The fairness of railway mail pay can also be tested by apportioning operating expenses between passenger and freight traffic, and then making a secondary apportionment of the passenger expenses between mail and other kinds of traffic carried on passenger trains. This method involves charging directly to each kind of traffic all expenses pertaining exclusively thereto, and the apportionment, on some fair basis, of those expenses which are common to more than one kind of traffic. In accordance with the request of the Postmaster-General, the railways estimated the cost of conducting the mail service in the manner just explained and reported the results to the Postmaster-General. After first charging to each service the expenses wholly due to it they apportioned the common expenses between the passenger and freight services, following (with inconsequential exceptions) the method most generally employed for that purpose, namely the apportionment of these expenses in the proportions of the revenue train mileage of each service. Having estimated, in this way, the operating expenses attributable to passenger trains, the railways assigned to the mails the portion of this aggregate indicated by the proportion of the total passenger train space required for the mails. Using this method, 186 railways, operating 2,370 mail routes, with a total length of 176,716 miles, ascertained and reported that for November, 1909, the operating expenses (not including taxes), for conducting the mail service were $4,009,184. The Postmaster-General states (Document No. 105, page 281), that all the railways represented in the foregoing, and enough others to increase the mileage represented to 194,978 miles, were paid for the same month only $3,607,773.13. It thus appears that the pay was far below the operating expenses, without making any allowance for taxes or for a return upon the fair value of the property employed. While different methods are in use for ascertaining the cost of passenger train service and the results produced by such methods may show considerable variation, yet the mail pay is so far below reasonable compensation, from the standpoint of the cost of the service and a return upon the value of the property, that no method can be reasonably urged which would not demonstrate the non-compensatory character of the present mail pay. This is illustrated by the method which the Postmaster-General himself employed, as the character of that method is such that it necessarily produces the very lowest estimate of cost for the passenger train service. The Postmaster-General, by his method of apportionment arrived at a cost of $2,676,503.75 But this must be increased (as will be shown below, on account of his erroneous apportionment of car space (page 10), by 800,802.00 And also on account of his refusal to assign expenses directly incurred in the mail service (page 12) 401,126.00[C]