That the stage lines received the assistance they did, under such
circumstances, is to be wondered at. Yet it must be borne in mind that
at the outset much of the political support necessary to secure
appropriations for overland mail routes was derived from southern
congressmen who were anxious for routes of communication with the West
coast, especially if such routes ran through the Southwest and linked
the cotton-growing states with California.

At the very beginning, it cost about one hundred thousand dollars to
equip the Pony Express line in those days a very considerable outlay of
capital for a private corporation. Besides the purchase of more than
four hundred high grade horses, it cost large sums of money to build and
equip stations at intervals of every ten or twelve miles throughout the
long route. The wages of eighty riders and about four hundred station
men, not to mention a score of Division Superintendents was a large
item.

Most of the grain used along the line between St. Joseph and Salt Lake
City was purchased in Iowa and Missouri and shipped in wagons at a
freight rate of from ten cents to twenty cents a pound. Grain and food
stuffs for use between Salt Lake City and the Sierras were usually
bought in Utah and hauled from two hundred to seven hundred miles to the
respective stations. Hay, gathered wherever wild grasses could be found
and cured, often had to be freighted hundreds of miles.

The operating expenses of the line aggregated about thirty thousand
dollars a month, which would alone have insured a deficit as the monthly
income never equaled that amount.

A conspicuous bill of expense which helped to bankrupt the enterprise