The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-01
LENGTHY DEMURRER
ANSWER FILED BY NEW YORK,
 NEW HAVEN AND HARTFORD.
Gavernment's Action Meets With Stub~ born Deninls of Railroad That at ss Acting in Restraint
 Of Trade.

Boston. July s1.--A demurrer as sweeping as legal phraseo1ogy could make 1t and offering objection to the form and substaRlce of hie petition, was the answer filed today in the united States Circuit CcvFt here by the New York. New Haven and Hartford RasI- road Company as defendant fh the ac- ton brought against it by the United States government.
 As aled. the demurrer Is in three parts. in the first which the New York New Haven and Hartford Railroad ap- pears as a corporation in three States. Tn the second part, the road demurs as having formerly been the Consol- dated Railroad Company, a Connecti- cut corporation. The third part em- braces the demurrer of the Providence Securities Company. The main conten- tion in each part of the demurrer and all threc parts are practically identical in many specifications--is that the petition is uncertain in its statements concerning alleged viola tions of the interstate commerce act.
 This uncertainty is alleged to be shown in that while the petition de- ciares that the holding of the stock of the Boston and Maine Railroad by the New Haven road and the possi- biiity of unified management" ts 8 restraint of trade in general and of interstate commerce in particular. ft fails to show to what extent there exists competition between the respec~ tive railroad systems and to what ex- tnt Q "unified or cooperative manage ment of these systems would create ad- vhntages to the public and an encour- agement and increase to interstate trade"
 It is pointed out that the New Haven road and the Boston and Maine road are. in the main, not parallel, as the petition ayers. but the systems and net works of railroads operating in distinct fields and that they compete with one another only at a few sta- tions, at the most important of which equally or moro effective competition exlsts by the Boston and Albany rail- road or by water"
 This main contention appears first in the demurrer of the New Haven as a tri-state corporation. In another form 1t is presented in that part of the de- murrer where the New Haven appears as formerly the Consolidated Railroad Company. This part has especially to do with the alleged consolidation of electric railways
 The demurrer says that the electric railways described in the governments petition when operating as net works of r-communication in the streets and highways of cities and villages and the suburbs thereof. are engaged in a kind of business substantially diff ferent from that of interstate steam railroads. and that most. at any rate of the electric railways described. arc not engaged in or adapted for inter. state commerce except as auxiliaries of interstate railroad systems.
 The sections of the petition referring to the Providence Securities Company are the subject of a general demurrer similar to that offered by the New Ha- ven Company to other declarations of the petition. Aside from the principal representations of the demurrer the general claim is offered that the gov ernment's petition does not make out a ease as should entitle the petitioner to the relief prayed for against the defendant
 It Is understood that an answer to the governments petition will be filed by the Boston and Maine Railroad within a few days.