Opening Address — Second Star Route Trial
Washington, D.C., December 21, 1882.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1882)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 10.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/second-star-route-trial-opening/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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Washington, D. C., Dec. 21, 1882.

MAY it please the Court and gentlemen of the jury: We consider that the
right to be tried by jury is the right preservative of all other rights.
The right to be tried by our peers, by men taken from the body of the
county, by men whose minds have not been saturated with prejudice, by
men who have no hatred, no malice to gratify, no revenge to wreak, no
debts to pay, we consider an inestimable right, regarding the jury as
the bulwark of civil liberty. Take that right from the defendants in any
case and they are left at the mercy of power, at the mercy of
prejudice. The experience of thousands of years, the experience of the
English-speaking people, of the Anglo-Saxon people, the only people now
upon the globe with a genius for law, is that the jury is a breastwork
behind which an honest man is safe from the attack of an entire nation.
We esteem it, I say, a privilege, a great and invaluable right, that we
have you twelve men to stand between us and the prejudice of the hour.
We believe that you will hear this case without passion, without hatred,
and that you will decide it absolutely in accordance with the law and
with the evidence. This is the tribunal absolutely supreme. In a case
of this character, gentlemen, you are the judges of what is the law; you
are the judges of what are the facts; you are the absolute judges of the
worth of testimony; and you have not only the right, but it is your duty
to utterly disregard the testimony of any man that you do not believe
to be true. You, I say, are the exclusive judges, and for that reason we
ask, we beg you, to hear all this testimony, to pay heed to every word,
and then decide, not as somebody else desires, but as your judgment
dictates, and as your conscience demands. Here before this jury all
letters of Attorneys-General, all desires of Presidents, all popular
clamor, all prejudice, no matter from what source, is turned simply to
dust and ashes, and you are to regard them all simply as though they
never had been.

There is one other thing. Some people are naturally suspicious. It is an
infinitely mean trait in human nature. Suspicion is only another form
of cowardice. The man who suspects constantly suspects because he is
afraid. Whenever you find a man with a free, frank, generous, brave
nature, you will find that man without suspicion. Suspicion is the soil
in which prejudice grows, and prejudice is the upas tree in whose shade
reason fails and justice dies. And allow me to say that no amount of
suspicion amounts to evidence. No case is to be tried upon suspicion.
No case is to be tried upon suspicious facts. No case is to be tried on
scraps, and patches, and shreds, and ravelings. There must be evidence;
there must be absolute, solid testimony. A case is tried according to
the rocks of fact and not according to the clouds and fogs of suspicion.
No juror has a right to make a decision until he feels his feet firmly
fixed upon the bed-rock of truth.

So I say, gentlemen, that we are glad of the opportunity to make a
statement of this case to you, and to tell you exactly the manner in
which my clients became interested in what is known as the star-route
service. You have to be guided in this case by the indictment. That is
the star and compass of this trial. You cannot go outside of it. The
evidence must be confined to the charges contained in that instrument.
If you find us guilty of a conspiracy, it must be such a conspiracy as
is set forth in that indictment. That indictment is the charter of your
authority, and you have no right to find us guilty of anything in the
world except that which is therein charged.

Now, let me give you an exceedingly brief statement of what we are
here for. It is charged in that indictment that all these defendants,
including one who has been discharged by a jury, who has been found not
guilty, Mr. Turner, including another who is dead, Mr. Peck, conspired
together for the purpose of defrauding the United States, and we are
met at the threshold with the statement that conspiracy is very hard to
prove. It is like any other offence, gentlemen. They say conspirators
generally meet in secret. My reply to that is that people generally
steal in secret, and the fact that they stole in secret was never deemed
an excuse for not proving the offence before they were found guilty. You
can see that this is precisely like any other offence in the world. Men
when they commit crimes endeavor to get away from the public eye. They
are in love with darkness. They do not carry torches in front of them.
And it is so in every crime. But whether conspiracy is difficult to
prove or not, it must be established before you can find the defendants
guilty. That is a difficulty that the Government must overcome by
testimony. The jury must not endeavor to overcome it by a verdict. And
I say here to-day that the same rule of evidence applies to this case as
to any other, and you must be satisfied by the testimony the Government
will offer that these men conspired together; that they entered into
an arrangement wherein the part of each was marked out, and that that
arrangement was contrary to law; and that the object of that arrangement
was to defraud the Government of the United States.

This indictment is kind enough to tell us the means that were employed
to carry out that conspiracy. How did they find these means, gentlemen?
They must have had some evidence on which they relied. If they had
evidence enough to convince them, they must introduce that evidence
here, and if that evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that
these men conspired, then you will find them guilty; otherwise not. The
difficulty of establishing it is something with which you have nothing
to do. How did they conspire? What were the means they had agreed
to use? Let us see. Thomas J. Brady was the Second Assistant
Postmaster-General. The Postmaster-General was not included in the
scheme, consequently they must deceive him. The Sixth Auditor was not
included in this conspiracy, and as by virtue of his office it was his
duty to go over all of these accounts and pass upon the legality of each
item, it was necessary to deceive him. According to the indictment Mr.
Turner was a clerk in the department, and his part of the rascality was,
on the jackets inclosing petitions, to make false statements in regard
to the contents of the petitions inclosed. The object of that being that
when the Second Assistant Postmaster-General, Mr. Brady, exhibited these
jackets to the Postmaster-General, it being considered that he would
not have time to read the petition, he would be misled by the false
statements on the cover touching the contents.

The next step was for the contractors to get up false petitions; that
is, petitions to be signed by persons who did not live along the route
upon which the mail was to be carried. These petitions also to be
forged; that is to say, the names of persons put there by another, or
the names of fictitious persons written, when in fact no such persons
existed.

The next thing to do was to write false and fraudulent letters; to
induce others to write such letters; the next thing, to make false
affidavits; and the next thing, to make false orders—those to be
made by Mr. Brady—and these false orders were to have, as a false
foundation, false petitions, false letters, false communications, false
affidavits, and fraudulently written representations.

That is the indictment. That is the scheme said to have been entered
into by my clients with all of these defendants, and the object being to
defraud the Government of the United States. Now, in order to establish
that scheme, it would be necessary for the Government to prove it. Not
to assert it. Neither have you the right to infer it. No man can
be inferred out of his liberty. No man can be inferred into the
penitentiary. That is not the way to deprive a man of his reputation and
of liberty—by inference. They must prove it. They must prove that the
petitions were false. They must prove that the letters were fraudulent.
They must prove that the orders rested upon those false and fraudulent
petitions, letters, and affidavits; and they must prove that Mr. Brady
knew them to be false.

It is also stated in this indictment that service was to be paid for
when it was not performed; that service was discontinued and a month's
extra pay allowed; that fines were imposed and afterwards set aside
because the contractors agreed to pay fifty per cent, of such fines to
General Brady. I will speak of them when I come to them.

Now, there is a clear statement. What part, then, did my clients play in
this scheme? I will tell you. It is charged in the indictment that John
M. Peck was in this scheme, and, although he is dead, whatever he did,
I imagine, can be established by the Government. A man can be found
guilty, I understand, of having entered into a conspiracy with another,
although the other be dead, and the living man can be convicted.

Now, it is stated in the outset that my clients never had been engaged
in carrying the mail and that is regarded as an exceedingly suspicious
circumstance. A man has got to commence some time, if he ever goes into
the business, and if this doctrine be true, the first bid that a man
ever makes is evidence that he has entered into a conspiracy. Suppose,
on the other hand, my clients have long been engaged in this business.
What would the Government counsel then have said? They would have said,
gentlemen, that they had been engaged for years in the business. They
knew all the tricks that were played, and consequently they were the
very persons to form a conspiracy. And that is the wonderful thing about
suspicion. It changes every fact. It colors every word it reads and
every paper at which it looks; and no matter what are the facts, the
moment they are regarded with a suspicious mind they prove what the man
suspects.

So, then, the first charge is that we had never been in the business,
and consequently our going into the business must have been the result
of a conspiracy. Gentlemen, if the doctrine be laid down that it is
dangerous for a man to make a bid the result of that doctrine will be
to double the expenses of the Government in carrying the mails. All that
will be necessary, then, is for the old bidders to combine. They will
know that there is no danger of any new men interfering with them,
because the new men will be immediately indicted for conspiracy and
the old men will have the field to themselves. You can see that this
is infinitely absurd. There is only one step beyond such absurdity, and
that is annihilation. No man can possess his faculties and get beyond
that absurdity, if it is evidence of conspiracy, because it is the first
thing.

As a matter of fact, however, John M. Peck had been engaged in the
mail business. He was engaged in the business before 1874. He had been
interested with others before that time. He was interested in several
important routes from 1874 to 1878. It was in the fall of 1877 that he
made arrangements to bid at the next letting. He was a business man.
He was not an adventurer. He was secretary at that time of the Arkansas
Central Railroad. He had been, I believe, for two sessions a member
of the Ar-kansas Legislature. He was in good standing, solvent, and
regarded as an honest man. In 1874 he was interested in the bids and,
as I said, was engaged in carrying the mails at the time these contracts
were entered into. He became acquainted with John W. Dorsey, I believe,
in 1874. When he made up his mind to put in more bids for the letting of
1878 he went after John W. Dorsey, and they met together in the city
of New York, I believe, in the month of September, and agreed that they
would put in some bids for the letting of 1878. Peck was acquainted with
John R. Miner and had been acquainted with him for a considerable time.
Mr. Miner wanted to go into some other business than that in which he
was then engaged, and those three men made up their minds to bid. Was
there anything criminal in that? Nothing. Any men anywhere have the
right to combine; the right to form a partnership; the right to come
together for the purpose of making proposals for carrying the United
States mails. Of course you will all admit that. Now, that is what they
did. There was nothing criminal, nothing secret, nothing underhanded.
Everything was above board, open, and in the daylight. There is no
conspiracy yet, and we will show that.

John M. Peck had been troubled with a lung disease. He had gotten much
better in September, and thought that he was almost well. Later in the
fall he took a severe cold and got much worse, and from that difficulty,
I believe, he never wholly recovered. He went, however, to Colorado and
New Mexico, and finally died.

Now, let us see about John W. Dorsey. I believe that great pains
have been taken to say that he was a tinsmith, which is a suspicious
circumstance. Why? Is there any law against a tinsmith bidding to carry
the mails? Is there any such provision in the statute? And yet that
has been lugged forward as one of the evidences of a conspiracy in this
case, and it has been lugged forward in a way to cast some disgrace upon
this man—simply because he was a tinsmith. Well, do you know I have
as much respect for a good tinsmith as for a good anything. What is
the difference? Sometimes I have thought I had more respect for a good
tinsmith than a poor professional man—sometimes. In this country of all
others labor is held to be absolutely honorable, and I think a thousand
times more of a man who works in the street and takes care of his wife
and children than I do of somebody else who dresses well and lives on
the labor of others, and then is impudent enough to endeavor to disgrace
the source of his own bread. I think the man who eats the bread of
idleness is under a certain obligation to speak well of labor. And yet
we have the spectacle in this very court of the Attorney General of the
United States endeavoring to cast a little stain upon this man. As a
matter of fact, and I am almost sorry to say it, John W. Dorsey is not
a tinsmith. I am almost sorry to make the admission. He happened to be
a merchant, which is no more honorable but somewhat easier. He dealt in
stoves and tinware. That, gentlemen, is his crime, and upon that rests
the terrible suspicion that he is a conspirator. And I want to say more,
that his reputation for honesty, his reputation for fair dealing, is as
good as that of any other man in the State in which he resides. He made
up his mind to cast his fortunes with John M. Peck and with John R.
Miner and make some bids for carrying the mails of the United States.
That is all there is about it.

There is, however, another suspicious circumstance, and that is that
John W. Dorsey was the brother of Stephen W. Dorsey, and Stephen W.
Dorsey at that time was a Senator of the United States. That is another
suspicious circumstance. Whenever you find a man with a Senator for a
brother, put him down as a conspirator. Another suspicious circumstance,
John M. Peck was the brother-in law of S. W. Dorsey, absolutely married
a sister of Mrs. Dorsey, and that was the beginning of this hellish
conspiracy. It was suspicious. He intended to rob the Government when he
was courting that girl.

Now, we come to another man, Mr. John R. Miner, and the suspicious thing
about Miner is that he lives in Sandusky. But that of itself would be
nothing. Dorsey lived there once, too. Now, do you not see how they
moved to that town with the diabolical purpose of swindling this great
Government? Miner was not in very good health—do you not see—pretended
to be sick so that he could leave Sandusky; and in some way Miner and
Dorsey were excellent friends—another suspicious circumstance; and
for several years whenever John R. Miner visited Washington he laid
the foundations of this conspiracy by always stopping at the house of
Senator Dorsey—another suspicious thing. And do you not recollect the
delight, the abandon with which Mr. Bliss emphasized the word house,
when he said that they met at Dorsey's house? I had a great notion to
get up and plead guilty on that emphasis.. Miner came here. He and Peck
were acquainted; and wherever you find four men acquainted, gentlemen,
look out, there is trouble. When Miner came here he went directly to the
house of Senator Dorsey. I admit it with all the damning consequences
that flow from that admission. He did not even go to a hotel. He went
directly to Dorsey's house. I want that in all your minds, because
the prosecution regards that as one of the foundation facts in this
conspiracy, and while admitting it, do you not see how much I save them
in the way of evidence.

