The Supreme Court of the United ■States has said:

In an earlier case, involving the construction of an act of the Legislature of Colorado of the same nature as the interstate commerce act, the same high authority spoke as follows:

Again, it has been said by an eminent jurist:

Again, the same jurist has said:

These statutes, as said by the Supreme Court, should be reasonably construed6, so as to promote their objects, and it is manifest that a construction which allows any deviation whatever from said standard would seriously impair the efficiency of said statutes, if not render them nugatory, and is therefore wholly inadmissible. A rate, to be uniform in its operation, must necessarily be expressed in dollars or cents, and when so expressed, as is the case with the rate here involved, the mode of payment is an essential part of the rate. To so interpret the law as to allow the carrier to disregard said mode, and to accept a part only of its compensation in money and the balance in a commodity, or by way of compromising a claim, would invite and open wide a door to the very discriminations which the statutes were designed to suppress. In order to exclude such an interpretation of the, law, section 1 of the Elkins Act (Act Feb. 19, 1903, c. 708, 32 Stat. 847 [U. S. Comp. St. Supp. 1907, p. 880]) forbids in terms any concession by a carrier in respect of the transportation of property whereby such property “by any device whatever” is transported at a less rate than named in the legal tariff, and expressly declares that any departure from the legal tariff, or any offer to depart therefrom, “shall be deemed to be an offense under this section of this act,” so that the construction of said act which I have just declared is clearly required by the letter as well as the spirit- of the law.

I hold that the acceptance by the defendant of a less sum of money than that named in its tariff for the transportation of the property described in the indictment, if there has been such acceptance, was a departure from the legal rate, and that it is no justification for such a departure, nor is it any defense to a prosecution therefor, that the acts of the carrier were done in compromise of claims for loss of property in transit.

Plaintiff’s motion will be allowed.