Speech #480072903

I propose to go back of the engineer estimates and look at this thing as a continental proposition. I ptopose to say to the Mississippi River gentlemen and to the Eastern gentlemen that the Missouri River both now and in the near future is entitled to a larger appropriation than is here proposed. and I do not care a solitary hair on the head of a baboon what the engineers say about it. Your immigration in the next decade and in subsequent decades will be along the foothills of the Rocky Mountain range. It will be right through the territory drained by the Missouri and its tributaries. and it is only wise. it is only looking a little bit ahead to prepare now for the accommodation of the population and the commerce which must speedily be upon that slope. And I wish to see such facilities for commerce furnished as will forestall and control by competition the inexorable. iron. selfish. monopolistic power of the railroads. [Here the hammer fell.J