And there is another damning fact connected with this case. Dorsey in
the top of his house had set apart one room for an office. It was up
two or three pair of stairs. I think he established his office there to
shield himself a little from the people who usually call on a Senator in
the city of Washington. But he found that he put himself to more trouble
than he did them, so he moved his office to the lower part of the
building, and when John Miner got to that house he occupied a room right
next to that office upstairs, and sometimes he went in there and wrote.
Now, you see, gentlemen, how that conspiracy was planted; how the
branches sprang out of the windows of that room and covered all the
territory of the United States. I might as well admit that frightful
fact. I do not know that they know that, but I might as well admit it,
because we want the worst to come first. Before Miner came here he wrote
a letter. There is another place to put a pin of suspicion. He wrote a
letter to S. W. Dorsey; that is, it was Miner or Peck, I have forgotten
which, and may be that very forgetfulness of mine is another evidence of
conspiracy. A letter was written either by Miner or Peck to Stephen
W. Dorsey, saying that they were going to bid; that Peck was not well
enough to be here at that particular time, and would he be kind enough
to hand that letter to some man in whom he had confidence and let that
man get such information as he could with regard to the routes upon
which they expected to bid—all these Western star routes.

Now, what did S. W. Dorsey do? There was a man in town by the name of
Boone. He sent for Mr. Boone, and I believe that Mr. Boone went to Mr.
Dorsey's house, and that Dorsey handed him that letter in his house.
And what was the object of the letter? For Boone to get information
regarding these routes. Well, now, what did Boone do? Boone made up a
circular which he sent to all the postmasters, or most of them, through
Oregon, Washington Territory, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, California,
Kansas, Nebraska; that is to say, the Western States and Territories;
and in this circular a certain number of questions were propounded to
each postmaster. First, the distance from that post-office to the next,
and from the next to the next, and so through the route. Second, the
condition of the roads, whether hilly or level. Third, about the snows
in winter and the floods in spring. Fourth, the cost of hay and corn and
oats. Fifth, the wages that would have to be paid to the man or men; and
it may be some other questions in addition. Now, these circulars were
sent by Boone to all the postmasters in consequence of a letter that he
received in Dorsey's house. What for? So that by the time that Miner and
Peck and John W. Dorsey came they could sit down and bid intelligently
upon these routes; so that they would have some information that would
guide them; in other words, that they would not be compelled to bid at
random.

Now, we will show, gentlemen, that that was done, and if at that time
there had been a conspiracy, certainly such information was of no
particular value. Now, that is what Mr. Boone did, and I believe that is
about all he did at that time. There is no conspiracy yet, no fraud
yet. It is utterly impossible to defraud the Government by getting
information from postmasters as to the condition of the roads, and as to
the distance from one post-office to another. There is no fraud yet, no
conspiracy up to this point. In a little while Mr. Miner and Mr. John W.
Dorsey appeared. Ah, but they say Stephen W. Dorsey was at that time
a Senator of the United States Yes, he was, and I believe he remained
Senator until the 4th of March, 1879. When his brother came we will show
to you that Stephen W. Dorsey said to his brother, "I would rather
you would not bid; I would much rather that you would keep out of this
business, because I am a Senator and somebody may find fault. Somebody
may suspect, and consequently I would much rather you would get out of
the business." John W. Dorsey did not agree with him. He said he did not
see how that could interfere with him, and that he believed he could
do well in that business, and the consequence was he went on. There is
nothing suspicious so far as I can see in that. That is what we will
show.

This man being a member of the United States Senate did what he did out
of pure friendship; did what he did for his brother, what he did for Mr.
Peck, and what he did for Mr.

Miner from pure friendship. I know it is very difficult for some people
to imagine that any man does anything for friendship. They put behind
every decent action the crawling snake of a mean and selfish motive. My
opinion of human nature is somewhat different. I have known thousands
and thousands of men capable of disinterested actions, thousands of men
that would help a brother, a brother-in-law, or a friend, and help
them to the extent of their fortune. I have known such men and I never
supposed such acts could be tortured into evidence of meanness.

The first charge against Stephen W. Dorsey is that he sent some bonds
and proposals for bids to a postmaster by the name of Clendenning, in
the State of Arkansas. The trouble with these bonds, as I understand it,
was that the amount of the bid was not put in the blank in the printed
proposal. It is claimed by the prosecution that according to the law the
postmaster has no right to certify to the solvency of the security until
that blank is filled. I want to explain this so that you will understand
it. I think I have one of the bonds and proposals here. I would like to
have the Court see exactly the scope of it. [Exhibiting blank form of
proposal and bond.] The proposal is that the undersigned,———— whose
post-office address is————, of the county of————, and State
of————, proposes to carry the mails of the United States from July
1, such a date, to June 30 of such a date, being four years,
between such and such a place, under the advertisement of the
Postmaster-General, for the sum of————dollars per annum. Now, if I
understand the matter of the Clendenning bonds, they were filled up
with the exception of the blank in which the amount of the bid was to be
written. That is the charge, as I understand it. Whenever a man makes
a proposal to carry the mail for four years on a certain route, that
proposal must be accompanied with a bond in a certain amount, and
certain men must sign that bond as sureties, and then a certain
postmaster must certify to the solvency of the sureties, the sureties
having made oath as to the value of their property. Now, understand that
perfectly. It is not the bond that a man gives after his bid has been
accepted. It is a bond that he gives to show that his bid is in good
faith. That bond is conditioned that if the contract is awarded to him
he will give another and sufficient bond not only, but I believe it is
also conditioned that he will carry the mail. The charge is—and let us
get at it just exactly—that some bonds were sent to a man by the name
of Clendenning, who was a postmaster, and this blank was not filled.
Let me tell you why. It was the custom—and I want your Honor to
understand that perfectly, because so much was made of it before in
talk—to leave that blank unfilled. It is the blank for the amount of
the bid. In the advertisement of the Government the penalty of the bond
is stated, so that the amount of the bid has nothing to do with the
penalty in the bond. Understand me now. If the bond was for ten thousand
dollars, it was because that amount had been put in the advertisement
by the Government. It did not depend upon the amount of the bid. It had
nothing to do with it. The amount of the bid threw no light upon the
amount of the bond. The penalty of the bond was fixed by the Government
before the bid was made and inserted in the advertisement published
by the Government. Why then did they not wish to fill up this blank?
This blank, gentlemen, told the amount of the bid. Where there are many
bidders, and an important route, if you let the postmaster who has to
certify to the sureties know the amount of the bid he might sell you. He
could go and tell somebody else "I have certified to all the sureties
on this route, and the lowest bid up to this time is fifteen thousand
dollars," and the person whom he told might go and bid fourteen thousand
nine, hundred and ninety-nine dollars and take the route. Ah, but they
say the postmaster is not allowed to tell the amount of the bid. No.
What was the penalty if he did? He would lose his office. Now, here is
a postmaster holding an office worth, perhaps, a hundred dollars a
century, or, perhaps, fifty dollars a year, and by selling information
as to one bid he might make ten thousand dollars. I do not know what he
could have made. Certainly the bidders did not feel like trusting the
secret of their bids to the postmaster who certified to the sureties. As
a consequence the bond was filled up with the penalty according to the
advertisement, but the blank in which the amount of the bid was to be
written was not filled, because they wanted the postmaster's mind left
a blank upon that subject. In other words, that blank was left unfilled,
not to defraud the Government, but to prevent other people from
defrauding the bidder. That is all there is about it. That is everything
about the Cleudenning bonds. But it may be well enough to state,
gentlemen, that those Clendenning bonds were never used on a solitary
route in this indictment, and I believe never anywhere; that no contract
was ever awarded upon any one of those proposals. The only rascality
in the transaction, gentlemen, was the failure to fill a blank; and the
reason they failed to fill that blank was because they did not want
the postmaster to know the amount of the bid. Let us come right down to
practical matters and things. For instance, suppose one of this jury
is in the stone-cutting business, and the Government should issue an
advertisement calling for proposals to furnish dressed granite, and
specify that every man who bid must file a bond in a penalty of five
thousand dollars to carry out his contract, and that that bond must
be approved by the postmaster here. Suppose it was a contract of great
proportions. Would the man who bid be willing that the amount of the bid
should be inserted in the blank to be passed upon by the postmaster? No.
Why? He would not want the postmaster to know it. Who else would he not
want to know it? He would not want his sureties to know it. A man might
be standing by while the bond was being approved and read the amount of
the bid. The bidder would be afraid somebody would get at those figures
and go and underbid him. Every man of common, ordinary sense knows that.
If you made a bid you would not let your sureties know the amount and
you would not give the amount to the keeping of a postmaster, neither
would you leave it to chance or accident. You would say, "I will leave
the amount a blank. I will keep it in my mind, and when the paper comes
into my hands for the last time I will write, it in there and fold it
and seal it and give it to the Government." That is what every sensible
and prudent man would do, and what has been done for years. And yet that
act is brought forward as something to stain the reputation of an
honest man; something to strike down as with a sword the character of an
ex-Senator. They even say he wrote upon paper that had the mark of the
United States Senate Chamber upon it. That is only another evidence that
there was nothing wrong in it. It was stated, too, in the opening of
this case, that an affidavit was made upon paper that bore the mark of
the National Hotel of this city. Think of such a damning circumstance as
that! Well, gentlemen, so much for the Clendenning bonds. We will
prove that the blank was left unfilled on purpose, not to defraud the
Government, but to prevent other people from defrauding us. Let me say
in that connection that there was an investigation in 1878 upon this
very question. The Clendenning bonds were brought up. Testimony was
heard, and we will be able to show you the facts that I have stated.
Then, if I am right, gentlemen, there is nothing in it; and when the
opening statement was made the Government knew, just as well as I know,
that there was nothing in it; at least they ought to have known it.
Probably it is not proper for me to say they knew it, because men get so
prejudiced, so warped, so twisted that it is hard to tell what they know
or what they do not know. But that has nothing to do with this case and,
in my judgment, will never be admitted by the Court. If it is admitted
by the Court we will establish exactly what I have told you. So much for
the Clendenning bonds. Do not forget that the penalty of the bond was
put in by the Government.

Do not forget that the amount of the bid was left blank simply to
protect ourselves. Do not forget another thing: That leaving that blank
unfilled could not by any possible peradventure injure the Government.
The bond was just as good with that proposal unfilled at the time the
sureties signed it as though it had been filled. It had to be filled
before it was finally given to the Government or else there would be no
bid. If there was no bid, then no obligation rested upon the sureties.
Certainly they could not be harmed, and if there was no bid certainly
the Government could not be harmed; unless the bid should have happened
to be lower than any received; and yet out of that nothing, out of that
one bramble, a forest of rascality has been manufactured. Gentlemen,
that is the result of suspicion when it is hoed by malice and watered by
hatred.

The next suspicious circumstance, gentlemen, is that we bid. That is a
suspicious circumstance. Miner bid, Peck bid, and John W. Dorsey bid.
And the suspicious circumstance is that they did not bid against
each other. Why should they? I was at an auction the other day and
unconsciously bid against myself, but I did not think it any evidence
of rascality on my part; I thought it tended to show that I was not
attending strictly to business, and yet it is brought forward as
a suspicious circumstance that these gentlemen did not bid against
themselves. Another suspicious circumstance is that they bid in their
individual names. That is the way all the bidding is done, I believe.
I believe every bond has to be signed by the individuals and not by
any partnership. That I believe to be one of the regulations of the
department. Well, there is no rascality yet, as far as I can see. Now,
when the contract is accepted—I will come to the bidding question
again—the contractor has to give a bond. One of those bonds will be put
in evidence in this case. You will see what the contractor is bound to
do. Then it can be subcontracted. You will find that the contract given
by the subcontractor to the department is not a hundredth part as severe
as the bond the contractor gives to the Government. In the contract that
we give to the Government certain things are provided. You will find
that a copy of it will be intro duced. The contractor is left to
the mercy of discretion-I believe that is the word—of the
Postmaster-General You will find that if he fails to carry the mail one
trip, no matter by what he may be prevented, by flood or storm or fire,
he is not to be paid for it. Although he is there ready with his men
and horses, if he is prevented by the elements he has no pay. If the
Postmaster-General thinks he ought to have carried it when he did not,
he can take from his pay three times the value of the trip. He can take
from him one quarter's pay. He reserves in his own breast the power
to declare that contract null and void, because in his judgment the
contractor has not done his duty. Everything is left to him. The man who
signs that contract gives a mortgage on his life, liberty, and pursuit
of happiness. He has no redress. I simply call your attention to this
to show you the obligation that a contractor takes upon himself. We will
show you that he is under obligation to discharge any carrier that the
Government does not like; that he has no right to carry any package or
any letter that can go by mail; that he is to forfeit a trip when it is
not run, or not to exceed three times the pay of a trip; that he is to
forfeit one-quarter of a trip if the running time is so far behind that
he fails to make connection with the next mail; that if he violates any
of these provisions he forfeits a penalty equal to a quarter's pay, or
if he violates any other provision touching the carriage of the mail and
the time and manner thereof, without a satisfactory explanation in
due time to the Postmaster-General, he can visit a penalty in his
discretion, and the forfeitures may be increased in the penalty to a
higher amount, in the discretion of the Postmaster-General, according to
the nature or frequency of the failure and the importance of the mail.
Provided that, except as specified, and except as provided by law, no
penalty shall exceed three times the pay of a trip in each case.

It is also agreed by the said contractor and his sureties that the
Postmaster-General may annul the contract for repeated failures; for
violating the postal laws; for disobeying the instructions of the
Post-Office Department; for refusing to discharge a carrier when
required by the department; for transmitting commercial intelligence or
matter which should go by mail; for transporting persons so engaged as
aforesaid; whenever the contractor shall become a postmaster, &c.

It is further stipulated and agreed that such annulment shall not impair
the right to claim damages from said contractor and his sureties under
this contract; but such damages may, for the purpose of set-off or
counter-claim in the settlement of any claim of said contractor or his
sureties against the United States, whether arising under this contract
or otherwise, be assessed and liquidated by the Auditor of the Treasury
for the Post-Office Department.

