The Mail Boat’s Erratic Schedule

The Oregon Railway & Navigation Company receives $50,000 a year for carrying the mail from Tacoma to Port Townsend, and $4,000 for carrying it from Port Townsend to Victoria. Otherwise expressed, it gets $1,000 a week for the mail service on this route, or $140 a day. The compensation is certainly adequate for the service. The service is intended for the benefit of the people alone, and not of the company. The company seems to believe that the contract is for its exclusive benefit, that the people are incidental only, and that it is optional with it to perform the service at such hours and in such manner as it may elect. It changes its own schedule to suit itself, without regard to the wishes or welfare of the public. Its latest change is a illustration in point. It has undertaken to carry the mail down the Sound by one route, and up the Sound by another, covering all or the greater part of the night. This is very inconvenient to the people on the way, whose benefit should be chiefly regarded by the Government in the terms of the contract. Not only is it inconvenient to the travel, but it is of no general advantage, but rather of disadvantage, the mailings of which appear to be for the good of the company alone. Under the late schedule, it was possible to write a letter to any of the lower Sound towns on the route one day and get a reply the next. Under the new arrangement, three days are required. The mail goes to the places on the lower Sound a few hours earlier than it did before, but this is of no advantage, because it arrives in the night and remains in the post office undistributed. The delay in the mail is not acceptable, and the owners should conform to it, whether its own convenience are balanced or not.