David McCullough Library E-book Box Set

by David McCullough

  Roebling refused to be “dragged into the board and put on exhibition,” as he said, simply to serve the purposes of political ambition. He had had his fill of politicians. “I am not a politician and I have never tried to conceal the contempt I have always felt for men who devoted their lives to politics,” he wrote privately. At another point he said there was not a self-respecting engineer in the country who would have put up with what he had over the years. He was seething with indignation, and when the Sun editorial appeared, charging him with irresponsibility, his patience ran out. He drafted a long letter in response, a letter he never sent. The one copy is in pencil, in Emily Roebling’s handwriting, in one of her letter books, and it is the single piece of evidence that perhaps there was, after all, a grain of truth to the whispered story that he was staying away because he knew too much.

  Roebling said in the letter that over the years he had had to deal with “no less than one hundred and twenty politicians” on the board. But now he found it particularly infuriating that the “virtuous Slocum” had been among those demanding that he appear in person before the board and that the “virtuous Slocum” had been seconded by “the still more virtuous Kingsley.”

  “This is the same General Slocum,” he wrote, “who joined with the request that I absent myself from any meeting of the board because my presence may embarrass Mr. Kingsley’s proposed operations of putting a couple of millions in his pocket, millions which have not yet reached their destination.” His “patience at an end,” Roebling said flatly that General Superintendent William Kingsley had been paid $175,000 for work he had never done—for work that he, Roebling, had in fact done—and that it had been Henry Slocum who stood up in the conference room years back and exclaimed that no man could name a sum that would compensate so eminent a man as Mr. Kingsley for the services he had rendered.

  In another note he commented that Kingsley had also been in line to get a granite contract, but the fall of the Tweed Ring had put an end to that. Which of the granite quarries Kingsley had an interest in, the note does not say.

  So the Chief Engineer had been aware of what had been going on. Had he not been there, he seems to say in his notes for another letter, this one to Comptroller Campbell, things might have been worse. (“I have always had bitter enemies in the Board for no reason except that I was in the way of any schemes for robbery.”) But so far Roebling had held his tongue.

  Farther along in his notes for the Campbell letter, Roebling wrote, “I have over and over again been interviewed by trustees who when they found themselves face to face with me and found me a live man and not the driveling idiot they had expected, had very few questions to ask and scarcely anything to say about the bridge in any way.”

  Toward the end of July, Seth Low decided that if Roebling would not come to Brooklyn, then he, the mayor of Brooklyn, would go to Newport and see for himself. Low was one of those trustees who had never laid eyes on the fabled Chief Engineer.

  It is only from comments Low and Roebling made later that anything can be deduced about Low’s flying visit and the confrontation. The papers said merely that the mayor of Brooklyn would be out of town briefly.

  Low arrived by boat, took a carriage down Washington Street, and apparently was ushered directly into Roebling’s room. Few words were wasted. Low told Roebling that it was time for him to step aside, which would be a perfectly honorable move for him to make. History would still remember him as the builder of the bridge, Low said. He could remain on as a consulting engineer and his salary would stay the same. C. C. Martin would be made Chief Engineer.

  Roebling flatly refused to do any such thing. If Low and the others wanted him out, he said, they would have to fire him out right. He would not step aside of his own accord and his decision on that was final. Low answered that if Roebling insisted on being stubborn then fire him they would. Why, Roebling wanted to know. Low tried to explain, but according to Roebling’s notes on the interview, the young mayor’s reasons “were so weak and childish he finally abandoned all attempt at argument and said, ‘Mr. Roebling, I am going to remove you because it pleases me.’” Whereupon Low walked out of the house and was back in Brooklyn in less than twenty-four hours.

  A few days later Emily and Washington Roebling were struck still another crushing blow. On August 8, after a sudden, severe illness, G. K. Warren died at his Newport home at the age of fifty-two. The military court appointed to examine his ignominious relief at Five Forks had by this time reached its decision, not only exonerating Warren fully and applauding him, but casting serious doubts as to the manner in which he had been treated. But tragically, for him and his family, the findings of the court would not be published for another three months. He had not lived to see his name cleared.

  On the afternoon of August 17 Mayor Low sent each of the Brooklyn trustees a note saying there would be a meeting of the board on Tuesday the 22nd. “Please make it convenient to be present, as business of importance is to be considered,” the mayor wrote. Right away reporters at the Brooklyn City Hall wanted to know what this meant, but Low replied that there was nothing more to be said in advance. In another couple of days, however, before the meeting, it was reported on good authority that Low planned to move for the dismissal of the Chief Engineer.

  The trustees met as planned promptly at three in the afternoon. It was noted by one reporter that Henry Murphy “did not look nearly so eager to proceed as did the youthful, bright-faced Mayor Low of Brooklyn…Nor did the venerable member of the Board, Mr. James S. T. Stranahan…appear as thirsty for information as did the affable business-intending Mayor Grace of New York.”