And it is further stipulated and agreed by the said contractor and
his sureties that the contract may, in the discretion of the
Postmaster-General, be continued in force beyond its express terms for a
period not exceeding six months. You will see, gentlemen, how perfectly,
how absolutely, the contractor is in the power of the department. The
Government enforces its contracts. No matter how many years may elapse
they are still after the sureties and are still after the principal.
Nothing relieves a man but, death. Only a little while ago a case was
decided in the Supreme Court of which I will speak to you. An importer
of sugar gave the importers' bond to pay the duty upon that sugar. By
the custom of trade, sugar is sold in bond.

The importer sold to a third person and the third person went to get the
sugar. By law he could only take it after paying the tax; and yet one of
the officers of the Government, contrary to law, allowed him to take the
sugar without paying the tax. The Supreme Court has just held that the
original importer and his sureties are liable to pay that tax—the man
who took the sugar out having become bankrupt—although the sugar was
given to the second party simply by a violation of law, and that law
was violated by one of the officers of the custom-house without the
knowledge or consent of the original importer. I tell you, gentlemen,
whenever a man gives a bond to this Government the Government stays with
him. The Government does not die; the Government does not get tired; the
Government does not get weary. The Government can afford to wait, and
the poor man with the bond hanging over him cannot go into business,
cannot get credit, but just lingers out a life of expectation, of hope,
and of disappointment. I trust none of you will ever sign a bond to the
Government. There is another thing, gentlemen. If you bid on a hundred
routes and they are given to you and you put the service on ninety-nine
of the routes and carry it in accordance with the contract, and yet fail
on the hundredth route, the Postmaster-General has a right to declare
you a failing contractor. A failing contractor on the hundredth route?
Yes. On any more? Yes; on every one. And whoever is declared a failing
contractor on one route is by virtue of that declaration a failing
contractor on all. They are all taken from him. So that when a man bids
for more than one route, for instance, a hundred or a thousand, and gets
them and carries them all absolutely according to his contract but one,
he can be declared a failing contractor on all. What does that mean?
It means not simply ruin to him, but ruin to every one of his sureties,
unless they are in a condition to go on and carry the mail. I want
you to understand something of the obligation of a contractor with the
Government of the United States.

Now, I come to the bidding. These bids were made with a full
understanding of the obligation of a bidder. Messrs. Miner, Peck, and
John W. Dorsey bid, I believe, on about twelve hundred routes. You see
you are in great luck in bidding if you get one route in fifty that you
bid upon. In the first place, there are about ten thousand star routes.
I do not know that it is too much to say that the number of bids runs up
into the hundreds of thousands; somewhere in that neighborhood. Hundreds
of men often bid on one route. Consequently, nobody who bids expects to
get more than a few of the routes for which they bid. Now, is there the
slightest evidence in the statement of the Government as to the frauds
in this bidding? Let me tell you how some frauds have been committed.
Suppose, for instance, this was a fraudulent business, and Miner, Peck,
and Dorsey were bidding. Let me explain it to you. I want you to know
it. All there is in this case is simply to have you understand it. That
is all there is. And if you do not agree with me when we get through the
case I shall simply think that you have not comprehended it. Say that
four men bid on the same route, one man four thousand dol-ars, another
man three thousand dollars, another man two thousand dollars, and
another man one thousand dollars.

Now, the man who bids one thousand dollars is of no account, has not
a dollar in the world, and so when the bid is given to him he does not
want it. He is what they call a straw man. The law provides then that
the next man may have it. The law does not provide that he must take
it. He may have it if he wants to, but you cannot force him to take it,
because he is not the lowest bidder. He is the two thousand dollar man.
He is another straw gentleman. He does not want it. Then the Government
offers it to the next man at three thousand dollars. He is another
chap made of hay. He says he doesn't want it. Understand the Government
cannot force these straw and hay men to take it. Then they go to the
fourth fellow, who bid four thousand dollars. It is a good thing at four
thousand, and he says, "Yes; I will take it." That is what they call
fraudulent bidding. If you had found Dorsey and Miner and Peck bidding
on the same route and one of them failing and another one taking it, you
would not only have suspected fraud, but you would have known it.
Now, if it is a badge of fraud for them to bid upon the same route and
apparently against each other, I will ask you if it is not a badge of
fair dealing that they were not found bidding against each other. They
bid on about twelve hundred routes, and much to their astonishment they
got one hundred and thirty-four contracts.

You have heard here a great deal of talk about the number of men and
horses. We will show you all about it. Men differ upon this subject. If
men did not differ upon it at all these bids would be alike. Instead of
being a dozen bids, all different, and differing sometimes as much as
ten, twenty, thirty, forty, or a hundred dollars or more, they would bid
the same. If they all agreed on the number of horses and men it would
take, and about what it would cost, they would bid about alike, wouldn't
they? But when they are bidding they honestly differ. One man says it
would take twenty horses, and another says "no, it will take forty."
Do you not know that the number of horses depends a great deal upon
the kind of man who makes the estimate. Here is a man who is hard and
brutal, and he says a horse can do so much work. He says it is cheaper
to buy him and wear him out than it is to feed him decently. You have
known men who were perfectly willing to make fortunes out of a horse's
agony, and out of animal pain. There are hundreds of them in the world.
Now, take it on horse railroads, and with freighters, and teamsters.
Whenever you find a mean, infamous man, if he cannot whip his wife,
he will take his spite out on his horse. If a man is a good, broad,
generous, free fellow he will say, "I don't want to work that horse to
death; I think it will take four horses. I am going to keep my horses
fat, and I am going to treat them as a gentleman should." Another man,
a wretch, will come up and swear it would not take more than fifteen
horses. When his horses are through the service you will simply see a
pile of bones wrapped in a lamentable hide. You understand that.

Well, these men made twelve hundred bids and got one hundred and
thirty-four contracts. Ah, but they say, here is another badge of fraud,
another badge. Ah, they bid on small routes, on cheap routes, on routes
where the mail was carried infrequently and on slow time. If it is a
badge of fraud to bid on such routes the Government can never let out
any more. Most of these routes were cheap routes. Now, I owe it to you
to give you the reason for this. We will prove in the first place that
these men were not rich men. If they had been very rich they probably
would not have gone into the business at all. They would have gone into
that perfectly respectable business of buying Government bonds. They
would have bought Government bonds and made other fellows pay the
interest, and twice a year they would have formed a partnership with
a pair of shears, and thus in the sweat of their faces they would
clip their coupons. They bid on poor routes. Why? They were poor,
comparatively speaking.

They had not the money to stock the expensive routes where four horse
coaches were run. They preferred to take the cheaper lines. Why? Because
they could stock them. They would have been able to have stocked the
routes if they had only obtained the number they expected. But as I
told you, they got many more routes than they expected. Was that for the
benefit of the Government? How did these men come to bid so cheaply on
some of these routes? I will tell you. Because they had the information,
because they had received the facts from all the postmasters on the
routes, and consequently they made a good close calculation, and the
result was that their bids were below others, and the fact that their
bids were accepted saved the Government hundreds of thousands of
dollars. When they found themselves with all these contracts, the first
hard work they did was to give away all they could. That was the first
hard work. They had contracts, not for sale, but just to give, and they
succeeded in giving away several of them. I believe they sold two of
these children of conspiracy for the enormous sum of one hundred dollars
each. That was the highest sale they made at that time. Afterwards
another route was sold which I will explain when I come to it. Now there
is no rascality yet. No fraud yet. No conspiracy yet. Well, they then
went to work to get their bonds. But first let me say that there was
another reason for bidding on cheap routes. Whenever the bid is above
five thousand dollars, then the man who bids must, at the time he bids,
put up a check for five per cent, of the amount.

A check certified by a national bank. For instance, if it all comes to a
hundred thousand dollars he has got to put in a certified check for five
thousand dollars. Even in the little bids we made we had to deposit with
the Government some twenty-six or twenty-eight thousand dollars, and I
do not know but more, in cash, or what is the same as cash, for the bank
certifies that the money is there. That is another reason they bid on
smaller routes. What is the next? The Government asks such frightful
bonds, such terrible amounts, that a man must be almost a millionaire,
or else there must be a confidence in him that is universal, before he
can give these bonds.

There was one route at this very bidding where they had to give bonds
for six hundred and forty thousand dollars, and the sureties upon these
bonds under oath had to testify that they had real estate to the value
of six hundred and forty thousand dollars, exclusive of all debts, dues,
and demands. So there was another reason for bidding upon small routes.
Where the amount was under five thousand dollars no certified check had
to be deposited, and the smaller the route of course the smaller the
bond.

Now, I have endeavored to show you the reasons that we bid upon these
routes instead of upon the larger ones. The reasons as stated by the
Government are that we took these routes where the service was once a
week, so that we could have the service increased; that we took those
routes where the time was long so that we could have it shortened, that
is to say, expedited. But I tell you that when a perfectly good reason
lies at the very threshold of the question you have no right to go
further. The reasons I have given to you it seems to me are perfect and
you need no more.

Now, then, we got, I say, about one hundred and thirty-four routes. Of
these, one hundred and fifteen are without complaint. There is not a
word about the other one hundred and fifteen. Recollect it. We got one
hundred and thirty-four routes. In this indictment are nineteen; one
hundred and fifteen appear to be perfectly satisfactory to this great
Government. There is not a word as to those routes, not one word, I say,
as to one hundred and fifteen routes, and they want you to believe
that these defendants deliberately selected nineteen routes out of one
hundred and thirty-four about which to make a conspiracy, and that
they left one hundred and fifteen to go honestly along, but picked out
nineteen for the purpose of defrauding the Government.

Now, then, when these gentlemen found themselves with these routes, the
next thing was to put the stock and the carriers upon them. As I told
you, a good many more had been awarded to them than they anticipated.
They had not the money. So, in putting the stock upon several of the
routes, they found it necessary to borrow some money, and here comes
another suspicious circumstance. Mr. Miner borrowed some money of
Stephen W. Dorsey, and everybody is astonished that any man would be
mean enough to loan money to another; that any man could so far forget
the dignity of the office that he held as to help a friend. Their idea
of a Senator is of such a lofty and dignified character that he ceases
to take interest in anything except national affairs; that after he has
been sworn in he forgets all the relationships and friendships of
the world, and the idea of asking him to loan money seems, to the
prosecution, to be the height of unconstitutionality. But as a matter
of fact he did loan some money, and we will show you how that loan was
treated, showing you that at that time he had not the slightest interest
in it. He loaned some money, and kept loaning money until, I believe,
he had given them about sixteen thousand dollars to get these routes on.
Then he, being on his way to New Mexico, met in the city of Saint Louis
John R. Miner, who at that time was coming back, I think, from Montana
or Dakota, where he had been putting stock on a route. Miner saw Dorsey
in Saint Louis, and said to him, "We have got to have a little more
money, and I want you to indorse my note or to loan me your note and
I can get it discounted in the German-American Bank in Washington."
Finally, Dorsey said to him, "You have already obtained from me about
sixteen thousand dollars: I will give you the note you ask, or indorse
your note upon one condition, and that is that you shall give me
orders"—what are called Post-Office drafts—"not only for the amount of
this note, but for the amount of the sixteen thousand dollars." We shall
insist, gentlemen, that that evidence shows exactly our position, and
that you are entitled not only to draw from it, but that you must
draw from it the inference, the fact, that we had no interest in those
routes. Finally that was agreed to.

Now, understand it, at that time a contractor with the Government who
had agreed to carry the mail for a certain time could give what are
called post-office drafts or orders—you know, orders on his quarterly
pay—and they would be taken to the proper officer in the Post-Office
Department and they would be accepted, not for the full amount,
understand, but for any amount that might be due that contractor.
For instance, he might fail to carry the mail, he might be fined, and
consequently the amount of that draft might not be there, so that the
only thing the Post-Office Department agreed to do was to pay upon that
order or draft anything that was due to the contractor. That was done at
that time, and why? Because there was no way other than that to secure
these advances. So he gave these drafts. He came on to Washington.
The note was put into the German-American Bank. The orders on the
Post-Office Department were filed with it, and the money advanced by
the bank and charged to Stephen W. Dorsey. That made, then, at that time
about twenty-five thousand dollars that Dorsey had advanced. That being
done he went on about his business.

Now, I will show you what happened after that. I think the note in the
German-American Bank was nine thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars,
I have forgotten which. Dorsey then went on to New Mexico from Saint
Louis, and remained there, I believe, until December, 1878. Now, I want
you to understand this, because here turns a very important question,
and a very important point. Now, you recollect the information about
these bids was collected in the autumn and winter of 1877. The last
bid was to be put in, I think, February 28, 1878. Now, this was in the
August of that year, 1878. Still being pressed for money, Miner, Peck,
and J. W. Dorsey were in danger of being declared failing contractors.
Now, recollect it. We will show that at that time Brady, who, according
to the Government, was a co-conspirator, threatened to declare Dorsey,
Peck, and Miner failing contractors, and if he had declared them failing
contractors even on one route that was the end of all. At that time
Miner and John W. Dorsey sought out Mr. Harvey M. Vaile, and let me say
that is the first appearance of Mr. Vaile in these contracts. He knew
nothing about the bidding, was not in Dorsey's house, knew nothing about
the letting. That is his first appearance in these contracts, August,
1878. Now let us see what he did. He was a man of means. He had some
money; had been, I believe, for a long time engaged in carrying the
mails; understood the business. They will tell you that is a suspicious
circumstance as to him, and that the fact that that was John Dorsey's
first experience is a suspicious circumstance as to him. Really to avoid
suspicion you would have to have a man that had been in it a long time
but never had anything to do with it. They got him, and offered what? To
give him a third interest in this entire business. I think that was
it. They were to give him a third interest in this entire business,
a business that had been born of conspiracy, a business that had as a
silent partner the man who fixed the amount of money to be paid. Think
of that. According to the statement of the Government, here was a
conspiracy full-fledged, perfect in its every part, flanked by the
Second Assistant Postmaster-General, buttressed by all the clerks they
desired, and yet that conspiracy got so hard up that in August, 1878,
nine or ten months after its creation, it was willing to give a third to
anybody who would advance a little money to carry the thing on.

