Mr. WILSON. Now, will you not be frank enough to tell to the jury that that petition

Mr. BLISS. [Interposing.] I will give you gentlemen a chance to tell the jury anything you want to. I say that was one of the vouchers on which Mr. Brady acted. I do not say it was the only voucher on which he acted.

Mr. WILSON. It was put on file after he made the order.

Mr. HENKLE. You want to tell the whole truth, do you not?

Mr. BLISS. I think I shall state it truly. It was not on file when some of the orders were made. It was on file before others of them were made, if I am not incorrect in my recollection. The evidence will show. I think it was on file, but even if it was not it does not help Judge Henkle's client any. If he put an unnecessary forgery on the files of the Post-Office Department did he do it because he was in the daily habit of so doing, or why? He put it there for some reason. It may have been intended as an ex post facto voucher. I do not care what it was. It was a square, bold, bare-faced forgery either to get money out of the Treasury or to back up the act of Thomas J. Brady in having already ordered money to be taken out of the Treasury. Twenty-eight thousand six hundred and sixty-six dollars of that $50,000 was ordered to be paid out after the petition was filed. That is the route, gentlemen of the jury, in which we have the transaction with the postmaster at Alvord. Mr. Miner wrote to his agent out there, Mr. Williamson, "I find that Mr. S. H. Abbott, postmaster at Alvord, is writing here, saying you do not need any weekly mail. Go and buy him up. Shut him up. Get rid of him. We cannot afford this sort of thing." That is the meaning of the letter, as we shall ask you to infer. John R. Miner knew that Mr. Abbott was writing to the department. John R. Miner had so written to Mr. Williamson. That letter, when we came to make an investigation after Mr. Brady had gone out of office, had disappeared from the files of the department, and there is no evidence on file there that it ever existed. We have only the word of John R. Miner that it ever did exist there. But this is one of the rare cases when we shall ask you to take the word of Mr. Miner. Mr. Williamson was told to go and shut the mouth of that man by paying him, and Mr. Williamson performed that duty, paid the money, and took a voucher for his payment. We shall have the pleasure of showing to you something about that.

Mr. HENKLE. That will be explained.

Mr. MERRICK. You cannot explain it.

Mr. BLISS. You cannot explain it. You bought the man off once for complaining of you because you had not run the mail, and he had at least to have a mail in which to put his quarterly report. He had to travel way up to Cañon City to get his quarterly report in the mail, and he complained to the department that it was pretty bad to have no mail but still worse to have to travel twenty-five or thirty miles at his own expense to put his quarterly report in the mail, and so they paid him for his expenses in doing that thing. It was that transaction that encouraged them to think they could go to work on the other one. They did it and carried it out faithfully. That was one of the cases where they paid right up.

Route 44155, from The Dalles to Baker City, was let as 275 miles on a schedule of 120 hours, or five days, and two trips a week. John M. Peck was the contractor, and he was to get from the Government $8,288. Lock-box 714 was to be used as in the other cases. Service was not begun until the 2d of September, 1878, though the contract required

them to commence on the 1st of July, 1878. Indian difficulties on a portion of the cute it is claimed existed. The service having been commenced on the 2d of September, 1878, on the 1st of October Mr. Vaile put his subcontract on file, and before the month of October had run out petitions began to come in, and in less than two months after the service was commenced it was increased by adding one trip and the time was reduced from 120 hours, or five days, to seventy-two hours, or three days. The result was that the pay was run up from $8,288 to $31,080. On that route there was a little liberality in the sense that Brady's allowance was less than pro rata. If you believe the oath of the contractor, then Mr. Brady allowed less than pro rata, and instead of carrying up the route $31,080, as he did, adding the expedited pay to the original pay, he could, under the oath, have carried it up to some sixty odd thousand dollars, I think. That, however, was a little oversight, and it was, as I recollect, corrected, for at a later period in the progress of the contract it was carried up, if I am right, to $72,520. Later than that there came off $10,360 for the reduction of a single trip. The fact is, that in the spring of 1880 Mr. Brady directed one trip to be taken off from all the star routes in the country which were over one trip a week, and these contractors sent out a circular calling attention to it and saying that Congress having failed to make the extra appropriation asked, Mr. Brady, for the purpose of bringing the expenditures for the fiscal year ending the 30th of June within the amount of the appropriation, was compelled to cut off one trip all around. "We give you this notice, and we advise you to write to your member of Congress and others." Brady estimated for $2,000,000 for the expense of the starroute service for that year. Congress gave him every dollar he estimated for, and yet he found himself obliged to go to Congress in the December following the summer of his estimate and ask for $2,000,000 more, and when Congress hesitated to do it, and set on foot an investigation which seems to me to have gone just up to the verge of discovering these frauds and then to have stopped, Mr. Brady ordered one trip a week cut off from all the star-route service of the country. contractors accompanied that notice with the intimation to everybody concerned in transporting the mail that they should bring pressure to bear upon their Congressmen to make the appropriation and restore the service. Mr. Brady, when he cut off one trip a week from all the starroute service of the country, which reduction was rendered necessary by his fraudulent extravagance, put into his order not only a direction that every contractor was to have a month's extra pay on all that service just dispensed with, but they received this thirty days' pay for service which they did not perform, and which Brady told them they could not perform, because having estimated for $2,000,000 he had spent $4,000,000.

