had claimed that he had not, that it was not so; that he had made a loan of this money to Brady, but that Mr. Brady took the ground substantially that it was bribe money. That was Walsh's statement at the time. His statement, however, was intensified at a later stage of the case, and he then said that Brady at the same interview had told him that he "must do as all the other contractors did." Mr. Walsh did not make that statement, however, until a long while after this time of which we have been speaking. I think he made it first to Mr. Woodward. Q. Was there any other testimony except Walsh's own statement as to that state of facts?-A. No, sir; there was not. Q. So that if you had prosecuted Brady on that transaction you would have had simply Walsh's testimony with Brady contradicting it? A. Yes, sir. I have here Mr. Walsh's statement which, if you desire, I will read. Q. That is hardly necessary, perhaps. I will state to you the object of my inquiry and then you can perhaps make your answer without reading that statement. As I said before, considerable testimony has been put in here by Mr. Cook, and I think by Mr. Gibson, that in selecting the Dorsey case you took the most complicated case, the one in which you were least likely to succeed, and that it was not a proper one for a pioneer case. Now I simply desire to have you state whether that is the fact or not?-A. I think that in my previous examination, at a time when you were not present, I went fully into that question. As to Mr. Walsh's statement, I testified that there was a statement of what Walsh knew which had been prepared by Mr. Gibson, and that I got Walsh here and read it over to him and corrected it by striking out certain things which it turned out he was unable to testify to of his own knowledge. I have here the original statement. Mr. MILLIKEN. If you have already testified on that point in my ab sence, you need not go over it again. The WITNESS. I have stated the reasons why the Dorsey case was the best case to begin with. As to this other case I think there can be no question that Mr. Walsh did at that time make assertions which implied corruption on the part of Mr. Brady; but I regarded Walsh's statements as certain to be contradicted by Brady, and then when you came to the circumstances of the case my idea was that the record evidence as to that route was not so strong as the evidence in regard to other routes which we were investigating, and I regarded Mr. Walsh as in this position that if the transaction was truthfully stated by him, and if Mr. Brady thought that he was in danger from Walsh's testimony, the prob ability was that if we took up that case Walsh would take a trip somewhere before we got to the trial and we would be left without any evi dence. In other words, that he would collect from Mr. Brady the twelve or fourteen thousand dollars that he was claiming of the Government, or perhaps more, and would disappear. We would be resting in that case entirely upon a single thread, the testimony of Walsh, and for these reasons I did not think that a proper case to put ahead. Q. You felt that you would be resting upon a single thread and you considered that it was a thread that you could not rely upon?—A. Yes, sir; I so considered, and I think that the result has shown the correctness of that view. Now as to the Dorsey case, as I have already said, that was a case of successive orders made in favor of the same set of men, always in their favor, never declaring them failing contractors, but everything always to their advantage. We put nineteen routes into the original indictment, but we could have extended it much beyond that number. In that case you had these repeated reiterations of orders by Mr. Brady in favor of these same parties, and that was the strength of the case. He might have been imposed upon in the first instance, or perhaps in the second, but when you found these orders coming along one after another and found these increases and everything of that sort being made regularly and continuously in favor of the same parties, I considered that we had a case which would carry conviction to every fair mind. I have got here a tabular statement which we used; and I may as well show you at this point how those routes and the orders upon them ran along. Bear in mind that Peck, Miner, and John W. Dorsey were the three original bidders, and that they were admittedly in combination. Stephen W. Dorsey was in the Senate and could not become a contractor for a year, or for about eight months after the contracts were let, but we had evidence of his having been interested from the outset, evidence that the bids were made up in his house, and evidence of his connection with the matter in various ways. These three others, Peck, Miner, and John W. Dorsey, were the bidders. After Stephen W. Dorsey went out of the Senate he promptly became directly interested in a considerable portion of the routes. That was admitted. Peck was Dorsey's brother-in-law. Miner we had reason to believe had been his business associate in Ohio, but I think that was probably an error. Now, let me take up these routes and show you how they run along. The route from Kearney to Kent was let as 125 miles long and they were to perform the service, one trip per week, in 60 hours; that is about 2.08 miles per hour. The contract price was $868 a year. Within three months after the contract took effect there was a small increase made of about $112. Then, in less than a year after the contract took effect there was an increase of $3,322, and that was made upon an affi davit which we thought was abundantly proved to have been false. