the traveling public. In England, with the limited distances, it had been possible to extend the time Standard of Greenwich Observatory over the whole island time without causing great inconvenience. In France the time of Paris had been made the standard time, but in the United States with a range of fifty degrees in longitude, meaning a difference in true time of some three hours between the oceans, no single standard could be adopted. Every railroad followed its own preference in adjusting its time-tables, and in cities like Pittsburgh, Chicago, and St. Louis, where large numbers of railroads converged, each with its own system, the traveler needed to have his wits about him when he handled the railroad guides. A standard time convention held in the spring of 1883 found some fifty-six standards of time in use in the United States. Later in the year the owners of nearly eighty thousand miles of railroad agreed to the adoption of four zones, each uniformly operating on a single standard. On November 18, 1883, standard time came into existence.

With the continental railroads built, the transportation plant of the United States was substantially complete, and although its mileage continued to grow, the future growth was one of detail and improvement of local service. The rapidity with which the continental roads were thrust across the plains and the mountains to the Pacific, following the trails of the overland emigrants and searching out the mining camps of the Western Territories, brought an unexpected strain upon both the General Land Office and the Post-Office Department, with the result that the latter broke down and became the victim of a notorious scandal in 1881, while the Land Office needed a thorough overhauling by the successor of Arthur.

The task of the Postmaster-General to deliver the mails was susceptible of routine administration in those parts of the country where the population was thickly spread in permanent residences. The mail service to the frontier was the most expensive and the most difficult to administer, but the mail routes followed the wagon-roads of the farmers

with considerable success. In the mining region of the Far West there was no such certainty. At best the mines were hundreds of miles away from the larger centers of settled life. The transitory character of the mining camp made it possible for a city of ten thousand inhabitants to appear within a single month and to disappear as rapidly. The mining communities demanded a mail service sufficiently elastic to keep up with their shiftings from place to place, and Congress recognized this need by providing special treatment for the Western mail routes.

The practice of the Post-Office Department was to divide all mail routes into two classes, according as the pouches were carried by train or boat, or by some other conveyance. The latter group, indicated on the Post-Office's lists by stars, were known as the "star routes" and included those services rendered by wagon, stagecoach, or mail rider.

The longest and most important of the star routes served the remote settlements in the Western plains and mountains. They were subject to the sudden and unexpected demands of a shifting population that became more insistent as the population of the plains increased and as the advancing railroads encouraged wider settlement. The ordinary mail routes were advertised and let at fixed prices to the contractors who operated them, but in the case of the star routes the law permitted a readjustment of compensation without readvertising the route in case a need should arise for increased service or greater expedition. The Second Assistant Postmaster-General, whose duty it was to adjust the mail service to the fluctuating demands upon it, became in 1881 a central figure in the star-route frauds.

For several years before 1881 Congress was irritated by the fact that the financial needs of the star routes could not Star-route be anticipated, and that the office was being frauds operated without reference to available funds, but in reliance upon deficiency appropriations. In the postoffice hearings testimony was taken to show the uncertainties of the service and the impossibility of reducing it to schedule. The star routes were investigated in 1878 and

shown to be in an unsatisfactory condition, partly because of the financial irresponsibility of the frontier mail contractors. Washington became conscious of a group of consistent bidders for the star routes, among whom the most prominent were Stephen W. Dorsey and various of his relatives. Dorsey was a former Senator from Arkansas and as secretary of the Republican National Committee managed Garfield's campaign in 1880.

Thomas J. Brady, in charge of the star routes as Second Assistant Postmaster-General, was under suspicion of mismanagement and extravagance in 1880, and resigned his office under pressure from the President in April, 1881, while the Senate was deadlocked over the New York Custom-House appointment. The charge against Brady, as rumor popularly stated it, was that he had acted in collusion with a ring of political star-route contractors, of which Dorsey was the chief; that the favored contractors had put in fictitious bids for the star routes and had secured the contracts because their bids were below the actual cost of the service to any honest contractor; that upon receiving the contracts they had by collusion and fraud produced evidence in favor of accelerating the mails or increasing the service over their routes, and that Brady had criminally raised the compensation to an unreasonable amount. In 134 routes originally awarded at $143,169, the compensation was thus raised to $622,808. After raising the compensation the favored contractors sublet the routes and divided the proceeds among themselves. It was charged that they had also contributed generously to the Republican campaign funds. "It is difficult to believe," said the Stalwart Chicago Inter-Ocean, "that he [Brady] was not in league with a set of unscrupulous contractors to defraud the Government."

Brady resigned under pressure, denying his guilt, and Washington gossip was informed that he would never be prosecuted because Garfield was himself in- The Hubvolved and because Brady possessed letters that bell letter would involve others in his downfall. A few days after his

retirement, a letter written by Garfield while a candidate, to the chairman of the Republican campaign committee, was given to the press, and it was threatened that more would follow. The Hubbell letter was written in a dark moment of the campaign, when party funds were low, and there was doubt as to whether the Stalwarts would support the ticket. "My dear Hubbell," wrote Garfield from Mentor, August 23, 1880, "Yours of the 19th instant is received. Please say to Brady that I hope he will give us all the assistance possible. I think he can help effectively. Please tell me how the departments are doing." The murder of Garfield before the trial of Brady prevented further revelations if indeed there were any to be made, but Attorney-General MacVeagh proceeded to prepare the cases, employing in the work Benjamin Harrison Brewster, whom Arthur selected to succeed him as Attorney-General. The trial and conviction of Guiteau was dragging out its fifty-three days of unseemly court-room conduct when the first of the starroute cases came to trial in Washington and was dismissed on technical grounds. One of the accused, M. C. Rerdell, a former private secretary of Dorsey, had already confessed his guilt and filed affidavits showing the nature of the fraud. A Washington grand jury indicted Dorsey and Brady and several others in February, 1882, and suits against indi

Acquittal of Dorsey and Brady

vidual contractors were brought locally throughout the country. The trial took place in the summer with Robert Ingersoll defending the accused, two of whom, minor accomplices, were found guilty. The conviction was set aside by the court and a new trial was arranged for the summer of 1883, Dorsey meanwhile publishing a long public statement of his innocence on December 1, 1882, as well as numerous letters tending to show his political intimacy with General Garfield. He resigned as secretary of the Republican National Committee in January, 1883, and was finally acquitted in June in spite of the testimony of Rerdell. None of the principals of the star-route frauds was ever convicted, but the testimony throws a strong light upon the conditions

prevailing in the Far West in the last days of the old frontier, and upon the character of the civil service that President Hayes had tried in vain to reform.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The best works on the continental railroads are L. H. Haney, A Congressional History of Railroads, 1850–1887 (1910), E. V. Smalley, Northern Pacific Railroad (1883), J. P. Davis, The Union Pacific Railway (1894), and C. F. Carter, When Railroads Were New (1909). Further data on the Northern Pacific may be found in E. P. Oberholtzer, Jay Cooke (1907), and Henry Villard, Memoirs (1904). For the Canadian Pacific, see Beckles Willson, The Life of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal (1915), and Walter Vaughan, The Life and Work of Sir William Van Horne (1920); for the Great Northern, see Joseph G. Pyle, The Life of James J. Hill (1917). The subject is specially treated in the monograph, F. L. Paxson, "The Pacific Railroads and the Disappearance of the Frontier," in the American Historical Association, Annual Report, 1907. The trend of falling prices after 1879 may be studied in T. E. Burton and G. S. Selden, A Century of Prices (1919). The history of the star routes must still be dug out from the newspaper reports of the trials and the congressional investigations.