Mr. Ingersoll. Or a stout, tough boy.
The Court. A boy would be best.
Mr. Ingersoll. You do not need any boy. Just one man and one horse will answer. The man can ride the horse one hundred and fifty miles in three days, and then ride one hundred and fifty miles back in the next three days. All you have to swear to, according to Mr. Bliss, is the number actually used, and so you would come in and swear to two on this route. Now, when you are making an affidavit as to the number to be used on a schedule to be made, you cannot swear to the number actually in use, because they are not then in use. You have to swear to the number necessary. You have to swear to the number required.
Now, see. On a mail route one hundred and fifty miles long I would only want a good smart horse, and one good active man or boy. I would not need to carry it more than one week, because I could make the affidavit for that week, and then the question would be how many men and horses would be required for a daily mail on the same route. I would put in a reasonable number, and the difference between the number then actually used and the reasonable number to use would be the standard by which to fix my pay.
If you take the man and horse actually used, and then take the number that would reasonably be used, you would make a difference of a thousand per cent. And yet that is the doctrine laid down here to guide us as to these affidavits.
Let me tell you what the law is. It does not make any difference what you are really using at the time. You must swear to the number that would be reasonably necessary to carry the mail on the then schedule. You must swear to the number that would be reasonably necessary to carry the mail on the proposed schedule. In the first place, if you put a great deal of work on a man and horse, you must put the same proportion on man and horse in the second schedule. If you are easy on man and horse in the first schedule, you must be easy on man and horse in the second. The only object, gentlemen, is to keep the proportion, because you are to be paid according to the number of men and horses used.
Now, they say it would be necessary to go out there in order to tell how many men and horses would be necessary, and that the men who made these affidavits had never been on the routes. There was no need of being on the routes. I could give you the number required on any route two hundred or five hundred miles long. I could give you the number of men and horses reasonably required to carry the mail once, twice, three times, or seven times a week; and I could give you the number reasonably required to carry it at the rate of three miles an hour or five miles an hour or six miles an hour without going there. I need not go there for the purpose of the affidavit. I can take it for granted that the road is good and level, and I can keep exactly the same proportion and nobody can be defrauded. If you take the rule of Colonel Bliss it would be the easiest thing on earth to defraud the Government. That would be by taking the actual number in use and then taking the number necessary.
Oil page 4761 Mr. Bliss makes the point that according to law the Second Assistant Postmaster-General was not bound to allow according to the affidavits. He is right as to that. That is what Mr. Bliss says, and that is what John W. Dorsey swore he thought, and that is what Mr. Thomas J. Brady swore he did. He did not take the affidavit as a finality. Mr. Thomas J. Brady said that he took it for granted that the man, when he made the affidavit, thought it was true, and that the man, when he made the affidavit, swore to the best of his knowledge and belief. But Thomas J. Brady never swore that he considered himself bound by the affidavit. On the contrary, he swore that he had a standard in his own mind, and that expedition was to cost thirty dollars a mile, or something of that kind. He went by that standard, and he gauged the affidavits by it.
On page 4762 Mr. Bliss says that Brady admitted that he made no inquiry as to the truth of affidavits, and that he accepted them as absolutely conclusive. On page 3434 Mr. Brady swears:
I accepted their statement as conclusive so far as they knew.