In the illustrative example we have put on the slate, the “hold up” would amount to—let’s see: 840,000 pounds, or 420 tons, divided by 6 gives us 70 tons as the daily average for the week, instead of 60 tons, as the actual average was. That is a “hold up” for pay for ten tons a day—for 10 tons not carried.
“What did the hold-up amount to in cash?”
Yes, it might be well to follow our hypothetical or illustrative example to its cash terminal. Well, that is easily and quickly done.
The rate of pay per ton mile per year on daily weights above 2½ tons is $21.37.[16] That ten tons added to the daily average would give to the railroads, then, just $213.70 in unearned cash each day.
If the contract stood for full four years on such false average, the railroad would pull down just 1,460 times $213.70 of unearned money or a total of $312,002 in the four years.
I would, of course, not have the reader understand that our hypothetical example would fit all railroads. Many, in fact most, of the mail-carrying roads average in mail weight much below sixty tons per day—even below ten tons per day. Some roads were and are paid for an average above sixty tons. Nor would I have the reader understand that the crooked practice just mentioned was common to all mail-carrying roads. There were possibly—yes, probably, some exceptions—some roads that carried so little mail as not to make a steal of a sixth of its weight-pay worth while.
I would, however, have the reader understand that I mean to assert that most of the mail-carrying roads were parties to the crooked method here described and that the hypothetical figures here given applied, proportionally, to any average per diem weight of mail covered in the carriage contract, whether it was one ton or a hundred tons.
I would also have the reader understand me to assert that, so far as information has reached me, no railroad man, or man representing the rail mail-carrying interests, ever questioned the “fairness” of the crooked practice just described—a practice which looted the government of millions of dollars.
As a raider into postal revenues, this thieving practice, it must be admitted, deserves conspicuous mention—more extended notice than I have given it.