If there was a corresponding loss in Kansas, Nebraska, California, Dakota, and Idaho, it would take more than the national debt to run the mail every year. And yet here in thirty-six square miles comes the wail of non-productiveness. It is almost a joke. We are carrying the mail in Kansas at a loss of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and yet Kansas has a hundred million bushels of wheat for sale. Good! I am willing to send letters to such people. It is a vast and thriving country. It contains men who have laid the foundation of future empires. I want people big enough and broad enough and wide enough to understand that the valley of the Mississippi will support five hundred millions of people. Let us get some ideas, gentlemen. Let us get some sense. There is nothing like it. We pay five hundred thousand dollars a year for the privilege of carrying the mail in Nebraska. Do you know I am willing to pay my share. Any man who will go out to Nebraska and just let the wind blow on him deserves to have plenty of mail. You do not know here what wind is. You have never felt anything but a zephyr. You have never felt anything but an atmospheric caress. Go and try Nebraska. The wind there will blow a hole out of the ground. Go out there and try one blizzard, a fellow that robs the north pole and comes down on you, and you will be willing to carry the mail to any man that will stay there and plow a hundred and sixty acres of land. When I see a post-office clerk sitting in a good warm room and making a fuss about a chap in Nebraska for not carrying the mail against a blizzard, I have my sentiments. I know what I think of the man. In the Territory of Utah we pay two hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year for the privilege of carrying the mails, and the males in that country are mostly polygamists. I want you to get an idea of this country. In the State of California, that State of gold, that State of wheat, the State that has added more to the metallic wealth of this nation than all others combined, an empire of magnificence, we pay five hundred thousand dollars a year for the privilege of distributing the mail. I am glad of it. I want the pioneer fostered. I want the pioneer to feel the throb of national generosity. I want him to feel that this is his country. You see the post-office is about the only blessing he has. Every other visitor that comes from the General Government wants taxes. The Post-Office Department is the only evidence we possess of national beneficence. It is the only thing that comes from the General Government that has not a warrant, that does not intend to arrest us. In Texas, which is an empire of two hundred and seventy-three thousand square miles, a territory greater than the French empire, which at one time conquered Europe, we pay four hundred and fifty-nine thousand dollars for the privilege of distributing the mail. I am glad of it. It will not be long before that State will have millions of people and give us back millions of dollars each year, and with that surplus we will carry the mail to other Territories. A man who has not pretty big ideas has no business in this country; not a bit. We pay one hundred and eighty-nine thousand dollars for the sake of carrying letters and papers around Arkansas; one hundred and eighty-three thousand dollars for the privilege of wandering up and down Alabama; one hundred and seven thousand dollars in Missouri; two hundred and forty thousand dollars in Ohio; two hundred and eight thousand dollars in Georgia; three hundred and twelve thousand dollars in old Virginia. When I first went to Illinois the Government had to pay for the privilege of carrying the mail in that State. Now Illinois turns around and hands six hundred and sixty thousand dollars of profit to the United States each year. She says, "You carry the mail to the other fellows that cannot afford it just the same as you carried it for us. You rocked our cradle, and we will pay for rocking somebody else's cradle." That is sense. In other words, in seventeen States we have a profit of seven million dollars. In twenty-one States, ten Territories, and the District of Columbia we have a loss of five million dollars. When we regard the country as a unit, then we make money out of the whole business. That is good. We have in the United States about a hundred and ten thousand miles of railroad now, and we pay about two hundred dollars a mile for carrying the mail on those railroads. We have two hundred and twenty-seven thousand miles of star routes, and we pay on them between twenty and thirty dollars a mile. I want you to think about it. In looking over the Post-master-General's report I accidentally came across this fact. You know, gentlemen, the present period is a paroxysmal period of reform. We are having what is known as a virtuous spasm. We have that every little while. It is a kind of fiscal mumps or whooping-cough. I find by this report that a mail averaging twenty pounds carried in a baggage-car from Connellsville to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, is paid for at the rate of forty-two dollars and seventy-two cents a mile. Under General Brady the star routes cost between twenty and thirty dollars a mile.