So Mr. Vaile came in. Now, then, they had to secure Vaile against any
loss, and it seems that on July 1, I believe, of that year, the law
allowed the subcontract to be filed. It was a little while before that
that a law had been passed for the protection of subcontractors. That
was all explained to you yesterday. You know it is something like
a mechanic's lien; that if the subcontractor would only file his
subcontract in the Post-Office Department and let that department know
the terms of it they would not pay the original contractor until this
subcontractor was paid. Now, that law had gone into effect a little
while before August, 1878, and the effect of that law, if anybody filed
a subcontract on these routes, was to cut out all those post-office
orders that Miner had given to secure Dorsey. You understand me now, do
you not? It was when he met him in Saint Louis that it was agreed
that these post-office orders were to be given and filed with the
German-American Bank in this city. Now, then, the law passed for
the protection of subcontractors, and subsequently the filing of
subcontracts on those very routes, would render those post-office orders
absolutely worthless. Very well. When they made the contract with
Mr. Vaile they agreed to file the subcontracts with the department
to protect Vaile and that rendered S. W. Dorsey's security absolutely
nothing. That cut out all other claims, drafts, and everything else, and
at that time Mr. Miner was fully authorized by power of attorney from J.
W. Dorsey and from John M. Peck, who was at that time in New Mexico, to
make this transfer to Vaile.

Now, see where we are on August 16, 1878. On Dorsey's return in
December, 1878—he had not been here from that time, and do you not see
he had nothing to do with it—he found that these subcontracts had
been filed. He found that the note in the German-American Bank had been
protested, and he found that his collateral security was not worth a
dollar, that it was all gone. Thereupon he demanded a settlement. The
matter drifted along for a little while, and a settlement was made with
the bank; and Mr. Vaile, holding the subcontract, undertook to pay that
Dorsey note, and he did pay it. He took it up, and gave, I believe, his
own instead, and that was finally paid. But the money due Dorsey, the
sixteen thousand dollars that at that time amounted to something more
by virtue of interest, was not provided for. The money that had been
expended by John W. Dorsey was not provided for. The money expended
by Peck was not provided for. Now, I want you to see exactly how that
matter stood at that time. We have got it up to that time and here
it stands, and the chief conspirator out sixteen thousand dollars and
without any interest in one of the routes. There is where he was at
that time, and that is what we will show. The brother of the chief
conspirator ten thousand dollars out, and not the interest of one cent
in any route. The brother-in-law of the conspirator about ten thousand
dollars out, and not a cent in. That was the condition of this
conspiracy at this time, and when Vaile took these routes Brady
telegraphed him and asked him, "What routes of Miner, Dorsey, and
Peck, are you going to put the stock on? This thing can be continued no
longer. The stock must go on." We will show it. Now, having got to that
point, we will take another step. There is nothing like understanding
things as we go along.

Now, from the time Mr. Vaile took the route, to the settlement in 1879,
to which I will call your attention in a little while, Mr. Vaile had the
absolute control. Neither Peck nor S. W. Dorsey had the slightest thing
to do with one of those routes until the final settlement, and I say to
these gentlemen of the prosecution now, that in that time they can find
no line, no word from Stephen W. Dorsey upon the subject. They cannot
find that he wrote a word to any official, that he sent a petition to
anybody, that he wrote a letter to any human being upon the subject,
or that he took any more interest in it than in the ashes of Sodom and
Gomorrah. It went right along.

Now, then, up to this time, Stephen W. Dorsey had made nothing. He was
only out about sixteen thousand dollars or eighteen thousand dollars.
John W. Dorsey was in the same healthy financial condition. John M. Peck
had reaped the same rich harvest of ten thousand dollars lost, and
all the things had been turned over to Mr. Vaile; John W. Dorsey put
out—left out—with nothing to show. That is the first chapter in this
conspiracy. [Resuming.]

I believe when I stopped, the principal conspirators were substantially
"broke." The head and front was out sixteen or eighteen thousand
dollars, and the other two ten thousand dollars each. Now, a contract
was made, and I propose to prove that contract in the course of this
trial. When that contract comes to be shown, it will be about this:
That, on the 16th day of August, 1878, H. M. Vaile, John R. Miner, John
M. Peck, and John W. Dorsey made an agreement That agreement made a
partnership, and we will show that a partnership was formed by and
between Miner, Vaile, Peck, and Dorsey on the 16th day of August, 1878.
We will show by the articles of that partnership that H. M. Vaile was
made treasurer, and that all the other partners agreed, by suitable
powers of attorney, to put the collection of all the money from the
Government absolutely in his hands. When he got the money he agreed,
first, to pay all the subcontractors; second, the expenses necessary
and incident to the proper conduct of the business; third, to divide the
profits remain-, ing among the parties as provided in that contract. The
profits were to be divided as follows: From routes in Indian Territory,
Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota, to H. M. Vaile, one-third; to John R.
Miner, one-sixth; to John M. Peck, one-sixth; and to John W. Dorsey,
one-third. From routes in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico,
Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Washington Territory, Oregon, Nevada, and
California, to H. M. Vaile, one-third; to John R. Miner, one-third, and
to John M. Peck, one-third. Before any division of profits was to be
made, the sums which before that time had been advanced were to be
paid to the parties so advancing such sums; and if the profits were not
sufficient to repay the entire sums so advanced, they were to be paid
from time to time during the existence of the life of these contracts.
Now, you will find that such contract was made on the 16th day of
August, 1878, and that Mr. H. M. Vaile then took absolute and complete
control of every one of these routes, and the only thing they asked of
him was to repay the money that had been advanced, which, as you know,
and as I have told you, was the sixteen or eighteen thousand dollars
by S. W. Dorsey, the ten thousand dollars by Peck, and about the same
amount by John W. Dorsey. Now that is understood. At that time certain
papers were executed by all the parties. I told you that a law had been
passed by virtue of which a man could make a subcontract and have that
subcontract put on file, and thereupon he could be protected by the
Government. Now, when H. M. Vaile took these routes, and they were to
be managed by him, subcontracts were made by the other parties to Mr.
Vaile, and Mr. Vaile put those subcontracts on record. Now you can see
that they gave him the absolute and entire control of every route.
That was the condition. I have explained to you the the liability of
a contractor. He cannot put it off on a subcontractor. He is the
man primarily responsible to the Government during the life of that
contract, and for six months thereafter. Whenever a contract is awarded
to any person, he is regarded as the original contractor, and his
name is kept upon the books of the department during the life of that
contract. No matter how many subcontracts may be made, he is looked to
primarily if there is a failure of a a trip, or if there is a failure
of the service, and he is responsible for its complete performance. If
there comes some great storm and the road is obstructed by snow, or if
the bridges are all carried away by flood, and the subcontractor throws
down the contract, the original contractor must be ready to take it
up; and if he fail to do so, he can be fined three times what he has
received for each trip. There is one case in one of these nineteen
routes, gentlemen, where the fines exceeded the entire pay simply
because they did not carry the mail according to the contract. Now,
then, these parties finally made a settlement and they divided these
routes. They divided them. They ceased to have any interest in common.
Recollect, that was in April, 1879. I want you to know it because this
entire case depends on your knowing it. This entire case, gentlemen of
the jury, depends on your understanding it. In April, 1879, Mr. Vaile
having had possession of these routes for several months, a division was
made of them, and all interest in common was at that moment severed. At
this time, I say, these routes were divided, and all partnership and all
partnership interest was absolutely destroyed. I want to tell you why.
When Dorsey returned from New Mexico and found that his orders on the
Post-Office Department had been superseded by subcontracts and that his
collateral security was worthless he was indignant, and at that time
he and Mr. Vaile had a quarrel. He did not think he had been properly
treated, and for that reason the moment he got the note at the
German-American Bank provided for, the moment he induced Mr. Vaile
to assume the payment of that note, he gave evidence that he wanted a
settlement. Not that he wanted the routes divided at that time, because
he did not dream of such a thing. He wanted the settlement. He wanted
his money. The arrangement that had been made with Mr. Vaile was unknown
to Mr. Dorsey, who at that time was in New Mexico; and, as I told you
before, when he returned and found that the note that had been given to
the German-American National Bank was protested, and found, as I
told you twice, his collateral security was worthless, he wanted a
settlement. He wanted his money refunded to him. They said to him, "We
haven't the money. We have just got the stock really upon these routes.
We have just got under way, and we cannot pay out the money." "Very
well," said he, "what will you give me?" I want you all to see that this
was a simple, natural, ordinary proceeding. Said he, "I want my money."
Said Vaile to him, "We haven't the money, but I will tell you what we
will do. We will divide the routes with you." Now, recollect at that
time that they had a hundred and thirty-four routes, and had given some
of them away. At that time they agreed upon a division, and they agreed
how that division should be made. We will prove the agreement to you.
The agreement was that Mr. Vaile should choose first, taking the route
he wanted—he and Miner being together at that time—that Mr. Dorsey
should choose the next, and Mr. Miner should choose the third route;
and then that Mr. Vaile should choose the fourth, Stephen W. Dorsey the
fifth route, Mr. Miner the sixth route, Mr. Vaile the seventh route, and
so on. They finally concluded it would be fair for Mr. Vaile to take
the best route, Dorsey the next best, and Miner the next best, and then
again Vaile the best, Dorsey the next best, and Miner the next best,
and that that would be an average that would do justice to each. In
that way, gentlemen, they divided these routes. There was no conspiracy;
nothing secret. This division was made on the 6th day of April, 1879,
not only after Dorsey had gone out of the Senate, but after he had
advanced this money, after they had failed to repay him, after he had
failed to collect it, and when he finally had said, "I must have some
settlement that recognizes my claim." Gentlemen, I want you to know
that. In this case that fact will be one of the great central facts. On
the 6th day of April, 1879, these routes were absolutely divided, and
after that they had nothing in common. But you recollect that these
routes were divided by chance. Mr. Vaile chose the first route. He might
choose a route that had been bid off by Peck, or he might choose a route
that had been bid off by John W. Dorsey. Stephen W. Dorsey took the next
route, and that might have been a route that had originally been awarded
to his brother, or to Peck, or to Miner. You can see how that is. The
division was here complete. Mr. Miner did not have the routes he had bid
off and that had been given to him by the Government. Mr. Vaile came in,
and as Mr. Vaile was not an original bidder he took routes that had
been awarded to Miner and to Peck and to John W. Dorsey. By the division
Stephen W. Dorsey came into possession of routes that he never had bid
off, because he never bid for one. Consequently as he went along with
those routes, he needed and he had oftentimes the affidavit or the
certificate of the original contractor. That was a necessity. Otherwise
the division could not have been carried out. Anything that arises from
the necessity of the case does not tend to show any conspiracy or any
illegal partnership. I hope you understand perfectly that on the 6th day
of April, 1879, these routes were divided and Stephen W. Dorsey took his
share because they at that time owed him between sixteen and eighteen
thousand dollars.

