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ERRONEOUS IMPRESSIONS FROM PREVIOUS TESTIMONY

In that which I am about to now say, I have no intention of casting any reflections upon members of the Post Office Department, for, in all probability, they were required by law to testify  not as to their real convictions, but as to their ideas as limited by legal restrictions imposed upon them by the Bureau of the Budget.

The printed version of last year's testimony would perhaps seem to indicate that an erroneous impression was last year left with the members of the Committee. For example, the table at the top of page 305 of the printed report of last year's hearings would seem to have made possible the impression that in the fiscal year then under discussion, vis., 1935, the Post Office Department expended on the transportation of domestic air mail $12,584,828.35, thereby creating a so-called "subsidy" for domestic air mail of $5,995,293.91. There is danger in leaving with you such an incorrect impression in view of the requirements of Paragraph 6 (e) of the Air Mail Act. Instead of such figures being correct as to expenditures for air mail and the subsequently alleged subsidy therein, the published fact is that, in the fiscal year 1935, the payment to domestic air mail carriers was but $8,803,848.18 and the size of the alleged "subsidy" was but $2,223.735.77. Adding the overheads created by air mail to the dollars paid to the air carriers, we may thereby increase such reported expenditures by the Government as follows:

[[2 columns]]
Screen Wagons | $229,963.00
Mail Messengers | 85,097.00
Salary, Transfer, Offices, Mail Fields| 469,997.49
Paid to Domestic Air Mail |  8,803,848.18
Total |$9,588,905.67
[[/2 columns]]

Expenditures so calculated minus the most pessimistic estimate of air mail revenue during the same fiscal year sets forth a maximum purported deficit for domestic air mail to be as follows:

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