  Low made a little speech. “I am convinced,” he said, “that at every possible point there is a weakness in the management of the Brooklyn Bridge. The engineering part of the structure—the most important—is in the hands of a sick man.” He went on to say what a serious handicap this was and told how he had gone to Newport to reason with Roebling but had failed. He had made an eminently fair proposition to Roebling “in order to facilitate the completion of the work,” but the man “would not accede.” Therefore action had to be taken. So Low said he had held a private conference on the issue with two other ex officio members of the board (the mayor and comptroller of New York) and they were “of the opinion that the change ought to be made, notwithstanding Mr. Roebling’s unwillingness.” He had, therefore, Low said, prepared certain resolutions, which he immediately presented:

  WHEREAS, The Chief Engineer of this Bridge, Mr. W. A. Roebling, has been for many years, and still is, an invalid; and,

  WHEREAS, In the judgment of this Board the absence of the Chief Engineer from the post of active supervision is necessarily, in many ways, a source of delay; therefore,

  Resolved, That this Board does hereby appoint Mr. Roebling Consulting Engineer, and Mr. C. C. Martin, the present First Assistant Engineer, to be the Chief Engineer of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge; and,

  Resolved, That in doing so, this Board desires to bear most cordial testimony to the services hitherto rendered by Mr. Roebling, and to express its regret at the necessity of making such a change at this time.

  Mayor William Grace rose to his feet and said he “heartily seconded” the resolutions of Mayor Low. “It is our duty to set aside all other considerations in seeing that nothing shall interfere with the progress of this work.” The elected heads of the two cities building the bridge and paying for it had decided the time had come to dispense with Washington Roebling.

  But at that point the Comptroller of Brooklyn, Ludwig Semler, a new man on the board, asked for the floor. “I also think the work should be pushed,” he said, “but I do not think it would be using Mr. Roebling justly to oust him from his position now that he is about to reap the full benefit of his labors. If he had been in any way guilty of delaying the bridge, I should be in favor of retiring him, but there is not a shadow of a charge upon which to base such action. In fact, Mr. Roebling has done much toward pushing the bridge along. Le
t us not act summarily toward him after his thirteen years of service. If someone will tell me how an engineer is going to build a bridge without material I shall be pleased. Mr. Roebling did not have the material and so he is made a scapegoat for others’ sins.”

  Semler, who had had almost nothing to say at the few previous meetings he attended, spoke with great feeling and was strongly commended for it by Stranahan, who had gotten up from his customary seat on a sofa that stood against the wall and began addressing the group, as one man said later, “with the manner and voice of a speaker at a funeral.”

  “I cannot but remember at such time as this,” Stranahan said, “the eminent abilities of the elder and younger Roebling. When I think that that ability has given us the finest bridge in the world I cannot help but feel that there is something yet due to the Chief Engineer. True, his health is not as sound as we could wish, but it is as good as it has been for many years past—years wherein we could not dispense with his services because of the accurate knowledge of the enterprise which he alone possessed. The older trustees will comprehend the truth of what I say. If this matter is to be referred to another meeting I should be much obliged, so far as I am personally concerned, to have it come up at the next regular meeting. I have traveled one hundred and eighty miles to attend this one, and I must travel one hundred and eighty miles tomorrow to join my family.”

  Stranahan, who had returned to Brooklyn from Saratoga, where he customarily spent part of the summer, was, in his usual fashion, stalling for time, banking on a “maturing of judgment” among those trustees who had not as yet made up their minds about what to do.

  It was then moved that the subject be “laid over” until September 11 and the motion carried.

  All Brooklyn was talking about it by the time the sun went down and in the next several days virtually every newspaper on both sides of the river began taking sides. The New York Tribune said the bridge had been “tainted at the start” and linked Roebling with Murphy, Kingsley, and Stranahan as the proper parties to blame. Things would have been far better, the paper said, had they all been pensioned off years before. “This is the day for sharp decision and vigorous action.”

  The Star said it was obviously time to get a new Chief Engineer. “Had Mr. Roebling done his duty instead of becoming the cat’s-paw of the Bridge Ring, he might have saved millions of dollars to the two cities, and his zeal would not have gone unrewarded.”

  The New York Evening Post said Mayor Low’s resolutions had been made not a moment too soon. The Daily Graphic reasoned that since Roebling’s special knowledge of suspension bridge construction was no longer essential to the work, and the bridge was too far along for anyone to mistakenly alter the plan, there was no real reason to keep him on. “That a man has been supervising a structure like this from its beginning gives him no right to delay the completion, as Mr. Roebling is now delaying this bridge,” concluded the editorial writer of the Daily Graphic.

  The Iron Age said the only thing wrong with Low’s action was the idea of replacing Roebling with C. C. Martin. “If new life is to be infused in that comatose engineers corps, it must come from the outside—for inside it there is no leaven of redemption left. No wonderful or even exceptional engineering talent is required to bring the work to completion; but what is required is some man with good executive ability, of great force of character, and complete independence of all possible future political preferment.”

