Many of the views advanced with regard to the Pacific Mail Company will apply to the United States Mail Steamship Company. That Company, at the outset, built very fine steamers, and ran them incessantly, until they were unfit for duty. They have constantly supplied their place, and have at all times, by building and by chartering at the highest prices, kept up a large and costly fleet for their ramified service. The service contemplated in their original contract, at $1.88-3/4 cents per mile, is but about two thirds of that actually performed. The contract required them to run 3,200 miles semi-monthly, but they actually perform semi-monthly 5,200. (_See Mr. King's Letter, Paper G._) The actual service has required nearly twice the number of steamers necessary to do that for which they contracted, although a part of it is in the coasting trade. Consequently the steamers have been rapidly worn out, from too heavy duty, and the stock of the Company has never paid as well as it should. The Company have, morever, suffered severely from disaster. The "Crescent City" was lost on the Bahama Banks, in 1855; all hands saved. The "Cherokee" was burned when in active service, in 1853; and the "George Law," or "Central America," but recently foundered at sea in a terrible gale. They were all good ships; but like those other excellent ships, the "Arctic" and "Pacific," they could not defy the powers of pure accident. In the same gale the "Empire City" was dismantled, having all of her upper works swept off, while the "Illinois" was injured by being on the Colorado Reef. They have both been undergoing most costly repairs for several weeks. While writing this, the "Philadelphia" is also in the shop. She recently broke her shaft and her cross-tail, and had to put into Charleston. All of these repairs cost an immense sum of money, and are calculated, with the severe losses which the Company has sustained, to dishearten the most hopeful and enterprising. Yet, since these disasters, and the completion of the "Moses Taylor," the Company are about laying the keel of another fine ship. This is another verification of my statement that the mail companies are in nearly every instance compelled to build new steamers in the very last years of their contracted service. The new "Adriatic" attests the same fact on the part of the Collins Company. (_See pages 141 and 142._)