company, the contemplated general order or requirement shall be first published in substance, with the time and place when and where the commissioners will hear objections which may be urged against the same. And every such general order or requirement made by the commissioners shall be published at length in one or more newspapers in the city of Richmond, and shall as long as it remains in force be also published in each subsequent annual report of the commission.

The Corporation Commission shall have the power and authority of a court of record to enforce compliance with all of its orders or requirements, and are charged with the visitation, regulation and control of corporations, and a corporation failing or refusing to obey any order of such commission may be fined thereby not exceeding $500, and each day's continuance of such failure, with notice, shall be a separate offense.

Transmission or transportation companies may appeal from the order or regulation of the commission, which appeal may be taken to the Supreme Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court of Appeals shall have jurisdiction to review, reverse, correct or annul the action of the commission within the scope of its authority. Appeals affecting rates, charges or classification of traffic shall have precedence upon the docket of the Appellate Court, and upon such appeal the operation of the action appealed from may be suspended until a final disposition of the appeal, provided a bond may be first executed and filed with the commission to insure the prompt refunding of such charges which the companies may collect and receive in excess of those fixed or authorized by final decision of the court.

Whenever the court shall reverse an order of the commission it shall at the same time substitute therefor such other order as in its opinion the commission should have made at the time of entering the order appealed from, otherwise the reversing order shall not be valid, and such substitute order shall have the same force and effect as if it had been entered by the commission as the original order appealed from was entered. No order of the commission prescribing or altering rates, charges, classifications, rules or regulations shall be retroactive.

The Board of Public Works and the office of Railroad Commissioner are merged in the State Corporation Commission.

The right of eminent domain and the police power of the State shall never be abridged.

No transportation or transmission company shall charge or receive any greater compensation in the aggregate for transporting. the same class of passengers or property or for transmitting the same class of messages over a shorter than over a longer distance along the same line and in the same direction; the shorter being included with the longer distance, but this section shall not be construed as authorizing any such company to charge or receive as great compensation for a shorter as for a longer distance.

The General Assembly shall enact laws preventing trusts, combinations and monopolies inimical to the public welfare.

The lending of the credit of the State or any municipality to corporations is prohibited, and the State shall become interested in no works of internal improvement except public roads.

The General Assembly may levy a tax on incomes in excess of $600 per annum and license tax on any business which cannot be reached by the ad valorem system; may impose said franchise taxes and may make the same in lieu of taxes on other property in whole or in part of a transportation, industrial or commercial company.

The statute of limitations shall not run against such taxes, and a failure to assess property for taxation shall not defeat a subsequent assessment and collection of such taxes unless such property shall have passed to a bona fide purchaser for value without notice, in which latter case the property shall be assessed for taxation against such purchaser from the date of his purchase.

No conduit, telephone, bridge company or any company, person or like partnership engaged in this or like enterprises shall be permitted to use the streets or public grounds of a city or town without previous consent of the corporate authorities thereof.

The right of a city or town in and to its streets or public places, in gas, water and electric light works shall not be sold except by an ordinance by resolution passed by a recorded affirmative vote of three-fourths of all the members elected to such council, and no franchise, lease or right of any kind to use any such public property in a manner not permitted to the general public shall be granted for a period longer than thirty years, and such

grant may provide that upon the termination thereof the plant, as well as the property of any of the grantees in the streets and public places, shall thereupon, without compensation to the grantee or upon the payment of a fair valuation thereof, be and become the property of such municipality.

The General Assembly shall not enact any law whereby private property shall be taken or damaged for public use without just compensation, nor shall it enact any special or private law granting to any private corporation, association or individual any special or exclusive right, privilege or immunity.

II. CORPORATIONS.

Any domestic corporation may conduct its business in or without the State and hold the meetings of its directors either within or without the State, but the annual meeting of the stockholders shall be held in the State.

The power of making and altering by-laws shall be in the stockholders unless the power so to do is conferred on the directors by the certificate of incorporation or by the resolution of its stockholders.

