Captain Bill Jones, as he was known, had been with Morrell for sixteen years. He had acquired a vast knowledge of the new process and had built a tremendous following among the men at Cambria Iron, largely for his robust, freewheeling willingness not to do things according to the rules if the rules did not suit him. It was the sort of reputation Carnegie took a special interest in. Carnegie never did learn much about steelmaking, but he had a gift for finding men who did, and if they were somewhat unorthodox, so much the better.
When the manager of the Cambria works, George Fritz, died and Morrell had to pick a man to replace him, he turned Jones down for the job, giving it instead to another Jones who seemed a steadier sort. At which point Carnegie immediately moved in and offered Bill Jones a two-dollar-a-day job at Braddock. Jones not only accepted but took a number of his “high-class graduates” along with him. Within one year, by 1876, the Edgar Thomson mill moved ahead of Cambria in production. Carnegie, on a mountaintop in Italy, literally danced with joy on hearing the news. And as Edgar Thomson continued to break every other production record, it was Bill Jones, not Carnegie or his associates, who got the credit from anyone who knew anything about steelmaking. Jones’s papers on production techniques were read before learned societies in Europe. In Pittsburgh he became so important to the Carnegie empire that Carnegie decided to make him a partner, an offer which Jones flatly refused, feeling that he would lose his influence with the men if he ever so openly joined forces with management.
“Just pay me one hell of a salary,” Jones said to Carnegie.
To which Carnegie shot back, “All right, Captain, the salary of the President of the United States is yours.”
“That’s the talk,” said Jones. The salary was $25,000 a year.
So now, if the Pittsburgh crowd was about to go tampering with the South Fork dam, Daniel J. Morrell wanted to know more about their doings than could be gained from mere hearsay. There was too much at stake to go on their word alone. He had no intention of stopping them, as he made clear later on. He had never been one to stand in the way of progress. He had welcomed innovations throughout his working life, and it seems he never objected to this one on principle. He only wanted to be satisfied that the work was being properly managed. He had seen enough explosions and fires at the mill to have a fair idea of the violent consequences of bungled innovation. He had also had some experience with dams, having personally supervised the installation of several small ones put in near town by the water company.
In November of 1880 he sent John Fulton to look over the job. Fulton was an engineer by training and profession, but he was also the next in line to succeed Morrell as head of the works. Morrell, in other words, was not just sending any ordinary employee to South Fork.
A lean Ulster County Irishman, Fulton wore his beard close-cropped and had a fix to his mouth like General Grant’s. He had wonderfully heavy eyebrows and a resolute gaze that gave him the look of an Old Testament prophet. He was a man to reckon with, one of Johnstown’s most ardent temperance leaders and a pillar at the Presbyterian Church, where he taught Sunday school and would be long remembered for closing his Bible classes with the most interminable prayers ever uttered by man.
Fulton had made his reputation as a mining engineer and geologist before joining Morrell at Cambria Iron. That there was anyone in Johnstown better qualified to pass judgment on the dam is doubtful. Nor was there any man, save Morrell himself, who was less likely to be dazzled or cowed in any way by the representatives of the club, a factor which Morrell must have taken into account.
Fulton was met at South Fork by two club members, Colonel E. J. Unger and C. A. Carpenter, as well as some of the contractors who had worked on the dam. His report was filed in a letter to Morrell dated November 26. The letter began by stating that he had gone as requested to inspect the dam now owned by the “Sportsmen’s Association of Western Pennsylvania.” (The correct name of the club was evidently still unknown to the Cambria management.) He then said that he did not think the repairs were done in “a careful and substantial manner, or with the care demanded in a large structure of this kind.” He stated that he believed the dam’s weight was sufficient to hold back the water, but that he had grave misgivings about other aspects of the dam:
There appear to me two serious elements of danger in this dam. First, the want of a discharge pipe to reduce or take the water out of the dam for needed repairs. Second, the unsubstantial method of repair, leaving a large leak, which appears to be cutting the new embankment.
As the water cannot be lowered, the difficulty arises of reaching the source of the present destructive leaks. At present there is forty feet of water in the dam, when the full head of 60 feet is reached, it appears to me to be only a question of time until the former cutting is repeated. Should this break be made during a season of flood, it is evident that considerable damage would ensue along the line of the Conemaugh.
It is impossible to estimate how disastrous this flood would be, as its force would depend on the size of the breach in the dam with proportional rapidity of discharge.
The stability of the dam can only be assured by a thorough overhauling of the present lining on the upper slopes, and the construction of an ample discharge pipe to reduce or remove the water to make necessary repairs.
Morrell promptly sent the report to Ruff, who responded on December 2.
Ruff was not much impressed by Fulton’s findings. He pointed out to Morrell that Fulton did not have the correct name of the club, and told Morrell what that name was. He said there was no leak such as Fulton claimed and that Fulton’s figures on the comparative weights of the water and the dam were off, since Fulton had overestimated how much water was in the lake. The tone was one of obvious impatience and suggested not very subtly that Morrell would do well to hire himself a more competent man. He ended the letter by saying:
We consider his conclusions as to our only safe course of no more value than his other assertions…you and your people are in no danger from our enterprise.
Very respectfully,
B. F. Ruff, President
Ruff, quite clearly, was not in the least interested in continuing the discussion. The club had managed nicely to keep its affairs private until then, and the idea of any prolonged or possibly complicated negotiations with the Cambria Iron Company had small appeal.
Morrell, however, was unwilling to let it go at that. On December 22 he answered Ruff’s letter. After a few opening courtesies, he got to the heart of the issue:
…I note your criticism of Mr. Fulton’s former report, and judge that in some of his statements he may have been in error, but think that his conclusions in the main were correct.
We do not wish to put any obstruction in the way of your accomplishing your object in the reconstruction of this dam; but we must protest against the erection of a dam at that place, that will be a perpetual menace to the lives and property of those residing in this upper valley of the Conemaugh, from its insecure construction. In my judgment there should have been provided some means by which the water would be let out of the dam in case of trouble, and I think you will find it necessary to provide an outlet pipe or gate before any engineer could pronounce the job a safe one. If this dam could be securely reconstructed with a safe means of driving off the water in case any weakness manifests itself, I would regard the accomplishment of this work as a very desirable one, and if some arrangement could be made with your association by which the store of water in this reservoir could be used in time of drouth in the mountains, this Company would be willing to cooperate with you in the work, and would contribute liberally toward making the dam absolutely safe.
Morrell, in short, was suggesting exactly what Fulton had urged: give the dam a major overhaul and install a discharge system of some sort. At the same time, he was making it plain that Cambria Iron considered the present job shoddy enough, the situation critical enough, to be willing to help foot the bill to set things right.
The offer
was declined. The matter was dropped—almost.
Morrell felt that just to be on the safe side it might be a good idea to have an inside view of doings at the lake. So he decided to join the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, and evidently the Pittsburgh men had no objections. Morrell therefore purchased two memberships in his own name.
It was not for another nine years that engineers from many parts of the country came to the site of the dam to study what had gone wrong. Fulton’s findings appeared to have been correct. But there were four other changes in the dam which Ruff and his men had made which Fulton had not noticed, and these were as crucial to what finally happened as the faults Fulton cited.
To begin with, in order to provide room for a road across the breast, the height of the dam had been lowered from one to three feet. This would give enough width for two carriages crossing the dam to pass each other comfortably. But it also meant that the capacity of the spillway had been reduced, for now the bottom of the spillway was not ten or eleven feet lower than the crest of the dam, but perhaps only seven or eight feet. This was a very significant change, since it meant that a rising lake would start to go over the top of the dam that much sooner.
Then, too, a screen of iron rods, each about half an inch in diameter, had been put across the spillway to prevent the fish from going over and down into South Fork Creek. The screen was set between the heavy posts which supported the wooden bridge over the spillway. Under normal conditions the combination of posts and screens decreased the spillway capacity only slightly, but they had the potential of decreasing it a great deal should the screens become clogged with debris.
The third change was probably the most important of all. The dam sagged slightly in the middle, where the old break had been. Exactly how bad the sag was no one was able to say later for certain. It may have been only a foot or two, but according to one study, the crest at the center may have been as much as four feet lower than the ends. The center was where the dam should have been highest and strongest, so in the event that water ever did start over the top, the pressure would be at the ends rather than at the middle. Now the reverse was the case.
To have seen the sag with a naked eye, and particularly an untrained eye, would have been next to impossible. It is conceivable therefore that it went unnoticed by Ruff and the men who did the reconstruction work. Fulton took no note of it apparently; whether it would have been observed and corrected had experienced engineers been responsible for the reconstruction is a question no one can answer.
What it meant in practical terms was that the depth of the spillway was now only about four feet lower than the top of the dam at its center. In other words, if more than four feet of water were going over the spillway, then the lake would start running over the top of the dam at the center where the pressure against it was the greatest.
The fourth change was unnoticed by Fulton because it had not as yet taken place when he made his inspection. The water then, as he says, was only forty feet deep, which is about the depth it had been kept at during the old days before the first break in 1862. The club, however, brought the level of the lake up to where it was nearly brim full, meaning that the depth ran to sixty-five feet or thereabouts. In spring it sometimes rose even higher. With the lake that full, it was not beyond reason to imagine serious trouble in the event of a severe storm.
But, as both Fulton and Morrell had made abundantly clear, with the discharge pipes gone, the club was faced with the unfortunate position of not being able to lower the level of the lake, ever, at any time, even if that were its expressed wish.
The water that high at the dam also meant that the over-all size of the lake was increased. The lake backed up well beyond where it had been in the old days, which lead to the widespread misconception, still current today in and around Johnstown, that the club had actually raised the height of the dam from what it had been.