Mr. HENKLE. Was not that the law?

These

Mr. BLISS. It was the law to give the month's extra pay. I grant you that. It was not the law for Mr. Brady to estimate for $2,000,000, run it up to $4,000,000 by these fraudulent orders such as I have called to your attention, and then intimate to the contractors to bring pressure upon Congress to get his extravagant appropriations and thus enable you gentlemen to come in here and undertake to say that Congress has condoned your offense. Now on that route the extra pay to the contractor for the month amounted to several thousand dollars, as I recollect it. Having been cut off in April, this trip was on the 16th of July restored. Brady had got in the mean time from Congress $1,250,000, and he had also, which was of more importance, got into

a new fiscal year with a new star-route appropriation to operate upon for the whole country. Therefore he restored this trip, and the result was that the contractors were at most without the one trip for two months and they got pay for it for one of those months. Mr. Rerdell, I think it is, for he was a voluminous correspondent, suggests to the contractors, in one of the letters we shall produce to you, that it will probably be a beneficial thing for them to have the trip taken off for a month because they can fatten up their stock and get them in better condition.

On the 18th of September, 1879, going back a little, Peck swore it would take on the existing schedule eight men and ten horses to perform the service on that route. It was 270 miles long and they had to go over it each way twice in a week. They had therefore to travel 540 miles in a week. Mr. Brady accepted Mr. Peck's oath that to do that would take only ten horses. I will not say that ten horses could not have done it, but I do say that those ten horses would have to travel a good many times as many miles in a day as Mr. Brady said in his orders for expedition was a proper number of miles for a horse to travel. He said on one of the routes that two miles a day was all a horse ought to travel, or four miles in double team, and from two to six miles a day; that was about all he allowed. But he accepts this statement of Mr. Peck of the number of miles these horses ought to travel. Mr. Peck also swore that to reduce the speed from 120 hours to seventy-two hours would carry up the men from eight to twenty, and the horses from ten to sixtysix. To go over that route in five days, twice each way, you need but ten horses. To go over that route twice each way, in three days, you need sixty-six horses. That is the statement of the oath. As to that route we have this peculiarity: There is Baker City [indicating on the map] and here is The Dalles [indicating]; there was from Baker City another route passing up by Pendleton and down to The Dalles. Every pound of mail matter which came from the east bound to The Dalles, which is a large place in Oregon, went over this latter route even though it arrived at Baker City. It went from Baker City up around that way because it was quicker and more certain than to go by the other route. Every pound of mail matter that went from The Dalles to Baker City or farther east went around. Although longer, the route could be traveled quicker and more certainly. The first station out of this route this side of Baker City is Auburn, and a letter at Auburn which was intended to go to The Dalles did not go over this route [indicating], but went the other way east, and then around, and came west to The Dalles. A letter from Auburn intended to go to the first station the other way from this end of the route went first east, then north, then west, and then south. Not only did not the matter from the terminal stations pass over the route north; matter coming from beyond the terminal stations, but the matter which originated upon a portion of the route went around about out of its way to strike another route so as to get to its destination quicker and more certainly. That is the route which the facts show so clearly was not a through route. It was a route that produced $2,300 a year, and Brady ran it up to $72,520 a year. There were only three settlements on the entire 270 miles. Those settlements were all in one valley, within a compass of fifteen miles. They were all right in there [indicating on the map], in the valley known as John Day Valley, which was a valley to which an alleged discovery of gold had brought a certain number of people. In point of fact, gentlemen, though expedition was ordered in November, 1878, within two months after the service actually commenced, there was no expedition performed on that route

until November or December, 1879, and yet expedition was paid for all that time at the rate of $72,000 a year. If it had got up to $72,000 as early as that, it is possible that some of the increases did not begin so early. At any rate, expedition was paid for upon that route. I think we shall be able to show you that there were some curious devices to get the evidence of a terminal postmaster that the mail had been carried when it had not been carried at all. A petition upon which that expedition was granted was interlined in a way to indicate that there has been applied to it some of the peculiar abilities which are shown to have existed in connection with other petitions on other routes.