  Even the Newport Daily News felt obliged to report on the situation. “Mayors Grace, of New York, and Low, of Brooklyn, are getting tired of waiting for the completion of the celebrated East River Bridge,” the little paper announced the morning of August 24. “The monster connecting link between the two cities has already cost them too much and it is about time that something was done to prevent anymore such delays as have hindered its completion.”

  Only the Trenton Daily State Gazette and the Brooklyn Eagle rose immediately and angrily to Roebling’s defense. “His spotless integrity and high sense of honor are unquestionable,” wrote the Daily State Gazette, “his great skill as an engineer is established, and his devotion to this work has been attended by the sacrifice of his health.”

  The Eagle, not surprisingly, had more to say. How, asked Thomas Kinsella in a two-column editorial, could Low present a proposal to appoint Roebling the consulting engineer, when Roebling, as Low himself reported to the trustees, had said explicitly he would not accept the job? And what earthly good would such a change accomplish? “Is it possible that the existence of Mr. Martin himself is now in the nature of a discovery, while the fact is that he has had practical executive control of the work for many years past? If he is not a ‘natural channel’ of information, who is?”

  As for Roebling’s competence, that was not even an issue, Kinsella asserted. His past contributions to the work were enormous. There had not been a single failure on any part of the work that could be chargeable to the engineers. Furthermore it would be a rotten thing to degrade the man and deny him his rightful honors on the very eve of his triumph.

  And that pretty much summed up the case for Roebling as it was being presented in Brooklyn—except for the strongly and privately expressed opinion of several on the board who claimed to know Roebling personally that he had been kept alive all these years only by his intense interest in the work and the desire to see it finished properly. The implication was that a vote to discharge him would be as good as a death sentence.

  A very important question, of course, was whether the voice of Kinsella was the voice of William Kingsley. A few years before, the immediate assumption would have been that it was, but not so now, for the influential editor had grown increasingly independent. Not long before, when he felt there was too much interference in editorial matters on the part of the owners, Kinsella had threatened to resign and start a rival paper and ever since he had been left to decide things pretty much on his own.

  The one other argument in Roebling’s behalf was, of course, the actual progress still being made on the bridge itself, progress that Henry Murphy kept presenting in formal reports to the two mayors. A hundred and fourteen intermediate chords had been put up in a week, 72 diagonal stays, 60 posts, 21 intermediate floor beams, 21 bridging trusses, 16 intermediate promenade floor beams, 12 lower chord sections, 2 upper floor stay bars. At the end of the Brooklyn approach, work had begun on the foundations for the iron viaduct and terminal station building.

  But the question of Roebling’s mental and physical health had not been put to rest. If anything, rumors and innuendo on the subject were more plentiful than ever before. The three most prominent trustees of long standing—Murphy, Stranahan, and Kingsley—said they could vouch for Roebling’s state of mind, but their word was not only not enough any longer, it was outright suspect among the younger trustees. The only one of the younger men who had seen Roebling and talked to him in person was Seth Low and he would make no comment on Roebling’s condition one way or the other.

  Toward the end of the month of August Comptroller Ludwig Semler received the following letter from Newport, from Mrs. Washington Roebling:

  I take the liberty of writing to express to you my heartfelt gratitude for your generous defense of Mr. Roebling at the last meeting of the Board of Trustees. Your words were a most agreeable surprise to us as we had understood you were working in full sympathy with the Mayors of the two cities and the Comptroller of New York. Mr. Roebling is very anxious for me to go to Brooklyn to convey to you…a few messages from him. Can you see me at your office some morning…? I will go to Brooklyn any day you can give me a little of your time and see you at your own house or your office just as you may prefer….

  As you are a stranger to Mr. Roebling all that you said was doubly appreciated. There are some few old friends in the Board of Trustees who know him well and who have always stood by him in the many attacks that have been made on him in the past ten years, but we never expect such consideration and kindness from those who have never seen him.


  On Tuesday, September 5, a week before the trustees were to meet to vote, Comptroller Semler suddenly announced he was leaving for Newport that evening to see Roebling and judge for himself.

  “Nobody should be convicted before he is tried,” Semler said. “As I have undertaken to defend Mr. Roebling to a certain extent against the attempt to remove him, I want to make his personal acquaintance and see what impression he makes on me. It seems from certain statements made in connection with this matter that an impression has gone abroad that he was not only suffering physically but that his mental faculties were also impaired. Of course, if this were so, his plans should not be relied upon, and the work should be suspended until an investigation could be had; but physicians tell me his intellect is all right. I am today more convinced than ever of the great injustice of displacing a man of his merit and standing without giving him an opportunity to defend himself. The idea that he could not do his duty without being at the bridge office is preposterous.”

  De Lesseps had been in Paris while the Suez Canal was being built, Semler said, and so why was it so unreasonable for Roebling to remain in a house a few blocks from the bridge. “There is nothing sentimental in my feelings in this matter. The question is simply one of justice.” Semler told reporters he would be back in his office Thursday morning.