Her services as his “amanuensis,” as he called her, were enormously important, as he said later. She kept all his records, answered much of his mail, delivered various messages or requests to the bridge offices, went to the bridge itself to check on things for him, and was his representative at occasional social functions. She was quite literally his eyes, his legs, his good right arm. And the more she did, the more the gossips talked.
Half a dozen New York and Brooklyn papers were delivered to the big brick house regularly each day. For Roebling they were still the only access to the world beyond the bridge and his own four walls. They still had to be read aloud to him. His eyes were greatly improved, but he had trouble reading for more than a few minutes at a time. So the two of them would sit together in the room on the second floor that was his office, sickroom, command post, where the days dragged by, one by one, ever so slowly for him, and where week by week, month by month, year after year, as he talked, she saw the bridge take form and grow on paper just as clearly as its progress could be seen from the window.
A day rarely passed during that winter of 1878-79 when the newspapers did not carry something about the bridge, and after she had finished reading them to him, she would clip out whatever there was on the bridge and paste the articles in a big scrapbook, just as neatly and methodically as her brother had done with items on his campaigns all through the war.
But the clippings must have seemed the top of the iceberg only, knowing what they did, feeling as they did about certain people. Never during this time was anything written about the anguish of their years in that room. No journalist or magazine writer was permitted to interview them there. Nor did either of them write anything about the experience, beyond the briefest, most factual statements. There would be no soul-baring memoirs. Their privacy was total and strictly enforced.
Only in the letter books that have survived are there any chinks in the wall of privacy they built about themselves—brief, sudden bursts of emotion sandwiched in with page upon page of technical detail—and even these are frequently illegible, her penciled lines having become badly smeared after so many years. The frustration, the sharp, bitter indignation, the rage expressed are always his, however. What she felt, what she said or did to keep him in balance, to be ballast for them both, can only be guessed at.
His worst time since leaving Trenton had come in the spring of 1879, in early May. For nearly a month it had looked as though everything was back on course again. Comptroller John Kelly, for all his Tammany bluster, had been put in his place by the courts. Murphy had hired William M. Evarts as counsel for the Bridge Company. He was the celebrated and expensive New York attorney who defended Andrew Johnson in the impeachment trial and Beecher in the adultery case and who had just been made Secretary of State. The central issue, Evarts argued, was whether a great public work was to be pulled down because it did not quite conform to some early bookkeeping or in order to save a few ships from making minor adjustments to pass beneath it. Henry Murphy had been a persuasive witness, to no one’s surprise, and the judges, first in the Supreme Court of New York, then in the Court of Appeals, decided in favor of the bridge. The city of New York which meant Comptroller Kelly—was ordered to continue its payments without further delay. “There is, of course, great rejoicing in Brooklyn,” the New York Herald said. “The success of the bridge is assured, and the work upon it which has been interrupted for more than six months, will be resumed within a few days.” And that was what had happened. Six hundred men went back to building the approaches and the cable wrapping was resumed at once.
The so-called Miller suit, to remove the bridge altogether, had also been settled at long last and again largely as a result of the tireless, determined efforts of Henry Murphy. The State Committee on Commerce and Navigation had held hearings in the Metropolitan Hotel in New York and one by one Murphy, Stranahan, old Julius Adams, C. C. Martin, Paine, McNulty and Collingwood had all gone over to appear as witnesses for the bridge. The opposition had rounded up a number of harbor pilots, shipmasters, shipbuilders, warehouse owners, and a few engineers to testify against the bridge. Abraham Miller, the warehouse owner who was the plaintiff, said he had not brought suit until as late as he did because he never expected the bridge would be finished. He was convinced the cities would fail to get up the money it would take. A representative from Standard Oil warned that the bridge would divert trade to Philadelphia; some harbor pilots complained that the cables were already hazard enough, as did several ship captains. The total testimony taken, the exhibits presented, the charts, tables, statistics, and the like, all printed up and bound together eventually made one great doorstop of a volume weighing a full five pounds. But the opponents of the bridge achieved nothing. As with Lincoln’s Effie Afton case or Eads’s victory over the Corps of Engineers review board, the pattern of east-west travel prevailed, the bridge was the victor.
But in May came what for Roebling was the lowest blow to date. He had decided on another major change in the bridge. After receiving Paine’s report on the ability of various manufacturers to produce steel in certain desired shapes and quality, he had decided to substitute steel for iron in the trusswork. This meant that it was to be virtually an all-steel bridge now, and with the approval of the trustees he had called for new bids. General Slocum announced at a meeting of the trustees that the assistant engineers (and Paine in particular, it was understood) had been taking bribes from steel manufacturers, which at different times, Slocum said, amounted to sums of as much as ten thousand dollars. Except for Roebling’s assistants, just about everyone who had had any real say in bridge matters had been accused of something or other by this time. Now it was their turn. Slocum’s charges were omitted from the official record, but two days later the papers had the story, with the result that the trustees met again in secret session on May 5 to discuss the matter and this time their comments were released to the press.
