Now, these gentlemen bring forward a law to protect the United States Government, and they bring that forward as an evidence of conspiracy, as evidence of a fraud. Nothing could be more unfair, nothing on earth could show a greater want of character. Now, let us see what else.
The next great charge is false affidavits. They tell you that we made lots of them; that we just had them for sale. False affidavits! And that Mr. John W. Dorsey made two false affidavits in two cases. The evidence will show that he did not. The evidence will show that he made only one in each case, when we come to it. But I want to call your attention to this fact, that in one case one affidavit was made where it said the number of men and horses then necessary was eight, that on the expedited schedule it would be twenty-four. Three times eight are twenty-four. The second affidavit said the number of men and horses then was fifteen, and the number on expedition and increase would be forty-five. Three times fifteen are forty-five. So that the amount taken from the Government would be exactly the same on both affidavits. You understand that. For instance, if it took five horses and men to do the then business, and would require fifteen to do the expedited and increased business, then you would be entitled to three times the amount of pay. So in this case one affidavit said it took eight and would take twenty-four, the other affidavit said it took fifteen and would take forty-five. Three times eight are twenty-four. Three times fifteen are forty-five. So that the amount of money taken from the Government would be exactly the same under each affidavit. Now, that is all there is of that.
In the next case, where he made two affidavits, I find that by the second affidavit it took, I think, thirteen thousand dollars less from the Government, and yet they call the second affidavit a piece of perjury. And here is one thing that I want to impress upon all your minds. Where you not only carry the mail but carry passengers, it is an exceedingly difficult problem to say just how many horses and men it requires to carry the mail, and then how many men and horses it requires to carry the passengers. It is hard to make the divide you understand—very hard. You can tell, for instance, the cost of mounting a railroad for a hundred miles, but it is very difficult to tell the cost of the bridges or what the spikes cost or what the deep cuts cost. You can take the whole together and say it cost so much a year. So in this case we can say it requires so many men and horses doing the business that we are doing, but it is almost impossible for the brain to separate exactly the passengers, the package business, from simply carrying the mail. As I said before, men will differ in opinion. Some men will say it will take ten horses, others twenty, others twenty-five, and then the next question arises, and I want to call particular attention to that question, and that is, whether the law means only the horses absolutely carrying the mail; whether the law means by carriers only the men who ride the horses or drive the wagons. Now, I will tell you what I mean. I undertake to carry the mail, we will say from Omaha to San Francisco. How many men will it take? Now, I will count all the men who are driving the stages, all the men who are gathering forage, all the men who are attending to that business in any way, and if on the way I have blacksmiths' shops where my horses are shod I will count those men. If I have men engaged in drawing wood a hundred miles, I will count those men. In other words, I will count all the men I pay, no matter whether they are keeping books in New York or carrying the mail across the desert. I will count all the men I pay; so will you. What horses will you count? All the horses engaged in the business; those that are drawing corn for the others, as well as the rest, will you not? There is an old fable that a trumpeter was captured in the war and he said to his captor, "I am not a soldier, I never shot anybody." "Ah," they said, "but you incited others to shoot, and you are as much a soldier as anybody; we want you."
Now, I say that we are entitled to count every man who carries the mail, and every man necessary to perform that service. So do you. Now, there we divide. The Government says we shall count simply the men carrying the mail, nobody else, and we shall count simply the horses in actual service. That is nonsense. For instance, you have got to have thirty horses. They are going all the time. Do you depend on just that thirty? No, sir. If one gets lame you cannot carry the mail. You have got to have twenty or thirty horses in your corral, in the stables, so that if one of the others gives out you will have enough. That is one great question in this case, gentlemen. What I say to you now is that on every one of these routes in which my clients are interested, or, I may say, in which anybody is interested, the evidence will be that the affidavits were substantially correct. In many cases there was a far greater difference between the men and horses then used and the men and horses that were afterwards necessary.
You must take another thing into consideration. In a country where there are Indian depredations one man will not stay at a station by himself. He wants somebody with him; he wants two or three with him, and the more frightened he is the more men he will want. On that route from Bismarck to Tongue River, as to which it was sworn it would take a hundred and fifty men, the statement was made at a time when the men would not stay separately; that they wanted five or six together at one station; that they wanted men out on guard and watch. You will find before we get through, gentlemen, that the affidavits do not overstate the number. You will find in addition that these petitions were signed by the best men; that that service was asked for by the best men, not simply in the Territories, but by some of the best men in the United States; by members of Congress, by Senators, by generals, by great and splendid men, men of national reputation. So when we come to that we will show to you that the affidavits made were substantially true. There is another charge that has been made, and that is that the affidavits in Mr. Peck's name were not made by him; that he never signed these affidavits.
