to pay the interest on its first mortgage bonds. In a printed paper addressed to me, on the 21st of April last, by the chairman and secretary of a committee of nine of first-mortgage bondholders, it is alleged that said failure to pay interest was owing mainly to the fact that the Union Pacific Railroad Company has persistently refused to transport passengers and freight in connection with the Kansas Pacific and Denver Pacific companies on the terms and in the manner required by the acts of 1st July, 1862, 2d July, 1864, 3d March, 1869, and 20th June, 1874; that said acts contemplated the Kansas Pacific and Denver Pacific railroads as a part of the connected and continuous line between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean, intersecting the Union Pacific at Cheyenne, to be operated without any discrimination for or against said roads; that the Union Pacific company has wholly disregarded the repeated requests of the Kansas Pacific and Denver Pacific companies to observe the provisions of said acts, and has denied its obligations to conform thereto, establishing and maintaining, in contravention of said acts, discriminating rates of fare for passengers and freight for merchandise against the Kansas Pacific and Denver Pacific companies; that the distance from Cheyenne to Ogden is 516 miles, one-half the distance from Omaha to Ogden, and yet the Union Pacific Company charges, in many cases, as much for transportation from Cheyenne to Ogden as from Omaha to Ogden, and in all cases out of proportion to the distance traversed, thereby compelling travelers and shippers to go to Omaha as a starting-point, greatly to the damage of the Kansas Pacific and Denver Pacific companies; that while the Kansas Pacific company has made default in payment of interest, the Union Pacific company, by means of the monopoly thus established, has paid 8 per cent. dividends annually to its stockholders, besides paying the interest on its debt, (other than that due the United States;) that the General Government is interested in having said discrimination terminated, in order that the sums advanced to the Kansas Pacific company by the United States may not be utterly lost.
A list of some of the discriminating charges accompanies the paper. That there is such discrimination is beyond dispute. That it is in direct contravention of the letter and spirit of the Pacific railroad acts there can scarcely be serious doubt. There seems to be no disposition on the part of the Union Pacific company voluntarily to remedy this evil, but I am of the opinion that proper steps should be taken to enforce compliance with the acts of Congress.
PATENTS.
The Commissioner of Patents reports that during the year ending June
30, 1877, 19,914 applications for patents were filed.
The number of patents issued, including reissues and designs, was 14,459; the number of caveats filed was 2,658; 1,098 patents were al-
