resentative of the deceased, for the benefit of the surviving
widow or husband and children of the employee, if there be
such persons, to the exclusion of the other beneficiaries named
therein. 34 In other words, under the federal statute, if there
be persons of the first class mentioned therein, all the persons
of the second and third class are excluded, and no cause of ac-
tion is given for their benefit for any damages which may have
resulted to them on account of the death of the employee. 85

Thus where a brakeman, who received fatal injuries from
being thrown from the top of a car en route to another state,
left a wife and child surviving, his dependent mother had no
right of action against the railroad company, the right of action
in such case being controlled by the federal act which gives a
right of action to the parents for the wrongful death of an em-
ployee only when he leaves no wife or child surviving. 86 And
in another case, in which the parties attempted to proceed in
accordance with the state law and sued in their individual ca-
pacities, the Supreme Court of the United States, holding that
the employee was engaged in interstate commerce at the time of
his injury and that the action should have been brought by the
personal representative in accordance with the federal act, said:

"Two of the plaintiffs, the father and mother, in whose favor •
there was a separate recovery, are not even beneficiaries under
the iederal statute, there being a surviving widow ; and she was
not entitled to recover in her own name, but only through the
deceased's personal representative, as is shown by the terms of
the statute and the decisions before cited. ,,8T

Dependency and Pecuniary Expectation of Beneficia-
ries. — As a matter of mere grammatical construction, there can

34. Existence of beneficiaries in one class as excluding other
classes. — St. Louis, etc., R. Co. v. Geer (Tex. Civ. App.), 149 S. W.
