Chapter Eighteen 
LUCK TURNS AGAIN 
THE EIGHTEEN-EIGHTIES were a comparatively happy period 
for a majority of the American people. In the seventies the 
country had suffered a terrific chastisement for over-indulg- 
ence during the post-war expansion. ‘The nineties were to 
bring a similar chastening. Between those two depressions 
stretched a succession of unruffled years when the nation dis- 
played its best gifts and its pleasantest graces. ‘The Civil War 
animosities were gradually fading, and even the disgraceful 
abuses of the Reconstruction period were being forgotten. 
In foreign affairs, relations with England were much im- 
proved since payment of the Alabama claims. ‘There was sym- 
pathy for the French because of their defeat in 1870, so that 
their abortive attempt to place a royal family in Mexico dur- 
ing the Civil War was overlooked. A new friendship for Ger- 
many was growing, as more and more American scholars 
were attracted to its universities. America was still dependent 
upon European capital for development of the West, but a 
surprising growth in national wealth was building an inde- 
pendent financial system. The upward surge of American in- 
dustries and Western agriculture was a promise for future 
strength and self-reliance. 
The Field family had grown up. Of the four attractive 
daughters, three married. The oldest, Mary, married a broker 
named Lindley, who joined with the older son, Edward 
Morse Field, to form a brokerage firm that possessed en- 
viable connections with important capitalists. The third 
daughter, Isabella, married into the well-known Judson fam- 
ily; she edited Cyrus Field’s letters and autobiographical notes 
260 
