ent on most of our American lines.

While the ocean mail steamer must be fast and costly, for the better
acceleration of correspondence and the accommodation of passengers,
she must also go at the appointed hour, whether she is repaired or
not, and wholly irrespective of her freight and passenger list. There
must be no delays for a lot of freight, or for a company of fifty
passengers who have been delayed by the train. She has the mails, and
must go at the hour appointed, whatever it may cost the company, and
however large a lot of costly stores may have to be thrown away. This
punctuality, while it is the means of securing small lots of freight,
prevents also the accommodation of the ship's day of sailing to
arrangements which might otherwise be profitable. This punctuality in
sailing always necessitates large extra expense in repairs. It
frequently happens that companies of men work through the nights and
on Sundays; getting much increased prices for such untimely labor, and
being far less efficient in the night than in the day. If the steamer
has had a long passage from whatever causes, she discharges whatever
she has and takes in her coal in a hurried and costly way, frequently
at fifty per cent. advance on the cost necessary for it if she had
ample time. The only means of avoiding these exigencies is by having
spare ships, which cost as much as any others, but which add nothing
whatsoever to the company's income. It may be safe to say that in
every mail company it is necessary to have one spare, and consequently
unproductive, ship for every three engaged in active service. This
thirty-three per cent. additional outlay would not be necessary except
on a mail line, where punctuality was positively demanded. Yet, it is
one of the heavy items of expense to be incurred by every company
carrying the mails, and with which they can not in any wise dispense,
however well their ships may be built. The "Pacific Mail Steamship
Company" in running their semi-monthly line from Panama to California
and Oregon, keep constantly at their docks eight unemployed steamers
and one tow-boat, ready for all exigencies and accidents, and could
keep their mails going if nearly their whole moving fleet should be
sunk at once. No wonder that they have never missed a single trip, or
lost a single passenger by marine accident since they first started in
1850. But there is another class of costs in running ocean steamers,
which amount to large su