The Chief Engineer was also a manufacturer of cable wire, Hewitt reminded Murphy and the others. He himself was a wire dealer, but he did not consider it just that he should become a bidder, and would not, therefore. Bids from any firm, company, or individual interested in the bridge in any way should not be accepted, he said. The Chief Engineer especially should not be allowed to become a bidder. Hewitt said further that if Colonel Roebling was permitted to compete for the contract, he, Hewitt, would resign from the board and have nothing more to do with the bridge. It was quite a little speech. It made an issue of something that had never been considered an issue in all the years since John A. Roebling was first asked to build the bridge and apparently it made a great impression, for when Hewitt offered the following resolution, it was adopted without any further discussion:
Resolved, That bids from any firm or company in which any officer or engineer of the Bridge has an interest will not be received or considered; nor will the successful bidder be allowed to sublet any part of the contract to any such person or company.
There was no specific mention of Roebling or the Roebling company, but just so nobody mistook his intentions, Hewitt later repeated what he had said for the benefit of the press. “I am very strongly opposed to the Roeblings having anything to do with the filling of contracts for the bridge,” he was quoted as saying.
But before the meeting adjourned another man present stood up and asked to be heard. His name was John Riley and he too wanted to say something concerning the Chief Engineer. He said he had understood that Roebling was very ill and unable to attend to his duties, but now he had heard that Roebling’s wife was doing his work for him. Clearly the time had come to give somebody else the job, Riley said. If there were mistakes in the construction of the bridge, the trustees would become liable, and he for one did not intend to be responsible for any such mistakes.
Murphy immediately answered that in the event of Roebling’s death, Martin, Collingwood, or McNulty could take charge of the work (nobody had said anything about Roebling dying) and Kinsella commented that there were no more efficient engineers. That seemed to satisfy Riley and everyone else and the meeting broke up.
That was on September 7, the day after William Tweed, who had disappeared from his house on Madison Avenue nine months before, stepped off a ship at Vigo, Spain, and was immediately arrested. After hiding out in a farmhouse in New Jersey for three months, Tweed had moved to Staten Island and from there went by schooner to Florida, where he lived in the Everglades until he was able to sail for Cuba. In Havana he had booked passage for Spain on a bark called Carmen. On the trip across he had been so seasick that he arrived in Spain weighing a scant 160 pounds. Still, incredibly, the Spanish authorities, with only a Nast caricature to go by, had recognized him. The news of his arrest caused a sensation in New York, about the time Hewitt, the man who had taken Tweed’s place in the running of the Bridge Company, was making news with his latest service in behalf of the great public work. His resolution was widely praised. And even though it was an intensely political season, and the pronouncements of candidates were pretty generally viewed with that in mind, Hewitt was taken at his word. Whether he or any of the other trustees anticipated the reaction in Trenton is impossible to say.
The New York and Brooklyn papers carried Hewitt’s resolution and his remarks about the Roeblings on the morning of September 8. In Trenton, later that same day, Washington Roebling dictated a letter of resignation.
His health, he wrote to Henry Murphy, was such that he could no longer continue as Chief Engineer. His doctors had been urging him to give up for the past two years, but he had not, he said, because his personal direction seemed to be absolutely necessary to the success of the bridge. Now things were different. “All plans down to the smallest detail have been prepared by me for several years to come,” he said; so the work would not suffer any if he were no longer in charge. He had been neglecting his private business. (“I have not been inside our mill for four years,” he added, but then thought better of that and had Emily cross it out.) “My health has been undermined by my faithful attention to these duties [as Chief Engineer] and the extra expenses I have been subjected to during these years have far exceeded the recompense I have received and I therefore feel I have earned a rest.”
Then he got to the heart of the matter. He had taken the full burden of responsibility for the engineering of the bridge, he had given the work his every energy, he had made financial sacrifices, he had endured years of physical suffering, but now his own honesty and integrity, and that of his family, had been questioned publicly and this he would not endure, and particularly at the hands of Abram Hewitt. For Roebling, as he would make abundantly clear in time, in his private correspondence, did not share the conventional view of Abram Hewitt.
Although devotion to the success of the work has been my ambition throughout, it is only by strict adherence to this principle that I have been able to steer clear of the entanglement connected with the general management of the work and maintain the impartial position on which alone an engineer should stand. It is therefore with regret at the close of our pleasant relations I am obliged to resent the gratuitous insult offered to me by the Vice-President of the Board of Trustees…a man whose designs upon the cable wire and ironwork of the superstructure are only too transparent and whose nominal connection with the Board of Management has had from the first no object but his own personal advantage.
According to Emily Roebling’s letter book the letter ended there. But a day or so later, still in a rage, Roebling wrote to the Brooklyn Eagle, explaining a little further what he meant by Hewitt’s “nominal connection.” Hewitt, Roebling charged, could resign his place as trustee anytime so as to evade his own resolution. The bridge itself meant nothing to Hewitt. But the letter never appeared in the Eagle. Either Roebling decided not to send it or Thomas Kinsella decided not to publish it.
