Mr. PRESIDENT: Your Committee on Corporations, to whom were referred Senate Bill No. 332, Assembly Bill No. 182, Senate Bill No. 319, and Senate Bill No. 134, have had the same under consideration, and now return said bills to the Senate with the following report and recommendations. Senator Lindsey, the author of Senate Bill No. 332, stated to the committee that the grounds covered by his measure were practically the same as those embodied in the Assembly bill, and requested the committee, in their deliberations, to allow the Assembly bill to take the place of the one introduced by him. For convenience throughout this report the Assembly bill will be designated as the "Archer bill," and Senate Bill No. 134 as the “O'Connor bill"

Your committee has given to the subject matter involved in these measures such consideration as its importance demands, and the other senatorial duties required of us would permit. We are sensible of the great interests involved, and the agitation that the public mind has undergone in respect to railroad management, and the relations of the companies to the public interests. We have endeavored to give due consideration to the daily business intercourse existing between transportation companies and the community. We have realized the necessity for the enactment of a law more restrictive in its character, calculated to foster the leading industries of the State, to cripple' none of them, and which, at the same time, would not impair the usefulness and efficiency of the transportation companies. We have recognized the strong desire of communities, not possessed of railroad conveniences, for the rapid construction of trunk and branch lines, and of the same desire on the part of the leading commercial centers to establish communication with the remote and more inaccessible districts of the coast. We have not been in doubt in respect to the right to readjust maximum rates, but the extent to which it could be wisely and judiciously exercised, and the mode ånd manner in which control should be enforced, we find full of embarrassment. The necessity for doing something effective, and that would realize the best public expectation, has been constantly confronted by the apprehension that in the lack of technical knowledge of the subject, positive injuries to the prosperity of the State might result from any law we might pass.

In view of the experience of other American States, in their efforts