Another of the reasons for the slow progress made up to 1865 was the scarcity of labor. The surrounding territory had no surplus workmen and the East had not as yet grasped the idea that the road was actually under construction. With the disbandment of the armies, both North and South after the war, this situation was changed for the better. Large numbers of the ex-soldiers drifted West and were glad to find steady work at remunerative wages with the construction forces. The Secretary of the Interior in his annual report for 1866 stated that out of fifteen hundred laborers employed on the Pacific Railways, three hundred were negroes and performed their duties faithfully and well, and he recommended legislation looking to the employment of more of the surplus freedmen on the same work. Among the officials,--engineers and bosses,--there were many who were ex-officers in the army. Thus the Chief Engineer had been a General, the Consulting Engineer, a Colonel, the head of the track-laying force, a General. This can best be explained by quoting from a paper on trans-continental railroads read by General Dodge, before the Society of the Army of the Tennessee at Toledo, Ohio, September, 1888. "The work was military in character and one is not surprised to find among the superintendents and others in charge, a liberal sprinkling of military titles. Surveying parties were always accompanied by a detachment of soldiers as a protection against Indians. The construction trains were amply supplied with rifles and other arms and it was boasted that a gang of track-layers could be transmuted into a battalion of infantry at any moment. Over half of the men had shouldered muskets in many a battle." The same facts are brought out by the following extract from a newspaper of that day.