Slocum said he had been told of the bribes by a man named Marshall P. Davidson of the Chrome Steel Company in Brooklyn. Slocum said he wanted it understood that these were distinct charges, not more idle rumors. He also said there was some question about certain transactions of the Roebling company. “And I want to say right here that I think it is indelicate that the brothers of the Chief Engineer should be engaged in furnishing us materials.”
It was William Kingsley, interestingly, who stood up at this point and, looking Slocum in the eye, said he regretted to hear such statements made about “gentlemen who were not present to defend themselves.” Furthermore, Kingsley said, no firm in the country had a reputation for honor and business integrity exceeding that of John A. Roebling’s Sons.
All the same a special committee was formed to investigate the charges and this committee met the following morning to hear Davidson speak for himself and to listen to Ferdinand Roebling, who had come on from Trenton. Davidson said Slocum had misquoted him. He had made no such remarks about the engineers. What he had said, he believed, was that there were rumors of bribes but that he himself did not believe them.
Ferdinand Roebling, for his part, said he thought the time had come for him to put the matter in the hands of a lawyer and begin suit against “somebody” for libel. He said the end had been reached so far as the abuse the Roebling company was willing to endure. His family’s connection with the bridge had been anything but advantageous, he reminded the trustees. His father had lost his life, his brother had sacrificed his health, the family reputation had been assailed. And so far as making money from their contracts was concerned, his company would be perfectly satisfied to produce the rest of the wire at cost.
Ferdinand almost certainly spent some time at his brother’s house while he was in Brooklyn and it seems Henry Murphy was going and coming from the Roebling front door rather frequently. The level of emotions Emily Roebling had to contend with can be gauged from this letter from her husband to General Slocum, dictated the same day Ferdinand appeared before the committee:
I hope I
have heard for the last time your oft repeated remark that you think it indelicate in me that I should allow my brothers to do any work for the bridge while I am the Chief Engineer. Did it ever occur to you that my brothers act independently of me without consulting me and that I have no control over them even if I wished to prevent them bidding on any contract for the bridge? Or did you ever consider that the John A. Roebling’s Sons Company hold the first rank in this country as manufacturers of wire rope—and the word “fraud” has never been coupled with their name save in your board? Would it not be at least probable that my reputation as an engineer is as dear to them as it is to me and that I should feel better satisfied to have work that I know requires care and skill entrusted to them rather than to some rascally contractor without capital or reputation who after he has been again and again detected in fraud is allowed to go on with his contract.
You should have been very sure of Mr. Davidson’s meaning before you brought the subject up in the way you did, and you should not, if you really had any desire to know the truth, have been contented with his simple assertion that you misunderstood him.
The course of a true gentleman would have been to come to me first with a lie that had been whispered behind my back and at least heard what I had to say, whether you believed me or not…. I have the right to think Mr. Davidson never said anything to you, but you merely gave the board the benefit of your own opinions….
The investigation committee presented its findings at the end of the month and the engineers were completely exonerated, as was the Roebling company. It had all been an unfortunate misunderstanding, it was explained. On Roebling’s orders, Colonel Paine had spent some time in Pittsburgh with Andrew Kloman, Carnegie’s former metallurgist, who was now in business for himself, and had rolled the steel for General William Sooy Smith’s new railroad bridge at Glasgow, Missouri, the first bridge in America built exclusively of steel. Kloman had a new way of making steel eyebars and Paine had gone to Pittsburgh to study the process. This, apparently, was what gave rise to the bribery stories, since it appeared that Paine was giving Kloman preferential treatment.
The newspapers assured the public that all was fair and square inside the engineering department. The work went right ahead. But Slocum never apologized to Roebling or to Paine or to any of Roebling’s staff or to his brothers. Roebling never would forgive him for what he had done and the deep-seated animosity between the two former war heroes would prove to be no minor issue.
Then, almost immediately, there was a change-over in the bridge trustees, the first real realignment since the bridge began. Thomas Kinsella declined to serve again because of “pressing business engagements” and several new faces were to be seen now in the board room, most of them quite young faces by Bridge Company standards. It was also quickly noted that there was a decidedly dubious look in their eyes whenever some of the more notable older members commenced to talk.
Among the new men were William G. Steinmetz, who automatically became a member of the board when he became Comptroller of the City of Brooklyn. He was an engineer by profession and a German by birth, with a thick head of wild black hair and one wooden leg. Alfred C. Barnes of Brooklyn, the oldest son and business partner of A. S. Barnes, the book publisher, was “one of the most cultured and affable gentlemen in the city,” according to one account. Edward Cooper, son of Peter Cooper and brother-in-law of Abram Hewitt, was mayor of New York. And Robert B. Roosevelt, wealthy New York lawyer, was an energetic politicial crusader and noted sportsman, whose favorite nephew Theodore was then in his last year at Harvard.
