III

THE BRIDGE

Eads was bred to the Mississippi. He had mastered its secrets by hard experience; he had worked in successful opposition to its great wayward forces. But he was not to be content till he had tamed it, till he had saddled it, and, wild as it will always be, had made it nevertheless subservient to him. To his quietly stubborn spirit there was a delightful invigoration in using his brain to conquer the brute force of this capricious monster. For the river is the grandest power between our two oceans. Niagara is more sublime; but Niagara is constant, and therefore its immense strength has been easily set to a task. The Mississippi is so irregular that one tends unconsciously to personify it by calling it tricky. To find the causes of its sudden changes one must go back hundreds of miles to the mountains east and west. Seeming to delight in destruction, it tears down or eats away the checks that are put upon it. Only a mind never discouraged, a mind capable of discovering and comprehending the laws that after all underlie the apparently blind and brutal jests of this untiring giant, can, by the use of those very laws, tame it. And such a mind Eads had. "That everlasting brain of yours will wear out three bodies," said one friend.

Though indeed his body was strong, with iron muscles and a fierce nervous energy, yet it was not a big body, and his health was weak. Again and again he worked beyond his strength, and only on the absolute order of his doctors would he go away from his work and rest. But he could not entirely rest. His brain would work. In his health tours to Europe he was always open to new ideas, always studying new methods to carry back to his task. "Your recreation," some one wrote him, "is Monitor discussions with Captain Ericsson." Another recreation was chess. Had he not elected to be the leading engineer of his day, he might have been the chess champion. This game, never one for the slothful and unthinking, he made even more exacting than usual. He would play several games at the same time; or, without seeing the board which his opponent used, he would carry the game in his head. Though it was his nature not to like to be beaten, yet he was as kindly as he was set in his purpose; and it was also his nature to take defeat gracefully: defeat seldom came. "Never let even a pawn be taken," he gave me, a small boy, as a rule for the game. Even in little things he liked thoroughness,—a capacity for painstaking which is, I think, characteristic of the "thoroughbred."

His appearance showed his traits. Not tall, and rather slight, he was always dignified. His wide and thin-lipped mouth shut so emphatically that it made plain his intention to do, in spite of all, what he believed could and should be done. Some one said that it was a hundred horse-power mouth. It admitted no trifling. When it spoke seriously, it spoke finally. But his eyes, with their merry twinkle, showed that he could also speak humorously. He was indeed a famous story-teller, fond of all sorts of riddles and jests, and remembering all of them he heard. He used often to point his arguments with an anecdote, always a fresh one. Believing with Lamb that a man should enjoy his own stories, he would laugh at his in a most infectious way, till he was red in the face. Indeed, he was the larger half of his stories. His face was thoughtful and stern. Though he seldom found fault, he never did more than once; but he was by no means violent. His mildness was more forcible than anger. He wore a full beard, but no mustache, thus exhibiting his long, determined lip. At forty he was already bald, and after he was sixty he always wore indoors a black skull-cap. Scrupulously cleanly, in his dress he was point-device. Without the least ostentation, his clothes were invariably faultless. From young manhood he had thought that it is due to one's self and to one's friends to look one's best; and he had also realized the practical value of a good appearance. Often impressing this on his wife and daughters, he would have them at all times well dressed. Really he seems to have been a point too precise. He was just the opposite to those geniuses whose great brain shows itself by a sloppy exterior. Eads was never sloppy, even at home.

His great brain showed itself in its restless activity, in its grasp of laws and of details, in its fight to help and to better the country and the world. For it was not only the lusty pleasure of battling with Nature that made him long for another struggle with the Mississippi: he saw the value there was in it to commerce and to civilization. Before the war he had long contended with stubborn currents, and with ice, and by his energy and his talent for inventing new devices he had become the most successful wrecker on the river. Abandoning the peaceful but lively triumphs of snatching hulls and cargoes from the maw of the stream, he had offered the government to cleanse its course and thereby to increase its safety and usefulness. In war times, owing to his knowledge of the waterways and of science, he had been able to build, with a speed fairly romantic, a gunboat fleet to patrol the Mississippi. Already now greater schemes for improving this central highway of our country were in his mind, but as yet the fullness of the time was not come. Still, he was no longer merely the careful son and father striving to protect his beloved ones and with no dreams of broader duties; he was no longer contented with rose-arbors for an occupation. The grim war had roused him; his years of rest were over; he was the well-known boat-builder,—engineer, perhaps some persons already called him,—and his mind was teeming with schemes of helpfulness. Yet his ambition was not for fame, but to do in the perfect way the work that only he could do.

In 1867 a grand convention for the improvement of the Mississippi and its tributaries met in Saint Louis. Even then people were beginning to see vaguely that the Mississippi Valley is destined to be the ruling section of the country. Eads in his speech showed that he foresaw it plainly. He urged the convention to persuade the government to take steps to improve the river; showing that for less money than was paid by the river boats in three years for insurance against obstructions, those obstructions could be removed. There was not one of them, he said, that engineering skill and cunning could not master.

Two years later he urged upon the commercial convention at New Orleans by letter the importance of introducing iron boats on the Mississippi; saying that it was the fault of the tariff on iron that the saving they would effect was not taken note of. Thirty years later this scheme has again been brought up. Perhaps Eads was before his time in advocating it. But it shows how he had the interests of commerce at heart.