What more did he do, gentlemen? He agreed at that time that he would
refund to John W. Dorsey all the money he had expended. That amount was
about ten thousand dollars. It was nine thousand and something. He also
agreed that he would refund to John M. Peck, who is now dead, the money
he had expended, which was between nine and ten thousand dollars. He
also agreed that he would take the routes for the money he had expended,
and that was between sixteen and eighteen thousand dollars. So, when
those routes were turned over to him they were taken in full of over
sixteen thousand dollars advanced by him, ten thousand dollars that he
was to give to his brother, and ten thousand dollars that he was to give
to John M. Peck—in the neighborhood of thirty-eight thousand dollars
in all. Speaking of the sum without interest it amounted to thirty-six
thousand dollars. Those routes were turned over to him. Gentlemen, it
was not done in secret. When that division was made, the law having
provided no way for A to assign a contract to B, that assignment had to
be accomplished by a subcontract, and consequently subcontracts had to
be given to Vaile, subcontracts to John R. Miner, and subcontracts to
S. W. Dorsey, and yet the original contractor was still held by the
Government. When the subcontract was made, it was for the entire amount
of the pay; not one dollar remained for the original contractor. Now,
I want to state to you what we are going to prove about that. After
the division was made, to show you the interest taken by the
arch-conspirator, we will prove these facts: That when the routes
awarded to him by chance, on the 6th day of April, 1879, had been
awarded, he left the city of Washington in a few days, and went to New
Mexico; that he returned here on the 15th or 16th of May; that he left
again on the 19th of May, and went to Arkansas; that from Arkansas he
went to New Mexico, and returned to Washington on the 21st day of June,
and that on the 27th of June he left for New Mexico. The next time he
visited Washington was in July of the following year, 1880. He remained
here one day, left and returned again to witness the inauguration of
General Garfield. From June 27, 1879, up to the present hour I challenge
these gentlemen to show that Stephen W. Dorsey ever wrote one line,
one word, one letter, to any officer of the Post-Office Department. I
challenge them to show that he ever took the slightest interest in any
star route, or said one word to any human being about that business,
except in explanation when attacked by the Government or in the
newspapers. Now, gentlemen, after the division of these routes what
did Stephen W. Dorsey do? This is a story, complicated, it may seem,
perfectly plain when you understand the surroundings. It is a story
necessary for you to know. After he got these routes what did he do? Did
he want them? Did he want to engage in carrying the mail of the United
States? Was that his business? At that time he had a ranch in New Mexico
where he was raising cattle. That was his business, and is up to to-day.
Did he want to stay here? Did he want to attend to these contracts? That
is for you to determine. Did he want to enter into some partnership by
which the Government was to be fleeced? That is for you to say. I tell
you he had another business. I tell you he had a ranch in New Mexico,
and we will prove it to you, and that ranch was of more importance to
him than all the star routes in the United States. We will show you
that at that time he could not have afforded to waste his time on these
routes; that the business he was then engaged in was too profitable
to waste any time in the mail business. Profitable as these gentlemen
appear to think it was, what did he do? Just as soon as he could make
the arrangement he went to a gentleman living in Pennsylvania by the
name of James W. Bosler. Who is Bosler? He is a man well acquainted with
the business of contracting with the Government. He has been in that
business for years and years. He is a man of ample fortune, excellent
reputation, considered by his friends and neighbors to be a gentleman
and an honest man. He went to him. That we will show you. He said to Mr.
Bosler, "I have advanced money by the indorsement of a note. I am in a
business that I do not understand. We have had to divide the routes in
order for me to have security for my debt. I want to turn these routes
over to you. I am not acquainted with the business of carrying the mail.
I know absolutely nothing about it. I want you to take it." How did he
turn it over? We will show. He said to Mr. Bosler, "You take all the
routes that have been given to me; every one. You run them and you pay
me back my money, and then we will divide the profit." Mr. Bosler
said he was not very well acquainted with post-office business, but
he understood how to transact any ordinary business, and he would take
them. That is all there is to it. He took the routes; every one. I
believe that he took absolute control within a few months of the 6th day
of April. I do not know but the warrants for the first quarter were
paid or came in some way to S. W. Dorsey. But for the second quarter Mr.
Bosler took them, and from that day to this Mr. Bosler has controlled
those routes. He has carried every mail or has contracted with the man
who did carry it. Every solitary thing that has been done from that day
to this has been done by him. Every dollar has been collected by Mr.
Bosler, and every dollar has been disbursed by Mr. Bosler. And before we
get through I am going to tell you how all the routes that were given to
Mr. S. W. Dorsey came out. Let me tell you how they came out. Mr.
Bosler has carried the mail, paid the expenses, kept the accounts, and,
gentlemen, I am going to tell you how much he made out of this vast
conspiracy that has convulsed that part of the moral world that has been
hired and paid to be convulsed. I am going to tell you exactly how we
came out on all this business. I will give you the product of all this
rascality, of all this conspiracy, of all the written and spoken lies; I
will tell you our joint profit on this entire business; a business that
promised to change the administration of this Government; a business
about which reputations have been lost, and no reputations will be
won; counting it all, every dollar, and taking into consideration the
midnight meetings, the whisperings in alleys, the strange grips and
signs that we have had to invent and practice, you will wonder at the
amount. I will give it to you all. Mr. Bosler has kept the books, has
expended every dollar, collected every warrant, and I say to you to-day
that the entire profit has been less than ten thousand dollars, not
enough to pay ten witnesses of the Government. Our profits have not been
one-fiftieth of the expense of the Government in this prosecution—not
one-fiftieth, and I say this, gentlemen, knowing what I am saying. It is
charged by the Government that these gentlemen were conspirators; that
they dragged the robes of office in the mire of rascality; that they
swore lies; that they made false petitions; that they forged the
names of citizens; that they did all this for the paltry profit of ten
thousand dollars. That is what we will show you. And the moment this
reform administration swept into power they cut down the service on
these routes. They not only did that, but they refused to pay the
month's extra pay, and they committed all this villainy in the name of
reform. And do you know some of the meanest things in this world have
been done in the name of reform? They used to say that patriotism was
the last refuge of a scoundrel. I think reform is. And whenever I hear
a small politician talking about reform, borrowing soap to wash his
official hands, with his mouth full and his memory glutted with the
rascality of somebody else I begin to suspect him; I begin to think that
that gentleman is preparing to steal something. So much, then, for the
conspiracy up to this point, up to the division of these routes in 1879.
Now recollect it.

Now, the next charge that is made against us, and it is a terrific
one, is that these defendants, my clients, have filled the Post-Office
Department with petitions—false petitions; forged petitions. I want
to tell you here to-day that these gentlemen will never present any
petitions upon any route upon which my clients are interested that they
will claim was forged—not one. Have we not the right, gentlemen, to
petition? Has not the humblest man in the United States a right to send
a petition to Congress? Has not the smallest man—I will go further—has
not the meanest man the right to petition Congress? Why, it is
considered one of our Constitutional rights not only, but a right back
of the Constitution, to make known your grievances to the governing
power. Every man always had a right to petition the king. There is
no government so absolutely devoid of the spirit of liberty that the
meanest subject in it has not the right to express his opinion to the
king—to the czar. Upon what meat do these officers feed that they are
grown so great that an ordinary citizen may not address a petition to
one of them? Now, I ask you, if you were living in Colorado and could
get a mail once a week, have you not the right to petition your member
of Congress to have it three times a week? Do you not know that
every member of Congress from every State, every delegate from every
Territory, is judged by his constitutents by the standard of what he
does. By what he does for whom? By what he does for them. They send a
man to Congress to help them, and they expect that man to get them a
mail just as often as any other member of Congress gets his people a
mail, do they not? And if he cannot do that they will leave that young
gentleman at home. They will find another man. It is the boast of a
member of Congress when he returns to his constitutents, "I have done
something for you. You only had a mail here once a week. I have got it
four times a week, gentlemen." "Here is a river that was navigable. I
have got a custom house." "Here is a great district in which the United
States holds a court and I have an appropriation for a court-house." Up
will go the caps; they will say, "He is the man we want to represent us
next session." But if he sneaks back and says, "Gentlemen, you do not
need a court-house, you have mails often enough," the reply of the
people is, "And you have been to Congress often enough." That is nature,
and no matter how highly we are civilized when you scratch through the
varnish you find a natural man.

Now, then, every member of Congress felt it was his duty, his privilege,
and his leverage, to have the mails established, and when the people
got up petitions he would indorse them. He would look at the petitions.
There was the principal man, you know, in his town. He would look down
a little farther. There was a fellow that had an idea of running against
him. He would look down a little farther, and there was the man who
presented his name at the last convention; there is the fellow who
subscribed three hundred dollars towards the expenses of the campaign.
That is enough. He turns it right over—"I most earnestly recommend that
this petition be granted. So and so, M. C." Then he would put it in his
coat-pocket, and he would march down to General Brady with a smile
on his face as broad as the horizon of his countenance. He would just
explain to the gentleman that there are miner's camps springing up all
over that country, towns growing in a night like mushrooms, Providence
just throwing prosperity away in that valley; that they have to have
a daily mail then and there, and he would show this petition. In three
weeks more there would come fifty others, and it would be granted. Why,
even the counsel for the prosecution would have done the same, strange
as it may appear. They would have done just the same—maybe worse, maybe
better. The Post-Office officials might have granted more to them.

Now, I have always had the idea that it was one of my rights to sign a
petition; that no man in this country could grow so great that I had not
the right just to hand the gentleman a paper with my opinion on it. Do
you know I do not think anybody can get so big that an American citizen
cannot send a letter to him if he pays the postage, and in that letter
he can give him his opinion. There is no fraud about that; not the
slightest. These men all out through the mountains, men that went out
there, you know, to hunt for silver and for gold, live in little camps
of not more than twenty or thirty, maybe, but they wanted to hear from
home just as bad as though there had been five hundred in that very
place. And a fellow that had dug in the ground about eleven feet and had
found some rock with a little stain on it and had had the stain assayed,
wanted to hear from home right off. He stayed there and dreamed about
fortune, palaces, pictures, carriages, statues, and the whole future
was simply an avenue of joy upon which he and his wife and the children
would ride up and down. He wanted to write a letter right off. He wanted
to tell the folks how he felt. Do you think that man would not sign a
petition for another mail? Do you think that fellow would vote to send a
stupid man to Congress who could not get another mail? He felt rich; he
was sleeping right over a hole that had millions in it, and he had
not much respect for a Government that could not afford to send a
millionaire a letter.

Now, Mr. Bliss tells you that we forged petitions, and in only a few
moments, as the Court will remember, he had the kindness to say that
anybody in the world would sign a petition for anything, and the
question arises if people are so glad to sign petitions why should we
forge their names. Do you not see that doctrine kind of swallows itself.
You certainly would not forge the name of a man to a note who was
hunting you up to sign it. And yet the doctrine of the Government is
that while the whole West rose en masse, each man with a pen in his hand
and inquiring for a petition, these defendants deliberately went to
work and forged it. It won't do, gentlemen. Oh, my Lord, what a thing a
little common sense is when you come to think about it, when you come to
place it before your mind.

Now, the next great trouble in this case, gentlemen, is that we bid on
routes that were not productive. When you remember that Congress made
all these routes—now Congress did it; we did not do it—you will
protect us. We did not make a solitary route upon which we bid, strange
as it may appear. Congress, with the map of the Territories and the
States of the Union before it, marked out all the routes. Congress
determined where these routes should run. And yet this case has been
tried as though in reality we were the parties who determined it.

Now, let me say something right here. It is for Congress to determine
first of all on what routes the mail shall be carried. I want you
to understand that, to get it into your heads, way in, that Congress
determined that question, and that there has to be a law passed that the
mail shall be carried from Toquerville to Adairville, from Rawlins to
White River. That law has to be passed first, and Congress has to say
that that route shall be established. Now, get that in your minds. I
give you my word we never established a mail on the earth. That was done
by Congress, and the moment Congress establishes a route it becomes the
duty of the Second Assistant Postmaster-General to put the service upon
that route, and the duty of the First Assistant Postmaster-General to
name the offices on that route. Is not that true? That is the doctrine.
Now, that had all been done before we entered into a conspiracy. These
routes had not only been established, but the Government had advertised
for service on these routes, and we bid. That was our crime.

These gentlemen said, I believe, at one time, that they were about to
lift a little of the curtain, to expose the action of Congress. You
see this suit has threatened the whole Government. If the Constitution
weathers this storm it will be in luck. They were going to raise the
curtain. They were going to be like children hanging around a circus
tent. One lifts it up and hallooes to another, "Come quick, I see a
horse's foot." They said that they were going to show the rascality
of Congress. They have never done it. I suppose the reason may be that
their pay depends upon an act of Congress, but they let that alone. Now,
they say that Congress committed a great mistake. Why, they say they
were routes that were not productive, and we knew it, and that when
the people asked for expedition and increase on a route that was not
productive we were guilty of fraud.

Now, gentlemen, let us see: There are not a great many productive
post-offices in the United States. They say that a post-office that is
not productive should be wiped out. Let me say to you, you cut off the
post-offices that are not productive and you will have thousands the
next day that are not productive. It is the unproductive offices that
make others productive. You cut off those that are not productive and
you will have double the number that are not productive. You cut off all
those that are unproductive and you will have nothing left but the
mail line. You might say that there is not a spring that flows into the
Mississippi that is navigable. Let us cut off the springs. Then what
becomes of the Mississippi? That is not navigable either. It is on
account of the streams not navigable, emptying into one, that the one
into which they empty, becomes navigable. And yet, these gentlemen say
in the interest of navigation, "Let us stop the springs because you
cannot run a boat up them." That is their doctrine. There is no sense in
that. You have got to treat this country as one country. You have got
to treat the post-offices business as a unit for an entire country. You
have got to say that wherever the flag floats the mail shall be
carried, wherever American citizens live they shall be visited with the
intelligence of the nineteenth century. That is what you have got to
say. You have got to get up on a good high plane, and you have got
to run a great Government like this that dominates the fortune of a
continent, and you have got to run it like great men. There has got to
be some genius in this thing and not little bits of suspicion.

Productiveness! Let us see. We are informed by Mr. Bliss, who is paid
for saying it, otherwise he would not, that the West is perfectly
willing to have mail facilities at the expense of the East. I do not
think the gentleman comprehends the West. There is nothing so laughable,
and sometimes there is nothing so contemptible, as the egotism of a
little fellow who lives in a big town. Some people really think that New
York supports this country, and probably it never entered the mind of
Mr. Bliss that this country supported New York. But it does. All the
clerks in that city do not make anything, they do not manufacture
anything, they do not add to the wealth of this world. I tell you,
the men who add to the wealth of this world are the men who dig in the
ground. The men who walk between the rows of corn, the men who delve in
the mines, the men who wrestle with the winds and waves of the wide sea,
the men on whose faces you find the glare of forges and furnaces, the
men who get something out of the ground, and the men who take something
rude and raw in nature and fashion it into form for the use and
convenience of men, are the men who add to the wealth of this world. All
the merchants in this world would not support this country. My Lord! you
could not get lawyers enough on a continent to run one town. And yet,
Mr. Bliss talks as though he thought that all the mutton and beef of the
United States were raised in Central Park, as though we got all our wool
from shearing lambs in Wall Street. It won't do, gentlemen. There is a
great deal produced in the Western country. I was out there a few years
ago, and found a little town like Minneapolis with fifteen thousand
people, and everybody dead-broke. I went there the other day and found
eighty thousand people, and visited one man who grinds five thousand
bushels of flour each day. I found there the Falls of Saint Anthony
doing work for a continent without having any back to ache, grinding
thirty thousand bushels of flour daily. Just think of the immense power
it is. Millions of feet of lumber in this very country, and Dakota, over
which some of these routes run, yielding a hundred million bushels of
wheat. Only a few years ago I was there and passed over an absolute
desert, a wilderness, and on this second visit found towns of five and
six and seven thousand inhabitants. There is not a man on this jury,
there is not a man in this house with imagination enough to prophesy the
growth of the great West, and before I get through I will show you that
we have helped to do something for that great country.

