David McCullough Library E-book Box Set

by David McCullough

  Furthermore, in the back of everyone’s mind were two very recent sensational tragedies. On the night of December 5, the Brooklyn Theater, built by William Kingsley’s construction company and owned by his partner, Abner Keeney, had caught fire and 295 people had lost their lives, many of them because the balcony had collapsed. It was the worst disaster in the city’s history. Then on the night of December 29, one of the worst railroad disasters of the nineteenth century occurred when a bridge failed at Ashtabula, Ohio. The bridge was just eleven years old, a wrought-iron truss over a seventy-five-foot gorge. When a train pulled by two locomotives started across it in the middle of a snowstorm, the center span gave way. It was thought that the metal had failed somehow. Eighty lives were lost.

  The newspapers were angrily crying for an explanation. Harper’s Weekly in its latest issue asked:

  Was it improperly constructed? Was the iron of inferior quality? After eleven years of service, had it suddenly lost its strength?…Was the bridge, when made, the best of its kind, or the cheapest of its kind?

  The chief engineer of the railroad, a man named Charles Collins, who had had nothing to do with the design of the bridge, but had examined it frequently and conscientiously, tendered his resignation, then committed suicide.

  The Ashtabula bridge had not been cheaply built and the iron had not suddenly lost its strength in some mysterious fashion. As subsequent investigations would show, the bridge probably went down because the derailed wheels of several cars ripped the bridge floor, causing a violent pull of a kind the truss had not been built to withstand. But the idea of bad (cheap) metal failing had been planted in the public mind. *

  After Hewitt’s letter was read the bids were reviewed still one more time, at the request of “Honest John” Kelly, Comptroller of the City of New York, who had replaced Tweed as the head of Tammany Hall. General Aspinwall said the history of crucible steel was too well known to need further consideration. The whole matter resolved itself, he said, into the question of whether they would put into the cables of the bridge a wire made from steel, the strength of which might be in doubt, as was the case with Bessemer steel, or use crucible steel, about which there could be no doubts whatever. Emphatically he was in favor of using crucible steel and nothing else.

  Mayor Ely of New York said this was the most important question put before the trustees in the entire history of the bridge and he personally wanted more time to familiarize himself with the subject. He therefore moved for adjournment. But Stranahan said now was the time to discuss the issue, while there were so many of them present, and the meeting continued.

  At about that point a trustee named William Marshall, who was a wealthy cordage manufacturer and one of Brooklyn’s most prominent citizens, recalled a conversation he had once had with John A. Roebling, during which Roebling talked about a testing strain for the wire that was half what his son had specified. So it did not seem to Marshall that anyone ought to get very worried about the standards called for in the specifications. The important thing, he said, was to buy wire that came up to standards. Thomas Kinsella, who had kept very quiet so far, said he thought no undue weight should be attached to the informal remarks of the elder Roebling. Kinsella did not think the lowest-price steel would be the cheapest. “It was the duty of the trustees to do for the bridge, as they would do for themselves,” he said. He was not interested in any special kind of steel, he wished them to understand. However, he did have an interest and pride in his own city and said he had a natural wish that the contract might come there. (There were two Brooklyn firms in the bidding, J. Lloyd Haigh and the Chrome Steel Company, but the Chrome Steel bid worked out to more than $200,000 higher than the Haigh bid and so was, for all intents and purposes, quite out of the running.) He would vote, Kinsella said, for using crucible steel.

  Henry Murphy read some extracts from engineering papers, extolling the superiority of steel made by the Bessemer process. Then there was a long discussion about what crucible steel was or was not, how Roebling’s earlier specifications called for crucible steel and why that was. William Marshall reminded everyone that the change had been made at Hewitt’s urging. “Mr. Hewitt was something of an expert and ought to know something about steel,” Marshall said. The problem seemed to be that Hewitt could be quoted to substantiate either side of the argument.

  Comptroller Kelly said he wanted the bids for Bessemer steel referred back to the Executive Committee, Kelly wanted the other manufacturers to have the chance to bid on the lower quality of steel (as though they had not in the first place) and he moved the Executive Committee open up the bids again. Aspinwall seconded the idea. The motion carried and that might have ended things for the time being had Kinsella not said that they ought to test the prevailing mood of the meeting on the question of which kind of steel to use. He would offer a motion, he said, to make the contract with the lowest bidder for crucible steel.

  Kelly said he hoped the resolution would not pass. Aspinwall said he did not want to be trapped into committing himself. Kinsella answered that he had no desire to trap anybody. The only object was to call a test vote. Stranahan said the motion, if carried, would pledge them to use crucible steel.

  The vote was taken and the motion lost, 8 to 7, with four abstaining. After a few further comments, the meeting broke up. By that time it was nearing five in the afternoon. But then the Executive Committee met, privately, and instead of reopening the bids as directed by the board, the contract was immediately awarded to J. Lloyd Haigh.

