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LEGISLATIVE PROCEEDINGS
HOUSE -TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY
Carson, February 8, 1864
This bill appears - to a man up a tree to be a bill of sale of Nevada Territory to the California State Telegraph Company. They never print this kind of bills - wherefore I shall have to copy it myself for you. It flashed through the House under a suspension of the rules, before you could wink, they tell me. It provides that Mr. Watson (his other name is the California State Telegraph Company) shall have the exclusive right to connect Star, Unionville, Austin, Virginia, Gold Hill, Carson, etc., etc., with Sacramento and San Francisco, and nobody else shall be permitted to do likewise, for five years after this line is completed, and with a liberal length of time allowed Mr. Watson in which to get ready to begin to commence completing it. To have all the telegraph lines in the hands of one Company, makes it a little binding on newspapers and other people. - MARK.]
[reprinted in Mark Twain of the Enterprise, edited by Henry Nash Smith, (Univ. of California Press, 1957), pp. 153.]
