Valdez daily prospector., 1914-01-22
NICE RAkE-0ff
 f0R N. C. C0.
Transportation Outfit WiIi Get About 90 Gents a Pound for Carry
 ing the Mail.

If the Northern Commercial com pany carries the weight limit of mail between Fairbanks and Cordova next winter season it will win about 61 cents a pound, but as it does not car ny half weight out from the Tanana to the coast it's actual earning will be 91 cents a pound. Here are the fig ures:
 The winter contract for carrying mail between the coast and the Tan ana calls for the following deliveries Thirty-eight trips inward bound with 800 pounds totals 30,400 pounds 48 trips inward bound with 1900 pounds totals 76,sO0 pounds; this makes .107,200 pounds to carry from Cor dova to Fairbanks. The contract calls for the same weight from Fair banks to the coast, or total of 214,- 400 pounds. For the eight months contract annually from October 1 to June 1 at $130.OO0 the company will scoop in 61 cents pound if it car ries the weight limit on every trip. It will carry the weight limit on ev- cry trip going in from the coast, or nearly so, but coming out from Fair banks to the coast 1t will hardly av- craze half the contract weight. This is established by the records of sev- eral years.
 About 400 pounds is the average coming out On that basis the con- pany will carry a total of about 141,,- 600 pounds, and receive about 91 cents pound for the compensation or $130,OOO annually.
 The Reasonable Cost.
 Freighters last winter carried sur plus second-cIass mail from Valdez to Fairbanks for IT cents. It is clear ly worth more to carry both first and second-class mail on a pretense of schedule time except when the Copper River * Northwestern rail road is frozen up solid, but to spec tator on the sidewalk it appears as if double the freighter's price ought to be plenty for an outfit that only maintains the schedule, when wind and weather and the intermittent eff forts of an invalid railroad permit.
 Most folks guess that the addition of S37,500 a year to the compensa- tion for carrying SS6 jags of mail each way is for the use and behoof of the Copper River railroad, which has been receiving from the North ern Commercial Company for carry ing the mail from Cordova to Chit ina about what the railroad saves the stage line---the cost of carrying the mail about 50 miles. This doesn't pay axle grease on the railroad. so the pay had to be boosted Maybe so, the Northern Commercial Com pany gets little piece of the extra money. Must be, because that con- cern was not incorporated as an eleemosynary institution.
 Graft or Biunder
 The question who put this over on the Postoffice department? Was it ignorance or case of stand-in that led the department 70 demand an enormous bond that barred everybody who might have been willing to bid except the Tanana octopus? Inas- much as the department can cancel a contract any time it feels that way there was no need of requiring such a bond. Or it could have cut the interior mail contract into two or three sections.
 And if the department in it's far eastern wisdom didn't think of ,loing either of these safe and sane actions beforehand it might have set aside the solitary graft bid of $130,0o0 for car rying the same mail that has been carried heretofore for $92,500 over a road that is getting better all the time.
 Neither is it too late for the de