The various tariff measures may be tabulated as follows: It should not be forgotten that the duties remitted were recognized as so much aid to railways. At the twenty-seventh congress a statement of the entire amount refunded between 1831 and 1841 was submitted: 23 Adapted from Bolles' Industrial History of U. S., pp. 200, 201. 24 Exec. Docs., 27 Cong., 2 sess., V, No. 265. Between January 1832 and March 1843, $5,989,99225 was the amount remitted in duties on railway iron. It is to be observed that the variation in amounts remitted each year may be taken as a rough indication of the growth of railway activity. Comparison with the chart of railway construction on page 365 will show a very close relationship between the two. That remission of duties amounts to a donation of money would be easy to forget, especially where free trade principles were involved. In debate on the subject, however, opponents to free railway iron constantly reminded Congress of the fact, and it is to be emphasized that the matter of duties on imports of railway iron falls properly under the subject, aid to rail ways. 25 Cong. Globe., 1843-44, XIII, Pt. II, Appendix, p. 680. CHAPTER XIII THE MAIL SERVICE AND AID TO RAILWAYS The history of the mail service has been fairly well written,1 and the mail service, as such, will not be treated in this chapter. The purpose is to analyze and state the various ways in which the desire of our government for securing the safe and speedy transportation of the mails has figured in the aggregate of aid granted to railways. The mail service has been an important point of contact between the government and the railway from very early times; today the chief instrument in that service is the railway, and about two per cent. of the aggregate gross earnings of the railways of the United States is received for transporting the nation's mail. In 1819 one of the grounds for Benjamin Dearborn's petition for aid in carrying out his invention was that it was well calculated for the conveyance of the mails; one of the reasons for the survey bill of 1824 was the necessity for transporting the public mail; and in 1825 the House resolved to inquire into the utility of railways "as a mode of conveyance for the mail in carriages. In debate over the proposed stock subscription for the Baltimore & Ohio railroad," in 1832, the great facility of railways for carrying the mail was an argument of those who favored the measure. In short, the mail service argument was used from the beginning. 774 1 Hist. of the Railway Mail Service, in Sen. Ex. Doc. 48 Cong., 2 sess., No. 40. A Hist. of the Railway Mail Service, publ. by Columbian Corr. College, Washington, D. C., 1903. Tunnell, G. G., Railway Mail Service: A Historical Sketch. See above, pp. 238, 259, and references there indicated. 2 Above, p. 186. 3 Above, p. 276. Above, p. 190. The material concerning the railway mail service to be gathered from congressional sources mainly falls under two heads: regulation and aid. The former subject has been treated in the chapter on the railway and society; the latter will now be considered. In approaching it, two main kinds or classes of aid in connection with the mail service may be distinguished: I. Special appropriations or land grants, considered as: 1. Donations, but attended by provisions for mail service, either a. Free, or at b. Reasonable rates. 2. Loans or investments, to be repaid by mail conces sions. In some II. General contracts for mail service with purpose to aid. I. Obviously the two sub-divisions of class I represent different attitudes or points of view concerning an act the immediate end and nature of which are essentially the same. cases it is difficult or impossible to determine under which division an aid falls, and it might well be that in the minds of some congressmen the donation idea predominated over any consideration of mail service, while others regarded the quid pro quo of the same grant as its most important content. Generally, however, the dominant idea is revealed in the nature of the act or the speeches for and against the measure. The preceding classification may be illustrated by specific cases. In 1834 a bill was up in the Senate the object of which was to give the Baltimore and Ohio $320,000, and in return the mail was to be carried free forever. Was this proposition regarded as a donation, or was it considered as an investment in that the appropriation would be compensated for? The utterances of speakers in debate on the measure make the answer sufficiently clear. Mr. Grundy (Tenn.) said he objected to the principle of "giving money to companies in the different states to make roads," and he referred to the fact that Congress had concluded at its preceding session not to levy taxes beyond those necessary for the government's support. Mr. Chambers Above, p. 259. Cong. Debates, 1833-34, X, Pt. II, 1752. 7 (Md.) urged that money had been given to canals, and hoped that the Senate "would, in its liberality, contribute to convert this into a useful improvement, for the use of individuals and the government, and give the sum proposed." He favored the bill on the ground that Congress had been in the practice of making appropriations for institutions of various kinds. The appropriation was opposed by Mr. Preston (S. C.) as being so large a grant that Maryland would be able to discharge her whole civil list by her income from the road. In addition to these indications, the propositions that were made to cut down the period during which free mail service was to be performed to twenty or thirty years emphasized the gratuitous tendency of the bill. In a word, arguments both pro and con indicate that the proposed appropriation was regarded as a donation in which the mail service was more or less incidental. The bill passed the Senate, but was not taken up in the House. A bill for granting right of way to the Ohio & Mississippi railroad being under consideration," Mr. Cobb (Ga.) moved an amendment providing that the United States mails should be transported over the road at the lowest rates paid to other railways, which amendment was agreed to and the bill passed. Here a grant was made to which the provision for a reasonable rate was incidental. As an instance in which aid was asked for in the spirit of a loan, to be in some measure, at least, returned in mail transportation, a memorial of the Selma & Tennessee Railroad Company may be presented. The company sought for a right of way and pre-emption, and in return proposed to furnish the government with transportation service, the memorial stating that the land would "be paid for hereafter, at the minimum price, by the transportation of the mails, munitions of war," etc. 10 When a bill granting right of way to the Tennessee and Coosa Railroad Company was under consideration it was agreed by a vote of 133 to 22 to so amend the grant as to require the road to transport the mails as required by the postmaster general, for which compensation was to be given • Maryland received one-fifth of the passenger returns. • Cong. Globe, 1847-48, p. 1030. 10 Sen. Docs., 1838-39, III, No. 184. |