J. F. SHAUGHNESSY- First Associate Commissioner

W. H. SIMMONS Second Associate Commissioner

E. H. WALKER

W. K. FREUDENBERGER

STARPOND T

SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT.

OFFICE OF THE RAILROAD COMMISSION OF. NEVADA,

CARSON CITY, NEVADA, March 20,-1914.

HON. T. L. ODDIE, Governor of Nevada.

DEAR SIR: The Railroad Commission of Nevada submits this, its sixth annual report, covering the work of the Commission for the calendar year ending on the 31st day of December, 1913. There has been considerable delay in getting this report into print. This has been partly due to press.. of work in the Commission office, and partly to the fact that the State Printing Office itself has been considerably crowded. Since the close of the year 1913 some very important cases have been disposed of, and, in order that the public may be informed with respect to those cases, they will be referred to in this report, even though their final disposition was of a date later than the calendar year 1913, which this report is primarily intended to cover.

IMPORTANT CASES DISPOSED OF

At the close of 1913 there were three cases pending in the United States District Court for Nevada, in which cases this Commission was the party defendant. Two of these-namely, Nos. 76 and 139—were suits brought by the Southern Pacific Company and the Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad Company to enjoin certain orders made by the Commission reducing freight rates upon the lines of the two companies named within the State of Nevada. Case 76 was a distinctively main-line case, affecting rates upon the main Central Pacific line only. Case 139 affected rates between Reno and Tonopah and Goldfield and involved a portion of the Central Pacific main line, the Nevada and California line, from Hazen to Mina, and the Tonopah and Goldfield road from Mina to Goldfield.

The cases named had been pending a long time in the Federal Court, and the orders of the Commission had been restrained. This delay was due largely to the fact that questions were involved that were under consideration by the Supreme Court of the United States in what are known as the Minnesota Rate Cases. The defendant companies had raised two questions: First, that the rates as prescribed were confiscatory, and, second, that the order fixing the rates was an interference with interstate commerce, and, consequently, violative of the Constitution of the United States.

When the Minnesota cases were decided in 1913 the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the long-established methods and principles of apportionment and calculation adopted by the railroads involved in those cases. The methods and principles passed upon in the Minnesota Rate Cases were identical with those employed by the Southern Pacific and Tonopah and Goldfield companies. As a result, those companies which were contesting the orders of this Commission in the United States District Court were left with no ground to stand upon, as far as the question of confiscation was concerned, because they were not prepared to present any new method of arithmetical calculation.