The last preceding statement is fully justified by the facts disclosed by the foregoing pages, which show how consistently the Post Office Department has relied upon reductions in railway mail pay as the ever available source of desired curtailments of expenses and how unsuccessfully the railways have resisted this persistent pressure. They show that successive Postmasters-General have taken advantage of every legal possibility, such as taking the longest time between mail weighings which the law permits and the strained interpretation of the statute fixing the basis of payment (page 19), in order to effect reductions in railway mail pay. Consequently, the facts point irresistibly to one conclusion, namely, that the Post Office Department is a bureaucratic entity with an interest in the reduction of the amounts paid to the railways that is incompatible with an impartial ascertainment of what is fair compensation. This interest, coupled with the brief tenure of the responsible officers of the Department, must always incline the latter to support insufficient standards of mail pay and prevent their recognizing the ultimate necessity of paying fairly for efficient service. It would, therefore, be clearly inexpedient and strikingly unjust to place railway mail revenues wholly at the mercy of the Department by enacting a law which would authorize each Postmaster-General to fix railway mail pay on the basis of his own inquiries and opinions in a field in which so much must be left to estimate and approximation as that of the relative or actual cost of the different kinds of railway service. It is conceded that every railway mail contract is between the Government, which is the sovereign, and a citizen, and that the nature and terms of the contract are always substantially to be dictated by the former. But this very condition invokes the principle of primary justice, that the sovereign shall take care to exercise its power without oppression. To this end the determination of the terms on which the Post Office Department may have the essential services of the railways ought to be reserved, as at least partially in the past, to the Congress, or, if delegated at all, they should be entrusted to some bureau or agency of Government not directly and immediately interested in reducing railway mail pay below a just and reasonable compensation. APPENDIX A. EXTRACTS FROM THE POSTAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS. "Railroad companies, at stations where transfer clerks are employed, will provide suitable and sufficient rooms for handling and storing the mails, and without specific charge therefor. These rooms will be lighted, heated, furnished, supplied with ice water, and kept in order by the railroad company." Section 1186, second paragraph.