The Pyramids were built by the sacrifices of the living for the dead.
They served no useful purpose, except to make odious to future
generations the tyranny which degrades humanity to the level of the
brute. In this age of the world such a waste of effort would not be
tolerated. To-day the expenditures of communities are directed to
useful purposes. Except upon works designed for defence in time of
war, the wealth of society is now mainly expended in opening channels
of communication for the free play of commerce, and the communion of
the human race. An analysis of the distribution of the surplus
earnings of man after providing food, shelter and raiment, shows that
they are chiefly absorbed by railways, canals, ships, bridges and
telegraphs. In ancient times these objects of expenditure were
scarcely known. Our Bridge is one of the most conspicuous examples of
this change in the social condition of the world, and of the feeling
of men. In the Middle Ages cities walled each other out, and the
fetters of prejudice and tyranny held the energies of man in hopeless
bondage. To-day men and nations seek free intercourse with each
other, and much of the force of the intellect and energy of the world
is expended in breaking down the barriers established by nature, or
created by man, to the solidarity of the human race.
And yet, in view of this tendency, the most striking and
characteristic feature of the nineteenth century, there still are
those who believe and teach that obstruction is the creator of wealth;
that the peoples can be made great and free by the erection of
artificial barriers to the beneficent action of commerce, and the
unrestricted intercourse of men and nations with each other. If they
are right, then this Bridge is a colossal blunder, and the doctrine
which bids us to love our neighbors as ourselves is founded upon a
misconception of the divine purpose.
But the Bridge is more than an embodiment of the scientific knowledge
of physical laws, or a symbol of social tendencies. It is equally a
monument to the moral qualities of the human soul. It could never have
been built by mere knowledge and scientific skill alone. It
required, in addition, the infinite patience and unwearied courage by
which great results are achieved. It demanded the endurance of heat,
and cold, and physical distress. Its constructors have had to face
death in its most repulsive form. Death, indeed, was the fate of its
great projector, and dread disease the heritage of the greater
engineer who has brought it to completion. The faith of the saint and
the courage of the hero have been combined in the conception, the
design and the execution of this work.
Let us, then, record the names of the engineers and foremen who have
thus made humanity itself their debtor for a successful achievement,
not the result of accident or of chance, but the fruit of design, and
of the consecration of all personal interest to the public weal. They
are: John A. Roebling, who conceived the project and formulated the
plan of the Bridge; Washington A. Roebling, who, inheriting his
father's genius, and more than his father's knowledge and skill, has
directed the execution of this great work from its inception to its
completion; aided in the several departments by Charles C. Martin,
Francis Collingwood, William H. Paine, George W. McNulty, Wilhelm
Hildenbrand and Samuel R. Probasco as assistant engineers; and as
foremen by E.F. Farrington, Arthur V. Abbott, William Van der Bosch,
Charles Young and Harry Tupple, who, in apparently subordinate
positions, have shown themselves peculiarly fitted to command, because
they have known how to serve. But the record would not be complete
without reference to the unnamed men by whose unflinching courage, in
the depths of the caissons, and upon the suspended wires, the work was
carried on amid storms, and accidents, and dangers, sufficient to
appall the stoutest heart. To them we can only render the tribute
which history accords to those who fight as privates in the battles of
freedom, with all the more devotion and patriotism because their names
will never be known by the world whose benefactors they are. One name,
however, which may find no place in the official records, cannot be
passed over here in silence. In ancient times when great works were
constructed, a goddess was chosen, to whose tender care they were
dedicated. Thus the ruins of the Acropolis to-day recall the name of
Pallas Athene to an admiring world. In the Middle Ages, the blessing
of some saint was invoked to protect from the rude attacks of the
barbarians, and the destructive hand of time, the building erected by
man's devotion to the worship of God. So, with this Bridge will ever
be coupled the thought of one, through the subtle alembic of whose
brain, and by whose facile fingers, communication was maintained
between the directing power of its construction, and the obedient
agencies of its execution. It is thus an everlasting monument to the
self-sacrificing devotion of woman, and of her capacity for that
higher education from which she has been too long debarred. The name
of Mrs. Emily Warren Roebling will thus be inseparably associated with
all that is admirable in human nature, and with all that is wonderful
in the constructive world of art.
This tribute to the engineers, however, would not be deserved, if
there is to be found any evidence of deception on their part in the
origin of the work, or any complicity with fraud in its execution
and completion. It is this consideration which induced me to accept
the unexpected invitation of the trustees to speak for the city of New
York on the present occasion. When they thus honored me, they did not
know that John A. Roebling addressed to me the letter in which he
first suggested (and, so far as I am aware, he was the first engineer
to suggest), the feasibility of a bridge between the two cities, so
constructed as to preserve unimpaired the freedom of navigation. This
letter, dated June 19, 1857, I caused to be printed in the _New York
Journal of Commerce_, where it attracted great attention because it
came from an engineer who had already demonstrated, by successfully
building suspension bridges over the Schuylkill, the Ohio and the
Niagara rivers, that he spoke with the voice of experience and
authority. This letter was the first step towards the construction of
the work, which, however, came about in a manner different from his
expectations, and was finally completed on a plan more extensive than
he had ventured to describe. It has been charged that the original
estimates of cost have been far exceeded by the actual outlay. If this
were true, the words of praise which I have uttered for the engineers,
who designed and executed this work, ought rather to have been a
sentence of censure and condemnation. Hence, the invitation which came
to me unsought, seemed rather to be an appeal from the grave for such
vindication as it was within my power to make, and which could not
come with equal force from any other quarter.
