Show FOETYEIGHTH CONGRESS SENATE Washington 17The Chair laid before the Senate a memorial from Wm Pitt Kellogg denying all the imputations against him contained in recent documents transmitted to the Senate by the Secretary of the Interior relating to the transfer of the land grant of the Texas Pacific to the Southern Pacific and asking an investigation The Senate went into executive session on the Mexican treaty Bills introduced Van Wyck to secure reasonable rates for the transportation trans-portation of people over railroads aidtd by the government Van Wyck said he recided to introduce the bill as a substitute for one of a similar character Introduced a few days ago The first bill was limited in scope to the Union and Central Pacific the present extends the regulating reg-ulating provisions to all roads in the United States which received government gov-ernment lands When the people gave enormous grants for building their railroad lines to the Pacific it was on the supposition sup-position that there would be natural competition between these lines but the wise purposes of the people and Congress were defeated by the corporations which are ccI partitioning = as they call it or dividing di-viding up between them the great empire stretching across the continent conti-nent as effectually as the partition of Poland was effected McPherson for the issue of circulating circu-lating notes by national banking associations as-sociations At the conclusion of the morning business Garland called up the bill making an appropriation of 605000 as compensation for the seizure by the United States Government in 1861 of the Spanish ferry boat Nuesta Senora De Eegla Passed Executive session doors opened Adjourned HOUSE Washington 18 The House proceeded to the consideration of the calendar The first bill was one amending Section 4887 Revised Statutes BO as to provide pro-vide that when an article has been patented in a foreign country previously pre-viously to obtaining a patent in the United State the patent granted in this country shall not expire until seventeen years from the day of the issue of the foreign patent Speaking of the bill Anderson said Probably threefourths of the monopolies oi the country were fortified behind patents and he wished to have it understood that he was heartily in favor of giving an American inventor inven-tor such a period of time as would give him a full and generous reward for his labor and genius but on the other hand he was in favor of drawing the line between that and the ability given to crystallzs monopolies mono-polies It was a question whether the patent system should not be looked after as well as the altitudinous altitu-dinous tariff system Some years ago patents were taken out on an instrument transmitting telegraph tele-graph messages by the Morse system sys-tem His impression was that investigation in-vestigation would show the ability of the Western Union Telegraph company to wear out their opponents who had rested on the question of the patent on the Morse instrument Rice thought Andersons speech was a big explosion with little powder Cox of New York offered an amendment provid ng that the act shall not apply to any patent in existence ex-istence or to any application now II pending or have the effect of extending ex-tending the time of duration of patents under existing laws Adopted Holman moved to recommit the bill with instructions to report it back with the provision that in any action against an innocent purchaser pur-chaser of an article manufactured i in violation of the right of patentee the measure of damages Should not exceed the cost in the open market of the article BO manufactured Agreed to 91 to 67 The next bill on the calender was one to enable United States courts In case of the improper grant of letters let-ters patent by reason of fraud or misrepresentations to declare a patent void on the application of the AttorneyGeneral Passed I I The bill making nIl public roads and highways post routes passed Adjourned = = = |