The improvement of the rivers and harbors of the country has always been a ready means of disposing of any embarrassing surplus and of assisting Congressmen to get money into their districts. "Promoters of all sorts of schemes, beggars for the widening of rivulets, the deepening of rills" clustered about the treasury during the eighties. During the early seventies expenditure on this account had not reached $6,500,000 annually, although in 1879 it exceeded $8,000,000. In 1882, the year of the mammoth surplus, Congress passed over Arthur's veto a bill carrying appropriations which amounted to almost nineteen million dollars.[2] Expenditures were somewhat reduced in the years immediately following, and Cleveland continued the repressive policy of his predecessor. Harrison in his first message to Congress in December, 1889, recommended appropriations for river and harbor improvement, although deprecating the prosecution of works not of public advantage. The recommendation fell upon willing ears and appropriations for undertakings of this sort at once increased again. Expenditure for rivers and harbors, like that for pensions, remained at a high level, the wise and necessary portions of such measures being relied upon to carry the unwise and unnecessary ones. A project which lacked many of the unpleasant features of river and harbor legislation was the Blair educational bill, which proposed to distribute a considerable portion of the surplus among the states. As discussion of the Blair bill proceeded, it became clear that its results might be more far-reaching than had been anticipated. A gift from the national government seemed sure to retard local efforts at raising school funds and would initiate a vicious tendency to rely on federal bounty. Hence although the Senate passed the bill in 1884, 1886 and 1888, it never commended itself sufficiently to the House and eventually was dropped. A small portion of the increased expenditure in the eighties was due to improvements in the navy, in which both parties shared. Presidents Arthur and Cleveland urged upon Congress the need of modern defences. Progress was slow and difficult. Although the day of steel ships had come, the American navy was composed of wooden relics of earlier days. The manufacture of armor and of large guns had to be developed, and skill and experience accumulated. Results began to appear in the late eighties when the number of modern steel war vessels increased from three to twenty-two in four years. Expenditures mounted from less than $14,000,000 in 1880 to over $22,000,000 in 1890.