His convention speech is a good sample of his style. He was so painstaking that even in private letters he would insert words and change sentences and sometimes rewrite. There are first draughts with excisions of whole half pages, for he sought conciseness. He sought also a certain rhythm or grace or forcefulness, it is hard to tell exactly what, since in his letters it often resulted in a rather self-conscious formality or a stiff playfulness, and in his speeches in a prettiness or a floweriness of style. He sought too carefully. Probably in delivery the speeches sounded better than we should imagine. In reading them, they seem florid. That was, however, the favorite style of the time. And while, by overdoing it, he often seems to lose force, he is almost always clear and always entirely logical. In contrast to his speeches his professional reports are models: simple and complete, written not faultlessly perhaps, but with a limpidity which makes one interested even in dry technical details. One of his most marked talents, often noted, was the ability to explain an abstruse subject so that it would be quite clear to anybody. And this he did nearly as well in writing as by word of mouth.

He thus made clear his remarkable plans for the bridge; for in 1867 the long talked of bridge at Saint Louis was at last begun.

In 1833, when Eads had arrived at the town, it had about 10,000 inhabitants. Though already seventy years old, it had not advanced very far beyond its original state of a French trading-post. With the introduction of steam and the waking up of the country, the growth of Saint Louis was rapid. In 1867 it had about 100,000 people. Despite a commanding situation, it could be seen that a struggle would have to be made for it to maintain the leadership among the river towns. As early as 1839 there had been a project for a highway bridge; and we are told that "the city fathers stood aghast" at an estimated cost of $736,600. In the following years there were several more abortive schemes for bridging, one of which, it is even said, would have been carried out, had not its projector died. Perhaps it is as well that he never lived to try it, for until Eads no one seems to have realized how enormous the undertaking was. Probably few others, realizing it, would have dared to go on.

In the winter of 1865-66 a bill was brought up in Congress to authorize the bridging of the Mississippi at Saint Louis. Dependence on ferries had become intolerable to the people, and often when the river was frozen even the ferries were blocked. A bridge was felt to be absolutely indispensable. However, the antagonism of rival commercial routes was so powerful that the bill was allowed to pass only after it had been so amended that it was supposed to require an impracticability. It declared that the central span of the contemplated bridge must be no less than 500 feet long, nor its elevation above the city directrix less than fifty feet. It was said at the time "that the genius did not exist in the country capable of erecting such a structure."

Still, a span of over 500 feet had been built in Holland; and the fact that there was not a total doubt as to the practicability of doing as well in the Mississippi Valley is shown by the inauguration of two rival bridge companies about a year after the passage of the bill. One of these, which was located in Illinois, after calling a convention of engineers, who considered the question for ten days, without an examination of Eads's plans, adopted a plan for a truss bridge. The other, the Saint Louis company, from the first had Eads as its chief engineer. For another year there was a sharp contest carried on between these two companies, confined, however, principally to the courts and the newspapers, until finally the Illinois company sold out to the Saint Louis company. Had the truss bridge been built, there is no knowing how long it might have stood, for the engineer who designed it did not arrange to base the foundations on the bed-rock of the river. Afterwards it was shown how necessary it was to do this; but at the time many people thought it quite superfluous, and on that, as well as on many other points, Eads met with opposition.

In every case it turned out that he had been right. No one else knew so well as he the immense power and the waywardness of the Mississippi. Good engineers supposed that the greatest imaginable scour at the river bottom in extreme high water would not remove over twenty-two feet of sand, and it was believed that there were perhaps one hundred feet of it along the east shore. But Eads had been sixty-five feet below the river's surface at Cairo, and there he had found the river bottom to be a moving mass at least three feet deep; and in cutting through the frozen river to liberate his diving-bell boats, he had found that the floating ice which goes underneath solid ice, as well as the rising or "backing-up" of the water above ice-gorges, forces the undercurrents lower than even a flood does; and he had found on cutting a wreck out of the ice that she had been held up by the gorged ice underneath her, which must therefore have been packed to the bottom. Knowing all this and much more about what goes on under the turbid surface of the river, he did not doubt that even beneath 100 feet of sand the bed-rock might at times be laid bare, and he was absolutely convinced that his bridge must be founded on it.

Moreover, he saw that on account of the exceptional force of the current in its rather narrow bed at Saint Louis, the masonry piers of his bridge must be made unusually big and strong to withstand it. Since they must be so big and sunk so very deep, it was evident that they would be so costly that the fewer there need be of them the better. The central span was required to be 500 feet; with three spans about that length the river could be crossed, and three spans would require only four piers. Steel trusses 500 feet long would have to be made extremely heavy; but Eads showed that a steel arch the same length, while quite as strong, would be lighter and consequently much cheaper. When his opponents objected that there was no engineering precedent for such spans, while he pointed out their mistake, at the same time he expressed his conviction that engineering precedents had nothing to do with the question of length of span; that it was altogether a money question. Therefore, since the cheapest method was to be carefully sought, he determined upon arches,—two abutment piers, two river piers, and three arches of respectively 502, 520, and 502 feet long.

