Oregon Sentinel, Jacksonville, September 9, 1865, page 3


    The hope that the Postal Department would reconsider and reverse its decision in regard to the Oregon daily mail is dispelled by the following dispatch, which has been received by the first vice president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce:
    For four years, by Congressional enactment, and at a price named by themselves, the California Stage Company conveyed the mails from Sacramento to Portland at ninety thousand dollars per annum. Last year, when gold was gelling at 260, they were allowed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They now demand three hundred thousand, with gold at 140. This sum is deemed extortionate. No more than two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars will be allowed for a daily mail. If the California Stage Company accept this, service can be renewed at once; if not, sea service will have to be submitted to until other arrangements can be made.
    The company refuses to accept the price mentioned as the limit of the allowance, and therefore the daily mail for Northern California and Oregon is among "the things that were." The Alta California, claiming to be a leading commercial journal of San Francisco, publishes the above dispatch, and adds: "Comment on the above statement of facts is entirely unnecessary. Shylock was not a wholly imaginary character, after all." Such is the first and only reference this organ of trade has made to a matter in which the business men at the Bay, who maintain commercial relations with the interior towns north of Sacramento, are interested, and which has excited much indignant complaint throughout the vast section of country that has been suddenly deprived of regular postal communication. The partial, unfair and unjust statement of the Assistant Postmaster General against the stage company is promptly accepted by the Alta as conclusive. The California Stage Company is a Shylock, guilty of attempted extortion, and the people, who have been abusing the Postal Department for stopping the mail service, should turn their tongues against the contractors, whose regularity and fidelity in the performance of their contract during the past four years nobody has ventured to question. Comment is entirely unnecessary where you are in want of the facts or can prejudice an important interest by significant silence. The dispatch of the Assistant Postmaster General is not such a statement of facts as a candid and intelligent journalist, familiar with the merits of the question, would allow to pass without comment or accept without examination or explanation. The California Stage Company were allowed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks per annum, because no competent parties were found to undertake the service for less. They recently demanded three hundred thousand, because experience had satisfied them that a lower sum would not pay, and pretty good evidence that their calculation was correct is found in the fact that the Department has been unable, after the most diligent search, to discover any other responsible parties to take the contract at a lower figure. There are innumerable mail contractors in the United States who would gladly take hold of any contract promising a reasonable profit. If the demand of the California Stage Company be "extortionate," and the mail service on that route can be profitably performed for any smaller amount, how is it that no party has been found willing to do the work? At the last opening of bids for this service the stage company had no competitor, and yet the Department only offered to give two hundred thousand dollars. The contract was hawked about for months before a man was discovered who would take it at an advance of twenty thousand dollars upon the sum offered the stage company, and that man, after learning the extent of the service, declined to incur the risk. Now the Department wants the company to accept the price which its own preferred contractor found to be inadequate! There can be no extortion where the privilege of bidding for contracts is accorded to everybody. If this service will pay at the price fixed by the Department, why don't some competent party offer to take it? The variable action of the Department in regard to the price is no less discreditable than the dense ignorance implied in the announcement--"sea service will have to be submitted to until other arrangements can be made." How can "sea service" accommodate the people of Northern California and Southern Oregon? How are mails transported from San Francisco to Portland by steamer going to Shasta, Yreka and Jacksonville? The Assistant Postmaster General seems to have as little knowledge of the geography of this coast as Lord Dundreary had of the game to be found in the neighborhood of New York. An appeal should be made to the President, and the Congressional delegations of Oregon and California could render the people of their respective states no greater service at this time than by giving their support to such a movement. The feeling in the northern counties of California, in consequence of this total deprivation of mail facilities, finds indignant utterance in their local journals. The Shasta Courier says:
    Instead of some eighty exchanges, we now get two, through the kindness of Wells, Fargo & Co.--the Sacramento Union and Bee. Let the gods be praised for the little we have; but this freak of the Postmaster General is costing not only us, but the people for a distance of six hundred miles, most dearly. We felt, when the stoppage took place, that so soon as telegraphic connection with the Department could be had, and proper representations made, the usual mail facilities would have been at once restored. The telegraph has been working, but the mails are dormant--lying in some of Uncle Samuel's depots below, daily accumulating, until their bulk must have attained enormous proportions. In that huge mass lie letters and papers for a whole people--a loyal people--numbering some one hundred and fifty thousand, who by no act of theirs ever forfeited their right to the fostering care and protection of their government. This people are advised by telegraph, every day, that the Post Office Department is using the greatest diligence, and incurring heavy outlays, to furnish the best possible mail facilities for what was recently known as the Confederate States. Placing such action by the side of the facts here developed, and the comparison is not of the most pleasing kind. Loyal people on this coast are unable to see justice in such measures. They naturally feel that in being superseded by such material a premium is offered to rebellion. That is the way it looks. Words cannot change the facts which produce the conclusion."
    The Trinity Journal uses still more emphatic language:
    "Our Postmaster General seems to have but a confused idea of the extent of territory composing the Pacific States and Territories. He must certainly be ignorant of the number of inhabitants which people those states, or if aware of their number, seems to entertain but a poor opinion of their intelligence, influence or deserts. Through official stupidity, or perhaps cupidity, the people from Lincoln (California) to Portland (Oregon) are deprived of that great necessity in a civilized country, the mail, and if it were not for Wells, Fargo & Co.'s Express would be cut off from all communication by letter with the balance of the world. Such a state of affairs would perhaps have been tolerated with silent indignation in time of war, but now, the whole country at peace and no earthly cause for such proceeding, the people will not tamely submit to such an outrage. It is simply a disgrace, a burning shame and insult to the people of this coast."

    THE DAILY MAIL.--The mail line between Lincoln and Portland is to be divided into five sections, each one to be carried by separate contract. The time is to be as follows--from Lincoln to Shasta 45 hours; from Shasta to Yreka 32 hours; from Yreka to Oakland, Ogn., 50 hours; from Oakland to Corvallis 25 hours; from Corvallis to Portland 29 hours--contract to last until 1870.