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 THE CIVTL WAR OF i8pi 331 vaccination offices, fire departments, etc. The police received a subsidy of §471,900. In the year 1888, -there was set aside for all these purposes the sum of $1,196,- 1.40. In December, 1887, there were 1,096 kilometers of government railroad in operation, and 1,369 kilometers projected for the following year at a cost of nearly seventeen millions of dollars (^3,517,000). Private companies operated 1,558 kilometers. Yet despite these lavish expenditures for public im- provements of all kinds, the government made an ex- cellent showing in its annual budgets and firmly main- tained the credit of the state. In 1889, the revenue collected by the government amounted to §50, 183,938; expenses, $46,135,501 ; foreign debt, $39,748,000; home debt, $23,834,484. On the first of January of the year 1889, the government had an available fund of savings of about $25,000,000. This, following upon a costly war with Peru, was indeed a flattering showing. In the years 1889 and 1890, there were abolitions of certain duties, such as the import duties on machines and tools for agriculturists, for mining, for different trades and industries. New railroads were contracted for at an estimated cost of $4,000,000; new buildings for elementary and normal schools were erected in all parts of the country ; a new line of steamers to run between Valparaiso and Panama was subsidized, the monopoly so long held by the Pacific Steam Naviga- tion Company being thus subjected to competition. These vast material and intellectual improvements, which not even the ravages of the cholera scourge of 1887 and 1888, could retard, were not brought about without unceasing debates with the conservatives, who saw the money go into railroads and schoolhouses, which, they argued, should be used to pay national