There were many opponents to this plan; some of them people who would have opposed any bridge, as, for example, the ferry and the transfer companies. To his own company he explained away every objection that came up, as he was bound to do, in view of their confidence in him. He made the clearest of explanations of the theories involved; and even such absurd predictions as that his superstructure would crush his huge stone piers, he took the trouble to blast sarcastically. To an engineering journal he wrote three letters correcting mistakes in its accounts of his work. But he seems to have wasted little of his energy in arguing with the newspaper public. It was a question only of time till everybody should be convinced.

The most extraordinary care and pains were expended in every direction. The stone, granite, and steel were both hunted up and tested by experts, and by machines specially devised in the bridge works, though not by Eads himself. For his assistants he chose men who were of real ability and well trained, and to them he invariably gave great credit for their part in the work. The plans, after being figured out in detail by them, were gone over by the mathematician Chauvenet, then chancellor of Washington University, who found not one single error in them. Most of the big work, such as the masonry and steel, was given out on contract; and, as was natural, delays by the contractors often greatly delayed the progress of the bridge. The whole work occupied seven years.

While Eads had promised the company to prove by careful experiment, so far as was possible, everything connected with the bridge that had not already been fully demonstrated in practice, he did not pretend that in his main outlines he was without some examples. It was in his development of known ideas and his expedients for simplification that his genius perhaps most strikingly showed itself. Again and again he contrived some device so simple that, like a great many strokes of genius, it seemed that anybody should have thought of it. The massive piers were sunk to the bed-rock by means of metal caissons. These were adapted in design from some he had seen in use in France, and had examined during a trip his doctors ordered him to make in 1868. Eads himself compared them to inverted pans. They were open at the bottom, but perfectly air-tight everywhere else. They had several important features which were entirely original. Such caissons, sunk to the bottom, have the masonry of the pier built on top of them even while they are sinking; and workmen inside them keep removing the sand from underneath, and throwing it under the mouths of pipes which suck it up to the surface of the river. Evidently the caissons must be filled with compressed air to equalize the external pressure, which is constantly increasing as ever deeper water is reached; they must also have an opening connecting with the surface; and to admit of passing from the ordinary atmosphere to the denser one, there must be an air-lock. Before this bridge was built, the air-lock had always been placed at the top of the entrance shaft, where, as the caisson sank and the shaft was lengthened, it had to be constantly moved up. Eads placed it in the air-chamber of the caisson itself, where it never had to be moved; and thus, as the shaft was not filled with compressed air, less was needed, and there was less danger of leaks. Another of his useful innovations was to build his shaft of wood, and another was to put a spiral stairway into it. Indeed, in the last pier he put an elevator into the shaft. Moreover, he was the first person to run his pipes for discharging the sand, not through the shaft, but through the masonry itself; and he invented a very simple and effectual new sand-pump, which was worked by natural forces without machinery. All these improvements and various others seem to have been thought of so easily, that we are inclined to wonder why clumsier methods had ever been in use. He described them all in his reports and his letters about the bridge in a style which is not only clear but actually fascinating even to a person who has scant scientific knowledge or taste.

One of the piers was sunk 110 feet below the surface of the river, through ninety feet of gravel and sand. Eads's theories were justified by finding the bed-rock so smooth and water-worn as to show that at times it had been uncovered. This was the deepest submarine work that had ever been done, and Eads tells us in his reports many interesting experiments he made in the air-chambers. In their dense atmosphere a candle when blown out would at once light again. This was before the days of electric lighting: otherwise we may be sure that that would have been used, as so many other modern inventions were. For the first time in any such work, the last pier sunk had telegraphic communications with the offices on shore; which must have been comforting to workmen starting out to their labor in the dead of winter with two weeks' provisions. The dense air of the chambers caused not only discomfort to the ears, but also in the case of some of the workmen a partial paralysis. There was no previous experience to go by, but every precaution seen to be necessary was taken; the hours of work were made very short, the elevator was provided, medical attendance and hospital care were given free. After the first disasters no man was allowed to work in the air-chambers without a doctor's permit. And it is known that in helping the sufferers with his private means, Eads was as charitable as ever. Out of 352 men employed in the various air-chambers, 12 died. Eads, with his wonted generosity of praise, printed in his yearly report the names of all the men who worked in the deepest pier from its beginning till it touched bed-rock. It is interesting to note in passing that of all the workmen in the blacksmith's yard only the head smith himself could lift a greater weight than the designer of the bridge.

The superstructure consisted mainly of three steel arches, by far the longest that had ever been constructed; the first to dispense with spandrel bracing; and the first to be built of cast-steel. The "Encyclopædia Britannica" called them "the finest example of a metal arch yet erected." They were built out from the piers from both ends to meet in the middle; and were put into place entirely without staging from below,—once again, the first instance of such a proceeding. All the necessary working platforms and machinery were suspended from temporary towers built on the piers; and thus while the arches were being put up, navigation below was not interfered with. This throwing across of the 500-foot arches without the use of false works has been ranked with the sinking of the piers "through a hundred feet of shifting quicksands," as producing "some of the most difficult problems ever attempted by an engineer." One problem, caused by the fault of the contractors, presented itself when they came to insert the central tubes to close the arches. The tubes were found to be two and a half inches too long to go in, although they would be only the required length when they were in. It was left for Eads to insert them. Shortening them would of course have lowered the arch. Eads, who was just starting for London on financial business of the bridge, cut the tubes in half, joining them by a plug with a right and left screw. Then he cut off their ends, for the plug would make them any required length by inserting or withdrawing the screws a little. Then he went away. As it would have been much cheaper not to use this device, his assistants tried for hours to shrink the tubing by ice applications, and thus to get the arches closed; and there is a popular tradition in Saint Louis that they succeeded; but it was excessively hot weather, and they did not succeed. The screw-plug tubes, of course, were easily put in. Any part of this steel work can be at any time safely removed and replaced,—another structural feature original in this bridge.