Now, gentlemen, I have told you our connection with the star-route business. I have told it all to you freely, frankly, and fully. Some charges have been made against us, and I want to speak to you about them. You understand that it often takes quite awhile to explain a charge that is made in only a few words. One man can say another did so and so. It is only a lie, and yet it may take pages for the accused man to make his explanation. The worst lie in the world is a lie which is partly true. You understand that. When you explain a lie that has a little circumstance going along with it, certifying to it, and attesting to its truth, it takes you a great deal longer to explain it than it did to tell it. The first great charge is that for us—and I limit myself to my clients—orders were antedated. That is one great charge. Let me tell you just how that was. Mr. Bliss calls attention to the fact that Mr. Brady made orders relating back, and in one case he alleged that the order was made, for the benefit of my clients, to take effect six weeks prior to its being issued. I want to explain that. A railroad was being constructed along the line of one of these routes. It may be well enough for me to say that it was the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. The points from which the mail was carried had to be changed as the road progressed. As it grew Mr. Brady increased the service on the route to seven times a week. He increased it from the end of the railroad, and he made it seven times a week because the mail on the railroad was seven times a week. We were to carry the mail from the end of the railroad, wherever that end might be. He increased the service on this route from the end of the railroad to the other terminal point; that is, he made it a daily mail so as to connect with the daily trains on the railroad. At the time the seven trips were to be put on, distance tables were sent out to postmasters at the terminal points to get the distances. Let me tell you what a distance table is. The names of the post-offices are on a circular, and the Post-Office Department sends that circular to the postmasters along the route and they are asked to return it with the distance from each station to every other marked upon it. Now, until that table is returned it is impossible for the Second Assistant Postmaster-General to tell how far they carry the mail. This railroad was progressing every month, and as the railroad advanced the distance from the end of the railroad to the other terminal point decreased. Now, the Postmaster-General or the Second Assistant cannot fix that pay until he has a return of the distance table. But before he has that return he can order the contractor to carry the mail, and after the distance table is returned then he can make up the formal order and have that order entered upon the records of the department. That is all he ever did. I want you to understand that perfectly. It might be four weeks after the contractor was ordered to carry the mail from the termination of the railroad, or it might be five or six weeks before the distance tables were returned and the distance calculated. But do you not see it made no difference? There was first an order either by telegraph or a short order, and after the distance tables were returned then the distance was calculated, the amount of money calculated, and the regular order written up and made of record, and a warrant drawn for payment. That is all there is to it. And yet this is what Mr. Bliss calls defrauding the Government. We are charged on that kind of evidence with having defrauded the United States. We will show you that no order of that kind was made except when the distance was unknown; and that when the distance was ascertained, the formal order was made, another order having been made before that time. Let me say right here that orders of a similar nature have been made in the Post-Office Department since its establishment. Since the construction of railways there has not a month passed in that department—certainly not a year—when such orders have not been made. And yet for the first time in the history of the Government it is brought forward against us as an evidence of fraud. We will show that the order was made exactly as I have stated.
The next badge of fraud that is charged is that after a route had been awarded to us it was increased or expedited, or both, before the stock was put on. Well, I will tell you just how that is, because you want to know. This case, apparently complicated, is infinitely simple when it is understood. There are in the United States, I believe, some ten thousand of these star routes. They are all or nearly all in some way connected. One depends upon another. It is a web woven over the entire West, and how you run a mail here depends upon how one is run there, and the effort is to have all these mails connect in a certain harmony so that time will not be lost, and so that each letter will get to its destination in the shortest possible time, and it requires not only a great deal of experience, but it requires a great deal of ingenuity. It requires a great deal of study and strict attention for a man so to arrange the routes and the time in the United States that the letters can be gotten to their destination in the shortest possible time. And yet that is the object. You can see that. Now, you may be looking at the route from A to B, and say that there is no sense in having it in that time; but if you will look at the time of other routes, if you see with what routes that connects you will say that it is sensible. Now, you go on to another route, and, gentlemen, you see that every solitary route is touched, is compromised, is affected by every other route. That is what I want you to understand.