Yet, gentlemen, we will prove to you as the Government once proved by Mr. Taylor, a notary public in New Mexico, that Mr. Peck appeared personally before him; that he was personally acquainted with Mr. Peck, and that he signed and swore to those affidavits in his presence. That we will substantiate in this trial as the Government substantiated it in the other. These gentlemen, are among the charges that have been made against us. I say to you to-day they will not be able to show that we ever put upon the files of the Post-Office Department a solitary letter, a solitary petition, a solitary communication that was not genuine and true. Not one. They cannot do it. They never will do it. You will be astonished when you hear these petitions to find the Government admitting that they are true. If they do not read them we will read them. That is all.
Now, I have stated to you a few of the charges made against my clients up to this point. I want to keep it in your mind. I want each man on this jury to understand exactly what I say. Let us go over this ground a little. I want to be sure you remember it. In the first place, S. W. Dorsey was not interested in these routes. All the bids were made by John W. Dorsey, John M. Peck, John R. Miner, and a man by the name of Boone. All the information was gathered by Mr. Boone by sending circulars to every postmaster on the routes. Upon that information John W. Dorsey, John M. Peck, and John R. Miner made their calculations and made their bids, numbering in all about twelve hundred. Of that number they had awarded to them a hundred and thirty-four contracts. Recollect that. After those contracts were awarded to them they were without the money to put the stock on all the routes, because more contracts were awarded than they expected. Thereupon John R. Miner borrowed some money from Stephen W. Dorsey and kept up that borrowing until the amount reached some sixteen or eighteen thousand dollars. Don't forget it. After it got to that point Mr. Dorsey started for New Mexico. At Saint Louis he met John R. Miner, then coming from Montana, and John R. Miner said to him, "We have got to have some more money of you;" and Dorsey replied, "I have no more money to give you." Miner then said, "You give your note or indorse mine for nine or ten thousand dollars." Dorsey replied, "If you will give me post-office orders and drafts, not only to secure the note I am about to indorse or make for you, but also to the amount of the money I have advanced for you, I will give the note." That was agreed upon. Thereupon he gave the note. It was discounted in the German-American National Bank, and Mr. Miner deposited with the note the orders on the Post-Office Department, not only to secure the note, but the sixteen thousand dollars that Dorsey had before that time advanced. Dorsey went on to New Mexico, and in May or July of that year another law was passed, allowing a subcontractor to put his subcontract on file. After he had advanced that money and indorsed or signed the note, they made the contract with Mr. Vaile, turning these routes over to him and giving him subcontracts on all these routes. When Stephen W. Dorsey came back from New Mexico in December of that year he found that the note at the German-American National Bank had been protested, and that his collateral security was at that time worthless, because the subcontracts had been filed and these subcontracts cut out the post-office orders or drafts. Thereupon he wanted a settlement. Matters drifted along until April, 1879, and a settlement was made. I have told you that from the time the routes were given to Mr. Vaile until that time nobody had the slightest thing to do with them except Mr. Vaile; that in April, 1879, the division was made; that Mr. Vaile paid the note at the German-American National Bank; that the division was made, as I told you, by Mr. Vaile drawing one route, Mr. Dorsey one, and Mr. Miner one, and keeping that up until they were all drawn. I forgot to tell you before that Mr. S. W. Dorsey had sixteen thousand dollars, to which, if you add the interest, it would be about eighteen thousand dollars; that John W. Dorsey had ten thousand dollars and John M. Peck had ten thousand dollars, and when that division was made Stephen W. Dorsey agreed to pay John W. Dorsey ten thousand dollars, and to pay John M. Peck ten thousand dollars for his interest. Gentlemen, he did pay John W. Dorsey ten thousand dollars, and he did pay the same amount to Peck, and from that day to this John W. Dorsey has never had the interest of one solitary cent in any one of these routes. He was simply paid back the money that he expended. Not another cent. John M. Peck never made by this business one solitary dollar. He simply received back the money he had expended. After he had paid back that money to both of these men, Stephen W. Dorsey took these routes with a debt to him of between sixteen and eighteen thousand dollars. Now, as to Mr. Rerdell. They say he was the private secretary of Stephen W. Dorsey. He never was; not for a moment, not for a single moment He attended to some of this business. I have no doubt that the Government imagine they can debauch somebody in order to get information. I give them notice now—GO on. There is no living man whose testimony we fear. There is no living lawyer who has the genius to make perjury do us harm. I want you to understand it. And I want them to understand that I know precisely what they are endeavoring to do. There is only one way for them to surprise me, and that is for them to do a kind thing.