  There is no way of knowing what happened, since everything said in the meeting was kept secret. All Murphy said later in a letter to the board was that the committee’s decision had been the direct result of Kinsella’s test vote. “They [the committee] regard that vote, although wanting one of a majority, still as decisive against the use of Bessemer steel; for in so important a matter as the main cables, it would, in their opinion, be unwise to adopt a material which is distrusted by any considerable portion of the trustees. The question of cost is an important one, but it is subordinate to that of safety, and the difference of expense between the two is comparatively too small to permit such difference to prevent unanimity and entire confidence.” (The difference between the Haigh bid and that of the Roeblings for Bessemer steel came to $132,600.) The official record of the committee meeting states there were seven men present—Murphy, Stranahan, Slocum, Van Schaick, Motley, Marshall, and Kingsley.

  How close was the vote? Who voted which way? The record provides no answers.

  Since its meeting of December 23, the committee had done a complete about-face. But because everything was done in private, the public, to whom the bridge supposedly belonged, would never know anything about that. Four days later, on Monday, January 15, another special meeting of the board was called. Murphy announced that J. Lloyd Haigh would post $50,000, or about 10 per cent of the contract, as surety, and he read a letter in which Haigh promised to supply crucible steel of the same quality as his samples. Then a resolution giving Haigh the contract was adopted by a vote of 16 to 1, the one dissenting vote being cast by William Marshall.

  So the wire in the bridge would not be Roebling wire. It would be made in Brooklyn by the one man Roebling had specifically warned Murphy not to trust.

  The news was warmly received in Brooklyn. Thomas Kinsella called the decision “most satisfactory” and said it was a “matter for congratulation” that a Brooklyn manufacturer had won out over the leading wiremakers of America and Europe (he did not specify which he meant). The resolution of this whole wire controversy was a great triumph the Eagle contended. “It is, we suppose, admitted on all hands that the cables which are to sustain the bridge structure are the most important features of this great undertaking. These failing, all fails.”

  The Union wrote that the bridge trustees had honored themselves and said, “We shall try to forget as soon as possible that they were ever brought to discuss so absurd a proposition as the use of Bessemer steel.” The impression left w
as that a catastrophic blunder had been narrowly averted. Someone had not known what he was doing and that someone had to be Roebling. The Union wanted prompt action taken.

  …They.. They [the trustees] can help us and the public to forget this by taking the next most necessary step in their great undertaking, the selection at once of a suitable and eminent consulting engineer. We know the exceeding delicacy of this point. No one, and not we, certainly, desires to be unconcerned or lacking in sympathy with the physical troubles and disabilities of the present Chief Engineer…But we must deal with things as they are; the subject is too important for sentiment, and the bridge needs the live attention of a man in his best powers. It is almost such a case as that where General Winfield Scott used to sit in lethargy over the early business of the war, when the great rebellion at its outbreak found him with his great powers masked and half useless by the infirmities of age. It seemed to be unkind and treasonable to say of this old hero, and in his presence, that the duties of the Commander-in-Chief must be done by someone who could take the field, endure the hardship, and live in the saddle…. So now the great bridge enterprise needs an active consulting engineer, bringing to his duties the best qualities of natural fitness and training, with physical powers equal to every emergency. It is loading a great and difficult undertaking to an unnecessary strain, this carrying with it its disabled chief engineer, and keeping down its discussions to the atmosphere and the hush of his sick room…

  There had been no comment from Roebling since the wire decision was announced, nor any from either of his brothers in Trenton. But a few days later, the following letter appeared in the Eagle. It was signed “Tripod.” Quite possibly it was written by Washington Roebling.

  My attention has been called to an article in the Union, relating to the appointment of a consulting engineer for the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. I know not what power behind the throne dictates the spirit of this, and similar articles, though I am forced to the conclusion that there is one as there was in the case of Mr. Hill, who professed to expose inaccuracies in the specifications for the wire, a matter by the way, in which he has finally failed…

  The Union calls for a consulting engineer who will “endure great hardship” and practically “live in the saddle.” If the writer understood whereof he wrote, he never would have used those expressions in that connection.

  Consulting engineers seldom seat themselves in any other saddle than a cushioned office chair, or expose themselves to any greater hardships than a few hours’ quiet office chat, per day, and the labor of signing a monthly receipt for their salary.

  The hardships of a campaign usually fall on the subordinate officers, as they have in the construction of the Bridge, since the illness of Colonel Roebling commenced. If Colonel Roebling had thrown more of the details of the work on his subordinates, in its earlier stages, he would not now be taunted by the Union, with breathing the air of a sick room, nor insulted by comparison with a superannuated general of armies.

  Neither would the present Assistant Engineers, who under the immediate direction of the “invalid,” have successfully brought this great work thus far on its way toward completion, with unsurpassed skill, fidelity and endurance, be told that they were of no account, and that they must give way to a consulting engineer whose “natural fitness, training and endurance” qualify him to lead “in the saddle.”

  Will the Union kindly tell me where such a one is to be found? Can it point to any living engineer outside of the “sick room” who has had sufficient training in this specialty of suspension bridge work to guarantee to the trustees and the taxpayers that he could do the work as well as the “invalid” assisted by those who may be said to have grown up with the work, under Colonel Roebling’s own eye, who are familiar with his plans, and devoted to their success?

