L. & N. R. R. Co. v. Commonwealth. station where there was none prior to the enactment of the law, nor to maintain one before established if unnecessary to the transaction of their business. We take it that if a railroad company chooses not to maintain a telegraph office at any one of its stations where one is now carried on, it may dispense with same altogether, and there is nothing in the statute to keep it from doing so, and if it is within the power of the company to dispense entirely with the telegraph office at any station (as we think it is), does it not follow that the company may dispense entirely with the maintenance or operation of such telegraph office at regular periods during any portion of a day of twenty-four hours when it deems it proper to do so?" the court in effect holding that because "it was evidently not the purpose of the Legislature to impose additional burdens in the maintenance of telegraph offices, it was only during the intervals that the telegraph office was regularly maintained by the company for its own purpose that it was a telegraph office within the meaning of the statute." Our statute requires the ticket office to be open for the sale of tickets thirty minutes before the departure of passenger trains from a regular passenger depot. This means a depot regularly maintained and used by the company as a passenger depot at the time that the train regularly stops thee, and it is only when the railroad company regularly uses the passenger depot as such that the statute applies. It was not intended and does not have the effect of requiring in any and all cases the opening of ticket offices at depots during intervals when they are not regularly used as such. It is a rule that penal statutes are given a strict construc L. & N. R. R. Co. v. Commonwealth. tion in favor of persons against whom they operate, and this rule is not violated by adopting that sense which best harmonizes with the object and intent of the Legislature when the entire text of a statute is considered as a whole (State v. Ind. R. R. Co., 133 Ind., 69). The statute in question is simply a reasonable requirement as to the regulation of the regular existing agencies of the company and such similar agencies as may hereafter come into existence, and was not intended to impose upon railroad companies of this State the burden of creating a new and distinct lot of facilities regardless of the necessity or the cost thereof. In this case appellant had never maintained a night office in Williamsburg for the sale of tickets; there is no pretense that it ever charged passengers getting on these night trains more than ticket rates, and we do not think appellant was required to open its depot for the trains in question. The second question raised by the appeal is one of practice. As our conclusions on the first question disposes of the appeal, it is not absolutely necessary that the second question should be passed upon, but in view of the importance of the question and the desirability that it should be finally determined, we will consider it. The Criminal Code makes no provision for the joinder of separate offenses in the same penal action in suits for the recovery of fines or forfeitures, and section 11 of the Criminal Code provides that proceedings in actions of this character are regulated by the Code of Practice in civil cases. Subsection 3 of section 113 of the Civil Code provides that if there be more than one cause of action, each must be distinctly stated in L. & N. R. R. Co. v. Commonwealth. a separate numbered paragraph. It is made the duty of the court to enforce this provision, and we think the court properly required appellee to paragraph its petition, as there is no question that appellee sought in this action to recover the penalty in one paragraph for four hundred separate, and distinct offenses, each of which could be, and was, properly required to be set up in a separate paragraph, and for recovery under each the Commonwealth could have maintained its action in any court of competent jurisdiction. Section 83 of the Civil Code sets out the causes of action which may be united, but actions for the recovery of penalties for the violations of penal statutes are not included in the list. It, therefore, follows that they can not be united in one suit. Section 1093 of the Kentucky Statutes provides that justices shall have jurisdiction, exclusive of circuit courts, in all penal actions the punishment of which is limited to a fine of not exceeding $20, and as the offenses embraced in this suit are all cases in which the punishment is limited to a fine of not exceeding $20 the circuit court had no jurisdiction. thereof, and the motion of defendant to require the plaintiff to elect which of the causes of action it would prosecute should have been sustained. Counsel for the State, in support of their contention that the offenses could be united in one action so as to give the circuit court jurisdiction, rely upon the case of the L. & N. R. R. Co. v. Commonwealth, 92 Ky., 117. It is true that in that case the court sustained a petition in which it was alleged that the railroad company had employed thirty persons, whose names were unknown, to work for it on Sunday, and L. & N. R. R. Co. v. Commonwealth. it was thus, as it is contended, allowing separate offenses. to be recovered for in one action. No motion was made in that case in the lower court to require the petition to be paragraphed, and, not having been objected to there, of course the question could not have been raised in this court. It is also true that the petition was demurred to, but the fact that distinct offenses are not set out in separate paragraphs is not a cause of demurrer, but of motion to paragraph (Williams v. Langford, 15 B. M., 566, and Milligan v. Milligan, 16 Ky. Law Rep., 609); and an objection to a pleading because not properly paragraphed is waived by answering. (Noel v. Hudson 13 B. M., 205.) But it seems to us that the facts of that case are so entirely unlike those of this that it affords no satisfactory guide. There the act complained of was the working of thirty men on Sunday by the same party at the same time and under the same circumstances. It was in fact, so far as defendant was concerned, but one act, and whilst the working of a single man on Sunday would have sustained the action, plaintiff had the right to allege all of them in the sameparagraph, and if it failed to prove that as many as thirty men had worked, and yet proved enough to show a good cause of action, it would have been entitled to recover under the count (Newman on Pleading, 410, and Brewer v. Temple, 15 Howell, 286), whilst here the acts complained of were entirely distinct and independent of each other. It is not the policy of the law, or was it the intention of the Legislature, to oust magistrates' courts of their exclusive jurisdiction in cases which the fine is limited to not exceed ing $20 by allowing a joinder of numberless separate of Jernigan v. City of Madisonville, etc. fenses in one action. Public interest requires that violators of penal statutes of this character should be proceeded against as soon as the violations are committed in courts having jurisdiction thereof. We are, therefore, of the opinion that the facts relied on here make out a good defense, and the judgment of the lower court must be reversed and judgment rendered herein for the appellant dismissing petition. 1. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW-CITIES AND TOWNS-ASSIGNMENT TO CLASS. -Under the provisions of section 156 of the Kentucky Constitution the power and duty of assigning towns to the different classes, and changing such assignments, is conferred alone upon the legislature; and any attempt upon the part of the legislature to delegate such power to the courts or any other tribunal is void. C. J. WADDLE FOR APPELLANT. GORDON & GORDON FOR APPELLEES. (Case argued orally.) JUDGE GUFFY DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT. It appears from this record that the circuit court of Hopkins county entered an order and judgment transferring the city of Madisonville from cities of the fifth class to cities of the fourth class, and afterwards the appellant instituted this action in the Hopkins circuit court against the said city, H. H. Holman, mayor, and other officers thereof, seeking to en |