All four had come in as a result of the elections of 1878. The two Brooklyn men, Steinmetz and Barnes, were Republicans, while Cooper and Roosevelt were Democrats. But they were all reputed champions of reform, and with the exception of Steinmetz, they were the gentlemen sons of wealthy, prominent fathers—city-born, expensively educated, urbane, public-spirited, and politically ambitious. Despite the party labels they had much more in common with one another than they did with a Kingsley or a Stranahan, the self-made men of another generation, who, with their back-country origins had grown up with the city, as it were, and had acquired, somewhere along the way, what the younger men found to be a reprehensible degree of patience with what the older men would call human failings.
The new men were determined to set things in order. But from the start it was Steinmetz who made the biggest fuss. Right off he wanted Kingsley removed, for one thing, and he made no bones about it. Kingsley was the keystone of the old regime, as the Brooklyn Comptroller saw it, and the reason the bridge had taken so uncommonly long to build was because the old regime either wanted it so or because they did not know how to run things. Either way Kingsley could no longer remain a trustee.
But Steinmetz grossly underestimated the power the contractor had. The mayor of Brooklyn, a man named Howell, who was a Democrat and doubtless beholden to Kingsley in innumerable ways, said Kingsley would stay. So Henry Murphy was removed instead—temporarily. No sooner was Murphy out, taking the blow very graciously, chatting affably with reporters as he packed his things, than another trustee resigned so Murphy could be reappointed in his place. That done, the others promptly voted Murphy president again and made Kingsley his vice-president. All of which left Comptroller Steinmetz, a testy, excitable man at best, so furious he was barely able to speak when the reporters came around to get his views.
But Steinmetz kept pressing the attack through that summer and into fall, opposing the use of Bessemer steel for the superstructure, opposing the awarding of the contract to the Edge Moor Iron Company, the lowest bidder, trotting out every old argument for crucible steel, and being so silly and tiresome about it much of the time that the other young men who had come in with him were left with no choice but to side with the opposition. They were just as eager as ever to clean house but they were looking for something more important to battle over.
But in December, just as had happened three years before, a sensational bridge disaster seemed to add credence to every rumor of shoddy steel and poor engineering. The new Tay Bridge over the Firth of Tay, in Scotland, one of the biggest, most famous bridges in the world, gave way in a gale and collapsed into the sea, taking with it a train carrying seventy-five people, all of whom were killed. The bridge was the work of Britain’s leading engineer and a disciple of the great Stephenson, Sir Thomas Bouch, who, along with Henry Bessemer, had been knighted by Queen Victoria that June. His bridge, a series of trusses, had been built mostly of wrought iron, however, not steel, and subsequent investigations of the disaster indicated that he had not calculated his wind loads accurately. The conclusion was that the engineer was mainly to blame. (His health and mind broken by the ordeal, Bouch died in less than a year.)
As might be expected, the news of the disaster caused a great stir in New York and Brooklyn. McNulty and Paine, interviewed at length in the papers, did their best to assure the reading public that the East River bridge was an entirely different kind of structure. But who was to say? Had not the word of the ill-fated Bouch been as respected as any in the profession?
By curious coincidence, the same papers that carried the Tay Bridge story also reported that J. Lloyd Haigh, “the well-known wire manufacturer” who had supplied the wire for the great cables, had just gone bankrupt. And to add one further note of doom, still another “noted engineer” was claiming the East River bridge would not hold a fifth of the weight that was liable to be put upon it. “WILL THE TAY DISASTER BE REPEATED BETWEEN NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN?” asked one big headline as the new year 1880, and the new decade, began.
There must have been moments in those early weeks of the new year when Emily Roebling stood alone at a window thinking of the Tay tragedy as she watched the tiny doll-like figures working up among the cables and suspenders. She knew enough now to appreciate the countless number of things that had to be taken into consideration and the immense weight of responsibility every calculation entailed. She knew enough to know how very many
things could go wrong. The East River was not the stormy Firth of Tay, standing wide open to the sea, as some were saying, still it was salt water, and for all the shelter Long Island provided, winds on the river could be savage. When the Tay Bridge went, the papers said, the train had dropped nearly ninety feet.
But there must also have been moments during those same weeks when she went about the house or drove along the snow-covered streets of the Heights with her heart lifted as it had not in years. In December, G.K.’s request for a board of inquiry had at last been granted, fourteen years and eight months after Five Forks.
In late February she pasted into her scrapbook a large illustration of Ferdinand de Lesseps, in top hat and overcoat, standing with a group on the summit of the New York anchorage, “inspecting” the bridge, according to the caption. “The Great Engineer” (who was no engineer at all, but a diplomat) had arrived from France to promote what he intended to be the triumph of his career, a sea-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama. In another week or so he would deliver an impassioned speech before the American Society of Civil Engineers (Collingwood and McNulty would be in the audience) and be lionized at a sumptuous banquet at Delmonico’s at which Richard Storrs, the Brooklyn pastor, would deliver the welcoming address and she herself would be among the ladies accompanying De Lesseps when he made his grand entrance into the dining room. The grandfatherly Frenchman was greatly impressed by the bridge, he told reporters, but in the illustration Emily saved, he appears more interested in an unidentified young lady in the foreground.
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 128