Productiveness! Let me tell you where that idea of productiveness was
hatched, where it was born, the egg out of which it came. It was by
the act of March 2, 1799, just after the Revolution, and just after
our forefathers had refused to pay their debts, just after they had
repudiated the debt of the Confederation, just after they had allowed
money to turn to ashes in the pockets of the hero of Yorktown, or had
allowed it to become worthless in the hand of the widow and the orphan.
In 1799, the time when economy trod upon the heels almost of larceny,
our Congress provided that the Postmaster-General should report to
Congress after the second year of its establishment every post-road
which should not have produced one-third the expense of carrying the
mail. Recollect it, and I want you to recollect in this connection
that we never established a post-route in the world. We will show
that, anyway, if we show nothing else. By the act of 1825 a route was
discontinued within three years that did not produce a fourth of the
expenses. Now, when those laws were in force the postage was collected
at the place of delivery.

But in old times, gentlemen, in Illinois, in 1843, it was considered a
misfortune to receive a letter. The neighbors sympathized with a man
who got a letter. He had to pay twenty-five cents for it. It took five
bushels of corn at that time, five bushels of oats, four bushels of
potatoes, ten dozen eggs to get one letter. I have myself seen a farmer
in a perturbed state of mind, going from neighbor to neighbor telling of
his distress because there was a letter in the post-office for him. In
1851 the postage was reduced to three cents when it was prepaid, and the
law provided that the diminution of income should not discontinue any
route, neither should it affect the establishment of new routes, and
for the first time in the history of our Government the idea of
productiveness was abandoned. It was not a question of whether we would
make money by it or not; the question was, did the people deserve a mail
and was it to the interest of the Government to carry that mail? I am a
believer in the diffusion of intelligence. I believe in frequent mails.
I believe in keeping every part of this vast Republic together by
a knowledge of the same ideas, by a knowledge of the same facts, by
becoming acquainted with the same thoughts. If there is anything that is
to perpetuate this Republic it is the distribution of intelligence from
one end to the other. Just as soon as you stop that we grow provincial;
we get little, mean, narrow prejudices; we begin to hate people because
we do not know them; we begin to ascribe all our faults to other folks.
I believe in the diffusion of intelligence everywhere. I want to give to
every man and to every woman the opportunity to know what is happening
in the world of thought.

I want to carry the mail to the hut as well as to the palace. I want
to carry the mail to the cabin of the white man or the colored man, no
matter whether in Georgia, Alabama, or in the Territories. I want to
carry him the mail and hand it to him as I hand it to a Vanderbilt or
to a Jay Gould. That is my doctrine. The law of 1851 did away with your
productiveness nonsense, and when the mails were first put upon
railways in the year 1838, the law made a limit, not on account of
productiveness, but a limit of cost, and said the mail should not cost
to exceed three hundred dollars a mile. Let me correct myself. In 1838 a
law was passed that the mails might be carried by railroad provided they
did not cost in excess of twenty-five per cent, over the cost of mail
coaches. In 1839 that law was repealed, and the law then provided that
the pay on railways should be limited to three hundred dollars a mile.
So you see how much productiveness has to do with this business. In
1861 Congress provided for an overland mail. Did they look out for
productiveness? The overland mail in 1861 was a little golden thread
by which the Pacific and the Atlantic could be united through the great
war. Just a mail, carrying now and then a letter in 1861, and they were
allowed, I think, twenty or thirty days to cross. Was productiveness
thought of? Congress provided that they might pay for that service eight
hundred thousand dollars a year. The mail did not exceed a thousand
pounds. Including everything. Some letters that were carried from this
side to the other cost the Government three hundred dollars apiece. What
was the object? It was simply that the hearts of the Atlantic and the
Pacific might feel each other's throb through the great war. That is
all. Suppose some poor misguided attorney had stood up at that time and
commenced talking about productiveness. In the presence of these great
national objects the cost fades, sinks. It is absolutely lost. Wherever
our flag flies I want to see the mail under it. After awhile we
established what is known as the free-delivery system. That was first
established on the idea of productiveness. Whenever you start a new
idea, as a rule, you have to appeal to all the meanness that is in
conservatism. Before you can induce conservatives to do a decent action
you have to prove to them that it will pay at least ten per cent. So
they started that way. They said, "We will only have this free delivery
system where it pays." We went on and found the system desirable, and
that many people wanted it, and that the revenues of the Post-Office
Department were so great that we could afford it, and we commenced
having it where it did not pay. Right here in the city of Washington,
right here in the capital of the great Republic, we have the free
delivery system. Is it productive? Last year we lost twenty-one thousand
dollars distributing letters to the attorneys for the prosecution
and others. And yet now this District has the impudence to talk about
productiveness. If anybody wants to find that fact it can be found on
pages 42 and 45 of the Postmaster-General's report. Productiveness! We
have now a railway service in the United States. I want to know if that
is calculated upon the basis of productiveness. A car starts from the
city of New York, and runs twelve hours ahead of the ordinary time
to the city of Chicago for the simple purpose of carrying the mail,
stopping only where the engine needs water, only when the monster whose
bones are steel and whose breath is flame, is tired. Do you suppose that
pays? You could scarcely put letters enough into the cars at three cents
apiece to pay for the trip. At last we regard this whole country as a
unit for this business. We say the American people are to be supplied.
We do not care whether they live in New York or in Durango; we do not
care whether they are among the steeples of the East or the crags of the
West; we do not care whether they live in the villages of New England or
whether they are staked out on the plains of New Mexico. For the purpose
of the distribution of intelligence this great country is one. Do you
see what a big idea that is? When it gets into the heads of some people
you have no idea how uncomfortable they feel. I have as much interest in
this country as anybody, just exactly, and I am willing to subscribe
my share to have this mail carried so that the man on the very western
extreme, on the hem of the national garment, may have just as much as
the man who lives here in the shadow of the Capitol. You see whenever
a man gets to the height where he does not want anything that he is not
willing to give somebody else, then he first begins to appreciate what a
gentleman is and what an American should be. Productiveness! I say that
all the State and Territorial lines have been brushed aside. We do not
carry the mail in a State because it pays. We carry it because there are
people there; because there are American citizens there; not because it
pays. The post-office is not a miser; it is a national benefactor.
There are only seventeen States in this Union where the income of the
Post-Office Department is equal to the outlay; only seventeen States in
this Union. There are twenty-one States in which the mail is carried
at a loss. There are ten Territories in which we receive substantially
nothing in return for carrying the mail, and there is one District,
the District of Columbia. I do not know how many miles square this
magnificent territory is; I guess about six. Thirty-six square miles.
How much is the loss in this District per annum? About one thousand
five hundred dollars a square mile. The annual loss right here in this
District is fifty-eight thousand dollars, and yet the citizens of
this town are rascally enough to receive the mail, according to the
prosecution. Why is it not stopped? Why is not the Postmaster-General
indicted for a conspiracy with some one? This little territory, six
miles square has a loss of fifty-eight thousand dollars.

If there was a corresponding loss in Kansas, Nebraska, California,
Dakota, and Idaho, it would take more than the national debt to run the
mail every year. And yet here in thirty-six square miles comes the wail
of non-productiveness. It is almost a joke. We are carrying the mail in
Kansas at a loss of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and
yet Kansas has a hundred million bushels of wheat for sale. Good! I
am willing to send letters to such people. It is a vast and thriving
country. It contains men who have laid the foundation of future empires.
I want people big enough and broad enough and wide enough to understand
that the valley of the Mississippi will support five hundred millions of
people. Let us get some ideas, gentlemen. Let us get some sense. There
is nothing like it. We pay five hundred thousand dollars a year for the
privilege of carrying the mail in Nebraska. Do you know I am willing to
pay my share. Any man who will go out to Nebraska and just let the wind
blow on him deserves to have plenty of mail. You do not know here what
wind is. You have never felt anything but a zephyr. You have never felt
anything but an atmospheric caress. Go and try Nebraska. The wind there
will blow a hole out of the ground. Go out there and try one blizzard,
a fellow that robs the north pole and comes down on you, and you will
be willing to carry the mail to any man that will stay there and plow a
hundred and sixty acres of land. When I see a post-office clerk sitting
in a good warm room and making a fuss about a chap in Nebraska for not
carrying the mail against a blizzard, I have my sentiments. I know what
I think of the man. In the Territory of Utah we pay two hundred and
thirty thousand dollars a year for the privilege of carrying the mails,
and the males in that country are mostly polygamists. I want you to get
an idea of this country. In the State of California, that State of
gold, that State of wheat, the State that has added more to the
metallic wealth of this nation than all others combined, an empire
of magnificence, we pay five hundred thousand dollars a year for the
privilege of distributing the mail. I am glad of it. I want the pioneer
fostered. I want the pioneer to feel the throb of national generosity.
I want him to feel that this is his country. You see the post-office is
about the only blessing he has. Every other visitor that comes from the
General Government wants taxes. The Post-Office Department is the only
evidence we possess of national beneficence. It is the only thing that
comes from the General Government that has not a warrant, that does not
intend to arrest us. In Texas, which is an empire of two hundred and
seventy-three thousand square miles, a territory greater than the French
empire, which at one time conquered Europe, we pay four hundred and
fifty-nine thousand dollars for the privilege of distributing the
mail. I am glad of it. It will not be long before that State will have
millions of people and give us back millions of dollars each year, and
with that surplus we will carry the mail to other Territories. A man who
has not pretty big ideas has no business in this country; not a bit.
We pay one hundred and eighty-nine thousand dollars for the sake
of carrying letters and papers around Arkansas; one hundred and
eighty-three thousand dollars for the privilege of wandering up and down
Alabama; one hundred and seven thousand dollars in Missouri; two hundred
and forty thousand dollars in Ohio; two hundred and eight thousand
dollars in Georgia; three hundred and twelve thousand dollars in old
Virginia. When I first went to Illinois the Government had to pay for
the privilege of carrying the mail in that State. Now Illinois turns
around and hands six hundred and sixty thousand dollars of profit to
the United States each year. She says, "You carry the mail to the other
fellows that cannot afford it just the same as you carried it for us.
You rocked our cradle, and we will pay for rocking somebody else's
cradle." That is sense. In other words, in seventeen States we have a
profit of seven million dollars. In twenty-one States, ten Territories,
and the District of Columbia we have a loss of five million dollars.
When we regard the country as a unit, then we make money out of the
whole business. That is good. We have in the United States about a
hundred and ten thousand miles of railroad now, and we pay about two
hundred dollars a mile for carrying the mail on those railroads. We have
two hundred and twenty-seven thousand miles of star routes, and we pay
on them between twenty and thirty dollars a mile. I want you to
think about it. In looking over the Post-master-General's report I
accidentally came across this fact. You know, gentlemen, the present
period is a paroxysmal period of reform. We are having what is known
as a virtuous spasm. We have that every little while. It is a kind
of fiscal mumps or whooping-cough. I find by this report that a mail
averaging twenty pounds carried in a baggage-car from Connellsville to
Uniontown, Pennsylvania, is paid for at the rate of forty-two dollars
and seventy-two cents a mile. Under General Brady the star routes cost
between twenty and thirty dollars a mile.

Now, gentlemen, I have told you our connection with the star-route
business. I have told it all to you freely, frankly, and fully. Some
charges have been made against us, and I want to speak to you about
them. You understand that it often takes quite awhile to explain a
charge that is made in only a few words. One man can say another did so
and so. It is only a lie, and yet it may take pages for the accused man
to make his explanation. The worst lie in the world is a lie which is
partly true. You understand that. When you explain a lie that has a
little circumstance going along with it, certifying to it, and attesting
to its truth, it takes you a great deal longer to explain it than it did
to tell it. The first great charge is that for us—and I limit myself to
my clients—orders were antedated. That is one great charge. Let me tell
you just how that was. Mr. Bliss calls attention to the fact that Mr.
Brady made orders relating back, and in one case he alleged that the
order was made, for the benefit of my clients, to take effect six weeks
prior to its being issued. I want to explain that. A railroad was being
constructed along the line of one of these routes. It may be well enough
for me to say that it was the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. The
points from which the mail was carried had to be changed as the road
progressed. As it grew Mr. Brady increased the service on the route to
seven times a week. He increased it from the end of the railroad, and
he made it seven times a week because the mail on the railroad was seven
times a week. We were to carry the mail from the end of the railroad,
wherever that end might be. He increased the service on this route from
the end of the railroad to the other terminal point; that is, he made it
a daily mail so as to connect with the daily trains on the railroad. At
the time the seven trips were to be put on, distance tables were sent
out to postmasters at the terminal points to get the distances. Let me
tell you what a distance table is. The names of the post-offices are on
a circular, and the Post-Office Department sends that circular to the
postmasters along the route and they are asked to return it with the
distance from each station to every other marked upon it. Now, until
that table is returned it is impossible for the Second Assistant
Postmaster-General to tell how far they carry the mail. This railroad
was progressing every month, and as the railroad advanced the distance
from the end of the railroad to the other terminal point decreased. Now,
the Postmaster-General or the Second Assistant cannot fix that pay until
he has a return of the distance table. But before he has that return he
can order the contractor to carry the mail, and after the distance table
is returned then he can make up the formal order and have that order
entered upon the records of the department. That is all he ever did. I
want you to understand that perfectly. It might be four weeks after the
contractor was ordered to carry the mail from the termination of the
railroad, or it might be five or six weeks before the distance tables
were returned and the distance calculated. But do you not see it made
no difference? There was first an order either by telegraph or a short
order, and after the distance tables were returned then the distance
was calculated, the amount of money calculated, and the regular order
written up and made of record, and a warrant drawn for payment. That is
all there is to it. And yet this is what Mr. Bliss calls defrauding
the Government. We are charged on that kind of evidence with having
defrauded the United States. We will show you that no order of that
kind was made except when the distance was unknown; and that when the
distance was ascertained, the formal order was made, another order
having been made before that time. Let me say right here that orders of
a similar nature have been made in the Post-Office Department since its
establishment. Since the construction of railways there has not a month
passed in that department—certainly not a year—when such orders
have not been made. And yet for the first time in the history of the
Government it is brought forward against us as an evidence of fraud. We
will show that the order was made exactly as I have stated.

