Bisbee daily review., 1906-10-04
BENTON FIRST ADVOCATED GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP.


 Thomas H. Benton, who served six
 terms in the United States senate
 from Missouri and wrote 'Benton's
 thirty years in the United States sen. ate" was the first man to advocate
 government ownership of the rail
 roads. In a speech delivered in a
 railroad convention held in St. Louis
 in 1S49 he proposed that the national
 government should build and own a
 railroad from the Mississippi river to
 the Pacific ocean. Following is an
 extract from Benton's speech on that
 occasion:
 We live in extraordinary times and
 are called upon to elevate ourselves
 to the grandeur of the occasion. Three
 and half centuries ago the great Co
 lumbus, the man who afterwards was
 carried home in chains from the new
 world which he discovered, this great
 Columbus. in the year 1492, departed
 from Europe to arrive in the east by
 going to the west. IL was a sublime
 conception, he was in the line of sue
 cess when the intervention of two
 continents, not dreamed of before, stopped his progress. Now in the Nineteenth Century mechanical gen jus enables his great design to be full filled. In the beginning and in bar barous ages, the sea was a barrier to the intercourse of nations. It sepa- rated nations. Mechanical genius in vented the ship, which converted the barrier into facility. Then land and continents became an obstruction. The two Americas intervening have pre- vented Europe and Asia from com rhunicating on a straight line. For three centuries and half this obstacle has frustrated the grand design of Columbus
 Now, in our day, mechanical genius has. triumphed over the obstacles of nature and converted into a facility what had so long been an impossible
 estacle. The steam car has worsea
 ipon the land among enlightened Mz.-
 .cns to degree far transcending t1- which the ship in barbarous ages worked upon the ocean. The land has now become a facility for the most distant communication. con- veyance being invented which ami hilaSad hotb tiroa aud eDoca VIZ. bnld the intervening land; we hold the ob- stacle which stopped Columbus; we are in the line between Europe and Asia; we have it ir our power to re- move that obstacle; to convert it into a facility to carry nIm on to this land of promise and of hope with a rapidity to all ocean navigation. A king and queen started him upon this grand en- terprise. It lies in the hands of re- public to complete it. It is in our hands, in the hands of us, the people of the United States. of the first half ,f the Nineteenth Century. Let us raise ourselves up. Let us rise to the grandeur of the occasion Let us complete the grand design of Colum- ,us by putting Europe and Asia into communication, and that to our ad- | through the heart of our | country. Let us give to his ships a | continued course unknown to all form l 1T times. Let us make an iron road l nd make it from sea to sea, states | nd individuals making it east of the | and the nation making. it | vest
 ''Let us now in this convention rise | ,bove everything sectional, personal, | ocal Let us beseech the national | egislature to build a great road upon | he great national line which unites Europe. and Asia. the line which will | ind on cur continent the bay of San Francisco on one end, St. Louis in the | middle. and the great national metrop- lis and emporium at the other, and which shall be adorned with it's crown ng honor the colossal statue of the ;reat Columbus, whose design it ac- newn from a granite peak f the Rocky Mountains. the mountain Lself the pe6estai. and the statue . a, of tie mountain, pointing with utsiretched arm to the western hori- or, and saying to the flying passen CTS: There is East; there is Indla."