Murphy did not keep Roebling waiting long for an answer. He said he could not accept Roebling’s resignation, only the trustees could do that at their next meeting. In the meantime, he urged Roebling to reconsider, assuring him that his services were vital, and that Hewitt was motivated by only the noblest intentions. Roebling was anything but pacified by this. Still hurt and angry, he was even more outspoken in his reply.
I was publicly and specifically singled out by name by Mr. Hewitt, as if I had spent my whole life in concocting a specification which I alone could fill or as if I were a thief trying to rob the bridge in some underhanded manner and against whom every precaution should be taken. Coming from such a source this is an insult I cannot overlook and I am compelled to resent it by declining to remain in a position where I am at any moment liable to a repetition of such acts on his part.
In light of later events, however, the most interesting part of the letter, none of which was ever made public, was this single sentence:
As you seem to be deeply impressed with Mr. Hewitt’s action in declining to become a competitor for this wire, I desire to say that his magnanimity is all a show, as the firm of Cooper and Hewitt have no facilities whatever for making the steel wire, and if you receive a bid from a Mr. Haigh of South Brooklyn, it will be well for you to investigate a little.
What Henry Murphy thought of this is not known and there is nothing in the record to indicate that he followed up Roebling’s suggestion. So presumably Murphy either knew more than he was ever willing to admit or he figured Roebling’s accusations to be those of a man under a great deal of strain. Roebling and Hewitt had long been rivals in business after all and the Roebling brothers were all known to be staunch partisan Republicans just like their father.
How much Murphy knew about Haigh’s business reputation one can only guess. It is possible that he and the other trustees had no suspicions about the man, but it is not very likely, for J. Lloyd Haigh had certainly not gone unnoticed during his time in Brooklyn.
Haigh had arrived in town some twenty years before. He took up residence o
n Columbia Heights, joined Plymouth Church, and commenced his social life as “a single gentleman.” He was quite suave and handsome apparently, a fine vocalist and considered “a great catch.” At Plymouth Church he “not only became an enthusiastic attendant, but was noted for his intense admiration for the pretty girls of the Bible class. His captivating manners and his personal attractions made him a welcome guest in many households, and his triumphs in winning hearts soon assured as great a success in that direction as his subsequent career in his business operations.” In a short time he was courting the daughter of a prominent Willow Street family. An engagement was announced and the fashionable part of Brooklyn was “agog with the gossip of the approaching nuptials,” until the father of the bride-to-be did a little checking into Haigh and found the man already had a wife and two children living “in rural retirement.” The wife was brought to Brooklyn to confront Haigh and the whole affair was hushed up as quickly as possible by the Willow Street family.
Haigh, however, waited only long enough for the rumors to die down before setting off on another round of courtship, devoting his attentions this time to a young lady who lived only a few blocks from Willow Street, and again presenting himself as a bachelor. Again he was found out and again he became a suitor, on Henry Street this time, only now he was saying he had obtained a divorce. There was a wedding shortly, with Haigh’s first wife again in Brooklyn claiming he was still her husband. Eventually there was a third wife and some question whether there had ever been a second divorce.
That there was a single Brooklyn man on the Board of Trustees who had not heard something of all this seems very doubtful. It is also doubtful that none of them knew, as Roebling did, that in the wire business Haigh was considered little better than a crook.
When the trustees met a month later, there was no talk of Roebling resigning. No business at all was taken up since the turnout was not enough for a quorum. The crisis had passed apparently, the rift had been patched up some way or other. Perhaps Roebling’s assistants persuaded him to change his mind, or his brothers did, or Emily, or all of them together. Or perhaps he himself, with time to think things over, decided he had come too far, sacrificed too much, to quit over injured pride, that there was another honorable alternative, and that in truth the bridge really could not be built without him. Perhaps he was just incapable of giving up.
Whatever his reasons, he made two decisive moves in quick succession that October, both of which were taken as sure signs of his renewed determination to stay with the bridge.
About the middle of the month he left Trenton for New York. He was still in a very bad way, physically and emotionally. His condition, in fact, was so precarious that he was unable to make the trip by train, his nervous state being such that he could not endure that much speed or vibration or the crowds of people. So it was arranged for him to go the whole way by canalboat and tug, instead, and as he came up the bay and into the East River, he saw the bridge for the first time in three years.
It looked to him, he is reported to have said, exactly as he expected it would. The carrier rope was up by then, as well as the first of the cradle ropes. A newspaper item from about this time was clipped out and saved by Emily Roebling:
There is something colossal in the look of the East River piers as they show in the morning sunlight; the ropes already connecting the two piers seem like slender threads, and as the vessels pass and repass under them some idea may be formed of what may be the effect when the graceful upper wire structure is completed, with the roadway crowded with passengers and vehicles of all descriptions and the high-masted clippers and coasting traders passing underneath.
He and Emily moved in with her brother, General Warren, and his wife, who were then living on West 50th Street. The intention, it seems, was to stay there just temporarily, before completing the return to the house on the Heights.
