22 rmnnnn. nmronrna.
namely, the transportation and delivery of parcels with certainty and
celerity on the one hand, and the furnishing the means and conven-
iences for so doing on the other. ,
And it is not apparent on what ground the defendant can reason-
ably refuse this facility, unless it desires to impede rather than pro-
mote the plaintiffs business, which is contrary to its duty and obli-
gations as a common-carrier. While the plaintiff was the only com-
pany doing business on the defendant’s routes, it was furnished this s
facility as a matter of course. It was mutually profitable. Under
* the circumstances, the defendant could furnish it much cheaper than
the plaintiff could supply it. That it was the proper and convenient
- thing to do, seems then not to have been questioned. But when a
rival corporation enters this field to compete with the plaintiff in the
express business, the defendant withdraws this facility from the lat-
ter, and extends it to the former. The only reasonable explanation
of this conduct is that the defendant intends to favor the one com-
· , pany, which is in fact itself or its near ally in interest, and hinder
the other in the conduct of its business. The same may be said of
the services of the conductors on the narrow guage road; Presum-
ably the business thereon is so light that it is a burdensome expense
to send a special messenger over the road with the express matter,
while the duties of the conductor are so inconsiderable that he can
attend to it as well as not. T
The injunction requires the defendant to furnish the plaintiff with .
the express facilities that it was allowed at and before the filing of
the bill; and this facility, as we have seen, was one of them. If,
however, the defendant or its manager thought that this was such a
facility or convenience as it ought not, under the circumstances, to
be required to furnish, and would not if the court’s attention was
specially called to the matter, he should have applied for a modifi-
cation of the injunction in this respect, and not have undertaken to
disregard it, with a viewof testing the matter or ot. wise. The
merit or propriety of the injunction is not open to consideration
in this proceeding, It is the duty of all the parties to obey the in-
junction until it is set aside or modified. Craig v. Fisher, 2 Sawy.
345. As it is, the respondents are clearly guilty of a violation of the
injunction, and are liable to be punished as for a contempt, regard-
less of the question whether this service is one which the defendant
ought to furnish the plaintiff as an "express facility" or not. But
even if the defendant had never furnished the plaintiff with this
facility, and even if · it is not, under the circumstances or otherwise,
an absolute express facility, yet the defendant has by its conduct, so
far made it one that it is bound, both by the terms of the injunction
and its duty and obligation as a common carrier, to furnish it to the
plaintiff. Having voluntarily furnished the Northern Pacific with
this convenience in the transaction of its business, it cannot refuse it
to Wells,-Fargo dz Oo. In giving this convenience to the one com-