the first water tower and the addition to the west side school came in this period. With limited means for fighting fires, there were devastating losses, often with little or no insurance. There were business failures, and when the revenue collector defaulted in 1873 his bondsmen, W. R. Bigham and S. T. Rogers continued for eleven years to make repayments. The contractor for the Eagle Block building failed to finish his contract which cost the promoters an added $30,000 to complete the buildings.
On July 4, 1876, the nation's centennial day, Dr. D. W. Lamme made the address and in an effort to be reassuring he presented the volume of revenue taken in by the railroad offices of El Paso for the year 1875:
Ticket sales of the Illinois Central, $10,165.15
Ticket sales of the T. P. & W. R. R., 12,737.10
Freight received by the I. C. R. R., 17487 tons, 30,937.45
Freight forwarded by the I. C. R. R., 7434 tons, 28,521.05
Freight received by the T. P. & W. R. R., 10590 tons, 25,737.99
Freight forwarded by the T. P. & W. R. R., 25390 tons, 34,066.00
In 1877-78 riots spread over the whole country and business became very unsettled. One of the El Paso combination grocery and dry goods stores became greatly overstocked and failed. An increased amount of legal procedures was the cause for four new lawyers arriving. At one time five lawyers in one family were practicing here, Mr. Robert T. Cassell, his sons Joseph J. and Martin H. Cassell, and two sons-in-law, John T. Harper and Walter S. Gibson.
The times grew worse. Almost $70,000 invested in the two large flour mills and the barrel factory proved a loss; in 1882 bank deposits declined $50,000, a large sum for those days, and in 1883 the bank failed, adding disaster to the approaching national panic of 1884. Four lawyers counseled and worked to restore financial order. Judge A. M. Cavan who practiced almost continuously in El Paso from 1867 to 1907 witnessed these upheavals, which included the Romeo Lewis land case in 1889 and the Ransom-Bullock murder case. Judge Walter S. Gibson, practicing from 1873 to 1892, Robert T. Cassell from 1874 to after 1887, and Walter Bennett from 1877 to 1892 won much of their esteem for their good counsel during these very trying years.
Since the days of readjustment and better times, the requirements of the legal profession have grown. Today there are several kinds of tax laws, including corporate, income, inheritance, gift, excise and state. There are municipal laws, school laws, banking laws, interstate laws, nor to mention the classifications of criminal and civil law cases. A pre-law college course and a law course successfully passed is a prerequisite to taking the bar examination in any state, since the law is now complex beyond anything our early lawyers knew. This has led to specialists in the various law cases as it has in the other professions.
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