The only thing I was certain I wanted was to work for women’s suffrage. Newspapers crackled with letters from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Surely, we were now past the risk of threats from a local policeman. It was time to revisit my goal.
* * *
Mother and her women’s suffrage circle had met throughout the years, but the movement progressed in fits and starts, there being no clear path forward and serious dissension within the ranks of the movement’s leaders. A few years before, Susan B. Anthony had been arrested for breaking the law by voting. Many meetings were held and speeches made, but no laws changed. The movement had stalled.
My neighbor and acquaintance, Reverend Beecher, had been embroiled in an adultery scandal, the lurid headlines of lawsuits and chicanery overshadowing his leadership in suffrage. Having had my own temptations, I found it hard to judge him. I wanted to remind the naysayers of Christ’s words, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Still, I kept my distance from the preacher.
My mother’s circle planned to travel to Manhattan to listen to Miss Anthony, who was beseeching Congress with a proposed amendment to allow women to vote. Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt was to host, and I accepted her invitation not only for the chance to hear Miss Anthony, but also to view the interior of the Vanderbilts’ new Fifth Avenue mansion.
The meeting was a rather jumbled affair. Mrs. Vanderbilt had given birth twice in the last year, and the wails of both babies frequently interrupted the proceedings, despite the best efforts of two nannies. The unfinished mansion disappointed, the meeting held in one of the few completed rooms.
The women argued over whether winning the right to vote would incur military service and jury duty obligations. This led to another argument about the responsibility of women to run a home and raise children—ostensibly the most important task imaginable as one is raising the very future of the country. I made a few suggestions that a woman could do both but was outshouted. Having heard enough, I excused myself and wandered about the unfinished rooms, admiring the fluted columns and tall windows, until I encountered a fellow escapee.
“A frightful mess, isn’t it?” A woman my mother’s age, with a strong face, more handsome than lovely, held out a gloved hand. “Amelia Bloomer.”
“As in bloomer costume? Pleased to meet you. I’m Emily Roebling.”
“I know of you.” Her eyes took in my dress, a rather frilly one I now regretted. “Yes and no. I wore the costume but didn’t invent it. Somehow, my name became associated, due to my magazine, I suppose. It should have been named for Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck.”
I recalled a beat too late that Mrs. Bloomer was well-known for publishing the first women’s periodical, The Lily. I had no idea who Hasbrouck was. Mother would have been humiliated.
“I heard you wear bloomers.” She crossed her arms under her considerable bosom, her gaze directed at my dress.
“Well, not on occasions such as these. As I see you agree.” I nodded toward her own plain white, perfectly serviceable dress.
“We gave up wearing them when you were but a girl. Well, Lydia didn’t, but she’s sort of a special case, as they say.” She rolled her eyes. “The costume does nothing but provide a distraction from the real issue of women’s rights.”
The statement rankled me, and her condescending tone made it worse. I held my tongue when I wanted to retort: As if the ridiculous temperance movement, which you have interwoven with suffrage, isn’t a distraction. This sort of infighting was one of the reasons the movement was progressing so slowly. Arguing filtered in from the adjoining room. If Papa and Wash had planned bridges this way, there would be carriages swimming in rivers.
“Bloomers are practical in some workplaces.” I excused myself and marched off to find Mother.
I left that day with a profound sense of unease. More and more, I was discouraged by the secretive meetings, not to mention the lack of agreement on the central issues and leadership. There had to be another way.
Believing peaceful protest to be the most successful way to effect change, I summoned the ladies’ presence on a drizzly Saturday morning in April.
We met under a star—a big red star. R. H. & Macy Co. had grown to eleven buildings at Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, so we counted on a built-in crowd of mostly women. We headed down the street wearing our finest bloomer costumes and carrying homemade signs, ignoring the heckles and stares of people on the street. Perhaps our attire was a bit of a miscalculation on my part—Amelia Bloomer might have had a point after all.
