ior Court of the county in which the principal office of the offending company is located, and not elsewhere. The principle of this decision applies as well to all other cases in which railroad companies fail or refuse to observe the orders of the Railroad Commission. This is a serious impediment to the enforcement of the law, as well as a source of great inconvenience and expense to the public. In the first place, it involves the State in the expense of having its witnesses, in many cases, attend upon sessions of court held hundreds of miles from their residences, or compels it to dispense with their personal appearance and rely upon the unsatisfactory method of substituting testimony upon answers to written interrogatories. In the second place one of the principal questions of fact which necessarily arises in that class of cases is whether or not the depot in a given case required to be built is such as answers the requirements of the public comfort and convenience, and whether the location selected by the Commission is a proper one. This class of questions, like those involving the condemnation of right-of-ways for public ways, can best be determined when the jury shall have the opportunity of viewing the premises; and their presence at or near the spot would be indispensable to the exercise of this right. Aside from these three considerations, in all cases of tort, under existing laws, the company must and in all cases of breach of contract may be sued in the county where the tort was committed or the contract was to be performed. With equal propriety all proceedings to enforce the performance of a duty owing to the public should be permitted to be brought in the county where the duty is to be performed; and since the principal offices of some of the railroad companies operating lines in Georgia may be beyond the limits of this State, there is the greater reason, not only that such suit should be brought in the county where the depot is to be built, but also that service in all such cases be perfected by the delivery of a copy of the writ to any agent of the company within such county. Indeed we are of the opinion that in all cases involving the breach of any duty that may be owing upon the part of a corporation, whether to the public or as an individual, whether such duty arises from contract or is imposed by law, the law should be so framed as to authorize suits to be brought in the county in which duties are to be performed, and that the remedy by maudamus or mandatory injunction should be provided for their enforce ment. SIDE TRACKS. We recommend that the law be so amended as to give the Commission the same jurisdiction with regard to the location, building, maintenance and discontinuance of side-tracks as it now has over freight and passenger depots. Heretofore the General Assembly thought it wise to confer upon this Board the authority to require the location and erection of such freight. and passenger depot buildings as the safety of freight and the public comfort required, and to make rules and regulations governing the maintenance and discontinuance of the same. This law has proven very beneficial, and has demonstrated the wisdom of vesting in this Commission the authority to require railroads to afford to the public which they serve the facilities and conveniences which are due from them as common carriers. This fact, and the fact that side-track facilities are naturally and necessarily a part of the accommodations given in connection with depots, show conclusively that depots and side-tracks should be subject to one and the same law, rules and regulations. Precisely the same reasons upon which the power to regulate depots was vested in this Commission apply with equal force to the matter of side-tracks, and should in our judgment, prompt the law-making power to treat it in the same manner. PHYSICIAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN RAILROADS. Not infrequently the tracks of railroad companies holding hostile and competitive relations intersect each other, but at such intersecting points for reasons personal to themselves, make no provision for the transfer of passengers or freight from one line to the other, refusing to institute such physical connection between their tracks, thus preventing the public from making choice of routes from such points, and practically denying to the public the benefit of competitive rates from such points. The Commission is of the opinion that the public interest will be promoted by the passage of an Act vesting in it the power to compel railway companies to make and maintain physical connection between their intersecting tracks at such points and under such reasonable rules and regulations as this Commission shall deem necessary to their protection and to the accommodation and convenience of the public, and it so recommends. SLEEPING-CAR COMPANIES. Sleeping-cars have come into such general use and are thereby so closely identified with modern passenger service that, in our opinion, the charges made for the accommodations which they furnish should be made subject to the same control that this Commission now exercises over passenger rates. If it is proper and desirable as a matter of public policy that the rates charged by railroads for transporting passengers shall be controlled and regulated, then it is equally desirable and proper as a matter of public policy that rates charged by sleeping-car companies shall be likewise controlled and regulated. If it is right and necessary that the rates paid by a passenger to a railroad company for transportation shall be prescribed by State authority, it is no less right and proper that the rates charged the same passenger on the same train for a service so closely allied to that of a common carrier of passengers as to become practically a part of it, should also be prescribed by State authority. We therefore recommend that legislation be enacted making sleeping-car companies doing business in this State relatively to intrastate traffic subject to the jurisdiction of the Railroad Commission, and to the same rules and regulations to which the passenger service of railroads is subject. TELEPHONE COMPANIES. The use of the telephone as a means of communication, both locally between points in the same town and for long distances between towns and cities widely separated, has become so general as to remove telephone companies from that class of persons serving the public, the control of which is usually vested in local municipal bodies, and has become of such importance to the public as to admit of their classification, in the matter of government control, along with railroad, telegraph and express companies; and, since the companies just mentioned have been placed under the control of this Commission, the necessity for a system of State regulation being instituted for the control of telephone companies becomes apparent. There is, from a practical point of view, no essential difference, so far as their relations toward the public are concerned, between telephone and telegraph companies. Both are created by authority of the law for the express purpose of serving the public by affording facilities for communication by wire, for hire. Some years ago the General Assembly of Georgia, recognizing the fact that telegraph companies were, owing to the nature of the service rendered, in no sense different from railroad companies, so far as being public servants, and being regulated by State authority as such, were concerned, enacted a law making all telegraph companies subject to the jurisdiction of this Commission the same as railroads, by providing that the Act creating this Commission shall apply to telegraph companies. As above pointed out, the public relations and responsibilities of telephone companies are not different from those of telegraph companies; each is required to serve the public; each is indispensable to the conduct of the business of the people, according to improved modern business methods; each has equal facilities for laying burdens upon the public to which their necessities require them to submit, and one is as capable of extortion as the other; and since the State has placed the telegraph under the control of her Railroad Commission, with satisfactory results, there is the greater reason why its cheap competitor, the telephone companies, should be made subject to the same authority. We therefore recommend that the General Assembly enact a law providing that all of the provisions of the law creating this commission, and of all acts amendatory thereof, be made likewise applicable to telephone companies, so that they may be under the same supervision as other similar public corporations. In the exercise of the great powers conferred upon this Commission from the date of its inception to the present hour, it has been its purpose to so administer the affairs committed to its care as to at all times promote the interests of the public, and to assure to it the enjoyment of all the benefits of modern improvement and invention as applied to the business of transportation, and at the lowest possible cost, consistent with the proper maintenance of the properties charged with the duty of furnishing transportation facilities to the public. The relations between the people and the carrier companies in this State are necessarily not entirely free from friction. Holding such diverse interests, such a condition may well be expected. When we consider, however, the contests constantly being waged in other States, in which the power of the State to control the carrier companies as they are in Georgia controlled, is challenged, we believe that the people of this State |