Of which was settled in the fiscal year ending 30th June, 1850, by collections, credits, and readjustment of accounts Charged to bad debts Leaving due 1st July, 1850 $6,884 06 $6,894 06 245,912 80 Most of these old balances are considered irrecoverable; and therefore, being unavailable as revenue, but included in the surplus balance appearing against the treasury, the whole amount has been deducted from that surplus balance, for the purpose of exhibiting the available means of the department, as shown in the first part of this report. There is another class of old balances, (which do not affect the surplus balance chargeable to the treasury,) most of which have been for a long time outstanding, and are now considered irrecoverable. They are due on accounts of late contractors, late marshals, late district attorneys, late mail agents, clerks, &c., involving, in many instances, charges for fines, penalties, and disputable items-all of which renders it impracticable to state the amount in the aggregate with any approach to accuracy at present. The current business of this office increases progressively with the annual extension of the department's operations. Every new post office, new mail route, and change of route, involves additional returns and new accounts. This increase of business for the past fiscal year will be understood from the following statement: The number of post offices in operation 30th June, On the 30th June, 1850, the number of post offices in operation was Contractors' accounts Special accounts 16,747 2,758 1,545 300 21,350 18,417 3,200 2,100 400 24, 117 Miscellaneous and foreign mail service Showing an increase within the year of current annual ac counts 2,767 But each office in operation renders within the year four quarterly ac counts current, with numerous returns for examination; and the contractors also require four quarterly settlements: so that, for the 18,417 offices and 3,200 contractors of the fiscal year, the examinations, adjust ments, correspondence, and settlements, involved 84,468 accounts. these, 11,048 arose out of the increased business of the fiscal year. This progressive increase of business calls for additional office accom modation. The necessity is already pressingly felt for several mor rooms, to enable the clerks of this bureau to despatch the business al lotted to them in a satisfactory manner, the number of rooms at present assigned to them being insufficient, and therefore too much crowded. I have the honor to be, respectfully, J. W. FARRELLY, Auditor. To the Hon. N. K. HALL, Postmaster General. POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT, Contract Office, November 16, 1850. SIR: The annexed table (marked A) exhibits the mail service of the United States for the last contract year. It represents the extent of the service as it stood at the close of the year by the number of miles of annual transportation-the only common standard to which it can be reduced; and it presents the cost of the transportation in the annual prices at which that service was engaged. It may be well to explain that, in the nature of things, it gives results at higher amounts than what the actual payments of the year, under the modifications and deductions that take place, would show. As compared with a like table made for the year ending June 30, 1849, it shows an increase in the service of the last over the preceding year in all particulars-greater length of routes within the United States by 10,969 miles; more annual transportation thereon by the difference of 3,997,354 miles; more aggregate cost on transportation within the United States by the sum of $295,911; more cost in mail agencies and foreign service by $54,343, making the total increase of cost $350,254. That increase from 1849 to 1850 is 12 per cent. in cost, and 9 per cent. in service. The mail service in California, and the trifling amount in Oregon, performed within the last contract year, were too irregular and too imperfectly reported and understood at the department to be embraced in the annexed table. On the 30th June last, there were 5,595 United States mail routes in operation; there were 4,765 mail contractors, 100 route agents, 27 local agents, and 376 mail messengers. Table B will show how they were distributed among the different sections of the service. In respect to the current year, commencing first July last, attention is called to the annexed table marked C. It shows the annual prices and the extent of transportation at which the mail service in the southwestern and northwestern sections of the Union was placed under contract at and since the last annual lettings, held in April and May last, for the term of four years, beginning with the 1st of July, 1850. A quarter's performance of this service has already expired. The last year's service in these States and Territories, to wit: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, was the last performed under the contracts that expired on the 30th June, 1850, and sums up at 17,368,998 miles of annual transportation, and $943,492 annual cost. The new service now employed in these States and Territories, and in operation since the 1st July, 1850, stands at 19,241,940 miles of annual transportation; and $1,180,188 of annual cost. More this year than last by 1,872,942 miles, and $236,696. Here is one item, the difference in cost of transportation. The placing of the steam mail-packet Franklin on the The service in California and Oregon, so far as officially reported for the current year, is $236,696 00 12,470 00 62,500 00 80,470 00 There is reason to believe that the actual amount will exceed that sum. The service in California is yet in a crude and unadjusted state. No routes have been established within it by Congress until a very recent date. No mail transportation has been authorized, except the temporary service to be procured by the agent created by the act of August 14, 1848. What has been obtained has been for short periods, and on brief notices, and at high rates. The agency placed in charge of this anonalous service has changed hands three times. At so remote and difficult a point of operations, beyond the immediate reach of orders and advice from the head of the department and its other offices, what is most needed is an adequate knowledge and practical familiarity on the part of the agent with the principles, rules, and modes of proceeding in the arrangement of mail service, in the letting of contracts, and other details; and this is not to be immediately expected, if the necessary experience is yet to be acquired. Sufficient time has not elapsed to receive information from the agent last appointed. There are other items of expenditure to swell the expenses of this year over those of the last; but the amounts of them cannot be stated with precision. The steam-ship Humboldt will be placed in the New York and Havre service, at the additional cost of $75,000 per annum, but at so late a date probably as to bring but a small portion of the expense into the accounts of this year. It is impossible to anticipate what will be the amount of the current orders for the increase of the service in the three last quarters of the year. Putting it at due proportion (which would be quite arbitrary) to the amount of like orders for three sections of the Union made in the first quarter, it would be at the rate of $52,878 a year. But then only a part of that amount would fall into the payments made this year; and circumstances in the service may arise to produce a very different amount of additional allowances. By