  …The fact is, there is no better talent in the country in this specialty than is now engaged in the construction of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. It is ample for all its needs, present and to come. And if chronic grumblers and those who have private “axes to grind” would let the work alone, they might wake up some morning and find it completed, and be ready to take part in the opening ceremonies.

  If the letter was indeed from Roebling, then it is the one and only time his feelings ever appeared in print. But by then there were people in Brooklyn talking about more than just a consulting engineer. The move had begun to get rid of Roebling entirely. On January 18 another editorial appeared in the Union.

  THE CHIEF ENGINEER

  It has become the deepest of mysteries in the Board of Bridge Trustees, too solemn for the keenest reporter to penetrate, and far too solemn for gossip, where the chief engineer is, and what is his condition. For aught any public act or appearance of his may indicate, he may have been dead or buried for six months. He is surrounded by clouds impenetrable…. We declare the great East River Bridge in peril, because it has no head, because its wires of control run into somebody’s closely guarded sickroom, because it is certain that a sick depressed tone runs through all its engineering discussions, from this cause…. The sooner we have a live, active chief engineer in full powers on the bridge work, the better the public of two cities will be pleased with the prospect.

  When Henry Murphy read this, he must have figured, knowing Roebling’s sensitivity to such charges, that another letter of resignation would be in his hands the next day. But no such letter arrived and there would be no more talk of resignation from Roebling. He had decided he would stay with the job, and fight for it, if need be.

  Some time in 1877, when things had quieted down a bit, Washington Roebling made some extraordinary private notes in his letter book.

  The whole maneuver to take the wire contract away from the Roeblings and give it to J. Lloyd Haigh had been the work of Abram Hewitt, he said, just as he had warned Murphy. Haigh, a known scoundrel, was in fact Hewitt’s man. Hewitt, Roebling noted, held a mortgage on Haigh’s wireworks and he had made a deal with Haigh not to foreclose so long as Haigh turned over 10 per cent of what he made from the bridge contract. When his first attempt at exempting the Roeblings from the bidding had failed (because Roebling sold his stock), Hewitt had then manufactured the crucible steel issue. Roebling never said Albert Hill was working for Hewitt or for Haigh, but that would seem to be the case and what is implied by “the power behind the throne” reference in the letter signed “Tripod.” Hill did not interest Roebling much, but Hewitt did: “In laying this plan, he [Hewitt] well took the calibre of the men in the board, for when a demagogue wants to effect an object he always raises the cup of public virtue—and under cover of the smoke he raises, slips in himself. It is on such low and crafty tricks that the honor of a Hewitt rests,” wrote the engineer.

  Roebling never bothered to speculate in his notes on why Kinsella turned on him and worked so hard in Haigh’s behalf. Maybe the editor was sincerely convinced crucible steel was the superior product. He also very much favored the idea of the contract going to a Brooklyn firm, as he said. But there is a further point to consider. No paper in the East had so strongly supported Samuel Tilden for President that fall as had the Brooklyn Eagle. Kinsella’s efforts in behalf of Abram Hewitt’s candidate had been extremely helpful and much valued by Abram Hewitt. And that January of 1877, with Tilden very likely about to become President, the times were ripe with possibilities for a brilliant, politically ambitious and cooperative editor.

  19

  The Gigantic Spinning Machine

  I never saw better days for bridge work.

  —C. C. Martin

  THERE was now one continuous path from Brooklyn to New York. The temporary footbridge, finished in early February 1877, was a sort of hanging catwalk strung from city to city, draped above the river at an elevation sixty feet higher than the actual roadway would be. Farrington had been in charge of the work and it was carried out with the greatest dispatch, even during days of extremely cold weather. No sooner was the footbridge in operation than the newspapers s
ent reporters to make the crossing, which a few of them managed to do, with Farrington going along each time as an escort. His own men were never bothered by great heights, he was quoted as saying. “No sir, no man can be a bridgebuilder who must educate his nerves. It must be a constitutional gift. He cannot when 200 feet in the air, use his brain to keep his hand steady. He needs it all to make his delicate and difficult work secure. They must plant their feet by instinct…and be able to look sheer down hundreds of feet without a muscle trembling. It is a rare thing for a man to lose his life in our business for loss of nerve.”

  But few of Farrington’s first visitors were so constituted. One reporter described proceeding along, step by step, nearly frozen with terror, as though his feet were fixed to the slat floor by Peter Cooper’s glue, as he put it. Another wrote, “The undulating of the bridge caused by the wind, which was blowing a gale, the gradually increasing distance between the apparently frail support and the ground, the houses beneath bristling all over with chimneys, looking small enough to impale a falling man, the necessity of holding securely to the handrail, to prevent being blown off, produced sensations in the reporter’s head—and stomach—never experienced before. In vain he glanced furtively into his companion’s face to detect any signs of flinching on his part. Stolidly the master mechanic kept on, and the reporter fancied once that he caught a backward glance of enjoyment at his discomposure.”

  The customary visitor’s entrance to the footbridge was from the top of the Brooklyn anchorage. Beside the short flight of steps leading up to the footbridge, a big sign had been posted.