age," that is, of exchanging bullion at the treasury for its weight in silver dollars (§ 196), though free coinage of gold was continued. In effect, therefore, gold remained the standard, but the silver dollars circulated freely at their face value. Soon after the Civil War people woke up to the problems of their municipal government. The cities outgrew both their 445. Devel- physical surroundings and their forms of government. Most of them were slovenly; old residential quarters were taken up for business, or went backward into tene(1860-1880) ment districts; railroads ran across or through the streets at grade; pavements were poor; no city was thoroughly cleaned; few had proper sewers or water supply; even a rich

opment of American

cities

city like Philadelphia had surface drainage in many quarters. By 1870 most of the cities had mayors chosen by direct popular election, regular police departments, and many of them paid fire departments and good schools; but not one had a well-organized central government controlling all parts of the city's functions.

Great defects in city government were shown in the systematic plunder of New York city by a gang known as the Tweed Ring (1869 to 1872). "Boss Tweed"

worked through the government of the c y of New York, and by fraudulent contracts stole about $4,000,000. In exposing this nest of robbers Samuel J. Tiiden rendered good service. The ring was broken up, the conspirators scattered, and Tweed was sent to the state prison. What the cities needed was system, economy, and forethought, such as was found among private stock companies.

446. Rise

Savings banks sprang up all over the North, and their deposits increased about sixfold from 1860 to 1880. Life insurance was also developed as a means of saving and of providing for families, and in the same period policy holders of great corporations and amounts invested increased nearly ten times over. (1865-1875) The insurance companies and savings banks were always ready to lend money on good real estate security, and that helped the building of towns and cities. Manufacturing corporations were growing in numbers and in power; and many private firms were changed into stock companies.

Another type of corporation was the great monopoly controlling some large line of business. In 1870 was chartered in Ohio a corporation called the Standard Oil Company, directed principally by John D. Rockefeller, for the purpose of manufacturing illuminating oil out of petroleum. In a few years it became one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the country. It consolidated with other companies; it had special contracts with the railroads, and was soon able to drive most of its rivals out of business; and its property, which in 1870 was about $1,000,000, rose in 1900 to an amount estimated at $500,000,000.

447. Reorganization of transpor

The richest and most important corporations were the railroads. All the eastern roads had state charters, which could give no rights outside the state limits. Hence "parent companies" were formed to lease or operate local lines. Foremost was the Pennsylvania Company, (1860-1880) which now holds at least thirty charters in twelve states. In

tation

this process there was plenty of "stock watering"- that is, issuing of shares to an amount greater than the cost of the property, and then trying to earn dividends on the whole capital.

Up to the Civil War most of the railroads were organized in lengths of a few hundred miles at most. Cornelius Vanderbilt, a steamboat king, bought an interest in several railroads branching out from New York, and in 1869 made a union between the Hudson River Railroad and the New York Central, which gave an all-rail line, under one management, from the wharves of New York to the wharves of Buffalo. The Pennsylvania Railroad, till then running from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, absorbed the Fort Wayne route to Chicago (1869), and the Pan Handle route to Cincinnati and St. Louis; and in 1875 changed its eastern terminus to New York. It also founded an "American Line" of steamers (1873), sailing from Philadelphia to Liverpool.

The great delay and expense of ferry transfers led to the building of great railroad and highway bridges. The first

bridge across the middle Mississippi was built at Rock Island, Illinois, in 1856. Between 1865 and 1880 that river was bridged at a dozen other places, and in 1874 the Eads steel arch railway bridge was constructed at St. Louis. In 1867 a wagon suspension bridge was built across the Ohio from Cincinnati to Covington; and the river was bridged for a railroad at Parkersburg in 1871. The greatest work of this kind was

the suspension bridge from New York to Brooklyn, begun in 1870, and opened for travel in 1883.

Another great improvement was caused by the invention of the Bessemer process for making steel direct from pig iron;

the first American Bessemer works were put up at Cleveland, Ohio, and at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The Bessemer steel furnished cheap and substantial railroad rails; the stronger wheel base made it possible to run heavier cars, carrying loads still heavier, and thus transportation was

cheapened. After 1880 the track gauges of almost all the railroads were made uniform, so that through freight and passenger cars could be more widely used.

New methods of sending intelligence came into use. The Western Union Telegraph Company absorbed a number of small companies, and spread a net of wires and offices over the Union; and in 1866 the first permanently successful Atlantic cable was laid. The mail system also underwent three improvements: delivery of mails by carriers (1863), postal money orders (1864), and mail cars in which clerks sort the mail while en route (1864).

Parallel with the concentration of capital went a combina448. Labor tion of labor. The first important political victory of and strikes labor was the exclusion of the Chinese, of whom the cen(1875-1882) sus of 1880 showed 105,000 in the United States. On the Pacific coast, where they were most numerous, a prejudice