I wish the reader to understand that I understand, or believe, them both to be merely _guesses_--guesses more or less mis-stitched in the knitting and more or less frazzled and threadbare by reason of long service. But they are what we have to “figger” from. Page 329 of the 1910 report says: Total mailings (second-class), 873,412,077 pounds. The 1907 tabulation of distributed mail weights (see table a few pages back) says that second-class mail, in carriage, is 36.39 _per cent_ of the _total mail weight_. Here’s where we put our slates into service. We’ll first divide (look back at that 1907 table), 873,412,077 pounds by .3638--that being the percentage of _second-class_ to the _total_ of mail carried, as reported in the “special weighing” of 1907. Well, .3638 into 873,412,077 gives us 2,400,802,850 _pounds_ as the _gross mail weight_ carriage in 1910. That does not look near so large, nor so _questionably_ peculiar, as does some other “answers” we are figuring out on our little red school-house slates. Looking back to that 1907 tabulated estimate, we find that, of the total weight carried--_and paid for as mail_--.4308 of that total for which we patriotic, likewise confiding, kitchen-garden citizens pay is not mail at all. A glance at that 1907 tabulation will show us that 43.08 per cent. of the _total mail weight_ for which the government pays is for “equipment” and “empty equipment dispatched.” Now let’s take our slates again and multiply that total weight 2,400,802,850 pounds by .4308. “Well, what’s your answer?” One billion, thirty-four million, two hundred forty-five thousand, eight hundred and sixty-eight pounds! Well, that’s some tonnage, is it not? Of course, as the reader will readily grab hold of, that tonnage is not, in itself, staged as a “feature” in this “ciphering.” This is a big country and its tonnages are big, whether of wheat, corn, pigs, fools, or mail. It is a “curtain” comparison we desire to have noticed and studied. Look at it, study it prayerfully, then put your thinker to work for about thirty seconds. According to the Postoffice Department’s own figures and estimates, it appears that a total tonnage of 2,400,000,000 pounds (omitting the tail figures), were handled, and the cost of all _paid for_ by this grand old government of ours. Next, let us notice that 1,034,000,000 pounds (tail figures again omitted), was not mail at all--sacks, fixtures, etc., etc. Now, look at it--the result. Railroads were _paid_ for carrying 2,400,000,000 pounds of mail. _Of that total weight_ 1,034,000,000 (_nearly half_) was _“equipment” and “empty” equipment “dispatched.”_ Beyond the showing of these figures, comment is scarcely necessary for anyone at all familiar with railway traffic methods and costs--whether the haulage is by slow or fast freight or by express--anyone will see the _raid_ in it.