Now, gentlemen, at that time—I want you to remember it; I do not want you to forget it—when these routes came to Mr. Dorsey, he, not understanding the business, turned it over to Mr. James W. Bosler. Mr. Bosler, as I told you before, is a man of wealth. But, say these gentlemen, "While these routes were in your possession, and while Stephen W. Dorsey had an interest in them he asked men to sign petitions in favor of an increase of trips and decrease of time." What if he did? Suppose you have a house out here somewhere; you can petition to have a street opened, even if you have the contract for paving the street. You have a right to petition to have a schoolhouse located in your neighborhood even if you have children. There is no harm about that. You certainly can petition to have cows prevented from running at large even if there is no fence around your yard. I think you could do so without being indicted for conspiracy. I think a man might start a subscription for a church, even if he owned a brick-yard and expected to sell bricks to build it. Now, suppose I had a contract to carry the mail through the State of California from one end to the other once a week, is there any harm in my asking the people of that country to petition to have it carried twice a week? Do you not remember what I told you? All the members of Congress out there, when they go home want to say to the people when they meet at the convention with all the delegates on hand. "Why, gentlemen, you did not used to get the New York Herald or New York Times, or The Sun, until it was two weeks old, and now it is only a week old. Where you only had one mail I have given you three. I have got fifty thousand dollars to improve your harbor, and one hundred thousand dollars for a new custom-house. Look at me, gentlemen, I am a candidate for re-election." That is natural. This Court will instruct you that any man who is carrying a mail anywhere in the United States has the right to use his influence in getting up petitions for the increase of that service or the expedition of that time. They say Dorsey did this. What of it? They say Dorsey tried to manufacture public opinion. That is what these gentlemen of the prosecution have been doing for eighteen months, and now they object to the manufacture of public opinion. Public opinion is their stock in trade.
Leaving that charge, every man who has a contract for carrying the mail has the right to call the attention of every editor in that country to the fact that they need more mail service. He has the right to send his agents there and if the people want to petition for more service, and if Congress is willing to give them more service, no human being has a right to complain in this manner and in a criminal court. If any offence has been committed it is of a political nature. If a member of Congress gets too much service his people can keep him at home. If he does too much for his locality they need not elect him the next time. It is a political offence for which there is a political punishment and a political remedy. So much for the right of petition. I am perfectly willing to tell all he did in regard to the increase of service and the expedition.
While I am on that point I want you to distinctly understand what increase is and what expedition is. Increase of service means more of the same kind. Suppose I am to carry the mail from one place to another. We will call it from Si-Wash to Oo-Ray. If I am to carry that mail once a week for five hundred dollars and they want it twice a week, I have one thousand dollars, but do not carry it any faster. That is an increase. Suppose I am carrying it in say two hundred hours and they want it carried in half that time. That is what they call expedition. Now, the question is as to the difference in cost of carrying the mail at six miles an hour, or at two and a half, or two, or one and a half. If I carry it slowly, I can go at a reasonable rate in the day and can lie by at night. I want you to understand distinctly the difference between increase of service, which is more of the same kind, and expedition, which means the same kind at a faster rate. Now, I can carry the mail twenty miles and back in a day and do that a great deal easier than if I were to make the distance in four or five hours. The difference is just about the same with a locomotive as with a horse. If a train runs twenty miles an hour and you want to increase its speed to thirty, it will cost altogether more than twice as much as it does to run it at twenty. If you want to increase it still further to forty or sixty, it will cost at sixty more than three times as much as at twenty. The cost increases in an increased proportion. I want you to understand that. Now, we are charged with having done some frightful things on several of these routes, and for three days and a half your ears were filled with charges of the rascality we have perpetrated. We had some ten or eleven routes, and we are charged with having defrauded the Government on those particular routes. Let us see what my clients did. Do not understand me as saying that because my clients have done nothing the other defendants have. I do not take that position. I take the position that according to the evidence in this case there is nothing against any of these defendants. Leave out passion, prejudice, falsehood, and hatred and there is absolutely nothing left. If you will take from Mr. Bliss's speech all the mistakes he made in law and fact, there will be nothing left to answer; not a word. But I think it due to my client, gentlemen, my client who is not able to be in this court, my client who sits at home wrapped in darkness, that I should answer every allegation touching every route in which he was interested. I think it due to him. [Resuming]