The average haul of apartment cars is 48 miles, and the average load in a twenty-foot apartment car is officially stated as 607 pounds, making the rate per mile on routes carrying an average daily weight of only 607 pounds, $68.40 per annum, and the average earnings, therefore, $3,283 per year, an average loss of $3,287 per car and an actual loss per year from operating the 3,116 apartment cars of $10,642,292, to say nothing of the 639 apartment cars in reserve. The C. B. & Q. has 76 full post office cars and 104 apartment cars, and applying to them the foregoing figures given in Mr. Hitchcock's letter, the loss from operating them in 1909 was $575,396, adding to which $634,713, the mail's proportion of taxes and interest, that must be included in estimating "cost," in which the Government's business should share, the estimated loss on the business was $1,210,109, compared with $1,002,168, arrived at by charging the Government business with 11.75 per cent of the passenger expense, that being its proportion of the space used in passenger trains. The Government should be willing to pay fairly for what it exacts from the railroads, and it exacts from the C. B. & Q. 11.75 per cent of its passenger train facilities. If it had paid 11.75 per cent of the passenger train expenses of the road in 1909, it would have paid approximately a million dollars more than it did pay. The Government which demands from the railroads that they build and transport daily over their roads for its benefit 5,100 traveling post offices as full postal cars and apartment cars should be willing to pay what the Postmaster-General estimates to be the actual cost of operating those cars, and a fair proportion of the taxes and interest. If it had paid such cost in 1909, it would have paid to the C. B. & Q. approximately a million dollars more than it did pay. RESULTS ON VARIOUS MAIL ROUTES. The foregoing are statements of results on the Burlington System as a whole, showing earnings and expenses and facilities furnished to the Government mail service. It may be of interest, and throw light on the situation, to show results for November upon several separate mail routes in the system, ranging from small routes carrying 200 pounds of mail daily, up, through routes carrying weights, respectively, of 1,300, and 8,000, and 20,000 pounds daily, to the heaviest route carrying 192,000 pounds, covering the fast mail service from Chicago to Omaha. Weights of express packages are not kept on separate mail routes and statements therefore of express earnings for such separate mail routes are necessarily estimated, but, as given in the following tables, they are approximately correct and corroborate the comparative results for the Burlington system as a whole, which results are based upon exact figures for express as well as for mails and for passengers. I. Route 157,030, Kenesaw to Kearney (Nebraska), 24.68 miles. Average Daily Weight 216 Pounds.