In 1883 the Brooklyn Bridge across East River was completed and ready for jumping purposes. It was regarded as a great engineering success at the time, but it is now admitted that it is not high enough. A person jumping from it is not always killed.
The same year the Civil Service Bill became a law. It provides that competitive examinations shall be made of certain applicants for office, whereby mail-carriers must prove that they know how to teach school, and guards in United States penitentiaries are required to describe how to navigate a ship.
Possibly recent improvements have been made by which the curriculum is more fitted to the crime, but in the early operations of the law the janitor of a jail had to know what length shadow would be cast by a pole 18 feet 6¼ inches high on the third day of July at 11 o'clock 30 min. and 20 sec. standing on a knoll 35 feet 8⅛ inches high, provided 8 men in 9 days can erect such a pole working 8 hours per day.
In 1883 letter postage was reduced from three cents to two cents per half-ounce, and in 1885 to two cents per ounce.
In 1884 Alaska was organized as a Territory, and after digging the snow out of Sitka, so that the governor should not take cold in his system, it was made the seat of government.
