Opinion of the Court. merged, could, without the consent of Congress, invest a state corporation with exclusive telegraphic privileges on the line of the roads it then owned or thereafter acquired. The United States was not bound to look to the Western Union Telegraph Company for the discharge of the duties the per formance of which, in consideration of the aid received from the Government, the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and other named companies, undertook to discharge for the benefit of the United States and of the public. No agreement with the telegraph company, to which the assent of the Government was not given, could take from the railroad company its right at any time to itself maintain and operate the telegraph line required by the act of 1862 for the use of the Government and of the public, nor impair the power of Congress to require the performance by the railroad company itself of the duties imposed by that act. As to the object of the provisions of the agreement of 1881, the Circuit Court, speaking by Mr. Justice Brewer, properly said: "They mean that the telegraphic business and the telegraphic franchise, in the sense. we have defined it, should be exercised by the Western Union Telegraph Company, and that no other company, railway or telegraph, should touch it. The purpose was a purpose disclosed by every section and line of the contract that the public and commercial use of the telegraph wires should belong to the Western Union Company, leaving to the railroad company only so much of the telegraph wires as was necessary for its own business." Again: "So it is that the lessons of experience support and establish the construction placed upon the contract of 1881, to the effect that the telegraphic franchise, as a franchise of independent, public, and commercial transportation, was intended to be and was transferred by the railway company to the Western Union Company, leaving only to the former so much use of telegraph wire as would facilitate and further its own railroad business." That the purpose of the agreement of 1881 was to transfér to the Western Union Telegraph Company the telegraphic franchises granted by the United States, was asserted by that company in a bill filed by it (a copy of which is made a part Opinion of the Court. of the present record) to prevent the Union Pacific Railway Company from complying with the mandate of the act of August 7, 1888. In that bill it was claimed that the parties stipulated in the contract of 1881 that the telegraph company "might render to the Government and to the public such telegraph service as by the law of its creation it was bound to perform." And the telegraph company stated, in the same bill, that it had come about under that agreement, and through the growth of the railroad business, that the railroad company had “no wires on which it can do a general telegraph business, all those devoted to its railroad business being overburdened therewith." Again, in the same bill: "The said wires used by the defendant in the operation of its road are not equal to its necessities in that behalf, and it is impossible for it to do any business for the public or other companies on said wires without seriously interfering with and impeding the operation of its engines, cars, and trains, and if it undertake to do so it will be under the necessity of using your orator's five wires, or some of them. Upon your orator's said wires is carried on almost the entire transcontinental business of the Union; nor can your orator submit to any interference therewith by the defendant or any other party without seriously impeding and disarranging that business to its great loss and the public inconvenience." In addition to this, it may be stated that the telegraph superintendent of the railway company testified in this case that it would not be practicable to operate the wires used by the railroad company "for general commercial business without seriously interfering with the railroad business, and the railroad company's wires would be inadequate to carry any additional business." This inquiry need not be further extended, except to observe that there would be no occasion to make the Western Union Telegraph Company a defendant in this suit, and it would not have any standing in court to complain of the act of August 7, 1888, if it did not claim that the construction, or the maintenance and operation by the railway company, through its own employés, of a distinct telegraph line on the route of its road, for the use of the Government and of the public, was in violation of the contract it had made with the railroad company. Opinion of the Court. + The fundamental question, therefore, is whether such a contract was permitted by the acts of Congress defining the obligations of railroad companies that had accepted the bounty of the Government. For the reasons we have given in the discussion of other parts of this case, we answer this + question in the negative. Such a contract is not authorized by the fourth section of the Idaho act, or by the like section (19th) of the act of 1862. The "arrangements" authorized by those acts were not such as to admit of a contract that would disable the railroad company from entering upon the construction and maintenance itself of a telegraph line for the accommodation of the Government and of the public, or that would prevent the United States from requiring the railroad company to maintain and operate a telegraph line to be entirely controlled by itself, and which would be wholly independent of any telegraph line operated by corporations created under the laws of a State. And we may add what has been said in