an act approved September 27, 1850, Congress created 783 new post routes. One sixth of them in number may be put in operation this year, at a supposable cost, we will say, of $15,000 per annum-fivetwelfths of which only will come into the expenditures of this year. To put this service under contract, requires an advertisement for proposals and a public letting. In respect to these new routes, that lie in the New England, New York, and middle sections, advertisements for bids may be immediately issued, and the lettings thereon held at an early day in January next. This preliminary letting could not well be enlarged, in order to include in it those of more distant States, without seriously interfering with the proceedings of the great annual lettings, which, this year, embrace the entire service of the southern States, as a later period would have to be fixed to allow the legal notices to be given to the distant points. Therefore, the new routes in all but the New England, New York, and middle sections, and in California and Oregon, will have to be disposed of to contract at the annual lettings next spring, and go into operation on the 1st of July, 1851. But, in the mean time, temporary contracts might be made whenever parties proffer proposals for that purpose. This last proceeding will involve an additional cost beyond what is above estimated; and the amount will be further increased by the new service that the California and Oregon agents may succeed in placing under contract within the year. I recur to the new contract service of the current year-that of the north western and southwestern States and Territories-to point out the character of its increase in cost and extent over the old service of the same section, which has been superseded by it. We pay on that section 25 per cent. more this year than last, whilst we have but 103 per cent. more of annual transportation of the mail. This, with the fact that the increase of the last year over the preceding is greater in cost than in the extent of the service, would indicate a constant rise in the prices of mail transportation. A close examination will show that, in the change from the preceding year to the last, and from the expired contracts of last year to the new contracts of the current year, there has been, to a large extent, a substitution of the higher for the lower grades of mail conveyance. If we do not get an equivalent increase of the service in the number of miles, we get service of greater speed and better quality. The mails have been shifted to more expeditious and costly lines of steamboats on the western lakes. They have been transferred from coaches to the newly constructed railroads radiating from the great centres of business and population in all sections of the country; and they have found entire new channels of conveyance on the Cumberland and White rivers, and on the coast of Texas, in steamboats arranged into lines for that purpose, where before there was nothing but some detached cross routes. And this species of change is more or less in progress, as the enterprise of the country is developed in the creation of improved facilities. Nor is it confined to the cases where steam has superseded the inferior modes of conveyance. At the last lettings, four horse coach transportation was contracted for on the thoroughfare roads in the southwestern and north western States, instead of the two-horse coach conveyance, which could have been obtained at much lower prices, but which left the public to suffer under an inadequate mode of mail transportation, or look to the uncertain favor of the contractor to furnish a better mode, under the influence of some other motive than a sense of obligation to the government. The increase of cost beyond the proportionate increase of extent in miles is not, therefore, wholly an advance of price or additional cost, without an equivalent, but represents mainly a better quality of the service secured by the contract in the particular of speed, and greater capacity to give certainty and security to the mails. On account of the more special interest taken by Congress and the public in our railroad and steamboat mails, the annexed tables D and E are appended to show the particulars of the contract on each route of railroad and steamboat conveyance for the current year. Improvements have been made on several of the lines, so as to give a speed of about twentyfive miles to the hour, by means of special trains, stopping at but few of the intermediate points, and devoted to the accommodation of the throngh mail and travel. It is believed that this is attended with decided pecuniary advantages to the companies, derived from the additional travel thus attracted over their roads. The desire is universal and most urgent to see this improvement introduced, where it is so natural to look for it, upon the principal line in the United States-that between its first commercial city and its capital. A departure from New York on this line at 7, instead of 5, in the evening, would promote the convenience and econ omy of travel. It would promote the mail accommodation of the public to an immense extent, by taking on the entire correspondence of the day, which there would then be time to write before the close of business hours, and by taking on a vast amount of mail from the interior, which in that case would have time to make full connexions with the southern line. This, with a despatch of but twenty miles to the hour, including all stops, instead of the average of sixteen now given on the whole line, would bring the mail to Washington by 7 o'clock the next morning, and allow a reasonable interval (whereas there is now not a minute) for overhauling and distributing that portion of it that is to go forward to the South.* The emula tion of our contractors on the ocean line has, in a space of three years, increased the speed of our steam-ships between America and England to equal, if not to surpass, that of the British steamers. Nowhere within the United States could this example be followed with greater advantage and distinction than on this the most national of our railroad linesthe route between New York and Washington. Another improvement on a portion of the railroads is greatly needed-more suitable apartments in the cars than have been furnished, to contain the mails safely, and to serve as an office for the mail agent. Table F exhibits a list of the foreign or ocean routes, distinguishing those under contract with the Secretary of the Navy from those held directly under the Postmaster General. On these routes correspondence is conveyed to and from foreign countries and remote portions of the United States in steam-packets, employed under contract by government, and running at stated periods. By the former mode (still in use whenever parties resort to it) it was conveyed by sailing vessels, as their voyages might occur, for a small gratuity, payable upon each letter at the port of delivery. The new system is much the most expensive, but it gives to correspondence regularity and despatchthe utmost that is attainable for any purpose between the same points of destination. This is of the highest importance to the interests involved in correspondence, and, as a matter of service, deserves a larger compensation. But this species of mail conveyance devolves a cost upon the gov *Between Liverpool and London, the speed of the ordinary mails, as we compute it, from office to office, is from twenty to twenty-three miles an hour, end of the express mail train from twenty-six to thirty. |