Gross revenue $ 48,155,379 621,939,274 670,094,653 1,823,651,998 Operating expenses $ 96,322,357 677,614,637 773,936,994 974,577,820 Taxes and interest on bonds $ 23,503,973 165,582,552 189,086,525 235,468,467 Total expenses $119,826,330 843,197,189 963,023,519 1,210,046,281 Surplus -- -- -- 613,605,711 Deficit $ 71,670,951 221,257,915 292,928,866 -- Ton mileage (thousands)-- Revenue weight 484,683 3,411,592 3,896,275 236,601,390 Dead weight 10,498,482 73,877,400 84,375,882 256,833,896 Total gross 10,983,165 77,288,992 88,272,157 493,435,286 Tons dead weight per ton revenue 21.7 21.7 21.7 1.1 Per gross ton mile (cents)-- Gross earnings 0.438 0.805 0.759 0.369 Operating expenses 0.877 0.877 0.877 0.197 Earnings over operating expenses -- -- -- 0.172 Operating expenses over earnings 0.439 0.072 0.118 -- Taxes and interest on bonds 0.214 0.214 0.214 0.048 Surplus -- -- -- 0.124 Deficit 0.653 0.286 0.332 -- Per cent of operating expenses to earnings 200 109 115 53 Gross expenses to earnings 249 135 144 67 Figures exclude dividends, betterments and additions, etc. The above shows that whilst passenger service as a whole is unremunerative, the mail earnings are hardly what they should be to pay a fair share of the railroad operating expenses only, regardless of taxes and interest. Or, put in another way, our computations have shown that in each passenger train run the railroads haul an average of 43/100 of a mail car, and the contents of this car yielded average earnings of 9.4 cents for each mile run. The computation just made shows that each freight car run, loaded or empty, yields a revenue to the carrier of 10.5 cents per mile. Incredible as this may seem, it is understandable when we reflect that the railroads transport 1.1 tons of dead weight for each ton of freight for which they are paid; with mail they transport 21.7 tons, or twenty times as much. The freight rate is .759c per ton mile, the mail rate 9.94c, or only thirteen times as much.