First, there, on page 329 of the 1910 report, it states, “estimated” on the basis of those 1907 “special weighings,” that there were 873,412,077 pounds of second-class mail carried and handled.
Let’s see! Yes, of course, how simple it is. There’s that 1907 table of percentages, a page or so back.
As it was “figured out” in 1907 by the people who did the weighing, or who bossed it, we may consider it as dependable as the Third Assistant Postmaster General’s figures on page 329 of the department’s 1910 report.
The reader will please understand me. I do not mean to say that either the 1907 or 1910 reports are dependable.
I wish the reader to understand that I understand, or believe, them both to be merely guesses—guesses more or less mis-stitched in the knitting and more or less frazzled and threadbare by reason of long service.
But they are what we have to “figger” from.
Page 329 of the 1910 report says:
Total mailings (second-class), 873,412,077 pounds.
The 1907 tabulation of distributed mail weights (see table a few pages back) says that second-class mail, in carriage, is 36.39 per cent of the total mail weight.
Here’s where we put our slates into service.