The railroads provide cars for freight traffic, but refused to build, and maintain, and haul these moving post offices with their clerks and paraphernalia, without pay. That is the post office car pay of which so much is said.
The truth regarding this feature of the subject is clearly stated in the following recent letter from the Postmaster-General:
(Congressional Record, March 5, 1910, 61st Congress, Second Session, Vol. 45, No. 61, Page 2852.)
Letter of the Postmaster-General Relative to the Cost of Furnishing and Operating Railway Post Office Cars.
"Office of the Postmaster-General,
Washington, D.C., March 2, 1910.
"Hon. John W. Weeks,
Chairman Committee on Post Offices and
Post Roads, House of Representatives.
"My Dear Sir: In response to your inquiry made of the Second Assistant Postmaster-General in regard to the cost of maintaining and operating railway post office cars and its relation to the compensation received by railroad companies for the same and your reference to the speech delivered by Senator Vilas on the subject in the United States Senate, February 13, 1895, I have the honor to advise you as follows:
"The Department has not at this time sufficient information upon this point to give from its own records a reliable estimate. As you are aware, we have recently asked railroad companies to submit answers to inquiries with reference to the cost of operating the mail service, and it is believed that when these shall have been received we will be in a position to furnish such information. Inasmuch, however, as it may be of importance to you to have estimates made from time to time by others and such incomplete information as we have at present, I submit the following:
"The cost of operating a railway post office car has been variously estimated (but not officially by the Department) as from 15 to 30 cents a car mile. The average run per day of such a car is about 300 miles. Estimating the cost at 18 cents a car mile, the total cost of operating such car for one year would be $19,710.
"The specific items which constitute this total cost are not definitely known to the Department. However, as to the cost of lighting, cleaning, repairs, etc., the General Superintendent of Railway Mail Service furnished the following estimates before the Commission to investigate the postal service in 1899, viz.: Lighting, $276; heating, $365; cleaning, water, ice, oil, etc., $365; repairs, $350; proportion of original cost of car (estimating the life of a car at fifteen years and the original cost at $6,000), $400; total, $1,756. Recent inquiry gives the following as the approximate cost of maintaining a car at the present time: Lighting (electric), $444; heating, $150; cleaning, $360; repairs, $300; oil and brasses, $120; interest on cost of car (at $7,500), $300; annual deterioration (estimating the life of a car at twenty years), $375; total, $2,049. These figures give the cost of a car built according to the Department's standard specifications. The cost of modern steel cars being built by some of the railroad companies is from $14,000 to $15,000.