“Emily, what are you doing to us old bats? Can’t we make the same statement properly dressed?” Henrietta asked as young bystanders hooted and catcalled. She gave them a fierce glare, as only Henrietta could, and the youngsters promptly hushed.
Eleanor smiled back at the crowd, deftly caught a potato launched at her, and raised it in triumph. We worked our way down the street, talking among ourselves as if we were merely out for a stroll.
“We hear such impressive things about your work with the bridge,” Eleanor said.
“Mother will tell you I’ve been a neglectful daughter. I finally read Mrs. Beebe’s book. I regret I wasn’t much help.”
“Oh, Emily, you were much too busy to worry about my manuscript!” assured Carrie.
“Nonetheless, I really must get something off my chest.”
“What is that, dear?” Mother said, a bit of worry and a hint of warning in her voice.
A woman sweeping the sidewalk stopped, her mouth agape. Eleanor waved her over.
Henrietta was waving some papers in the air—her tax bill. “Recall the words of the Revolutionists, Taxation without representation is tyranny.” Her voice could be heard for a block. “We have tyranny still. Women are taxed while not allowed their own vote.”
The gathered cried, “Tyranny!”
“Lydia Hasbrouck went to jail for refusing to pay taxes,” Henrietta said.
More cheering women gathered, encircling Henrietta, who raised her arms to the crowd, her voice growing more forceful. “Hasbrouck said: So long as men held women as inferiors, and unworthy of citizenship, and of no account politically, save when the tax-roll was called, we should demand…to be ‘let alone,’ and let men pay the fiddler who gives all the golden music to them.”
The woman dropped the broom and joined us. She joined Henrietta, who used her wits and connections to build a real estate empire under her late husband’s name, and Carrie, who had penned a novel that had tongues wagging all over the country. Eleanor was a genius inventor, with patents under a pseudonym.
I had failed them, my support half-hearted. So entrenched in my own world, I had failed to recognize the achievements of the women marching shoulder to shoulder with me. “I’m afraid I’m guilty of the very thing I despise. You accomplished ladies have helped me to see that.”
They regarded me with raised eyebrows and small smiles.
“Don’t be so mysterious, Emily. What do you mean to say?” Mother said.
By now, a larger group of women had joined the procession. I raised my voice to be heard by all. “I’ve long resented the barriers women face should they want a career. Denied proper education, the right to vote, even forced to wear clothing that handicaps them. Laws written by men to keep women in their place.”
Pedestrians stopped and listened.
“Right to vote! Right to vote!” the women behind us chanted.
“I think we all share those views, dear,” said Eleanor.
“Yes. I know that.” I lowered my voice. “But I thought I was exceptional. That I was bright and talented and deserved a place working next to the men.”
“While other women, like us, didn’t?” Henrietta interjected without malice. We stopped walking as the ladies circled around me and the crowd chanted. Our numbers were now large enough to block street traffic. The police approached,
bobby sticks at the ready. But I didn’t care—they could throw me in the paddy wagon. I would run from the cause no longer.
I nodded to Henrietta. “I am guilty of underestimating my own gender, not considering how much more they were capable of. But I always thought all women should be allowed to do whatever they choose.”
Mother put her arm around me. “That’s all right, Em. We grow too soon old and too late smart. And you are exceptional. Look around you.”
“Emily! Emily!” The crowd chanted as if on cue. Even though my picture had been in the newspapers several times, it startled me to be recognized. I waved in thanks, and they applauded.
Perhaps my long detour into bridge building was a journey to my true calling. The ladies wrapped their arms around me like the cloak of a queen. Mother’s friends, my friends granting me safe passage.
I approached my work with a renewed enthusiasm. I should have liked to say that my dedication was accepted and appreciated by the scores of men with whom I worked, but that was not the case. I simply determined that their reluctance to do so was their problem, not mine.
* * *
We were entering the next critical phase of construction. The entire weight of the roadway—and anything upon it—was to be suspended on the four nearly completed cables, each about sixteen inches in diameter and about thirty-six hundred feet long. In each cable would be five thousand wires, close to seventy-eight million feet of wire rope in total.
Of course, Roebling’s Sons’ wire rope company produced some of the finest in the country, and the cost for transportation from Trenton would be reasonable. However, as had concerned Papa in Cincinnati, it would be unseemly to award the huge contract to the Roebling brothers, even if the deal made financial sense.
After much behind-the-scenes dealing, the Brooklyn Bridge Committee awarded the contract to a business partner of Benjamin Stone: J. Lloyd Haigh. Not only was his bid the lowest, his firm was located in Red Hook, Brooklyn, which pleased the committee.
Wash was circumspect about the decision. “So long as the wire passes all the tests, I have no issue.”
Stone himself accompanied the inspectors as they tested a sample from each huge spool of wire upon arrival from the manufacturer, and he assured me the quality was as specified.
Wash wrote numerous letters and provided records to assure the committee and the public that he took no profit from the bridge, other than his salary. Although I admired his honorable ethics, the financial consequences weren’t clear until one Sunday morning as he packed his bags for yet another stay in Trenton. He had been in Brooklyn for the past two months, and his palsies and headaches had resumed with ferocious intensity.
Avoiding the sight of his shaking hands as they folded shirts into neat packets, I stared out the window at the gray ribbon of river below. “Why are you are cured of your afflictions while away only for them to return when here at home?” I raised the window for some fresh air. “It seems the environments are quite similar. A city. A river. Four seasons. The only difference seems to be me.”
“Come here.” He sat on the bed and patted the spot next to him. “I don’t know the answer to your question, but be assured, I’m not leaving to get away from you.”
The springs creaked on the old bed as I joined him. I ran my hand over the quilted coverlet with its interlocking circles—the “wedding band” pattern.
He took my hand in his own, warm and trembling. “I must earn a living.”
“What do you mean? The committee has continued your salary throughout.”
“Ha! That salary barely covers my expenses to do the job. The travel, the lawyers, the medical bills. What do you think pays for all this?” He waved around the finely furnished room. “And Johnny’s education, the help, the—”
“I see. But your inheritance. And mine. Surely—” My brow crinkled. I hadn’t dwelt on our finances.
“Darling, it is all under control. But it’s critical the wire business be attended to. Finding new customers, developing new products and uses.” He took back his hand, stretching and clenching his fingers. “Perhaps that’s part of the puzzle.”
“Oh?”
“When here, I’m surrounded by reminders of all the things I can no longer do. But back home, it’s all forward motion.” He straightened a perfectly aligned stack of shirts. “There, I feel like a man again.”
His reference to Trenton as home was not lost on me. I had been struggling with my love for two men but failed to consider that I might no longer fit into Wash’s life. We had long since drifted apart, he to a life in Trenton, his adoring family surrounding him, and me, working hard but much preferring the grand adventures of the larger city, with its glittering lights and entertainment.
My husband had said he no longer felt like a man around me, a thought that crushed my very soul. How did one respond to that? Deny it was true? We no longer made love, and I had given up trying to entice him.
He had finally opened up, been brave enough to reveal his most vulnerable self, but I just wrung my hands. If my words didn’t come out right, he’d sense my own conflict. So I did the worst thing. I pretended not to hear him.
* * *
Mother’s friends had hinted that they wished to take a tour of the huge cable-spinning operation. Of course, we welcomed politicians, dignitaries, and anyone with power and influence to attend carefully staged demonstrations. However, my mother and her coterie could be a bit unpredictable. After long deliberation, I decided they should have their tour, but only after I had given them a thorough lecture on safety. No bloomer costumes this time. I wanted them well-dressed, like any other important visitor. Even so, I still harbored some misgivings when Mother, Carrie, Henrietta, Eleanor, and I set out for the bridge.
The roof of the Brooklyn anchor building provided a good vantage point. Farrington gave them a brief tour of the site. “These wire strands, each three inches in diameter, are made up of a bundle of over two hundred and seventy wires.” He pointed to the strands descending from the bridge tower. “Nineteen strands are being wired together to form a cable. If you studied a cross section, it would resemble a round honeycomb. That honeycomb will be wrapped like a mummy with even more wire”—he circled his finger—“giving us the four main cables that will support the roadway. The strands are attached to a chain of iron eyebars in the brick structure beneath us, then fixed to a massive iron anchor at street level.”
Supple and two other workers adjusted a horseshoe-shaped iron support that clamped a taut wire strand. The iron support with the strand was lowered and disappeared into an opening leading to the anchor below. Farrington gave a signal, and workers began easing the next strand through a pulley, straining mightily against the tremendous forces as the strand tightened and the machinery took hold.
I overheard the ladies enjoying some private joke, referring to Farrington as a wire bundle. Even though I agreed it was an apt description and thought Farrington would appreciate their attentions, I kept to my script. “We are using galvanized steel wire, not iron, for an extra measure of strength and durability.”
I held up a sample of the wire when—bang!—there was a sound akin to cannon fire as the strand snapped off the machinery. Like a steel serpent, its tail end whipped violently, first slicing across Farrington’s chest and then across a worker’s back, sending him flying across the anchorage. With a loud whoosh, the tail flew back toward us and struck Supple with such force, he vanished from the rooftop. As the terrified women and workers flattened themselves on the roof, the strand whipped, whooshing and snapping, then streaked toward the tower.
Onlookers screamed as the strand sailed over the streets, toppling trees like a giant scythe. The strand sliced the chimney off a house before sailing over the Brooklyn tower. Losing velocity, it snapped very close to a ferry boat, then crashed into the river with a huge splash.
The women huddled together, wide-eyed
and shaking, in a tangle of dresses and crinolines. Farrington’s injury didn’t seem severe; he was shouting orders and checking others. A swarm of workers preceded me to the injured men, so I hurried to the edge of the anchor building to see if Supple had survived his fall from the building. His unnatural position, limbs splayed on concrete over eighty feet below, gave me the sad answer.
Sometimes, the mind, in times of great distress, resorts to the clinical, perhaps the most effective way of bearing with crushing sorrow. Were it not so for me, I would have sunk to the floor and wept. Instead, I puzzled: Why did that strand snap? The tensile strength of the many wires should have far exceeded the forces. Some wire remnants hung from a pulley. I worked the wire back and forth until it snapped. I knew the wire rope better than the texture of my own hair, and this was not what we had specified. How did it pass inspection? Had it been switched?
I grimaced at the hardening of my own heart, thinking about the wire instead of the loss of this dear man. Supple had done nothing to deserve this. In fact, he had risked his own life for others, asking nothing in return but a steady paycheck. I comforted the women, trembling in shock.
Thirty-One
1879
The massive towers and anchor buildings were now connected by the graceful arcs of the cables, glinting in the sun and showing promise of the future. Contracts for the steel suspenders were opened for bids. These suspenders would hang from the cables and support the infrastructure for the roadway. Papa had specified iron, but Wash felt steel was less prone to damage from corrosion and stress.
Roebling wire had been mixed with Haigh’s wire in the cables when Haigh’s company couldn’t keep up with the demand. The wire strand that had so violently snapped was mostly Roebling wire of good quality but had been frayed by a pulley. After repairs, I was assured it wouldn’t happen again. But still, my gut twisted with the suspicion that something else was wrong. The type of wire I had recovered was unlikely to have been responsible for the accident, but its friability troubled me, and I didn’t trust Haigh, the contractor who had provided it. I broke off a piece and sent it to a laboratory for testing.
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