Although Eads took care to protect his special innovations by patent, he was most willing to explain them with care to other engineers and to have others profit by his improvements; and several of the mechanical novelties of his bridge are now in the commonest use, and have been taken advantage of even in such famous structures as the Brooklyn Bridge.

During the building of the bridge Eads spent many months in enforced absence, but while in Europe he always had his labor in mind, and, as I have said, brought home from France one of his most useful appliances. During his absence he left absolutely trustworthy and efficient engineers in charge of the work, and before leaving home he provided for accidents that might occur. So much work was done in the winter that great barriers had to be built to keep it clear of floating ice. One curious detail connected with the bridge is that the Milwaukee, one of the double-turreted gunboats which Eads had built from his own plans, and which had been with Farragut at Mobile, was bought now from a wrecking company, and her iron hull used in making the caissons; so that her usefulness still continued in peace as in war.

It has been said of Eads that he grappled with great problems in engineering, and solved them as easily as a boy subtracts two from six. While this is true, it must not be forgotten that he had not the school-training of an engineer. Nothing is more untrue than the statement that he was, like de Lesseps, only a contractor. He was a very unusually brilliant engineer, and his ignorance of the higher mathematics served to show his brilliancy the more clearly. Some persons have said that his chief talent was in explaining abstruse reasonings simply; but an engineer has told me that he thought Eads's chief talent was his ability to arrive by some rough means at a certain conclusion to a given problem, which conclusion would in every instance be approximately the same that better trained mathematicians would reach by mathematics.

By the time the bridge was finished, indeed from the time (1868) when his first report for it made a decided stir in the scientific world, both at home and abroad, Eads was a very well-known engineer. In that same year a visit to Europe for his health's sake gave him the opportunity to interview a French steel company, through whom he met a famous bridge-builder, and was led to examine the piers of the bridge then being constructed at Vichy; and it was there that he found his new ideas for caissons. Going home, by way of England, he explained his plans to the engineers there, and was by them proposed as a member of the Royal Society. Even at home, in his own adopted State, he was not without recognition; for in 1872 the University of Missouri conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. From the general of engineers he received a request for suggestions for improvements in guns; and from his work on the subject of Naval Defenses it is plain that his mind still found time to run on this favorite topic.

In 1874 the bridge was finished. After it had satisfactorily stood the severe tests put upon it, it was formally opened on the 4th of July. The celebrations of that day were the first public outburst of approval given to Eads's work. And to-day the strong and graceful bridge stands as his most beautiful and lasting monument. And as even the great tornado of 1896 was unable to do the piers any serious damage, they are likely to last indefinitely, and thus make the bridge "endure," as its builder said, "as long as it is useful to man."

To Saint Louis it has been so useful that while on the one hand the growth of the city was the cause of its being built, on the other it has been one great cause of the continued growth and prosperity of the city. But it had even broader results than that. "It made a radical change in the conditions of transportation East and West, and it made possible the Memphis bridge and the future New Orleans bridge."

And in another direction yet it is peculiarly important. In bridge-building it marks an era, not only because of its strength and beauty and the daring of its design, but also because of its many labor-saving devices, the inventions of a thoroughly practical mind. A distinguished engineer calls it "a great pioneer in the art of sinking deep foundations and building spans over wide stretches of space, that astonished in its construction the entire civilized world." London "Engineering" chose it, while building, as preëminently the "most highly developed type of bridge;" and says, "In that work the alliance between the theorist and the practical man is complete." In Eads it finds its long-sighed-for dream, combining the highest powers of modern analysis with the ingenuity of the builder.

IV

THE JETTIES

The Mississippi River is a great antimonopolist. As more and more railways have been built it has been less and less used. And yet, because it drains almost every corner of a valley which comprises over one third of the whole United States, it affords means of transportation to an immense area; and since it cannot be controlled by any one company or group of companies, its freight rates can hardly be arbitrarily fixed. Still, so long as there are impediments to its free navigation in the shape of floods and bars, it cannot be depended on for shipping, and the magnificent opportunities it should offer to commerce are lessened. The vastest river system in the world, it shows in its various parts great contrasts. One large tributary flowing from the Alleghanies, one from the Rockies, one from the north, others from the southwestern plains, are each able to contribute their various products of grain, lumber, cattle, cotton, fruits, and so on. Some branches freeze every winter; others never do. Some are clear, others silt-bearing. From about Cairo it flows southward through the greater delta, or land built up by its own action in ages past, and in all this part of its course both banks and bottom are of yielding alluvion. For some hundreds of miles "the crookedest of great rivers," it varies frequently in width and velocity and is full of shoals; then for hundreds more, though uniform in width, it often rises higher than its shores, and is confined in artificial levees, which it continually breaks down. Finally, below New Orleans, growing more sluggish, and dividing into several mouths, or "passes," it wanders through tracts of waste marsh-lands into the gulf, which it colors brown for miles around. Blocking the end of each shallow mouth there was formerly a sand-bar; and these obstructions to navigation were the despair of the river commerce, and no less the despair of the government in its attempts to remove them.

