Title 47, Telegraphs, Telephones, and RadiotelegraphsRelease 119-102
§9 Subsidized Companies Required to Construct and Operate Lines
Title 47 › CHAPTER 1 — TELEGRAPHS › § 9
Summary
Companies that got U.S. land, bonds, or loan credit to build railroads or telegraph lines must use their own officers and employees to build, keep up, and run telegraph lines. They must run those lines for railroad, government, business, and other uses, and personally carry out the telegraph rights and duties given by those grants.
Full Legal Text
Title 47, §9
Telegraphs, Telephones, and Radiotelegraphs, Source: USLM XML via OLRC
All railroad and telegraph companies to which the United States has granted any subsidy in lands or bonds or loan of credit for the construction of either railroad or telegraph lines, which, by the acts incorporating them, or by any act amendatory or supplementary thereto, are required to construct, maintain, or operate telegraph lines, and all companies engaged in operating said railroad or telegraph lines shall, by and through their own respective corporate officers and employees, maintain, and operate, for railroad, governmental, commercial, and all other purposes, telegraph lines, and exercise by themselves alone all the telegraph franchises conferred upon them and obligations assumed by them under the acts making the grants as aforesaid.
Reference
Citations & Metadata
Citation
47 U.S.C. § 9
Title 47, Telegraphs, Telephones, and Radiotelegraphs
Last Updated
Aug 21, 2026
Release point: 119-102