs. Miner, Peck, and John W. Dorsey bid, I believe, on about twelve hundred routes. You see you are in great luck in bidding if you get one route in fifty that you bid upon. In the first place, there are about ten thousand star routes. I do not know that it is too much to say that the number of bids runs up into the hundreds of thousands; somewhere in that neighborhood. Hundreds of men often bid on one route. Consequently, nobody who bids expects to get more than a few of the routes for which they bid. Now, is there the slightest evidence in the statement of the Government as to the frauds in this bidding? Let me tell you how some frauds have been committed. Suppose, for instance, this was a fraudulent business, and Miner, Peck, and Dorsey were bidding. Let me explain it to you. I want you to know it. All there is in this case is simply to have you understand it. That is all there is. And if you do not agree with me when we get through the case I shall simply think that you have not comprehended it. Say that four men bid on the same route, one man four thousand dol-ars, another man three thousand dollars, another man two thousand dollars, and another man one thousand dollars.

Now, the man who bids one thousand dollars is of no account, has not a dollar in the world, and so when the bid is given to him he does not want it. He is what they call a straw man. The law provides then that the next man may have it. The law does not provide that he must take it. He may have it if he wants to, but you cannot force him to take it, because he is not the lowest bidder. He is the two thousand dollar man. He is another straw gentleman. He does not want it. Then the Government offers it to the next man at three thousand dollars. He is another chap made of hay. He says he doesn't want it. Understand the Government cannot force these straw and hay men to take it. Then they go to the fourth fellow, who bid four thousand dollars. It is a good thing at four thousand, and he says, "Yes; I will take it." That is what they call fraudulent bidding. If you had found Dorsey and Miner and Peck bidding on the same route and one of them failing and another one taking it, you would not only have suspected fraud, but you would have known it. Now, if it is a badge of fraud for them to bid upon the same route and apparently against each other, I will ask you if it is not a badge of fair dealing that they were not found bidding against each other. They bid on about twelve hundred routes, and much to their astonishment they got one hundred and thirty-four contracts.

You have heard here a great deal of talk about the number of men and horses. We will show you all about it. Men differ upon this subject. If men did not differ upon it at all these bids would be alike. Instead of being a dozen bids, all different, and differing sometimes as much as ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or a hundred dollars or more, they would bid the same. If they all agreed on the number of horses and men it would take, and about what it would cost, they would bid about alike, wouldn't they? But when they are bidding they honestly differ. One man says it would take twenty horses, and another says "no, it will take forty." Do you not know that the number of horses depends a great deal upon the kind of man who makes the estimate. Here is a man who is hard and brutal, and he says a horse can do so much work. He says it is cheaper to buy him and wear him out than it is to feed him decently. You have known men who were perfectly willing to make fortunes out of a horse's agony, and out of animal pain. There are hundreds of them in the world. Now, take it on horse railroads, and with freighters, and teamsters. Whenever you find a mean, infamous man, if he cannot whip his wife, he will take his spite out on his horse. If a man is a good, broad, generous, free fellow he will say, "I don't want to work that horse to death; I think it will take four horses. I am going to keep my horses fat, and I am going to treat them as a gentleman should." Another man, a wretch, will come up and swear it would not take more than fifteen horses. When his horses are through the service you will simply see a pile of bones wrapped in a lamentable hide. You understand that.

Well, these men made twelve hundred bids and got one hundred and thirty-four contracts. Ah, but they say, here is another badge of fraud, another badge. Ah, they bid on small routes, on cheap routes, on routes where the mail was carried infrequently and on slow time. If it is a badge of fraud to bid on such routes the Government can never let out any more. Most of these routes were cheap routes. Now, I owe it to you to give you the reason for this. We will prove in the first place that these men were not rich men. If they had been very rich they probably would not have gone into the business at all. They would have gone into that perfectly respectable business of buying Government bonds. They would have bought Government bonds and made other fellows pay the interest, and twice a year they would have formed a partnership with a pair of shears, and thus in the sweat of their faces they would clip their coupons. They bid on poor routes. Why? They were poor, comparatively speaking.

They had not the money to stock the expensive routes where four horse coaches were run. They preferred to take the cheaper lines. Why? Because they could stock them. They would have been able to have stocked the routes if they had only obtained the number they expected. But as I told you, they got many more routes than they expected. Was that for the benefit of the Government? How did these men come to bid so cheaply on some of these routes? I will tell you. Because they had the information, because they had received the facts from all the postmasters on the routes, and consequently they made a good close calculation, and the result was that their bids were below others, and the fact that their bids were accepted saved the Government hundreds of thousands of dollars. When they found themselves with all these contracts, the first hard work they did was to give away all they could. That was the first hard work. They had contracts, not for sale, but just to give, and they succeeded in giving away several of them. I believe they sold two of these children of conspiracy for the enormous sum of one hundred dollars each. That was the highest sale they made at that time. Afterwards another route was sold which I will explain when I come to it. Now there is no rascality yet. No fraud yet. No conspiracy yet. Well, they then went to work to get their bonds. But first let me say that there was another reason for bidding on cheap routes. Whenever the bid is above five thousand dollars, then the man who bids must, at the time he bids, put up a check for five per cent, of the amount.

A check certified by a national bank. For instance, if it all comes to a hundred thousand dollars he has got to put in a certified check for five thousand dollars. Even in the little bids we made we had to deposit with the Government some twenty-six or twenty-eight thousand dollars, and I do not know but more, in cash, or what is the same as cash, for the bank certifies that the money is there. That is another reason they bid on smaller routes. What is the next? The Government asks such frightful bonds, such terrible amounts, that a man must be almost a millionaire, or else there must be a confidence in him that is universal, before he can give these bonds.

There was one route at this very bidding where they had to give bonds for six hundred and forty thousand dollars, and the sureties upon these bonds under oath had to testify that they had real estate to the value of six hundred and forty thousand dollars, exclusive of all debts, dues, and demands. So there was another reason for bidding upon small routes. Where the amount was under five thousand dollars no certified check had to be deposited, and the smaller the route of course the smaller the bond.