There you are. The department will not let these raiders help the people _save their own money_. Very generous. Much like a burglar calling on you the day before in order to tell you how to prevent him from cracking your safe. But the beauty of that railroader’s statement lies in the fact that it states a fact; not one of these glittering, rhetorical facts, but a real _de facto fact_. The rules and regulations of the Postoffice Department for the carriage of mails in postoffice cars are such as furnish ample grounds and warrant for the railway official’s statement. Postoffice cars are from 40 to 50 or more feet in length and weigh, empty, from 50,000 to 110,000 pounds. The department then has fixtures and handling equipment put in. This equipment occupies about two-thirds of the floor space of the car, and, with the four to twelve railway mail clerks also put into it, weighs from 10 to 15 or more tons. The railroad is paid for carrying all this bulky, space-occupying equipment at the regular mail-weight pay rates. And how much real mail does the department get into these postoffice cars? Well, some years since Professor Adams, after a most careful and extended investigation, placed the average weight of mail actually carried at two tons. He pointed out, however, that the mail load could easily go to three and a half tons and referred to the Pennsylvania road which, in its special mail trains, loaded as high as six tons. He also stated that if the load were increased to five tons, the cost of carriage would be _reduced more than one-half_, and he made it very clear that his figures were easily inside the service possibilities. In view of such evidence and testimony from Professor Adams, and of other men to much the same effect, the department may possibly have increased the mail load since 1907 to three or maybe to three and a half tons. Even so, it is still evident that the railroad must haul from 70,000 to 140,000 pounds of car and equipment to carry 6,000 to 7,000 pounds of mail; thirty-five to seventy tons of dead load to carry three to three and a half tons of live--of service--load. Do not forget that, so far as the railroads pay is concerned, the equipment is live weight--_paid weight_. So, the railroads get paid for a load of fifteen to eighteen and a half tons, while they carry only three to three and a half tons of mail--for carrying, according to Professor Adams’s figures in 1907, only two tons of mail. As a deficit-producer that should rank high. As an evidence that our Postoffice Department is run on economic lines, that mail car tonnage load is nearly conclusive enough to convince the residents of almost any harmless ward.