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

by Robert Green Ingersoll

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.