_Per cent _Per cent _Should Earn _Did Space_ Earnings_ on Space_ Earn._ Passenger 69.45 79.44 $28,864 $33,015 Mail 19.70 8.45 8,187 3,511 Express 10.85 12.11 4,509 5,034 ------- $41,560 Mail earnings from all sources $3,511 per month, or $117 per day. The service is performed in three 60-foot postal cars, two 16-foot apartments and one 27-foot apartment, each way daily; also one 44-foot postal car and one full storage car, daily except Sunday, in addition to some space furnished for closed pouches in ordinary baggage cars. The car space provided for the mails on this route is equivalent to ten full sixty-foot cars daily, over the whole length of the route, or 365,000 car miles a year. At 18 cents per mile the pay would be $65,700, whereas the actual pay is only $42,132. If the Government paid for the service in proportion to the facilities it demands and receives, it would pay $98,244. VI. Route 135,007. Chicago to Burlington (205 Miles). Average Daily Weight, 192,540 pounds. _Per cent _Per cent _Should Earn _Did Space_ Earnings_ on Space_ Earn._ Passenger 73.14 74.72 $210,134 $214,671 Mail 17.19 13.74 49,387 39,462 Express 9.67 11.54 27,782 33,170 -------- $287,303 On the basis of space used and facilities provided for the mails, the Burlington road is underpaid $119,000 a year on this route. Two-thirds of the weight of mail is carried in special trains run at great speed and unusual expense, for which no extra allowance is made. The extension of the route to Omaha is across Iowa, where it is "Land Grant," and subject to land grant deductions. The Government made a "gift" to the company in 1856 of lands amounting to 358,000 acres and then valued at $1.25 per acre, or $447,500. The mail pay deductions to June 1, 1910, on account of this Iowa land grant aggregate $1,650,000, and still continue at the rate of $62,000 a year. Neither in the foregoing six statements of results upon separate mail routes, nor in the general statement of results upon the Burlington Road has any allowance been made for the expense to the company of what is called the "Mail Messenger Service." At all points where the post office is not over one-fourth of a mile from the railroad station the railroad company must have all the mails carried to and from the post office. What an important item of expense this amounts to appears in the following extract from the Report of the Wolcott Commission, which states: