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.
V
THE SHIP-RAILWAY
When the Jetties were finished and paid for, Eads found himself in a
very good situation. Not only was his bold scheme proved to be a
complete success, but it had in the end paid him well; and he was
promised still further payment for maintaining his works twenty years
longer. His reputation was world-wide. He was now fifty-nine years old.
Five years later, in 1884, he went to live in New York. It is not hard
to imagine why so busy a man wished to be more in the centre of things,
though, for that matter, he had not for some years past spent much of
his time at home. There was too much to make him travel. Besides the
frequent voyages which he was ordered to take for the sake of his
health,--and which, as he was a very bad sailor, he said were real
medicine,--he was in demand here and there, in places miles apart, for
professional services; and then, too, he visited many engineering works
in various remote lands,--river improvements, docks, the Suez Canal. It
was not alone that his curiosity was always healthy, but also that his
education--the broad, useful education that he gave himself--was never
ended.
We have seen how he refused to go to Brazil. He was also wanted at
Jacksonville, Florida, where the citizens called him in 1878 to examine
the mouth of the Saint John's River, and to report on the practicability
of deepening the channel through the bar with jetties. He went there,
and, after a personal examination, presented a very elaborate report.
In 1880 the governor of California had requested him to act as
consulting engineer of that State, and he accordingly visited the
Sacramento River, and reported upon the plans for the preservation of
its channel and the arrest of debris from the mines. In 1881 he was
consulted by the Canadian Minister of Public Works on the improvement
of the harbor of Toronto, which he also examined. This was the first
instance in which the Canadian government had ever employed an American
engineer. When he was in Mexico, the government there asked him for
reports on the harbors of Vera Cruz and Tampico and suggestions for
their improvement. Although he did not examine these two harbors
personally, he drew up plans on surveys furnished by engineers whom he
sent there; and the work which has since been carried out after his
instructions has proved eminently satisfactory. Again, it was the
people of Vicksburg who sent for him to tell them how to better their
harbor; and at another time he was consulted about the Columbia River
in Oregon and about Humboldt Bay. In 1885 the Brazilian Emperor made a
second attempt to secure his services for an examination of the Rio
Grande del Sul, but ill health and pressing business prevented his
acceptance of the offer; nor was he able to undertake the examination
of the harbor of Oporto requested by the Portuguese government. It
seems superfluous to say that all the reports he did make "were
exhaustive and eminently instructive in their treatment of the subjects
discussed."
Perhaps the two most important professional cases submitted to him were
those in 1884 on the estuary and bar of the Mersey River and on
Galveston Harbor. In the case of the Mersey he was called in, at the
solicitation of the Mersey Docks and Harbor Board of Liverpool, to
settle a dispute. Appearing before a committee of the House of Lords,
he gave his testimony as to the effect which the proposed terminal
works of the Manchester ship canal would have upon the estuary of the
Mersey and the bar at Liverpool. "He brought to the solution of this
question that same keen insight into hydraulics and the same close
application that had made him so successful in this country." He showed
so plainly what would inevitably be the deleterious results of the
proposed plans that the committee decided against them. Subsequently
they were changed to conform to his suggestions. For this report he
received L3500, said to have been the largest fee ever paid to a
consulting engineer.
In the Galveston case, the same year, he was requested, not only by the
city but by the state legislature, to formulate a plan and to take a
contract from the United States government for improving that harbor.
The government had already been carrying on works there for several
years and accomplishing nothing. Indeed, it was the jetty method--by
this time more highly thought of than ten years before--which was being
attempted, but not in proper form. Eads, after long and careful study
of the situation, made a plan, which he offered to carry out on
conditions very similar to those adopted in the case of the Mississippi
Jetties, but Congress was not willing to grant the contract. Since
then, however, the works there have been altered according to his
suggestions, and have consequently been more successful.
For a good many years, owing to the weakness of his lungs and to other
illness, Eads had not only had to travel much for his health, but to
take special care of himself generally; and yet, to judge from the
following account, in the first person, of how he had spent the year
1880, it seems that his wondrous energy had not failed: "I inspected
the River Danube about 800 miles of its course; and investigated the
cause and extent of the frightful inundation at Szegedin, in Hungary,
which involved an examination of 150 miles of the Theiss River. I also
examined the Suez Canal, to familiarize myself more thoroughly with the
question of a ship canal across the American isthmus, having previously
visited the Amsterdam ship canal and the one at the mouth of the River
Rhone. As a member of the Mississippi River Commission I also aided in
perfecting the plans for the improvement of that river, and the
preparation of its report now under consideration before Congress. As
consulting engineer of the State of California I made a thorough
inspection of the Sacramento River, to consider the best method of
repairing the injury to its navigation caused by the hydraulic mining
operations there, and submitted a lengthy report upon it. On my way
back I visited the wonders of the Yellowstone Park, crossing the Rocky
Mountains in that excursion six different times. Within this time I
have thrice visited the Jetties at the mouth of the Mississippi,
besides my visit to the city of Mexico, Tehuantepec, and Yucatan.... I
have also, at the request of the mayor and council of Vicksburg, twice
visited that city during the last year, to examine its harbor with a
view to its improvement."
In 1884 Eads received perhaps the most distinguished honor of his
career--the award of the Albert Medal. As it came only two or three
months after the report on the Mersey, it was undoubtedly due to that
as its immediate cause, although the Jetties were almost specifically
named as the reason for this honor,--and Eads had not by any means
lacked even earlier appreciation in England. Three years before, at a
meeting of the British Association, he had been urged, nay pressed, to
deliver an impromptu address on his works, both completed and
projected. Nevertheless, it was not until after the Mersey report that
the Albert Medal was conferred upon him. This medal, founded in 1862 in
memory of the Prince Consort, is awarded annually by the Society for
the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. It was in Eads's
case awarded "as a token of their appreciation of the services he had
rendered to the science of engineering," to the engineer "whose works
have been of such great service in improving the water communications
of North America, and have thereby rendered valuable aid to the
commerce of the world." He was the second American citizen and the
first native-born American to receive this medal.