The route from Bismarck to Fort Keogh, 35051, was let at 250 miles long, on a schedule of eighty-four hours of time once a week. John R. Miner was the contractor. On the 2d of April, 1878, before the contract term commenced, when John R. Miner was the contractor, Stephen W. Dorsey, who was a Senator, writes to an engineer officer of the Northern Pacific Railroad-I think it was with reference to the length of the route-and he gets a reply, which he places on file, showing that in point of fact the route was 303 miles, instead of 250 miles, long. On the 23d of December, 1878, three trips were added, and $4,700 allowed for those, being pro rata. Then the service was reduced from eightyfour hours to sixty-five hours, and $27,950 was allowed for that, making a total of $35,000; and on the 2d of August, 1879, three trips more were added, making $70,000 on a route where the original contract price was $2,350. Miner swore that three trips would take twelve men and thirteen animals on the then schedule; that to reduce it to sixtyfive hours from eighty-four-twenty hours-would require one hundred and fifty men and one hundred and fifty animals. Is not John R. Miner the champion swearer of the universe, gentlemen? There is no pretense, there will not be any pretense, that that affidavit was correct. It was sworn to by a man who never saw the route. In that respect, however, he is just like all the rest of these defendants. There is not an affidavit on file from any one of these defendants who, at the time he made the affidavit, ever had seen the route, as I am informed. Miner swore that it would take three hundred men and animals to perform the service in sixty-five hours on a route in fact 303 miles long. It would, he said, take a man and an animal to every mile to perform that service. Now that statement was more than Brady could swallow. I am stating it pretty strong, gentlemen, I know, when I say that. But it was more than he could swallow, and therefore in that case he did not make expedition up to the limit. He made expedition considerably below the limit. But you will remember, gentlemen, that in another portion of my opening I called your attention to the fact that there appeared on file proof of another affidavit of the same John R. Miner, in which he made a statement entirely different as to the number of men and animals which would be required, only about a third of what is stated in that affidavit, and though Mr. Brady could not swallow this second affidavit of Miner's and make the allowance up to the limit called for by it, he compromised things by making an allowance somewhat in excess of the first affidavit of Mr. Miner.

Mr. HENKLE. How much?

Mr. BLISS. Somewhat in excess; about $2,000 if I remember right; and when anybody gets within $2,000 of Miner's figures he gets surprisingly near them.

Now that affidavit of Miner's, gentlemen, was made within two months after he had been putting petitions into the Post-Office Department de

claring that that route ran through trackless prairie, with no inhabitants, which was true; with no call for the mail, which was true, except that it was, as I am going to show you presently, a route of growing importance between two terminal stations, and where it had been claimed that he must have a company of soldiers to accompany every carrier over the route in order to carry the mail safely, and if his 150 men had actually been needed as mail carriers, he would have taken something like half the Army of the United States to accompany his mail-carriers over that route, if his affidavit had been true.

That route, gentlemen, was the route on which Rerdell made the proposition to Pennell, the contractor, that when he got out a hundred miles or so he should pretend that there was, thirty or forty or fifty miles north of it, a settlement, and that he should get up a petition and have it signed by his gang of workmen, and that in that way they should ask for mail service to connect with this route; and that they should ask for the appointment of one of their number as postmaster at this supposititious place, on this supposititious route, and then they would get their arrangement made in Washington to carry their mail over this supposititious route they were going to make, and get an allowance for fifty or sixty or seventy miles. Mr. Pennell was too honest for them. He would not do it. He will come here and tell you the whole transaction, and you will believe every word he says when you see him. That is the route, gentlemen, where they commenced by building a station every seventeen miles, and when asked by the contractor why they wanted stations every seventeen miles, they said that they were going to have an increase, and when they got an increase of trips and speed they would have to have stations every seventeen miles, which was true. But they were so certain that they were going to have it that they built those stations every seventeen miles, when, until they got the expedition, they used only every other station. They spent in building their stations, and for things other than the horses that were to run the route, $6,600, before there had been an order for expedition; before there had been any sign in the department that there was any call for expedition, when the Indians were going over that trackless prairie, according to their papers on file here; and they spent $6,600 for these permanent improvements, while at their existing rate of payment they were getting only $9,500 in the whole four years of their contract. That is the route, gentlemen, upon which John W. Dorsey proposed to Pennell to go into partnership with him, and told him that it was to be expedited, and told him that there would be two increases within a year; that one of them would be an increase up to $25,000, and it is the route, gentlemen, on which they got one increase within a year which was up to $33,000 instead of $25,000, and on which they got a second increase in thirteen months instead of within the year, which carried it up to $52,000.

Now, gentlemen, that route, as I have said, was a route of considerable and growing importance. The reason why their efforts to have it discontinued, on the ground that it belonged to the Indians and not to them, did not succeed, was that the inhabitants of Dakota, represented by their Delegate here, insisted upon it that there should be a mail route from Bismarck to Fort Keogh, which was a military post within the Territory of Dakota. There was, in that point of view, a justification of the existence of the route. There may have been, possibly, a justification of the increase of the number of trips to some extent. There never was any justification of the increase of speed and expedition. The very orders which Brady made refer to applications for increase coming from