REPORT OF AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE COMMISSION. 37
THE COST OF NEW OCEAN MAIL ROUTES.

The maximum subventions required for the complete service on the
ten new ocean mail routes authorized by the proposed bill amount to
$2,665,000. This is the expenditure which must not be exceeded, but
as the contracts are to be let to the lowest responsible bidders it is
possible that the actual final cost may be considerably less than this.
However, assuming that $2,665,000 is the maximum, it may be said in
the beginning that this full expenditure can not be reached for at least
three years, for the majority of the ten new mail routes provided are
absolutely new. There are, for example, no American ships whatever
DOW running on the routes to Brazil or Argentina or South Africa, or
In the Gulf of Mexico to Mexico and Central America. Moreover,
there are few steamships now in existence in the United States qualified
 for this service, especially for the long lines southward beyond
the equator, Nearly all of the tonnage required for these mail routes
tn the Atlantic, and a large part of that required in the Pacific, will
have to be designed, launched, and completed, and fully three years
will be necessary for this undertaking.
Even assuming that the few steamships that could be adapted to this
mail service will be diverted from their present use, no more than onefourth
 of the maximum of $2,665,000, or $666,250, could in all probability
 be expended on the new mail routes within the first fiscal year.
The United States is now paying a considerable sum of money for
the carrying of ocean mails, on the weight basis, to American and foreign
 steamers on the new proposed mail routes. This sum amounted
to $158,401.46 in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1904. At least twothirds
 of this, or about $100,000, will be saved when the new mail routes
are established, and should therefore be deducted from the maximum
estimate of $2,665,000, leaving a net maximum cost of $2,565,000.
Moreover, the important fact should be emphasized right here that
the United States is the only mercantile nation in the world that makes
any profit out of its ocean mail service. Great Britain, for example,
a kes the entire income from its ocean mails and devotes it, with sevtral
 million dollars more, to the encouragement of its chief lines of
steamships,
The United States, on the other hand, according to the report of
the Superintendent of Foreign Mails for the fiscal year ending June
30, 1904, actually made in that year $2,579,336 beyond the net cost of
the service, exclusive of the cost of transferring the articles between
the United States exchange post-offices and the United States postoffices
 at which they were mailed or delivered. There will be general
agreement that at least this apparent profit on the ocean mail service
of the United States ought to be turned back to the encouragement of
our ocean mail lines, and that is exactly what is contemplated in the mail
subvention clause of the proposed legislation. In effect, the annual—
not the accumulated—profit from our ocean mail service is hereafter
to be devoted to the upbuilding of American steamship communication
 with distant markets. Great Britain goes beyond this, and
applies to this purpose two or three millions more annually. The
United States can at least afford to utilize in this way the full’amount
of its ocean-mail net income.
The maximum expenditure for the mail service, it should be remembored,
 can not be reached before the fiscal year beginning July 1,
9K