Engineers are of two kinds: the creative and the constructive. The
power to conceive great works demands imagination and faith. The
creative engineer, like the poet, is born, not made. If to the power
to conceive, is added the ability to execute, then have we one of
those rare geniuses who not only give a decided impulse to
civilization, but add new glory to humanity. Such men were Michael
Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Watt, Wedgwood, Brunel, Stephenson and
Bessemer; and such a man was John A. Roebling. It was his striking
peculiarity, that while his conceptions were bold and original, his
execution was always exact, and within the limits of cost which he
assigned to the work of his brain. He had made bridges a study, and
had declared in favor of the suspension principle for heavy traffic,
when the greatest living authorities had condemned it as costly and
unsafe. When he undertook to build a suspension bridge for railway
use, he did so in the face of the deliberate judgment of the
profession, that success would be impossible. Stephenson had condemned
the suspension principle and approved the tubular girder for railway
traffic. But it was the Nemesis of his fate, that when he came out to
approve the location of the great tubular bridge at Montreal, he
should pass over the Niagara River in a railway train, on a suspension
bridge, which he had declared to be an impracticable undertaking.
When Roebling suggested the Bridge over the East River, his ideas were
limited to the demands of the time, and controlled by the necessity
for a profitable investment. He had no expectation that the two cities
would embark in the enterprise. Indeed, in one of his letters so late
as April 14, 1860, he says, "As to the corporations of New York and
Brooklyn undertaking the job, no such hope may be entertained in our
time." In eight years thereafter, these cities had undertaken the task
upon a scale of expense far exceeding his original ideas of a
structure, to be built exclusively by private capital for the sake of
profit.
How came this miracle to pass? The war of the rebellion occurred,
delaying for a time the further consideration of Roebling's ideas.
This war accustomed the nation to expenditures on a scale of which it
had no previous conception. It did more than expend large sums of
money. Officials became corrupt and organized themselves for plunder.
In the city of New York, especially, the government fell into the
hands of a band of thieves, who engaged in a series of great and
beneficial public works, not for the good they might do, but for the
opportunity which they would afford to rob the public treasury. They
erected court-houses and armories; they opened roads, boulevards and
parks; and they organized two of the grandest devices for
transportation which the genius of man has ever conceived; a rapid
transit railway for New York, and a great highway between New York and
Brooklyn. The Bridge was commenced, but the Ring was driven into exile
by the force of public indignation, before the rapid transit scheme,
since executed on a different route by private capital, was
undertaken. The collapse of the Ring brought the work on the Bridge to
a stand-still.
It was a timely event. The patriotic New Yorker might well have
exclaimed, just before this great deliverance, in the words of the
Consul of ancient Rome, in Macaulay's stirring poem,
"And if they once may win the bridge,
What hope to save the town?"
Meanwhile, the elder Roebling had died, leaving behind him his
estimates and the general plans of the structure, to cost, independent
of land damages and interest, about $7,000,000. This great work which,
if not "conceived in sin," was "brought forth in iniquity," thus
became the object of great suspicion, and of a prejudice which has not
been removed to this day. I know that to many I make a startling
announcement, when I state the incontrovertible fact, that no money
was ever stolen by the Ring from the funds of the Bridge; that the
whole money raised has been honestly expended; that the estimates for
construction have not been materially exceeded; and that the excess of
cost over the estimates is due to purchases of land which were never
included in the estimates; to interest paid on the city subscriptions;
to the cost of additional height and breadth of the Bridge; and the
increase in strength rendered necessary by a better comprehension of
the volume of traffic between the two cities. The items covered by the
original estimate of $7,000,000 have thus been raised to $9,000,000,
so that $2,000,000 represents the addition to the original estimates.
For this excess, amounting to less than thirty per cent., there is
actual value in the Bridge in dimension and strength, whereby its
working capacity has been greatly increased. The carriage-ways, as
originally designed, would have permitted only a single line of
vehicles in each direction. The speed of the entire procession, more
than a mile long, would, therefore, have been limited by the rate of
the slowest; and every accident causing stoppage to a single cart
would have stopped everything behind it for an indefinite period. It
is not too much to say that the removal of this objection, by widening
the carriage-ways, has multiplied manifold the practical usefulness of
the Bridge.
The statement I have made is due to the memory not only of John A.
Roebling, but also of Henry C. Murphy, that great man who devoted his
last years to this enterprise; and who, having, like Moses, led the
people through the toilsome way, was permitted only to look, but not
to enter upon the promised land.
This testimony is due also to the living trustees and to the engineers
who have controlled and directed this large expenditure in the public
service, the latter, in the conscientious discharge of professional
duty; and the former, with no other object than the welfare of the
public, and without any other possible reward than the good opinion of
their fellow-citizens.
I do not make this statement without a full sense of the
responsibility which it involves, and I realize that its accuracy will
shortly be tested by the report of experts who are now examining the
accounts. But it will be found that I have spoken the words of truth
and soberness. When the Ring absconded I was asked by William C.
Havemeyer, then the Mayor of New York, to become a trustee, in order
to investigate the expenditures, and to report as to the propriety of
going on with the work. This duty was performed without fear or favor.
The methods by which the Ring proposed to benefit themselves were
clear enough, but its members fled before they succeeded in
reimbursing themselves for the preliminary expenses which they had
defrayed. With their flight a new era commenced, and during the three
years when I acted as a trustee, I am sure that no fraud was
committed, and that none was possible. