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CAMPBELL WALLACE, Chairman,

L. N. TRAMMELL,

ALEX. S. ERWIN,

A. C. BRISCOE, Secretary

Commissioners.

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OFFICE OF THE RAILROAD COMMISSION of Georgia,
ATLANTA, GA., Nov. 1, 1888.

His Excellency John B. Gordon, Governor :

SIR: We respectfully submit the following report of the operations of the Railroad Commission since the date of our last report.

NEW RAILROADS.

Within this period five new railroad companies have been furnished with tariffs of freight and passenger rates and are now operating under the same. They are: the Savannah and Tybee, Atlanta and Florida, Covington and Macon, Georgia Southern and Florida, and Chattanooga, Rome and Columbus Railroad Companies. That part of the line of the Northeastern Railroad extending from Cornelia to Tallulah Falls has passed into the hands of another company, known as the Atlantic & Blue Ridge Railroad Company, and is now being operated under a tariff furnished said company on its own application.

THE PENNY CIRCULAR.

In February last the Commissioners issued Circular No. 103, now known as the Penny Circular, as a substitute for rule four of the rules governing the transportation of passengers. This circular provides that railroad companies shall collect the exact mileage for passenger fares if they shall furnish the necessary change. Otherwise they shall collect the next lowest amount ending in 5 or 0. The old rule was as follows: "When the passenger fare does not end in 5 or 0, the nearest sum so ending shall be the fare. For example, for 27 cents collect 25 cents, for 28 cents collect 30 cents." The new rule commends itself as being exact, just and business-like. When a passenger was required to pay two cents more for his ticket or fare than the mileage he travelled called for, some dissatisfaction was naturally occasioned which was not removed by the knowledge of the fact that another passenger from a different station would pay two cents less than the exact amount of his fare. It was morcover believed by the Commission that this circular would encourage the introduction and use of the penny in our circulation, and thus to some extent promote habits of economy and thrift among our people.

So far as we have heard the new rule is working well. It has been received with satisfaction by the public, and has not produced the inconvenience to the railroad companies that some of them apprehended.

FIRST AND SECOND CLASS FARES.

In the month of March last, application was made to us to establish in the State a new class of railroad fares to be known as Second Class. This application came from a committee appointed by a convention of colored people held in Macon on the 25th of January. The Commission was already considering the propriety of adjusting and equalizing the passenger fares in the State, and had invited the railroad companies to furnish their views on the subject. We found it convenient, therefore, to consider the two questions together, and after a patient hearing and investigation, we declined to make any change in passenger rates or establish a new class of fares. In some of the neighboring States there are two classes of fares, called First and Second Class, but in some, and perhaps all of them, the Second Class fare is three cents per mile, and the First Class, higher. As the usual rate of First Class fares in Georgia was already three cents, the establishment of Second Class rates would involve either an increase of the present rate for First Class fare, or a reduction below there cents for Second Class fare.

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