Congress has provided for a vast and incalculable extension of mail traffic by creating a "Parcels Post," to be inaugurated on January 1, 1913, which, by opening the mails to many articles not previously accepted at the post-offices and by materially reducing the rates on mailed merchandise, is expected enormously to increase the volume of the shipments which it covers. The Government seems to have assumed that, under existing contracts, which were made before the meaning of the word "mail" was thus extended, the railways can be compelled, until these contracts expire, to carry this great additional volume of mail traffic WITHOUT ANY COMPENSATION WHATEVER. If the former practice of the Post Office Department is followed, no new contracts will be made until after the next quadrennial weighings in each of the four weighing sections, so that the position of the Government amounts to an assertion that the whole added volume of the Parcels Post mails will have to be carried without any compensation by the railways of New England for four years and six months (these railways are in the first weighing section but the weighing for the adjustment to be made on July 1, 1913, has begun and will be completed before the Parcels Post is inaugurated), by those of the second weighing section for three years and six months, by those of the third weighing section for two years and six months, by those of the fourth weighing section for one year and six months, and by those of the first weighing section, not located in New England, for six months. No presentation of the injustice of the mail pay received in former years suggests even the approximate extent of the losses which the railways will thus incur in the next four and one-half years, unless readjustments are promptly made on account of the Parcels Post. III. THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL'S ERRONEOUS ASSERTION THAT THE RAILWAYS WERE OVERPAID "ABOUT $9,000,000.00" IN THE YEAR 1909, RESTS PRIMARILY UPON HIS ADOPTING AN UNPRECEDENTED THEORY WHICH ALLOWS NOTHING FOR A RETURN UPON THE CAPITAL INVESTED IN RAILWAY PROPERTY. The Postmaster-General assumed that the railways would be properly compensated if they received a sum equal to the operating expenses and taxes attributable to the carriage of the mails plus six per cent. of the sum of those expenses and taxes. The calculation by which he obtained the sum which he assumed would have been proper compensation for the single month covered by his investigation was as follows: His estimate of operating expenses and taxes on account of mail service (Document No. 105, p. 280) for one month $2,676,503.75 Six per cent. of above 160,590.22 -------------- Total, assumed to represent just compensation for one month $2,837,093.97