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. Was that last increase made after Senator Dorsey became interested-A. This was on the route from Kearney to Kent. Stephen W. Dorsey did not become interested in all the routes of the combination. The combination had 134 routes. We put 19 of them into the indictment. Stephen W. Dorsey became interested in only certain of the routes. Certain others passed to Henry M. Vaile. The parties interested in all the routes were Peck, John W. Dorsey, Miner, and Vaile, Vaile being an old mail contractor and the only real mail contractor in the party, the others being speculators in mail contracts. The next route from Vermillion to Sioux Falls was let at $398, and in less than a year there was something over $5,000 added to it; so that a route which at a public letting was let for $398, one trip a week, was run up to five trips a week, and from 34 miles an hour was carried up to five miles an hour, and for this difference of 13 miles an hour the pay was increased to $3,680. The pay on this route was run up from $398 to over $6,000. On the route from Bismarck to Tongue River the original contract price was $2,350, and the pay on that route was run up within a year to $70,000. There was some justification for a reasonable increase on that route as Dakota was developing very rapidly and there was considerable increase of business. Then take the route from White River to Rawlins. That was originally let at $1,700, and within a year it was run up to $13,000 or $14,000, within two years, to nearly $32,000. The contract on the route from Pueblo to Rosita was let originally for $388; within a year it was run up to $7,700, the distance being only 49 miles. The route from Saint Charles to Greenhorn, 35 miles, was let H. Mis. 38, pt. 2——15* originally for $548, and was run up within about a year to nearly $4,000. The route from Trinidad to Madison, 45 miles long, was originally let for $338, and within a year was run up to over $4,000. The route from Garland to Parrott City, 288 miles, was let originally for $2,745, and within a year it was run up to $13,000, and within two years to over $31,000. The route from Saguache to Lake City was let originally for $3,426; within a few months it was run up to $15,000. That was the route in which Sanderson was interested, and in which he took all the money. The route from Ouray to Los Pinos was let originally for $348, and there was never any increase. The route from Silverton to Parrott City was let for $1,488, and within a year it was increased to $15,000. The route from Mineral Park to Pioche was let for $2,982, and within six months it was run up to over $20,000, and in about a year to over $49,000; then it was put down and then it was put up again. The route from Tres Alamos to Clifton was let for $1,568, and within a year was run up to $13,000, and within eighteen months it was run up to $27,000. The route from Toquerville to Adairville was let for $1,168, and within a year it was run up to about $20,000. The route from Eugene City to Bridge Creek was let for $2,468, and it was run up within a year to over $18,000. The route from The Dalles to Baker City was let at $8,288, and within a year it was run up to over $60,000. The route from Canyon City to Camp McDermott was let for $2,888; in six months it was run up to $16,000, and within a year and a half to over $50,000. The route from Julian to Colton was let for $1,188 and was run up within a year to $8,000. The route from Redding to Alturas, California, was let for $5,988; within six months it was run up to $30,000 and within two years to about $40,000. These were 19 of the routes belonging to the combination, but there were 134 routes as to which similar things were done. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. Were those the routes upon which the indictments were based in the Dorsey-Brady case?—A. Yes. These increases were made upon affidavits as to the number of men and horses which were being used on the routes and which would be required for the increased and expedited service; which affidavits were shown by abundant evidence to have been utterly false either in one respect or inboth. Then, too, there were bogus petitions gotten up, and everything of that sort. There were all sorts of little frauds in connection with the business. They were routes as to every one of which, except the route from Bismarck to Tongue River, the parties had made sub-contracts, and the work was being done by men who were being paid very much less than the Government was paying the contractors, and in several of the cases the routes were being run and the mails carried, before these large amounts were allowed for increase of speed, by the carriers themselves, for their own convenience, at a rate as quick or even quicker than that at which the Government was undertaking to have them carried under this costly expedition. There was one case, at least, in which the sub-contractor who carried the mail carried it on the expedited time and never knew that there had been any order of expedition, but was doing the work for his original pay, although there was a provision in his contract that he was to get 40 per cent. of any increase that might be allowed, and after he came here, at the time of the trial, he began a suit to recover the money. Now, let me show you the revenue derived from these important routes. On the route from Kearney to Kent, where the original pay |