Every corporation, domestic or foreign, shall make annual report to the State Corporation Commission, giving its name, location of its office, the name of the agent upon whom process may be served, its business, amount of its authorized capital and the amount issued, and the names and addresses of its officers. The State Corporation Commission shall ascertain and declare whether the applicants have complied with the reuirements of the law which entitled them to a merger or consolidation applied for, and shall issue or refuse a certificate issued therefor, accordingly. Wilful failure to use any of its essential functions for the period of twelve years shall work a forfeiture of its charter and proceedings to declare the same forfeited may be had on motion of the Attorney-General.

Every incorporated company doing business in the State shall have an office in the State at which all claims against such company due to residents of the State may be audited, settled and paid. Every foreign corporation shall, before doing business in the State, present to the State Corporation Commission a certificate appointing a person resident of the State, its agent upon

whom process may be served and two duly certified copies of its charter of incorporation and a certificate of the Auditor of Public Accounts, showing the payment into the treasury of the fee declared by law to be paid by such corporation, and a foreign corporation transacting business without having obtained the license hereinbefore provided for shall be fined not more than $1,000, and the officers, agents and employees of any such company doing business without a license shall be personally liable to the State for any fines imposed on it, and for any resident of the State having a claim against such company and service of legal process upon any of such officers, agents or employees shall be deemed sufficient service on the corporation.

The term transmission company" shall include any company owning, leasing or operating for hire any telegraph or telephone line, and the term "public service corporation" shall include all transmission companies.

It shall be the duty of the State Corporation Commission to make inquiry and examination from time to time into the acts and proceedings of chartered transmission companies doing business in the State, from officers and agents, for the purpose of ascertaining whether anything has been done in violation or contravention of their charters or of the law, and the commission shall give notice to such companies of any violation of such law and compel compliance with the same.

Upon the complaint of the board of municipal authorities, within which any part of the transmission lines lie, it shall be the duty of the commission to make an examination of the physical condition and operation thereof, and if it shall deem the complaint well founded it shall so adjudge and notify the corporation thereof, and such corporation or person shall within sixty days thereafter remove the cause of complaint. The commission shall have power to render an entry of judgment for fines and penalties or for the recovery of money in any complaint, whether instituted. on its own motion or otherwise, and to issue execution, which may be levied and executed in like manner as executions charged and issued upon the terms and decrees of the courts at law or equity, and such commission shall have power to punish for contempt persons summoned to appear who shall fail or refuse to appear and

testify without a lawful excuse or who shall refuse to answer proper questions propounded to him. The judgment of the commission for the recovery of money, fines or penalties shall be a lien on the real estate of the judgment debtor when duly docketed and indexed in the judgment lien docket of the respective courts. The commission shall have made and kept in its clerk's office a register of all corporations chartered and existing in the State and of all foreign corporations licensed to transact business therein.

III. TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE COMPANIES.

Any number of persons, not less than five, may establish a corporation to purchase lines or construct and maintain and operate telegraph or telephone lines or both or any other works except a railroad intended to be used for public service; the articles of incorporation of which shall require its name, the nature of the works to be purchased, constructed or operated, the name of the cities or counties in which the same is or shall be constructed and the principal termini to and from which it is proposed that the same be purchased, constructed or maintained, the estimated length of the proposed line and the limitation of its duration, its capital stock and the division thereof, the names and residences of its officers and directors, and the place in the State in which its principal office will be located. Such articles of association shall be acknowledged and presented to the State Corporation Commission, who shall issue or refuse the same accordingly, and when the charter shall have been issued the same, with all endorsements printed and the order of the State Commission, shall be certified to the Secretary of the Commonwealth and by him recorded in his office and thereupon returned to the State Corporation Commission to be preserved in its office. No public service corporation shall use or occupy with its works the streets, public or private, or the public grounds of any municipality without the consent of the corporate authorities thereof, and in case any person shall be damaged in his property by such use such company or partnership shall, before using, crossing or occupying such streets or public grounds, make compensation therefor to the person so damaged under the rules regulating the exercise. Vol. 221