Then, only a short time later, Roebling notified Henry Murphy that he had sold his stock in John A. Roebling’s Sons, three hundred shares, worth $300,000, thereby eliminating any possible conflict of interest. “Please acknowledge receipt of this letter,” he wrote, “and oblige me by making the above fact known to the Board of Trustees of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge at their next meeting.” This Murphy did, on November 6. According to the requirements of the Hewitt amendment, the Roebling company, the major wire manufacturer in the world, and the only one Roebling had total confidence in, could now stay in the bidding.
But the question of the Chief Engineer’s health had not been resolved in the view of several trustees, including General Lloyd Aspinwall of New York, a most piously civic-minded figure, who urged that “some competent engineer be associated with him [Roebling] at once, in order to protect the future interests of the public.”
Murphy replied that Roebling was greatly improved and able to see his assistants on a regular basis now that he was living in New York. Stranahan, too, rose to Roebling’s defense. But Aspinwall wanted a consultant just the same. There was a good deal more discussion, with much emphasis on the idea that nothing personal was intended toward Roebling, and in the end it was agreed that a committee be formed to select suitable candidates for the job.
Abram Hewitt did not attend this session, nor would he appear again for some time. The little Congressman had much else on his mind. The elections were over, and while he himself had won handily enough, there was some question about who had been elected President. Tilden, as the official returns later showed, had a plurality of more than a quarter of a million votes and was the rightful winner, but at that point the outcome in three southern states—South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana—was still undetermined, and if they were to go for Hayes, then Hayes would have the electoral votes needed to win—which was what the Republicans were claiming. Hewitt, still the moving spirit of the Tilden camp, was doing all he could to rescue his man, writing speeches, sending prominent citizens off to the disputed states to see that a fair count was made (Grant, meanwhile, was sending his own set of “visiting statesmen”), and rallying his fellow Democrats to “boldly denounce all…fraudulent contrivances for the destruction of self-government.” But in the year of the centennial of American democracy, the Presidency was about to be stolen by the Republicans, who were quicker and more efficient with their bribes than the other party. Hayes would win in the Electoral College by a majority of one. But it would be March before that happened, and until then Hewitt was spending most of his time in Washington. How he felt about Roebling’s recent moves he did not say.
In the meantime there was work to be done and Roebling applied himself to it.
Still in confinement in New York, he was kept constantly informed by his assistants as the footbridge cables and the second cradle cable went up and he himself kept after Murphy not to let things slide while waiting for a decision on the wire contract. A whole force of men had to be trained for spinning the cables, he explained. It was work in which all would be novices, which would be immensely difficult at best and seem terribly dangerous to anyone not accustomed to it. Men would have to be taught the crucial techniques of regulating the deflection of individual strands. Others would have to be taught to oil and splice the wire. He would need good men to operate the various machinery to be used. “Our previous bridges,” he said, “always came near enough together so that many of the old and experienced hands were to be found to initiate the new ones, but they are entirely wanting for this work.”
Only a small amount of wire ordered now would be enough for the men to work with and would make a great difference he said. So Murphy ordered thirty tons of wire—ten tons each from John A. Roebling’s Sons and two other firms, one of which was J. Lloyd Haigh of South Brooklyn.
Roebling sent off a steady stream of dispatches to his assistants—to specify how he wanted the oil kettles housed, to say that a sample ferrule joint sent over for his inspection looked a little short, to explain the differences in working with iron and steel wire (steel wire may crack, he warned). In a l
ong letter to Murphy and Stranahan on the matter of a consultant, he expressed himself with customary bluntness. Any consultant would either be his superior, in which case he would resign, or his equal, in which case he would resign, or his inferior, in which case the man ought to take his place in the ranks. It was understandable that Aspinwall and some of the other New York trustees were concerned lest he die before the bridge was built. But there were things they ought to understand: “Man is after all a very finite being in his capacities and powers of doing actual work,” Roebling wrote, “but when it comes to planning, one mind can in a few hours think out enough work to keep a thousand men employed for years…. Continuing to work has been with me a matter of pride and honor! You must however trust me in so far that the moment I am unable to do full justice to my duties as chief engineer, I shall give you ample warning…” He really did not want to be troubled by any more talk of consultants.
To better familiarize himself with what the Europeans were doing with steel, he had begun learning Danish and Swedish. He sent Ferdinand lengthy, highly technical instructions on steel-wire extrusion, and in one such letter, commenting on the deficiency of a Roebling product already in service, there appears what may possibly be a touch of his old humor: “Everybody is getting afraid of the carrier rope, so many wires are breaking in it and when they break they make such a noise you can hear it all over. It hangs right over the Trustees’ office and if it breaks it might kill a dozen of them.”
Sealed bids for the cable wire were to be received at the bridge offices in Brooklyn up until the first of December. In the meantime, on Pier 29, beside the New York tower, wire samples sent with each bid were being tested on various machines in the presence of the bidders or their agents, all of whom thus far had expressed total satisfaction with the procedure.
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