The next badge of fraud that is charged is that after a route had been
awarded to us it was increased or expedited, or both, before the stock
was put on. Well, I will tell you just how that is, because you want to
know. This case, apparently complicated, is infinitely simple when it is
understood. There are in the United States, I believe, some ten thousand
of these star routes. They are all or nearly all in some way connected.
One depends upon another. It is a web woven over the entire West, and
how you run a mail here depends upon how one is run there, and the
effort is to have all these mails connect in a certain harmony so
that time will not be lost, and so that each letter will get to its
destination in the shortest possible time, and it requires not only a
great deal of experience, but it requires a great deal of ingenuity.
It requires a great deal of study and strict attention for a man so to
arrange the routes and the time in the United States that the letters
can be gotten to their destination in the shortest possible time. And
yet that is the object. You can see that. Now, you may be looking at the
route from A to B, and say that there is no sense in having it in that
time; but if you will look at the time of other routes, if you see with
what routes that connects you will say that it is sensible. Now, you go
on to another route, and, gentlemen, you see that every solitary route
is touched, is compromised, is affected by every other route. That is
what I want you to understand.

Now, then, Mr. Bliss says that it was a badge of fraud to increase the
time and the service on a route before the stock was put on. Now let
me show you. Here you have your scheme. Here is the route, we will say,
from A to E. You let that for a weekly route, once a week. How fast?
A hundred hours. When you get the other routes and look at this
business you see that that crosses several places where the mail is
lost. That is where a day is lost, and you see, if instead of that being
a hundred hours it were seventy-five hours the mail at many stations
would save one day or two days. Now, then, the law vests in you the
power before a solitary horse or carriage goes upon that route to say
to the man to whom the contract was awarded, "You must carry that in
seventy-five hours instead of one hundred hours, and you must carry it
four times a week instead of once a week." If you take that power from
the Postmaster-General and from the Second Assistant those offices
become useless. It is impossible for any human intellect to take into
consideration all the facts growing out of this service.

There is another thing, gentlemen, which you must remember, and that
is that these advertisements for this service are not made the day the
service is wanted. These advertisements are put out six months before
there is to be any such service.

It is sometimes a year before that service is wanted, and if you know
anything about the West you know that in one year the whole thing may
change. That where there was not a city there may be a city, and where
there was a city nothing but desolation. Now, then, the law very wisely
has vested the power in the Second Assistant and the Postmaster-General
to rectify all the mistakes made either by themselves or by time, and
to call for faster time or for slower, that is, for less frequent trips.
Now, then, you see that that is no badge of fraud, do you not? If,
before you put a man or a horse on that route, the Government finds it
wants twice as many trips there is no fraud in saying so, and if they
find they want to go in fifty hours instead of a hundred hours there
would be fraud in not saying so. That has been the practice since this
was a Government.

Now, what is the next? The next great charge against us, gentlemen, is
that when they agreed to carry a greater number of trips, or any swifter
time for money, Mr. Brady did not make us give an additional bond, and
Mr. Bliss talked about that I should think about a day. Nearly all the
time I heard him he was on that subject. "Why did they not when they
were to carry additional trips give a new bond?" Well, I will tell
you why: Because there is no law for it. There never was a law for
it—never. And Mr. Brady had no right to demand a bond unless the
statute provided for it. When I give a bond to carry the mail once a
week, and the Government finds that it wants it carried three times
a week, the Government cannot make me give an additional bond. Why?
Because the statute does not provide for it, and Mr. Brady had not the
power to enact new laws. That is all. Why, there never was such a bond
given, and any bond that is given under duress, by compulsion, not
having the foundation of a statute, is absolutely null and void.
Everybody knows it that knows anything. And yet the gentleman comes
before you and says it is a sign of fraud that we did not give an
additional bond. There never was such a bond given in the history of
this Government—never; and in all probability never will be unless
these gentlemen get into Congress. You know the law prescribes every
bond that the contractor must give, and it is bad enough without ever
being increased during the contract term.

So much now for that frightful badge of fraud. I want to make this
statement so you will understand it. They have the unfairness, they have
the lack of candor to tell you that it is one of the evidences that we
are scoundrels, that we failed to give an additional bond, and when
they made that statement they knew that by law we could not give an
additional bond, and they knew that if we had given an additional bond
it would not have been worth the paper upon which it was written. And
yet they lack candor to that degree that they come into this court
and tell you that that is one of the evidences that we have conspired
against the United States. It won't do.

What is the next badge of fraud? And I want to tell you this is a case
of badges, and patches, and ravelings, and remnants, and rags. It is a
kind of a mental garret, full of odd boots, and strange cats, thrown at
us, and altogether it is called a case of conspiracy. Another badge of
fraud is that whenever we carried the mail one trip a week, and it was
increased to two trips a week, Brady was such a villain that he gave us
double pay; and Mr. Bliss informed the jury that they knew just as well
as he did that it did not cost twice as much to give two trips a week as
it did to give one. Well, who said it did? And yet they say that is an
evidence of fraud. Well, let us see. There is nothing like finding the
evidence.

Now, when we come to this case we will introduce a bond that we gave
at that time, and when the jury read that bond they will find this, or
substantially this:

It is hereby agreed by the said contractor and his sureties that the
Postmaster-General may discontinue or extend this contract, change the
schedule, alter, increase, or extend the service, he allowing not to
exceed a pro rata increase of compensation for any additional service
thereby required, or for increased speed if the employment of additional
stock or carriers is rendered necessary, and in case of decrease,
curtailment, or discontinuance, as a full indemnity to said contractor,
one month's extra pay on the account of service dispensed with, and not
to exceed a pro rata compensation for the service retained: Provided,
however, That in case of increased expedition the contractor may, upon
timely notice, relinquish his contract.

Now, it is in that provided that if they call on him for double service
he is entitled to double pay. That is the law, and it has been the
practice, gentlemen, since we have had a Post-Office Department. And
why? Let me show you. Here is a man who carries a mail from A to Y.
There are supposed to be some commercial transactions between those two
places. It is supposed that now and then a human being goes from one of
those places to the other, and the man who carries the mail, as a rule
carries passengers and does the local business. Now, do you suppose that
he would agree with the Government that he would carry the mail once a
week for a thousand dollars a year, and that they might hire another man
to carry it once a week for a thousand dollars a year, and maybe
that other man take all his passengers and all his business. The
understanding is that when I bid a thousand dollars a year for once a
week, if you put it to three times a week I am to have three thousand
dollars; four times a week, four thousand dollars; seven times a week,
seven thousand dollars, and that has been the unbroken practice of this
Government from the establishment of the Post-Office Department until
to-day. You can see the absolute propriety of it, and you can see that
any man would be almost crazy to take a contract on any other terms, and
that contract is this: "I will carry for you so much a trip, and if you
want more trips you can have them at the same price as that fixed." That
is fair. That is what we did.

So much for that badge of fraud. What is the next one? It is that the
pay was increased twice as much by the increase, and, as I said, that is
the law.

Now let us see what is the next great badge of fraud. That we received
the pay when the mail was not carried. I deny it, and we will show in
this case, gentlemen, that we never received pay except when the mail
was carried. And how do I know? Because General Brady established a
system of way-bills, so that a way-bill would accompany every pouch in
which letters were, and they would put on that way-bill the time that it
got to the post-office, and when that way-bill got to the terminal point
it was sent here to Washington and filed away, and at the end of every
quarter a report was made, and if a mail was behind at any post-office
you would find it on that way-bill, and if they had not made the trip
then they were fined. That way-bill system was inaugurated by General
Brady, and under that way-bill system we carried the mail, and we could
not get pay unless we had carried the mail. I call them way-bills. They
are mail-bills that go with the pouch and give a history of each mail
that is carried. That is all.

Now another great badge of fraud. The first was that he was to impose no
fines when the mail was not carried. The next was that he was to impose
fines and then take the fines off for half—fifty per cent. Now, would
not that be an intelligent contract? I carry the mails. You are the
Second Assistant Postmaster-General. I agree with you that if you fine
me and then will take the fine off I will give you half of it. About
how long would it take you to break me up? And yet that is honestly and
solemnly put forward here as a fact in the case. They tell a story of
a man who was bitten by a dog. Another man said to him, "I'll tell you
what to do. You just sop some bread in that blood and give it to the
dog; it will cure you." "Oh, my God!" says he, "if the other dogs hear
of it they will eat me up." And here it is, without a smile, urged
before this jury that we made a bargain that a fellow might fine us
for the halves. Well, there may be twelve men in this world who believe
that. They are unfortunate.

The next charge is that a subcontract was made for less than the
original contract. Well, that is where most of the money in this world
is made. Thousands and millions of men have made fortunes by buying corn
at sixty cents a bushel to be delivered next February, and selling
the same corn for seventy cents. There is where fortunes live. The
difference between a contract and a subcontract is the territory of
profit in which every American loves to settle. You make a contract with
the Government to furnish, say, a thousand horses of a certain kind for
one hundred and fifty dollars apiece. You go and make a subcontract
with some one to furnish you those same horses for one hundred and
twenty-five dollars apiece. Is that a fraud? You have taken upon
yourself the responsibility and if your subcontractor fails you must
make it good. There is no harm in that.

Suppose I agree with you to-morrow that if you will furnish me one
thousand bushels of wheat on the first day of January, I will give
you one thousand five hundred dollars, and I find out that you made a
bargain with another fellow to do it for a thousand dollars. If I am an
honest man I suppose I will jump the contract, won't I? Not much. If I
am an honest man I will say, "Well, you made five hundred dollars; I am
glad of it; good for you." But the idea of the prosecution is that the
moment Brady saw a subcontract for less than the original contract
he should have had a moral spasm, and said, "I won't carry out the
contract; I will swindle you, I will rob you, and I will do it in the
name of virtue." And that is the meanest way a man ever did rob—in
the name of virtue, reform. So much for that. But if you ever make a
contract with this Government and can make a subcontract at the same
price you do it as quick as you can.

The next is, that whenever he discontinued a route or any part of a
route, rather, he gave us a month's extra pay; you heard that, did you
not? He was on that subject about a half a day. How did he come to do
that? I will tell you. There is nothing like looking:

And in case of decrease, curtailment, or discontinuance of service, as a
full indemnity to said contractor one month's extra pay on the amount of
service dispensed with.

That is first the law, secondly the contract, and thirdly it was made
in the interest of the United States. And why? Suppose the United States
made a contract with a man to carry a mail from New York to Liverpool,
and in consequence of that contract the man bought steamships to perform
the service, and then the United States made up its mind not to carry
the mail. That man might get damages to the amount of hundreds and
thousands of dollars. Therefore the United States endeavored to protect
itself and say the limit of damage shall be one month's pay, and that
has been the law for years, and that law has been passed upon by the
Supreme Court of the United States. It was passed upon in the case of
Garfielde against the United States, where he claimed greater damages
because he had all the steamships to carry the mail from San Francisco
to Portland, and the Supreme Court said it made no difference what
his expense had been. He was bound by the letter of the law and the
contract, and could have only one month's extra pay as his entire
damage.

Now, these gentlemen bring forward a law to protect the United States
Government, and they bring that forward as an evidence of conspiracy,
as evidence of a fraud. Nothing could be more unfair, nothing on earth
could show a greater want of character. Now, let us see what else.

The next great charge is false affidavits. They tell you that we made
lots of them; that we just had them for sale. False affidavits! And that
Mr. John W. Dorsey made two false affidavits in two cases. The evidence
will show that he did not. The evidence will show that he made only one
in each case, when we come to it. But I want to call your attention to
this fact, that in one case one affidavit was made where it said the
number of men and horses then necessary was eight, that on the expedited
schedule it would be twenty-four. Three times eight are twenty-four. The
second affidavit said the number of men and horses then was fifteen, and
the number on expedition and increase would be forty-five. Three times
fifteen are forty-five. So that the amount taken from the Government
would be exactly the same on both affidavits. You understand that. For
instance, if it took five horses and men to do the then business, and
would require fifteen to do the expedited and increased business, then
you would be entitled to three times the amount of pay. So in this case
one affidavit said it took eight and would take twenty-four, the other
affidavit said it took fifteen and would take forty-five. Three times
eight are twenty-four. Three times fifteen are forty-five. So that the
amount of money taken from the Government would be exactly the same
under each affidavit. Now, that is all there is of that.

In the next case, where he made two affidavits, I find that by the
second affidavit it took, I think, thirteen thousand dollars less
from the Government, and yet they call the second affidavit a piece
of perjury. And here is one thing that I want to impress upon all your
minds. Where you not only carry the mail but carry passengers, it is
an exceedingly difficult problem to say just how many horses and men it
requires to carry the mail, and then how many men and horses it
requires to carry the passengers. It is hard to make the divide you
understand—very hard. You can tell, for instance, the cost of mounting
a railroad for a hundred miles, but it is very difficult to tell the
cost of the bridges or what the spikes cost or what the deep cuts cost.
You can take the whole together and say it cost so much a year. So
in this case we can say it requires so many men and horses doing the
business that we are doing, but it is almost impossible for the brain
to separate exactly the passengers, the package business, from simply
carrying the mail. As I said before, men will differ in opinion. Some
men will say it will take ten horses, others twenty, others twenty-five,
and then the next question arises, and I want to call particular
attention to that question, and that is, whether the law means only the
horses absolutely carrying the mail; whether the law means by carriers
only the men who ride the horses or drive the wagons. Now, I will tell
you what I mean. I undertake to carry the mail, we will say from Omaha
to San Francisco. How many men will it take? Now, I will count all the
men who are driving the stages, all the men who are gathering forage,
all the men who are attending to that business in any way, and if on
the way I have blacksmiths' shops where my horses are shod I will count
those men. If I have men engaged in drawing wood a hundred miles, I
will count those men. In other words, I will count all the men I pay, no
matter whether they are keeping books in New York or carrying the mail
across the desert. I will count all the men I pay; so will you. What
horses will you count? All the horses engaged in the business; those
that are drawing corn for the others, as well as the rest, will you not?
There is an old fable that a trumpeter was captured in the war and he
said to his captor, "I am not a soldier, I never shot anybody." "Ah,"
they said, "but you incited others to shoot, and you are as much a
soldier as anybody; we want you."