reference to the prior agreements of 1866, 1869, and 1871, namely, that no railroad company, operating a post road of the United States, over which interstate commerce is carried on, can, consistently with the act of July 24, 1866, bind itself, by agreement, to exclude from its roadway any telegraph company, incorporated under the laws of a State, which accepts the provisions of that act, and desires to use such roadway for its line in such manner as will not interfere with the ordinary travel thereon. On behalf of the telegraph company it is contended that it was beyond the power of Congress to so legislate as "to impair the contracts, first, that between the United States and the several companies mentioned in the act of 1862; and, second, those between the railway company and this defendant." We perceive no ground on which this contention can properly rest. It has already been fully examined. As we have seen, Congress in the act of 1862 expressly reserved the power not only to alter, amend, or repeal that act, but to add to its provisions. To what has already been said as to the power of Congress, under this reserved power, we may add, that the object of such reservation is to enable the legislative VOL. CLX-4 + Opinion of the Court. department to protect the public interests, and "to preserve to the State control over its contract with the corporators, which without that provision would be irrepealable and protected from any measure affecting its obligation.", Tomlinson v. Jessup, 15 Wall. 454, 457, 458. Another contention of the telegraph company is that for any failure or refusal by the railway company to comply with sections one and two of the act of August 7, 1888, the remedy of the United States is an action at law by mandamus, and that equity is without jurisdiction to enforce a compliance with those sections. It cannot be doubted that the Government could lawfully proceed by mandamus against the railway company for the purpose simply of compelling it to perform any duty imposed by its charter or by statute. But that remedy would not afford the United States the full relief to which it is entitled. Here are agreements between the railway company and the telegraph company that are wholly inconsistent with the present claims of the Government. Until cancelled because inconsistent with the act of 1888, and prejudicial to the rights of the Government and the public - by a decree to which the telegraph company is a party, those agreements constitute an obstacle in the way of the enforcement of that act, and the protection of those rights. In a mandamus proceeding by the Government against the railway company, the telegraph company could not properly be made a defendant, and no judgment in mandamus, as between the United States and the railway company, would conclude the rights of the telegraph company. The United States is certainly entitled to the interposition of equity for the cancellation of the agreements under which the telegraph company asserts rights inconsistent with the act of 1862 and the acts amendatory thereof, as well as with the act of 1888. Jurisdiction in equity being acquired for that purpose, the court, in order to avoid a multiplicity of suits, can proceed to a decree that will settle all matters in dispute between the United States, the railway company, and the telegraph company which relate to the general subject of telegraphic communication between the Opinion of the Court. points named by Congress. Consequently a decree cancelling the agreements of 1866, 1869, 1871, and 1881, by reason of their being in the way of the full performance by the railway company of the duties imposed by the act of 1888, may also require the railway company to obey the directions of Con+ gress as given in the last named act. Indeed, in a proceeding by mandamus instituted against the railway company alone, it might be objected that a court of competent jurisdiction, in a suit brought by the telegraph company against the railroad company, had enjoined the latter, as between it and the telegraph company, from disregarding the agreement of 1881. Atlantic & Pacific Tel. Co. v. Union Pacific Railway, 1 McCrary, 541; Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Union Pacific Railway, 3 Fed. Rep. 423; Same v. Same, 3 Fed. Rep. 721. It is true that the United States, with leave of court, might have intervened in that suit. But it was not bound to do so. It was entitled to institute its own suit, and bring before the court both companies, to the end that its rights might be declared and enforced by a comprehensive, decree against both defendants. In Boyce v. Grundy, 3 Pet. 210, 215, this court said: "It is not enough that there is a remedy at law; it must be plain and adequate, or, in other words, as practical and efficient to the ends of justice and its prompt administration as the remedy in equity." The circumstances of each case must determine the application of the rule. Watson v. Sutherland, 5 Wall. 74, 79. In Oelrichs v. Spain, 15 Wall. 211, 228, an objection was raised that the remedy at law was ample. The court, observing that the remedy at law was not as effectual as in equity, said, among other things, that a "direct proceeding in equity will save time, expense, and a multiplicity of suits, and settle finally the rights of all concerned in one litigation." The final order in a proceeding by mandamus against the railway company would not conclude the rights of the telegraph company. Nor would a suit in equity by the telegraph company against the railway company conclude the rights of the United States. But a suit in equity by the United States against both companies for the purpose of an |