Railroad Company, the Vicksburgh, Shreveport and Texas Railroad Company, the managers of Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railroad and Steamship Company.
The following have complied in a measure with the requests of the Auditor, viz: The Hannibal and Saint Joseph Railroad Company, the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad Company, the Missouri River, Fort Scott and Gulf Railroad Company, the North Wisconsin Railroad Company, the Winona and Saint Peter Railroad Company, the Southern Minnesota Railway Company, and the Saint Paul and Duluth Railroad Company.
The following railroad companies are preparing to comply with the requests of the Auditor, viz: The Little Rock and Fort Smith Railway Company, the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad Company, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad Company, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company, and the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company.
Four months only having elapsed since the establishment of the bureau, most of which time has been consumed in organizing and in correspondence with railroad companies, it became questionable whether any report of its operations could be made at so early a day, and in consequence it is necessarily incomplete.
The Auditor's report is accompanied by an appendix, containing statements and compilations of facts relating to the Pacific and land-grant railroad companies, the laws affecting them, official correspondence, statements of the affairs of the companies, their receipts, expenditures, and operations, the accounts between the United States and the Pacific Railroad companies, the condition of the respective land-grants, and other matters of general interest in respect to railroad companies.
It will be seen from Appendix C of the Auditor's report, that about 196,424,800.68 acres of land have been granted for railroad purposes, of which, to June 30, 1878, 31,014,496.7 acres were patented. The acts of Congress making these large grants were passed with conditions intended, in a measure, to repay the people for such valuable donations; but, until the passage of the act creating the Bureau of the Auditor of Railroad Accounts, the government had no certain way of ascertaining whether these conditions were complied with, nor was it possible to know what they were worth.
The recommendations of the Auditor in regard to legislation are worthy of consideration.
THE PRO-RATE QUESTION.
The suit of the Kansas Pacific Railway Company et al. vs. The Union Pacific Railroad Company, instituted January 21, 1875, in the United States circuit court of the district of Nebraska, commonly known as “the pro-rate case,” has not been determined. In view of this fact, and the fact that legislation bearing upon this question is now pending in Con-