Every one interested in trade or shipping realized what a very serious hindrance to the usefulness of the Mississippi these choked-up mouths were, but no one realized it better than Eads. Understanding that the great valley is capable of supporting 400,000,000 people, and intent on doing all in his power for good, even before he had completed the bridge he was studying the problem of opening the river. Its improvement and the welfare of its millions of people were cherished objects of his life. For some men one great undertaking at a time is enough, but Eads's energies were such that his works overlapped one another. It is hard to see how one man can have time, even if he has brains, to do all he did. But apparently he never lived an idle day. The bridge, with its many extraordinary solutions of new problems, made its builder's permanent reputation. At the particular request of West Point he had supplied that institution with writings, diagrams, and models. And so far afield had his fame spread that on one of his many trips abroad, he made plans, at the request of the Sultan's grand vizier, for an iron bridge over the Bosphorus. A change in viziers, however, prevented its being built.

It seems as if the river-mouth problem had not always been so difficult. Still, Eads showed that the bars were inevitable; and it is probably only because, with the growing population and trade of the central States, the need for an outlet was greater, that the problem seemed more complicated. Moreover, ocean vessels were increasing in size and draught, which also made an adequate channel more desirable. Although the blockade had forced the construction of several expensive lines of railway, yet it was impossible to carry all the products of the valley by rail. Millions of dollars' worth of merchandise were delayed at the bars. As early as 1726 attempts had been made to deepen the channels through the river's mouths by harrowing. But the first government effort was in 1837, when an appropriation was made for a survey and for dredging with buckets. Again in 1852 another appropriation was made; and a board, appointed by the War Department, recommended,—

Dredging by stirring the bottom was tried, and produced a depth of eighteen feet. Three years later this depth had entirely disappeared. In 1856 an appropriation was entered into, but the jetties were never completed. Later than that dredging was tried again. Up to 1875 more than eighteen feet of depth had never been obtained, and even that could not be steadily preserved. Channels, opened in low water, were quickly filled up with sediment in high water, and sometimes a severe storm would wash in enough sand from the gulf to undo the result of months of dredging.

As early as 1832 a ship canal near Fort Saint Philip, which should cut through the river bank out to the gulf, had been planned, and this solution had been approved of by the Louisiana legislature. That idea had been revived from time to time. And there had also more than once been new recommendations made for jetties, which by narrowing the channel should deepen it. Finally Congress ordered surveys and plans for the canal, and then appointed a board not only to report on them, but also to ascertain the feasibility of improving the channel of one of the natural outlets of the river. In 1874 this board reported in favor of the canal, and against the idea of jetties, which, in its opinion, could hardly be built, could not be maintained, and would be excessively costly.

This, then, was the situation when Eads appeared on the scene: "scratching and scraping" were going on in South West Pass, but were doing little real and no lasting good; the government engineers had declared themselves in favor of a canal; and though in some quarters jetties had been advocated, scarcely any one thought they could be built, or that if they were they would last, or that they would do any good. Eads, however, understood the river like a book, and he had studied this particular subject. He now came forward publicly, offering not only to build and to maintain jetties which would insure a twenty-eight foot channel, but to do all this for less than half the cost the board had estimated, and on a contract which should provide for his being paid only in case he succeeded. From this remarkable offer his own confidence in his plans may be inferred. A purpose which he had reasoned out as practical became an inspiration to him which nothing could shake, for his courage equaled his convictions.

But so bold was his proposition that he was considered a wild enthusiast. Never at a loss to solve any problem, again, as when he planned the bridge, he undertook to do what was commonly held to be impossible. Of course, all the backers of the canal scheme opposed him bitterly. New Orleans was of that faction. Saint Louis, on the other hand, upheld him because of his personal popularity and his signal success with the bridge. The army engineers were against him as a civil engineer. Thus the controversy was sectional, personal, and professional. Up to this time the government had invariably intrusted all works of river and harbor improvement to the military engineers; and to hand over the most important one it had ever undertaken to a private citizen, and to permit him to apply a method that had just been condemned in a report signed by six out of seven of the most distinguished army engineers, met with decided opposition. So the government hesitated. Certainly this was a proposal to make them consider, promising, as it did, an open river mouth, at a cost much lower than that of the canal, and in case of failure leaving the total loss to fall upon the contractor. Besides, several eminent civil engineers supported Eads's theory. The House, nevertheless, passed the canal bill; but the Senate, more thorough, after calling Eads and two of his principal opponents to state their views before a committee, passed a bill appointing a commission to reconsider the entire subject once more. The discussion before the Senate committee was one of the crises in Eads's life. The fate of the jetty enterprise hung on the outcome of it. Fortunately for himself and for the good of the country, he was a most magnetic and persuasive man. His theories and arguments were sound and logical, his experience of the river was vast; and beyond his aptitude for making technical reasoning simple and clear, his skill as a diplomatist was equal to his ability as an engineer.

So the commission was appointed; and, ultimately, on account of the far-reaching importance of the question of river-mouth improvement, its members decided to go to Europe to inquire into the matter. About the same time, and for the same purpose, Eads also went abroad, and while there he made a careful study of the works at the mouths of the Danube, the Rhone, and several other European rivers. What he saw there served only to strengthen his confidence in his own plans. When he returned home, there had been a noteworthy change in public sentiment. Though there still remained many either prejudiced or honest enemies to his plan, and although the newspapers were still noisy with their cheap and ignorant opposition, the country at large and Congress were inclined to accept the offer, which promised them so much at no risk at all.

