Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/742

 ■W. TT. TELBGBAPH 00. V. V. V. BT. 00. 785 �bompetent judges. It îs also proper to look to the conse- quences which would flow from a dissolution of the injunc- tion. It is made perfectly plain, both by the answer of tha defendants, and by what they have done and what they pro- pose to do, that if this injunction ia dissolved, and anothet injunction which eovers the telegraph alpng the Une of the Union Pacific Eailroad from Omaha to Ogden, that the West- ern Union Telegraph Compaûy,— which now and for 12 or 15 years past has been working a continuons line, and the only line, between the Atlantic coast and the Pacific coast, and- especially between the Missouri river and San Francisco,— will be at once deprived of the power to work any such line at ail until it shallbe enabled to construct a new line at least 600 miles in length. �This corporation has corne to be one whose property is of immense value — a value almost unknown to any one. The shares of its stock are scattered ail through the country, and now are, and long have been, the most profitable shares of any corporation now in existence. It has done the business; of almost the entire country for many years past west of the AUeghany mountains — aU the business west of the Missouri river. To suspend this business by the act of a single party, to permit the raUroad company, both at Omaha and Kansas City, to eut off the connections of these wires with the Union Pacific Eailroad Company east of those points, and to turn those wires into that of a rival company, is to produce an amouut of financial ruin hard to be appreoiated. Telegraph lines and telegraph business, like the good-will of a news- paper and hôtel, have a character so different from ordinary Personal property, or ordinary real eatate, that when we corne to deal with injuries to it we must look at it in a different light from what we do the injuries to those classes of prop- erty. �The total suspension of its business for the period of time neoessary to construct a line from Omaha or Kansas City to Ogden would produce an irreparable injury, within the mean- ing of that term, as nsed in equity proceedings. It would be an iujury to that company by no means commensurate with ����