Q. At the time you sold out, was there any understanding about your making papers?—A. That was a part of the agreement. I was to sign all the necessary papers to carry on the business.
When he sold out he agreed to sign all the necessary papers. It is like this: Mr. Bliss says on such a day, for instance, they divided. Suppose, instead of being routes it was all land. They divided the land and then they agreed to make the deeds. That was the conspiracy; not in the land; not in the agreement about the land; not in the bargain, but in the execution of the papers in consequence of the bargain. That was the conspiracy. They agreed to make all the necessary papers. That was the agreement. Then the Court asked John W. Dorsey a question.
Q. You agreed to sign what?—A. All the necessary papers to carry on the business.
That is what he agreed to do. What else? What were those papers? First, they were to sign all the subcontracts that were necessary, all the Post-Office drafts necessary, and they were to sign letters like this:
The Post-Office Department, in regard to this route, will hereafter send all communications to the undersigned.
In other words, the object was to let the person who fell heir to a given route in the division control that route. That was all. The man who was the contractor agreed that he would sign all the necessary papers. For what purpose? To allow each man who got a route to be the owner of it and control it and draw the money. That is all. And yet it is considered rascality.
Let me call your attention to another piece of evidence on this subject. On page 5016, Mr. Bliss is talking about all these papers and these letters that were written and apparently signed by Peck, but really signed by Miner, saying, "I want you to send all communications in reference to such a route to post-office box No. so and so, John M. Peck," sometimes with an M. under it and sometimes without. He did that in consideration of the agreement at the time he got the routes that had been originally allotted to Peck. Mr. Bliss brought here a vast number of these papers, and then he continued, on page 5017:
All those, gentlemen, are orders, dated after the division, many of them coming away down into 1881, and all of them relating to routes with which Peck had no connection, because he severed his connection with all the routes prior to the 1st of April, or as of the 1st of April, 1879. John W. Dorsey tells you that he signed papers right along—Of course he did. He agreed to—and I have here a series of them. Many of them are orders not in blank. There are among the papers, orders signed in blank, but these are dated, and they are witnessed not always by the same person as indicating that they got together and signed a lot of orders at the time of the division. There is every indication that the dates are correct. The witnesses are different at different times.
The Court. These same orders would have been made if the division had been perfectly honest.
That is what I say. That is what we all say, gentlemen.