The commission, returning too from Europe, where it had made as careful investigations as those of Eads, reported, by a majority of six to one, in favor of trying jetties in the South Pass. This pass, the smallest of the three mouths, had a depth of only eight feet on its bar, and had besides a shoal at its head. The South West Pass, the one which Eads had proposed to use, is not only two or three times as big, both in width and in volume of water, but it had fourteen feet on the bar, and no shoal at its head. Eads argued and implored with all his strength to be allowed to use the larger pass, as the only one adequate to the demands of commerce; and so convincing were his reasons that the House passed a bill which called for jetties in the larger pass. But the Senate, again more conservative, was cautious in this experiment, and insisted on the small pass. Finally, the bill went through, and the grant was made for the improvement of South Pass. And notwithstanding the considerable difference in size, as well as preliminary conditions altogether less promising than in the pass Eads had asked for, still, the depth of thirty feet was to be obtained,—the same result under harder circumstances. The payment promised, however, was not increased with the difficulty; but on the contrary was to be a good deal less than the estimate of the commission. The terms, which required certain specified depths and widths of channel to be obtained and then maintained during twenty years, were so arranged that Eads should not receive any part of his payment till after the work covered by that part had been finished and approved.

Hard as these conditions were, they were based on his own proposal, and he was glad even on such terms to undertake the great work he had longed to do. He at once busied himself in raising money for beginning the Jetties, and here again his peculiar talents helped him. One of his friends has said, "His powers of persuasion, his charm of address, and the magnetism of his personality opened the hearts and purses of whomever he pleaded with in support of his engineering devices. He was a most lovable man." Moreover, he was an excellent business man. He had indeed a marvelous faculty for obtaining funds with which to carry on his works; and in that time of financial distress such a faculty was very necessary.

The theory on which he based his jetties was really extremely simple. He said that, other things being equal, the amount of sediment which a river can carry is in direct proportion to its velocity. When, for any reason, the current becomes slower at any special place, it drops part of its burden of sediment at that place, and when it becomes faster again it picks up more. Now, one thing that makes a river slower is an increase of its width, because then there is more frictional surface; and contrariwise, one of the things that make it faster is a narrowing of its width. Narrow the Mississippi then, at its mouth, said Eads, and it will become swifter there, and consequently it will remove its soft bottom by picking up the sediment (of which it will then hold much more), and by carrying it out to the gulf, to be lost in deep water and swept away by currents; and thus, he said, you will have your deep channel. In other words, if you give the river some assistance by keeping its current together, it will do all the necessary labor and scour out its own bottom.

Today, since this theory has been proved, it seems as simple as A B C. And it is almost impossible to believe what opposition it then aroused. People were not only set on blocking the undertaking, but they were actually ignorant enough to deny that the velocity of water had any connection with its sediment-carrying power. Even if the narrowing process should happen to give a channel through the present bar, they said, a new one would presently form beyond, and so the jetties would have to be extended every year.

However, Eads had his contract and his backers and his ideas and his faith in them; and he set to work on the little pass. The actual delta of the Mississippi consists of nothing but water, marsh, and some sandy soil bearing willows. At the sea end of South Pass Eads extended the low banks out over the bar, by driving rows of guide-piles and sinking willow mattresses close alongside them on the riverside. The mattresses were sunk in tiers, and each tier was weighted well with rock, put in as soon as each mattress was in position. As usual he invented many of the requisite mechanical appliances and contrivances himself, and generally such good ones that his methods came to take the place of earlier ones. The South Pass was not only the smallest and shallowest of the mouths, but it was besides more difficult than the other two in having a bar at its head as well as at its sea end. And although by his contract Eads was not required to remove that bar, by the exigencies of the case he was. Like the other it had to be attacked with water, guided by dikes and dams, which were similar in construction to the two parallel banks, the jetties proper. The scheme was always to force the river itself to do all the real work; and though there was, to be sure, a good deal of planning and building, the main idea, as already explained, is exceedingly simple. Eads never pretended to have originated this idea. He had studied many jetties in Europe. He had had the eye to see that they could be adapted to the Mississippi, and the skill to adapt them. For simple as the bald theory is, there was need of the nicest appreciation of laws and forces in applying it, and the result has been called the greatest engineering feat ever accomplished. The problem of making the quantity of water needed run up into the smallest pass "through a narrow, artificially contracted channel, located immediately between two great natural outlets,"—this problem being complicated by many "occult conditions,"—has been called, by no mean engineer, perhaps the most difficult problem ever dealt with successfully. "There is no instance, indeed, in the world where such a vast volume of water is placed under such absolute and permanent control of the engineer, through methods so economic and simple."

To the non-mechanical mind the control of such a multitude of abstruse, minute, and exact details as combine in the making of a bridge seems perhaps more marvelous than the mere bending of nature's forces to serve the ends of man. In Eads the power to do both existed.

On piles in the marsh houses were built for the engineers and the workmen, and the Jetties were begun. Eads was not able to be there in person all the time, but as usual his choice of competent and faithful lieutenants was noteworthy. His plans were approved by an advisory board of very eminent engineers; and by the end of one year the value of the work began to show. As yet it was not very strong or solid, but it had deepened the water on the bar from nine to sixteen feet.

