Ramsey & Carmick, contract. / Letter from the Postmaster General transmitting copy of a conditional mail contract; also copies of correspondence relative to the same

by Various

The obstacles to the non-fulfilment of the Pacific service.—As before stated, the contractors, this company, and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, entered into mutual covenants, by which the latter company obligated themselves to carry the mails between San Francisco and Acapulco according to the contract and schedule time as therein set forth by the department. At the date of the contract the Pacific Mail Steamship Company were running a weekly line of steamers between Panama and San Francisco, in the weeks intervening with their semi-monthly mail; and the late administration intended, by this weekly line and the Vera Cruz and Acapulco route, to send a weekly instead of semi-monthly mail to San Francisco, and in sixteen days from New Orleans instead of twenty-eight days (the average at that time of the semi-monthly mails) from New York. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company withdrew their weekly line, which of course prevented the execution of the Pacific service in contract time until steamers could be placed on the line between Acapulco and San Francisco, and which this company are making arrangements to effect, not only in reference to the line from New Orleans, but from New York, so as to carry passengers in sixteen or eighteen days from New York to San Francisco. In consequence, however, of the (early) non-performance of the Pacific service in schedule time, it is understood that your department rescinded the order made by the late Postmaster General Hubbard for the postmasters at New Orleans, San Francisco, San Diego, Monterey, and to forward letters by this route. The disappointment of the contractors by the withdrawal of the weekly line was great and embarrassing, and disordered the whole arrangements of this company; and while we respectfully defer to the abstract correctness of the position taken by the Post Office Department on account of it, we yet hope that a great enterprise, so eminently calculated to benefit our commerce, and one so earnestly demanded by our southern and western citizens, as intimately connected with their interests, might have a little further time to place itself right before Congress and the department.

It is respectfully suggested, in this connexion, that the Gulf service is punctually performed twice a month, and will be three times a month as soon as the steamer “Vera Cruz,” now nearly ready, can be finished; that the land-service, as will be hereafter shown, (see appendix,) has been performed, carrying an independent mail in sixty hours, (instead of one hundred and twenty hours, schedule time;) that this company have not asked for any special favors from the department—no advance on the appropriations—as other ocean mail companies have done; that no pay is asked for until the service is performed, and the money honestly and equitably earned; and that the 2d section of the law of March 3, 1851, is applicable to our case, viz: that the Postmaster General by this law “shall be bound to select the speediest, safest, and most economical route.”

We deprecate a negation of the contract by the department until further time is allowed us; and it is believed, in view of these facts and the spirit of the law last referred to, that our enterprise may receive an impartial consideration and presentation in your annual report on the Post Office Department. An official condemnation, emanating from the department under your administration, would be a serious obstacle in the development of the Mexican grants. It is believed by many that the department had full power under the law to make the contract without the intervention of Congress for its approval; but having been made with that contingency, it is now only asked that this enterprise may go before Congress on its own merits and integrity. A spirit of frank and honorable dealing renders it necessary for the undersigned to say, that a difference exists among the associated parties as to the real value and bearing of a government contract on this enterprise, and this difference may have reached the ears of the department.

Some of the parties believe that a government contract nationalizes the route, and gives it an importance superior to mere individual enterprise, and that the imperative necessity of “making time” insures more despatch. Others of the parties believe that a line of fast steamers from New Orleans to Vera Cruz, for the increasing southern and western travel from the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, (composing the source of nearly seven-tenths of the whole resident population of California out of the city of San Francisco,) and another fast line of steamers from New York to Vera Cruz in six or seven days, by steamers built expressly for mail and passenger service, (and not naval service,) of about one thousand tons, in connexion with similar steamers from Acapulco to San Francisco in six days, would form a line that would take precedence of all others for celerity and certainty. Experience has exploded the idea that the mail and naval service can be performed by the same steamers, and an examination of the steamers now in the employ of the United States and mail-service department verifies the position that steamers suitable for a marine battery are too slow for “mail-service,” and that the light and fast steamer which can be propelled three hundred and fifty miles in twenty-four hours is not suitable for a battery corresponding with her tonnage or power adequate to such speed. They believe that such a line, by this overland route, in sixteen, or eighteen, or twenty days, with an independent mail, would seriously diminish the postage receipts of the government, if not virtually supersede them, and render the present mail contracts a sinecure in the hands of the parties holding them. If offices should be opened in proper places for the receipt of mail-matter by advertisements, and the company should enclose that mail-matter in government-stamped envelopes, and guaranty the delivery of the mail by this route in six, eight, or ten days earlier than by the present government route, it is evident that the great bulk of the mail-matter would go by the quickest route, even at double, triple, or perhaps quadruple the present charge for postage. Such an independent mail (clearly within the law) would, it is confidently believed, measurably supersede the government mail, and reduce the postage to a pittance. Moreover, such an independent line, not being trammeled by government time, might connect with it English, West India, Australian, and Asiatic mails, all of which are specifically allowed by the several Mexican grants held by this company; and it is believed that the time is not far distant when an English express independent mail in forty-seven days, with Australia, will be in operation. It is also thought by some, that this company should be entirely disembarrassed in order to give an exclusive right to certain foreign interests.

Having frankly stated the difference of opinion on this subject among the associates in this enterprise, it is proper to say that a route nationalized by a public contract is the true official expression of the company’s opinion, and the one which is now before the department. In conclusion on this point, it is respectfully suggested that this route is to be one of the great inter-oceanic routes of Atlantic, California, and Asiatic travel; that this enterprise may be fully developed by the present administration of our government without expense in its initial operations, but mainly by a prudent forbearance and official approbation, and by an order to carry such mail matter as our citizens may choose to send by it.

The enterprise is emphatically a southern and western one; although originated by Pennsylvanians, yet its vitality is due to New Orleans and southern influence, as the very numerous memorials on the files of the department or Congress, and signed by southern and western senators and members, will attest. The steamer Texas, which has been performing the Gulf service during the last summer, has carried a large amount of specie into New Orleans, (at the rate of one million and a quarter per annum;) and soon as the specie and express wagons of this company are fully at work, millions of dollars will flow into the New Orleans mint from the gold placers and silver mines of Mexico now being worked by American and Mexican combined skill.

Of the practicability of the route.—The direct mail route runs from Vera Cruz, by the way of Orizava, Cordova, Puebla, Matamoras, Chietla, Mitapec, Kalcozotitlan, Chilapa, Tixtla, to Acapulco, with branches from Puebla up to Mexico and via Cuernavaca.

This road was called by Humboldt the “Asiatic road,” as indicative of the maritime commerce of Spain; and is the oldest road on the continent of America. This route is no new thing, as many suppose, but the whole enterprise is but a recast of one developed long before our country had its name or a place among the nations of the earth.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been received by the government of Old Spain, transported over this road, in the interchange of productions between the flotas of Spain and the galleons of the Indies, and millions of American commerce are yet to be rolled over it in the progress of American enterprise. The distance direct (as will be seen by the annexed itinerary) from Vera Cruz to Acapulco is 404 miles, and via the city of Mexico 517. Colonel Ramsey has since shortened this distance to under 390 miles, and it will be reduced to less than 350.

Over this road the materials and machinery for the vast coffee and sugar plantations of Mexico have to be transported, and these plantations for magnitude and productions are almost unequalled.