Everybody who has ordinary common sense knows that! If I bid on service for once a week there is a great deal better chance for getting an increase of trips than if there were seven when I started. Everybody knows that. There is about six times as good a chance.
All contractors consider that—That chance—in their bids, and bid lower on one, two, and three times a week service than on a daily service—Why?—because the chances are the route will be increased.
Boone swears on the same page that he always did that himself; that he always had done it. Yet that is lugged in here as evidence of a conspiracy.
There is a great deal better chance for expedition when a route is let at two or three miles an hour, than when it is let at six or seven.
Of course there is. The slower it is let the better chance of getting it expedited. The faster it is let the less chance of getting it expedited. There is no need of bringing a man here to show that. You know that. If you thought there was more money in expedition and increase than on the original schedule, you would, as I insist, bid on such routes as the advertisement showed the time was to be slow and the service infrequent upon. Now, gentlemen, to take advantage of such a perfectly apparent thing as that will not do. You have heard a good deal about star routes, gentlemen. Every one of you by this time ought to make a pretty good guess.
Postmaster-General; every one of you. If you do not know all about this subject, you never will.
The Foreman (Mr. Crane). We ought to be good lawyers, too.
Mr. Ingersoll. You also ought to be good lawyers, at least on this subject! I do not know that you have all the testimony in your minds, as there have been so many misstatements made, but if you ever are to know anything on this subject you know something now; and if you, Mr. Foreman, or you Mr Renshaw, were to-morrow to go to work to bid on some star routes you would bid on the longest routes, on the slowest time, and with the most infrequent trips. You would do that. Then would you say, "That is evidence that we have conspired"? Has a man got to be so stupid that he will not take advantage of a perfectly plain thing in order to escape the charge of conspiracy? If you were to put your money in land in the Western country you would not go where the country was settled up, and give one hundred dollars an acre for land. You would go where you could get laud for two, or three, or four, or five dollars an acre, and say, "There is a chance for land to rise." That is not conspiracy. So if you were going to bid on mail service you would bid where the time is slow, or the route long, and the service once a week. Then you would say that the country might grow, that railroads might be built and that they might get the service up to seven trips a week; and that instead of going on two miles an hour may be they would want to make it seven miles an hour. That is the service to make money on. Is it a crime to make money? Is it a crime to make a good bargain with the Government? I suppose these gentlemen of the prosecution made the best bargain they could with the Government themselves. Is it a crime? I say no. Is a man to be regarded as a conspirator because some outsider thinks he got too good a bargain? That will not do. Boone says he always did that. Of course he did. He says another thing. These gentlemen say that we did not go above three trips, and that is another evidence of fraud. They say we did not bid on any route with more than three trips a week. Mr. Boone tells you, on page 1565, that the department never advertised for four trips a week. That is the reason I think they did not bid on any of these. He also swears that they never advertised for five trips. That is a good reason for our not taking any routes with five trips, is it not? There were not any advertised. The Government did not offer to let us have any. That is a good reason for not taking any of them. The Government had not any of that kind. After you get beyond three trips Boone swears that the next number is six or seven; never four, never five. Don't you see? And yet it is a very suspicious circumstance that we did not bid on any four-trip routes, or any five-trip routes; that we stopped at three. Why did we stop at three? Because if we had not stopped at three we would have had to go to six. Why did we not go to six? Because at six trips a week we would have been obliged to put up too much money, and to put up too many certified checks. It required too many men to go on the bonds. That is the reason. Gentlemen, if there had been a conspiracy it would have been just about as well for us to bid on six or seven trips to get the expedition of time. If there had been a conspiracy to make money, and it had been understood by the Second Assistant Postmaster-General, he could have just as well given us routes with seven trips a week, and put the service up to seven, eight, nine, or ten miles an hour, and he could have done that in the thickly-populated parts of the country; if it had been the result of a conspiracy.
Let me read more from what Mr. Boone says on page 1565:
The proposals that I destroyed were upon routes of at least six times per week.