None the less the storm of detraction continued. There were enough difficulties to meet without this, but none of them was met more forcibly. It was never Eads's way to attack other people in a malicious spirit, for he was never jealous; nor did he often deign to answer purely personal attacks. But in defense of his undertakings, to protect them and the people who had put money into them, he was ready to fight. His defense commonly took the form of criticism of his critics, and in such writing his pen was decidedly trenchant. Probably no man ever incurred more foolish criticism, and probably none ever pointed out more plainly how foolish it was. Even "the ablest of his adversaries confessed themselves afraid of his pen." Besides this parrying of attack, he was continually writing and talking to show the simplicity and feasibility of his method; and one man phrased what it is likely many exemplified, that a few minutes' conversation with Eads had done more to convert him to the Jetties than any amount of writing and of talking with other people could have done. Always modest and unassuming, he was so thoroughly in earnest that he convinced others by his own conviction.

Never was a man less afraid to work. Years before, in the diving-bell days, he had set himself the precedent of never asking an employee to do what he himself would fear to do. And, on the other hand, he did not hesitate to ask an employee to do as much work as he himself would have done. His former confidential clerk has told me that sometimes, after evenings of discussion, Eads on starting to bed, perhaps at midnight, would say to him, "Now, have that figured out for me in the morning," which meant three or four hours of scrupulous figuring or writing to be done by eight the next morning.

Undoubtedly he could not have worked so hard as he did himself had he not been able to throw aside his cares and problems when he was not actively engaged with them. A very sociable man, he liked not only to be with people, but to be making them enjoy themselves. Thus he was both generous and jovial. No one loved more to give presents; no one knew more droll stories and more poetry. Nor was his joviality by any means a descent; for not only before royalty was he dignified, but in the most democratic assembly. His was not, however, a forbidding dignity. Simple-hearted as a child, he was fond of children, and they were fond of him.

Of course, he kept up his miscellaneous reading. He was specially devoted to poetry; and loved not only to recite verse upon verse aloud, but also to read to his friends and associates. As usual, his enthusiasm spread to others. One old lady has told me that she never had thought much of poetry till she heard him read it. Burns and Edwin Arnold and Tennyson were favorites; and there is a letter written by Eads to Tennyson, apparently to send him a clipping in which the one was described reciting from the other's poems. Eads excuses himself for intruding with his tribute, and remarks that both of them have built works destined to outlive their authors. He says it quite modestly and candidly, "as equal comes to equal; throne to throne."

Yet despite the confidence of their builder, despite his cheerfulness, the Jetties were not getting along well. To be sure, they were steadily deepening the channel, and thereby proving to all ingenuous persons who were undeceived that jetties were what had long been needed, and that they should be helped along and finished. But the Jetties were situated far off in a remote marshland where few people saw them; consequently nearly everybody was either deceived or was disingenuous. People who had no business to interfere did interfere. Every hitch was shouted abroad, every success was concealed or twisted. Concrete difficulties were enormous. Sudden storms at just the wrong time delayed and undid the work. The need for more money was pressing, and it could be borrowed only at exorbitant rates of interest. The newspapers were clamoring that the rash experiment was a failure; and though, of course, it was not a failure, still it might have fallen through, when one day the Cromwell liner, Hudson, drawing over fourteen feet of water, came in through the Jetties, and they were saved.

Although the prestige of the undertaking was thus established, Eads realized that his contract with the government was too severe. Not that he asked to be paid beforehand for his work, but he did ask to be paid as the work was actually done. So evident were his energy, skill, and good faith that Congress promptly voted him an advance of a million dollars. It also sent a commission to inspect and to report on the progress and efficiency of the works. This commission, while reporting favorably, advised against any further advance payments. But Congress, nevertheless, voted him three-quarters of a million more. It is said that this is the only instance where the government has voted money to an individual in advance of the specific terms of his agreement. Moreover, his contract was re-arranged so as to be less oppressive.

It has been said that if Eads had failed with the Jetties he would not only have destroyed his reputation, but he would have been a beggar,—though, some one added, he would still have deserved everlasting gratitude for his efforts and sacrifices. And now he had already succeeded in changing the little pass into a grand channel of commerce sufficient for the largest shipping that visited New Orleans. Yet the violent opposition and the calumnies still continued. There was a wonderful persistency in the false reports which came from bitter opponents who would not be convinced. The foolishness and ignorance of their arguments are almost incredible. But however foolish, they had to be disproved; and Eads set himself patiently to work to point out the errors in logic and in physics; and in doing so he wrote what those who know call one of the greatest works on river hydraulics.

While there were so many men's hands against Eads, it is pleasant to record that there were also many for him. It was the "Scientific American" which first suggested his name for the presidency. It advocated him as a fearless, honest, and forceful man; but the peculiar compliment in it was that this was a technical paper that upheld him. The proposal was repeated in many newspapers, but Eads had no more intention now than ever of going into politics. He knew in what line he could do most for his country, and had an ambition rather to be a supremely useful engineer than to be president.

Another of his admirers was the late Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II., who, after a visit to the Jetties, first tried to persuade Eads to go to Brazil to do some very important work for him, and who then, failing that, sent him a personal letter asking him to recommend an engineer. And he engaged the one whom Eads recommended.

