APPENDIX A.

Post-OFFicE DEPARTMENT,
OFFICE OF THE POSTMASTER-(GENERAL,
Washington, D. C., February 12, 1910.
My Dear Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your
communication referring to me bill S. 525, Sixty-first Congress, first
session, to amend the act of March 3, 1891, entitled ‘“An act to provide
 for ocean mail service between the United States and foreign
ports and to promote commerce’’ and requesting to be furnished with
such suggestions as I may deem proper touching the merits of the
bill and the propriety of its passage. The text of the bill is as follows:
. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America
in Congress assembled, That the Postmaster-General is hereby authorized to pay for
dcean mail service under the act of March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one,
in vessels of the second class on routes to South America, to the Philippines, to Japan,
to China, and to Australasia, four thousand miles or more in length, outward voyage,
at a rate per mile not exceeding the rate applicable to vessels of the first class as provided
 in said act.

The act of March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. Li, 830), which the bill proposes
to amend, is the only existing provision of law authorizing formal
contracts for ocean mail service by American vessels at rates exceeding
 the sea and inland postage, no further helpful legislation toward
the promotion of our foreign mail service having been enacted since
the passage of that law.
Under the act referred to we now have, in addition to a weekly
service to Europe and a service of ten times a year to Tahiti, a service
to Cuba, Jamaica, Venezuela, and the Atlantic ports of Mexico in
our own ships subject to our own control; but with these exceptions
our mails to foreign countries are wholly dependent upon steamers
over which the department has no control whatever—a condition of
affairs not in keeping with the policy of other great commercial
nations. Not only is our mail service to points covered by the bill
performed by steamers not under our control, but, with few exceptions,
 it is performed by steamers which do not fly our flag. ot
steamers conveying our mail to the Orient, more than 70 per cent fly
foreign flags. Not a single steamer now carrying our mails to Australasia
 and to points in South America covered by the bill flies the
American flag.
The act of March 3, 1891, has enabled the department to secure
service in accordance therewith on short routes, but it has not enabled
 us to secure service on the longer and more expensive ones. Service
to Brazil, Argentina, Australasia, and the Orient, which was contracted
 for under its provisions, was discontinued for the reason that
the contractors could not continue the service for the amount of
compensation received. If we are to have service on the long routes
in American steamers, more liberal compensation is necessary; and
public policy forbids that the carrying of our mails to foreign countries
 and that the means of our merchants for reaching the markets
of those countries should continue to be dependent upon the voluntary
 service of steamers flying foreign flags and operated by foreign