Now, I say that we are entitled to count every man who carries the mail,
and every man necessary to perform that service. So do you. Now, there
we divide. The Government says we shall count simply the men carrying
the mail, nobody else, and we shall count simply the horses in actual
service. That is nonsense. For instance, you have got to have thirty
horses. They are going all the time. Do you depend on just that thirty?
No, sir. If one gets lame you cannot carry the mail. You have got to
have twenty or thirty horses in your corral, in the stables, so that
if one of the others gives out you will have enough. That is one great
question in this case, gentlemen. What I say to you now is that on every
one of these routes in which my clients are interested, or, I may say,
in which anybody is interested, the evidence will be that the affidavits
were substantially correct. In many cases there was a far greater
difference between the men and horses then used and the men and horses
that were afterwards necessary.

You must take another thing into consideration. In a country where there
are Indian depredations one man will not stay at a station by himself.
He wants somebody with him; he wants two or three with him, and the more
frightened he is the more men he will want. On that route from Bismarck
to Tongue River, as to which it was sworn it would take a hundred and
fifty men, the statement was made at a time when the men would not stay
separately; that they wanted five or six together at one station; that
they wanted men out on guard and watch. You will find before we get
through, gentlemen, that the affidavits do not overstate the number. You
will find in addition that these petitions were signed by the best
men; that that service was asked for by the best men, not simply in
the Territories, but by some of the best men in the United States; by
members of Congress, by Senators, by generals, by great and splendid
men, men of national reputation. So when we come to that we will show to
you that the affidavits made were substantially true. There is another
charge that has been made, and that is that the affidavits in Mr. Peck's
name were not made by him; that he never signed these affidavits.

Yet, gentlemen, we will prove to you as the Government once proved
by Mr. Taylor, a notary public in New Mexico, that Mr. Peck appeared
personally before him; that he was personally acquainted with Mr. Peck,
and that he signed and swore to those affidavits in his presence. That
we will substantiate in this trial as the Government substantiated it
in the other. These gentlemen, are among the charges that have been made
against us. I say to you to-day they will not be able to show that we
ever put upon the files of the Post-Office Department a solitary letter,
a solitary petition, a solitary communication that was not genuine and
true. Not one. They cannot do it. They never will do it. You will
be astonished when you hear these petitions to find the Government
admitting that they are true. If they do not read them we will read
them. That is all.

Now, I have stated to you a few of the charges made against my clients
up to this point. I want to keep it in your mind. I want each man on
this jury to understand exactly what I say. Let us go over this ground
a little. I want to be sure you remember it. In the first place, S. W.
Dorsey was not interested in these routes. All the bids were made by
John W. Dorsey, John M. Peck, John R. Miner, and a man by the name
of Boone. All the information was gathered by Mr. Boone by sending
circulars to every postmaster on the routes. Upon that information John
W. Dorsey, John M. Peck, and John R. Miner made their calculations and
made their bids, numbering in all about twelve hundred. Of that number
they had awarded to them a hundred and thirty-four contracts. Recollect
that. After those contracts were awarded to them they were without the
money to put the stock on all the routes, because more contracts were
awarded than they expected. Thereupon John R. Miner borrowed some money
from Stephen W. Dorsey and kept up that borrowing until the amount
reached some sixteen or eighteen thousand dollars. Don't forget it.
After it got to that point Mr. Dorsey started for New Mexico. At Saint
Louis he met John R. Miner, then coming from Montana, and John R. Miner
said to him, "We have got to have some more money of you;" and Dorsey
replied, "I have no more money to give you." Miner then said, "You give
your note or indorse mine for nine or ten thousand dollars." Dorsey
replied, "If you will give me post-office orders and drafts, not only to
secure the note I am about to indorse or make for you, but also to the
amount of the money I have advanced for you, I will give the note." That
was agreed upon. Thereupon he gave the note. It was discounted in the
German-American National Bank, and Mr. Miner deposited with the note the
orders on the Post-Office Department, not only to secure the note, but
the sixteen thousand dollars that Dorsey had before that time advanced.
Dorsey went on to New Mexico, and in May or July of that year another
law was passed, allowing a subcontractor to put his subcontract on file.
After he had advanced that money and indorsed or signed the note, they
made the contract with Mr. Vaile, turning these routes over to him and
giving him subcontracts on all these routes. When Stephen W. Dorsey came
back from New Mexico in December of that year he found that the note
at the German-American National Bank had been protested, and that his
collateral security was at that time worthless, because the subcontracts
had been filed and these subcontracts cut out the post-office orders or
drafts. Thereupon he wanted a settlement. Matters drifted along until
April, 1879, and a settlement was made. I have told you that from the
time the routes were given to Mr. Vaile until that time nobody had the
slightest thing to do with them except Mr. Vaile; that in April,
1879, the division was made; that Mr. Vaile paid the note at the
German-American National Bank; that the division was made, as I told
you, by Mr. Vaile drawing one route, Mr. Dorsey one, and Mr. Miner one,
and keeping that up until they were all drawn. I forgot to tell you
before that Mr. S. W. Dorsey had sixteen thousand dollars, to which, if
you add the interest, it would be about eighteen thousand dollars;
that John W. Dorsey had ten thousand dollars and John M. Peck had ten
thousand dollars, and when that division was made Stephen W. Dorsey
agreed to pay John W. Dorsey ten thousand dollars, and to pay John M.
Peck ten thousand dollars for his interest. Gentlemen, he did pay John
W. Dorsey ten thousand dollars, and he did pay the same amount to Peck,
and from that day to this John W. Dorsey has never had the interest of
one solitary cent in any one of these routes. He was simply paid back
the money that he expended. Not another cent. John M. Peck never made by
this business one solitary dollar. He simply received back the money he
had expended. After he had paid back that money to both of these men,
Stephen W. Dorsey took these routes with a debt to him of between
sixteen and eighteen thousand dollars. Now, as to Mr. Rerdell. They say
he was the private secretary of Stephen W. Dorsey. He never was; not for
a moment, not for a single moment He attended to some of this business.
I have no doubt that the Government imagine they can debauch somebody
in order to get information. I give them notice now—GO on. There is no
living man whose testimony we fear. There is no living lawyer who has
the genius to make perjury do us harm. I want you to understand it.
And I want them to understand that I know precisely what they are
endeavoring to do. There is only one way for them to surprise me, and
that is for them to do a kind thing.

Now, gentlemen, at that time—I want you to remember it; I do not
want you to forget it—when these routes came to Mr. Dorsey, he, not
understanding the business, turned it over to Mr. James W. Bosler.
Mr. Bosler, as I told you before, is a man of wealth. But, say these
gentlemen, "While these routes were in your possession, and while
Stephen W. Dorsey had an interest in them he asked men to sign petitions
in favor of an increase of trips and decrease of time." What if he did?
Suppose you have a house out here somewhere; you can petition to have a
street opened, even if you have the contract for paving the street.
You have a right to petition to have a schoolhouse located in your
neighborhood even if you have children. There is no harm about that. You
certainly can petition to have cows prevented from running at large even
if there is no fence around your yard. I think you could do so without
being indicted for conspiracy. I think a man might start a subscription
for a church, even if he owned a brick-yard and expected to sell bricks
to build it. Now, suppose I had a contract to carry the mail through the
State of California from one end to the other once a week, is there
any harm in my asking the people of that country to petition to have
it carried twice a week? Do you not remember what I told you? All the
members of Congress out there, when they go home want to say to the
people when they meet at the convention with all the delegates on hand.
"Why, gentlemen, you did not used to get the New York Herald or New York
Times, or The Sun, until it was two weeks old, and now it is only a
week old. Where you only had one mail I have given you three. I have got
fifty thousand dollars to improve your harbor, and one hundred thousand
dollars for a new custom-house. Look at me, gentlemen, I am a candidate
for re-election." That is natural. This Court will instruct you that any
man who is carrying a mail anywhere in the United States has the right
to use his influence in getting up petitions for the increase of that
service or the expedition of that time. They say Dorsey did this. What
of it? They say Dorsey tried to manufacture public opinion. That is what
these gentlemen of the prosecution have been doing for eighteen months,
and now they object to the manufacture of public opinion. Public opinion
is their stock in trade.

Leaving that charge, every man who has a contract for carrying the mail
has the right to call the attention of every editor in that country to
the fact that they need more mail service. He has the right to send his
agents there and if the people want to petition for more service, and
if Congress is willing to give them more service, no human being has a
right to complain in this manner and in a criminal court. If any offence
has been committed it is of a political nature. If a member of Congress
gets too much service his people can keep him at home. If he does too
much for his locality they need not elect him the next time. It is
a political offence for which there is a political punishment and a
political remedy. So much for the right of petition. I am perfectly
willing to tell all he did in regard to the increase of service and the
expedition.

While I am on that point I want you to distinctly understand what
increase is and what expedition is. Increase of service means more of
the same kind. Suppose I am to carry the mail from one place to another.
We will call it from Si-Wash to Oo-Ray. If I am to carry that mail once
a week for five hundred dollars and they want it twice a week, I
have one thousand dollars, but do not carry it any faster. That is an
increase. Suppose I am carrying it in say two hundred hours and they
want it carried in half that time. That is what they call expedition.
Now, the question is as to the difference in cost of carrying the mail
at six miles an hour, or at two and a half, or two, or one and a half.
If I carry it slowly, I can go at a reasonable rate in the day and can
lie by at night. I want you to understand distinctly the difference
between increase of service, which is more of the same kind, and
expedition, which means the same kind at a faster rate. Now, I can carry
the mail twenty miles and back in a day and do that a great deal
easier than if I were to make the distance in four or five hours. The
difference is just about the same with a locomotive as with a horse. If
a train runs twenty miles an hour and you want to increase its speed to
thirty, it will cost altogether more than twice as much as it does to
run it at twenty. If you want to increase it still further to forty or
sixty, it will cost at sixty more than three times as much as at twenty.
The cost increases in an increased proportion. I want you to understand
that. Now, we are charged with having done some frightful things on
several of these routes, and for three days and a half your ears were
filled with charges of the rascality we have perpetrated. We had some
ten or eleven routes, and we are charged with having defrauded the
Government on those particular routes. Let us see what my clients did.
Do not understand me as saying that because my clients have done nothing
the other defendants have. I do not take that position. I take the
position that according to the evidence in this case there is nothing
against any of these defendants. Leave out passion, prejudice,
falsehood, and hatred and there is absolutely nothing left. If you will
take from Mr. Bliss's speech all the mistakes he made in law and fact,
there will be nothing left to answer; not a word. But I think it due to
my client, gentlemen, my client who is not able to be in this court, my
client who sits at home wrapped in darkness, that I should answer every
allegation touching every route in which he was interested. I think it
due to him. [Resuming]

I will call your attention to a few of the routes, possibly to all, in
which my clients were interested. It will take but a short time. I want
you to know whether or not these routes were important, whether it was
proper to carry the mails as they were carried, whether it was proper
that they should be carried from once to seven times a week, and whether
it was proper that the speed should be expedited. Now, you may think
after hearing the evidence that there were some routes that never should
have been established; but that does not establish a conspiracy. That
simply establishes the fact that Congress created routes where they were
not absolutely necessary. You may come to the conclusion that General
Brady ordered more trips on some of these routes than he should have
ordered. That does not establish a conspiracy. The most that it could
establish would be extravagance, and extravagance is not a crime. If it
were, the penitentiaries of the day would not be large enough—or rather
would be large enough, and too large, to hold the honest men. You may
say after you have heard the evidence that the time was faster than it
need be; but you must take into consideration all the connecting routes,
and even if you should so feel, it is for you to say whether that
establishes any conspiracy. All these things must be taken into
consideration.

We will take first the route from Garland to Parrott City. ***

Now, I have gone over just a few of these charges. I have shown you that
they are false; that they are without the slightest shadow of foundation
in fact. Now, gentlemen, after you hear all this evidence, it is for
you to determine. It is for you to say whether these men entered into a
conspiracy to defraud this Government. It is for you to say whether our
testimony is to be believed, or whether you are to decide this case upon
the suspicions of the Government. It is for you to say whether you will
believe the contracts and the witnesses, or whether you will take the
prejudice of the public press; whether you will take the opinion of the
Attorney-General; whether you will take the letter of some counselor at
law, or whether you will be governed by the testimony in this case. It
is for you to say, gentlemen, whether a man shall be found guilty on
inference; whether a man shall be deprived of his liberty by prejudice.
It is for you to say whether reputation shall be destroyed by malice and
by ignorance. It is for you to say whether a man who fought to sustain
this Government shall not have the protection of the laws. It is for you
[indicating a juror] and it is for you [indicating another juror] and
you [indicating another juror] and you [indicating another juror] to
say whether a man who fought to take the chains off your body shall have
chains put upon his by your prejudice and by your ignorance. It is for
you to say whether you will be guided by law, by evidence, by justice,
and by reason, or whether you will be controlled by fear, by prejudice,
and by official power. That, gentlemen, is all I wish to say in this
opening.