In 1879, a little over four years from the time the Jetties were begun, the United States inspecting officer there reported the maximum depth of thirty feet and the required width and depths throughout the channel. Thereupon all the remainder of the price agreed was paid over to Eads, excepting a million dollars, which was kept, at interest, as a guarantee, during twenty years' actual maintenance of the channel. Omitting from the count every day of deficient channel, these twenty years are now (1900) almost over; the results in the channel and in the part of the gulf just beyond the Jetties have been precisely and entirely what the projector of the works predicted when he began them. The bar has never formed again. The Jetties themselves, so far from having to be lengthened, are shorter than they were originally designed. In a word, the sole legitimate objection that can be made to them is that they do not furnish a great enough depth. Of course they furnish the required depth, and as great a depth undoubtedly as can possibly be had in the little South Pass. Ships, however, now draw more water than they did twenty-five years ago, and a still deeper channel is needed. The best proof of the success of the present one is that the government is preparing to apply the same plan to the big South West Pass, which Eads begged to open and was not allowed to. It is said that in that pass he would have produced thirty feet in one year. But nothing is more useless to discuss than what might have been. What Eads has accomplished with his Jetties is certain.

One result of his achievement was a quick improvement in prices. Every acre, mill, farmhouse in the whole of the Mississippi Valley was increased in value by the impetus which the open river-mouth gave to commerce. New Orleans rose from the eleventh to the second export city in the country. Consequently there was a great increase in the number of lines of ships going there, and in their tonnage. And as a result of that there was a rapid increase in railway facilities. In twenty years from the commencement of the Jetties there was a gain of one hundred per cent. in the total commerce of New Orleans, nearly all of it due to these works. This boom has, despite the marvelous multiplication of railways, preserved the river traffic; and the river traffic, as always, has by competition lowered freight rates. The effect has spread to remote districts; and by this reduction in rates and prices there is no doubt that the Jetties have made living cheaper on the Atlantic seaboard as well as in the Mississippi Valley.

Even more: in another way they have made living cheaper. The half-rail-and-half-water route from the Pacific coast to New York via New Orleans, which the Jetties first made possible, forced the transcontinental railways to cut down their time for shipping freight over one half. The tonnage by this newer route has increased enormously, and its competition has affected commerce by reducing all rates from the Mississippi Valley and the West and the Pacific slope to the Atlantic seaboard and to Europe. As a consequence bread has been made cheaper to all the great populations that require the food products of the central zone and the Pacific slope.

Another very different but curious change is probably largely due to the Jetties. Before their construction only very light-draught ships could safely reach New Orleans; but it was so favorite a cotton port that many owners would build vessels of unusually light draught, in order that they might make one trip a year to New Orleans with them, although the rest of the time they sailed to deeper ports. As soon as it became known over the shipping world that New Orleans was now open to deep-draught vessels, a great many new ones were built. Thus the Jetties, as much as any other cause, brought in the era of great ships.

It has been calculated from statistics, which it is not necessary to give here, that the annual saving to producers of the Mississippi Valley brought about by the fall of rates, the saving in marine insurance, and the saving in time, due to the Jetties, is $5,000,000; and it is furthermore calculated that the annual money value of the Jetties to the people of the country at large is, by a very conservative estimate, $25,000,000.

Even the Jetties, however, were not the end of Eads's efforts toward the improvement of the Mississippi. For several years before their completion he had been delivering addresses urging the application of the same system to the entire alluvial basin of the river from the gulf to Cairo. People were in despair as to what to do to prevent the breaking of the levees (the results of which are as "terrible to the dwellers on those flats as the avalanche to people who live on the sides of steep mountains"), and the distress and prostration created by the awful spring floods. Most people thought there were two possible remedies,—to build more and higher levees, and to drain off some of the volume of the river through the Louisiana bayous. But Eads insisted that the requisite move was to reduce the excessive width of certain stretches of the river with willow mattresses; by uniformity of width to produce uniformity of depth, and consequently uniformity of current. This would facilitate the discharge of floods, and would tend to lessen the need of any levees, whereas drawing off any of the volume of water, he said, would increase the elevation of its surface slope, and thus necessitate higher levees.

His arguments on the question are clear and forcible; and it is likely that his plan, if carried out, would solve the important question of the Mississippi. But enough money to try it thoroughly has never been appropriated; and so little effect has patching had, that at this very day there are still advocates of the scheme of drawing off some of the water,—a scheme which Eads blasted years ago.

In 1879 the Mississippi River Commission was created, consisting of one civilian and six military and civil engineers, of whom Eads was one. But for him the government would not have undertaken, at any rate at that time, its very comprehensive system of river improvement, founded primarily on his theory. Besides giving a regular, deepened channel, and putting an end to overflows, he contended that his system would reclaim about 30,000 square miles of rich alluvial lands subject to inundation. For two years he served on this commission: for many years before he had been working and fighting for the same grand result,—grand though almost fruitless. "He had no selfish interest to subserve" in this; "no contract to execute; nothing himself to gain." But when, on returning from a trip to Europe, he found that the work was no longer being carried on as he thought it should be, he resigned from the commission. Deploring the wrong methods used, he still was most deeply interested in this great work up to the time of his death. If, some day, the Mississippi is conquered, it will doubtless be through the means he pointed out.