Of course he belonged to many scientific organizations. He was a member
of the Engineers Club of Saint Louis, and for two years president of
the Academy of Science there; he was also a member of the American
Geographical Society, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Great
Britain, and of the British Association, and of the Society for the
Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce; a fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science; and a member,
fellow, and for a year vice-president of the American Society of Civil
Engineers.
He was now a person whose return from Europe, with plans for river
improvement, and news about a fresh engineering scheme, was an item in
the small as well as the large newspapers. For, since the Jetties were
finished, he had a new scheme,--a decidedly new one it seemed to most
people,--though, as formerly, he made no pretense of having originated
the idea. Instead of resting content, now that he was almost
sixty,--rich, and honored, and frail,--instead of resting content on
his laurels of the gunboats, the Bridge, the Jetties, he was as active
as ever, with the hope of opening more roads to commerce and
prosperity. The publication of the proceedings of De Lesseps's
Interoceanic Canal Congress in 1879 gave Eads an opportunity to
propose, in a letter to the New York "Tribune," his own project for
spanning the isthmus. The Tehuantepec route from the Gulf of Mexico to
the Pacific would be, in the general lines of travel, about 2000 miles
shorter than the Panama route, or 1500 miles shorter than the
Nicaragua. And it was at Tehuantepec that Eads proposed building, not a
canal, but a ship-railway. The proposition was astounding. It certainly
suggested very picturesque visions of transportation; but at first
sight it did not sound very practicable. However, Eads held that it
presented six great and purely practical advantages: First, it could be
built for much less than the cost of a canal. Secondly, it could be
built in one quarter of the time. Thirdly, it could, with absolute
safety, transport ships more rapidly. Fourthly, its actual cost could
be more accurately foretold. Fifthly, the expense of maintaining it
would be less than for a canal. Sixthly, its capacity could be easily
increased to meet future requirements.
In 1880 he appeared before a committee of the House, and in reply to De
Lesseps, who was advocating the Panama Canal, he stated his plan for
the ship-railway. A few months later he went to Mexico, where the
government gave him, besides a very valuable concession for building
the ship-railway, its cordial assistance in his surveys. It was at this
time that Mexico requested his aid in improving its two harbors, and
when he returned home, sent him in the Mexican man-of-war, the
Independencia. The next year he proposed to Congress to build the
ship-railway at his own risk, and to give the United States special
privileges, which had been arranged for in his Mexican charter,
provided the government would, as he proved the practicability of his
plan by actual construction and operation, guarantee part of the
ship-railway's dividends. Although this arrangement would have laid as
little risk on the government as the jetty arrangement had, it was not
accepted.
Strange and even unnatural as the idea itself appeared, it was adapted
from perfectly simple ship-railways already in existence and in
satisfactory use. Science, he said, could do anything, however
tremendous, if it had enough money. In the magnified form contemplated,
the plan provided for a single track of a dozen parallel rails, and a
car with 1500 wheels. On this car was to be a huge cradle into which
any ship might be floated and carefully propped. The car having then
been hauled up a very slight incline out of the water, and monster,
double-headed locomotives hitched to it, by gentle grades it and the
ship were to be drawn across to the other ocean a hundred miles away,
where the ship could be floated again. To obviate any chance of
straining the ships, all curves were to be avoided by the use of
turn-tables.
Nevertheless, many people believed that such a journey would strain a
ship so much that it would never float afterwards. On the other hand,
there is so imposing an array of names of distinguished engineers,
shipbuilders, and seamen, who declared that the plan was feasible in
every particular, that it is hard to think they could all have been
mistaken in thus supporting the leading engineer of the day. It may
easily be supposed that every other imaginable and unimaginable
objection was raised, but to one and all Eads gave an answer that
sounded conclusive.
As usual he was willing to back up his ideas with money, and he had the
most elaborate surveys made, and remarkable models prepared to show the
working of the ship-railway. He preached this new crusade of science
with his customary vigor. So many men were financially interested in
the project, or were ready to be, that it would at all events have been
tested, had not its leading spirit, the very life of it, died.
Even though he was at the same time engaged in investigations so
important as those at the Mersey and at Galveston, Eads devoted the
last six years of his life mainly to this daring and tremendous
enterprise. In 1885, after obtaining from the Mexican government a
modification of his concession, guaranteeing one third of the net
revenue per annum, he had a bill introduced in Congress, whereby, when
the ship-railway should be entirely finished and in operation, the
United States was to guarantee the other two thirds. Though this bill
was favorably reported, Eads finally decided to withdraw it, and to ask
after all for a simple charter, which would doubtless have been
granted. During those six years there was perhaps not another man in
the country who was so able to persuade others of the scientific,
financial, commercial soundness of his projects. If, more than any one
else, he could make a scheme appeal, it was not that it was in any
sinister sense a scheme, but because his tact and his address were
pleasing, his reputation firmly grounded for honesty and common-sense
as well as for thorough scientific knowledge, so that his enthusiasm
was contagious. His enemies might call him a lobbyist, but his sole
means of persuasion were the soundness of his views, the clearness of
his arguments, and the fervor of his wish to benefit his country.
For this undertaking, as for his previous ones, Eads invented many
devices. All in all he held nearly fifty patents from the United States
and England for useful inventions in naval warfare, bridge foundations
and superstructure, dredging machines, navigation, river and harbor
works, and ship-railway construction.