Material Interests
the first Pacific railroad. On the day named the two roads which for several years had been pushed, the one from the Mississippi Valley westward, the other from the Pacific coast eastward, met at Promontory Point, and the last spike was driven “with a silver hammer and a golden nail.” The line was 1,914 miles long from Omaha to San Francisco, and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts were thus connected by a highway of steel and steam. There followed other comparable undertakings. It was in 1869 that the government began the gigantic work of removing the dangerous obstructions at Hell Gate in New York Harbor, and in the following year it committed itself to the project of a trans-Isthmian canal at Darien or Panama.
The year 1870 saw all the southern states fully restored to participation in the national government, with the political rights of most of the former Confederates also restored while the enfranchisement of the negro race was emphasized by the election of some of its members to both Houses of Congress. Many of the stamp taxes and other domestic imposts of war times were abolished or reduced, and there were also substantial reductions of the tariff on imports, particularly on tea, coffee, sugar, and other articles of popular use. The army was reduced to a peace footing of only 30,000 men.
One of the greatest administrative reforms in the history of the government was begun in March, 1871 in the establishment of the merit system in the civil service. More than forty years before the Democratic party, under Andrew Jackson, had established the spoils system under which there was a “clean sweep” at every change of administration and loyalty and useful-
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