Now, then, Mr. Bliss says that it was a badge of fraud to increase the time and the service on a route before the stock was put on. Now let me show you. Here you have your scheme. Here is the route, we will say, from A to E. You let that for a weekly route, once a week. How fast? A hundred hours. When you get the other routes and look at this business you see that that crosses several places where the mail is lost. That is where a day is lost, and you see, if instead of that being a hundred hours it were seventy-five hours the mail at many stations would save one day or two days. Now, then, the law vests in you the power before a solitary horse or carriage goes upon that route to say to the man to whom the contract was awarded, "You must carry that in seventy-five hours instead of one hundred hours, and you must carry it four times a week instead of once a week." If you take that power from the Postmaster-General and from the Second Assistant those offices become useless. It is impossible for any human intellect to take into consideration all the facts growing out of this service.
There is another thing, gentlemen, which you must remember, and that is that these advertisements for this service are not made the day the service is wanted. These advertisements are put out six months before there is to be any such service.
It is sometimes a year before that service is wanted, and if you know anything about the West you know that in one year the whole thing may change. That where there was not a city there may be a city, and where there was a city nothing but desolation. Now, then, the law very wisely has vested the power in the Second Assistant and the Postmaster-General to rectify all the mistakes made either by themselves or by time, and to call for faster time or for slower, that is, for less frequent trips. Now, then, you see that that is no badge of fraud, do you not? If, before you put a man or a horse on that route, the Government finds it wants twice as many trips there is no fraud in saying so, and if they find they want to go in fifty hours instead of a hundred hours there would be fraud in not saying so. That has been the practice since this was a Government.
Now, what is the next? The next great charge against us, gentlemen, is that when they agreed to carry a greater number of trips, or any swifter time for money, Mr. Brady did not make us give an additional bond, and Mr. Bliss talked about that I should think about a day. Nearly all the time I heard him he was on that subject. "Why did they not when they were to carry additional trips give a new bond?" Well, I will tell you why: Because there is no law for it. There never was a law for it—never. And Mr. Brady had no right to demand a bond unless the statute provided for it. When I give a bond to carry the mail once a week, and the Government finds that it wants it carried three times a week, the Government cannot make me give an additional bond. Why? Because the statute does not provide for it, and Mr. Brady had not the power to enact new laws. That is all. Why, there never was such a bond given, and any bond that is given under duress, by compulsion, not having the foundation of a statute, is absolutely null and void. Everybody knows it that knows anything. And yet the gentleman comes before you and says it is a sign of fraud that we did not give an additional bond. There never was such a bond given in the history of this Government—never; and in all probability never will be unless these gentlemen get into Congress. You know the law prescribes every bond that the contractor must give, and it is bad enough without ever being increased during the contract term.
So much now for that frightful badge of fraud. I want to make this statement so you will understand it. They have the unfairness, they have the lack of candor to tell you that it is one of the evidences that we are scoundrels, that we failed to give an additional bond, and when they made that statement they knew that by law we could not give an additional bond, and they knew that if we had given an additional bond it would not have been worth the paper upon which it was written. And yet they lack candor to that degree that they come into this court and tell you that that is one of the evidences that we have conspired against the United States. It won't do.
What is the next badge of fraud? And I want to tell you this is a case of badges, and patches, and ravelings, and remnants, and rags. It is a kind of a mental garret, full of odd boots, and strange cats, thrown at us, and altogether it is called a case of conspiracy. Another badge of fraud is that whenever we carried the mail one trip a week, and it was increased to two trips a week, Brady was such a villain that he gave us double pay; and Mr. Bliss informed the jury that they knew just as well as he did that it did not cost twice as much to give two trips a week as it did to give one. Well, who said it did? And yet they say that is an evidence of fraud. Well, let us see. There is nothing like finding the evidence.
Now, when we come to this case we will introduce a bond that we gave at that time, and when the jury read that bond they will find this, or substantially this: