It shall be the duty of every telegraph or telephone company, incorporated or unincorporated, operating any telephone or telegraph line in this state, to provide sufficient facilities at all its offices for the dispatch of the business of the public, to receive dispatches from and for other telephone or telegraph lines and from or for any individual, and on payment or tender of their usual charges for transmitting and delivering dispatches as established by the rules and regulations of such telephone or telegraph lines, to transmit and deliver the same to designated address and to use due diligence to place said dispatch in the hands of the addressee, by the most direct means available, without material alterations, promptly, and with impartiality and good faith under a penalty of three hundred dollars for every neglect or refusal so to transmit and deliver, to be recovered with costs of suit by civil action by the person or persons or company sending or desiring to send such dispatch; two-thirds of the amount recovered to be retained by the plaintiff and one-third to be paid into the county school fund of the county in which the suit was instituted, and the burden of proof shall be upon the company to show that the wire was engaged as the reason for the delay in transmitting such dispatch.
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