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Show M In Fifty Years T HE Oregonian of Oct. 30th, in its "Half a Century Ago" column, has a dispatch of the. H 21st from San Francisco announcing that H the great overland telegraph had been completed H from Omaha to Salt Lake City and that men H were vigorously pushing the building of the line H from Rugby (Ruby) valley to Salt Lake and it H was hoped that the through line would' be com- H pleted within a week. Hi It had another dispatch from Yreka, Cal., an- H, nouncing the completion of the Northern line, the H' previous day and saying that it was working 0. Ml K. to St. Louis. H Those announcements bring back vividly the H memories of the old days, when there was no H telegraphic communication between the east and H the "west, and the mails only came semi-monthly; H how the coming of the telegraph took away much H of the sense of isolation from the hearts of men H and renewed the hope that sometime a railroad H would find its way over the mighty waste. H Think what that waste was, and the change Ht that has come to it in half a century! There is K nothing like it in all the records of the past. The H railroad came eight years later and then the con- W quest of the desert began in earnest. Except for K the demonitization of silver, much more would 11 have been done; the nation would have been H quite a billion of dollars richer, the mighty panic H of 1893 and 1907 would have been avoided, and H the awful depression from 1892 to 1897, and the H- other awful depression from 1907 to the present H would never have been known; but as it Is, an H area greater than two or three European empires H have been reclaimed, and covered with homes; H the savage has been subdued, the frown of the H desert driven away and now, when on the na- H tion's birthday comes around and the anthem of H praise is raised where the surf thunders against M the cliffs of Maine, it is taken up and borne H westward, "following the sun and keeping com- B pany with the hours" until it blends with the H boom of the deep sea beyond the Golden Gate. |