How satisfied Morrell was after the business of the letters was over and done with is not known. For when the sun went down behind Laurel Hill on Monday, August 24, 1885, Daniel J. Morrell was in his grave at Sandy Vale. He had been ill for several years, having suffered what appears to have been an advanced case of arteriosclerosis. He had gone into a steady mental decline not long after he took out his membership in the South Fork fishing club. In 1884 he had given up all his various civic responsibilities and retired from business. After that, it seems, senility closed in hard and fast. He was seen almost never, “lost in mental darkness,” as one account put it years later. When he died, “calmly and peacefully” at eight in the morning on Thursday, August 20, 1885, he was sixty-four years old.
On Sunday thousands of mourners queued up along the south side of Main Street to go through the iron gates, up the long front walk, and into the big house to view the remains. For three hours the doors were open and a steady procession filed through.
The next day, from noon until five, the whole town was shut down. The procession that marched out to the cemetery was as fine a display of the town’s manhood as anyone had ever seen. Ahead of the hearse tramped men from the Cambria mines and railroads, the rolling mills and blast furnaces, row on row, like an army, followed by the merchants and professional men, the police, the city fathers, men of every sort who worked for or did business with or depended on the Cambria Iron Company, which meant just about everybody. The only sound was the steady beat of their heavy boots and shoes on the cobblestones.
After the hearse came the special carriages for the mourners. Bill Kelly and his wife were there; so was Captain Bill Jones, and a Cleveland steel man and family friend named Marcus Alonzo Hanna.
There never was a bigger or better funeral in Johnstown.
Two years later, on March 29, 1887, the day a wagonload of fruit trees arrived at his cottage on Lake Conemaugh, Benjamin F. Ruff died suddenly in a hotel in Pittsburgh. The cause of death according to the papers was a carbuncle on the neck.
III
“There’s a man came from the lake.”
–1–
The hard, cold rain that had started coming down the night before had eased off considerably by the morning of Friday, May 31. But a thick mist hung in the valley like brushwood smoke and overhead the sky was very dark.
Even before night had ended there had been signs of trouble. At five o’clock a landslide had caved in the stable at Kress’s brewery, and anyone who was awake then could hear the rivers. By six everyone who was up and about knew that Johnstown was in for a bad time. The rivers were rising at better than a foot an hour. They were a threatening yellow-brown color and already full of logs and big pieces of lumber that went bounding along as though competing in some sort of frantic race.
When the seven o’clock shift arrived at the Cambria mills, the men were soon told to go home and look after their families. By ten there was water in most cellars in the lower part of town. School had been let out, and children were splashing about in the streets with wooden boxes, boards, anything that would make a boat.
One of the most distinguished residents of the lower part of town was the Honorable W. Horace Rose, Esquire, former cavalry officer, former state legislator, former district attorney of Cambria County, a founder of Johnstown’s Literary Society, father of five, respected and successful attorney at law. Rose was a Democrat with a large following among Republicans as well as his own party, and including those Republicans who ran the town and Cambria Iron. He was an expert horseman, slender, erect, and full-bearded, with strong blue eyes and a soft voice which he seldom ever raised.
He had been born in a log house that had stood at the corner of Vine and Market. At thirteen he had been orphaned when both parents died of cholera within the same hour and had been on his own ever since, first as a bound boy in a tannery, later as a carpenter. When he was nineteen, John Linton, Johnstown’s leading lawyer, took him into his office to “read law.” Not long after he opened his own office, which he built himself, and got married to Maggie Ramsey of Johnstown. Then came the war, durin
g which he was wounded, captured, and released in time to take part in General Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley campaign.
The house Horace Rose and his family lived in was downtown, on lower Main Street. He had witnessed nearly every one of Johnstown’s floods over the years, and when he heard that the rivers this particular morning were both coming up rapidly at the same time, something they had not done before, he decided to go out after breakfast and see how things were going.
By the time he and his two youngest sons, Forest and Percy, had finished hitching the team, there was water on the stable floor. Rose took care to use his second-best harness and had one of the boys drive their cow to the hillside, expecting to bring her back down again in a few hours, when the water subsided. Then they climbed into an open wagon and headed down Main, with Rose driving.
His intention was to pick up anyone toward the river who wished to be evacuated. But by now, which was somewhere near nine, the water that far downtown was too deep to get through safely. So he wheeled around and headed back up Main, going as far as Bedford, where he paused to pass the time with his old friend Charles Zimmerman, the livery-stable owner. For a few moments they watched another cow being led to higher ground.
“Charlie,” Rose said, “you and I have scored fifty years, and this is the first time we ever saw a cow drink Stony Creek river water on Main Street.”
“That’s so,” Zimmerman agreed. “But the water two years ago was higher.”
About then the rain started coming down again as hard as it had during the night, heavy and wind-driven. Rose stopped off long enough to buy his sons rubber raincoats, then proceeded over to the end of Franklin to his office, which was less than a hundred feet from the roaring Stony Creek. For another half-hour he and the boys set about placing his papers and other things well above the flood line of 1887, which was about a foot from the floor. Then they started for home, stopping once more on the way to talk to another old friend, John Dibert, the banker, who was also their next-door neighbor.
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 247