Institutional racism reforms of the spoils system in place since the 1830s, and abuses of the post-war Grant-Jacksonian era; when Congress authorized the president to appoint a Civil Service Commission and prescribe regulations for admission to public service. A dis-satisfied office-seeker assassinated President Garfield in 1881 and Congress was motivated to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883 which firmly established civil service. During reconstruction, this enabled the federal government to provide jobs for newly freed blacks in the south (primarily the Postal Service) where no other employment opportunities existed for them. Since the inception of the merit system in
SS Coptic (1881) Steam Ship Company ("Toyo Kisen Kabushiki Kaisha") of Yokohama, Japan, and renamed Persia Maru. She continued plying the trans-Pacific route through 1922, when she was transferred to the Tokyo–Netherlands East Indies route. She was laid up in Yokohama in December 1924 and her fittings were auctioned off. In 1926, the Oriental Steam Ship Company merged with the Japan Mail Shipping Line (NYK), and after a 44-year career, "Persia Maru" was scrapped in Osaka, Japan, in 1926. SS Coptic (1881) SS "Coptic" was a steamship built in 1881, which was successively owned by the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, the Pacific Mail