Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1908 — $70,000,000 WAS GRAFTED [ARTICLE]

$70,000,000 WAS GRAFTED

'Representative Lloyd Shows How the Congress Gave Railroads That Sum Improperly. Representative James T. Lloyd, of Missouri, chairman of the Democratic national congressional committee, on March 10, 1908, exposed the flagrant theft of the people’s money through the unfair weighing of mails when official tests were made to determine what compensation the railroads should receive. He said: “Mr. Chairman, in delivering my ad* dress a few days since on postal conditions, in discussing the interpretation of the law as to the "weighing of the mail, I failed to sta'e the law on the subject, and I wish to do so now: “ ‘The average weight to be ascertained, in every case, by the actual weighing of the mails for such a number of successive working days, not less than thirty, at such times after June 30,- 1873, and not less frequently than once in every four years.’ “Later the time was changed to ninety days. Otherwise the law hits not been changed to this date. “Until March 2, 1907, the department required the mail to lie weighed for ninety days. Sunday was not considered, so that the weighing covered a period of one hundred and five days Instead of ninety successive days. In other words, working days were con strued to mean week days. Postmaster General Cortelyou changed this Interpretation which had been accepted as correct for over thirty years and Issued the following order as his construction of the law: “‘That when the weight of mail is taken on railroad routes, the whole number of days the mails are weighed shall be Used as a divisor for obtaining the average weight per day.’ “This required In effect, that, instead of dividing the number of working or week days in the weighing period, the devisor should be the number of days on which mail Was actually carried during the period. If it was weighed one hundred and five, days, the divisor to Obtain the daily weight was one hundred and five. If the mail was not carried on Sunday, the divisor would Ik* ninety. This, a* you can readily see, would give less compensation for carrying the full week than for six days, for the accumulated man would be practically Ihe same whether carried in six days or in seven.

“Tlie present postmaster general, seeing this predicament, issued another order of construction, known as ‘order 412,’ which is as follows: “ ‘That when the weight of mail is taken on railroad routes the whole number of flays includ'd in tlie weighing period shall.lie used as a divisor for obtaining the average weight per day.’ “If tlie construction up to last year was right, then there has been with held from the railroads this year over $1,700,000 that is theirs under tlie law. If tlie present construction is tlie proper one, the railroads have received over $70,000,000 since 1880 that belongs to tin* people; so that whichever view is sustained money has been wrongfully, withheld through tlie postoffice department.”