They are the letters and packets that are conveyed from one post office to another under public authority.
Who conveys them? The railroads convey nine-tenths of them.
The railroads are the mail service of this country. The Post Office Department states that it receives from the people who use the mails eighty-four dollars on every one hundred pounds of letters and post cards. Who makes that money for them? The railroads. The railroads convey those letters and cards from post office to post office—not the Government.
For a service like that the Government can afford to pay.
What does it pay?
On the great bulk of the business the railroad companies which do the work and earn the money receive less than two dollars a hundred. On every pound of first-class mail the Government collects eighty-four dollars a hundred.
The fact that the Congress, for purposes of general education or other reasons, thinks it is good public policy to carry the magazines and other second-class matter at one dollar a hundred is something about which the railroads have nothing to do and nothing to say.
The mail pay of the railroads has been reduced in the past four years more than eight million dollars a year. Part of this was done by act of Congress, but the greater part came from the arbitrary and illegal Cortelyou order.
These reductions were made without any hearing being granted to the railroads. Hearings were refused by the Committee which reduced the pay three and a half millions, and no pretense of a hearing was made by Secretary Cortelyou when his autocratic order was issued reducing the mail pay approximately five million dollars a year. This order was an arbitrary and unwarranted and illegal exercise of executive power.
The last hearing allowed to the railroad companies on this subject was by the Wolcott Commission, 1897 to 1900, composed of eminent Senators and Representatives. They reported, after two years' investigation, that the mail pay was reasonable and should not be reduced. Upon the question whether railroads should be asked to carry the mails at a loss their report expressed the following views: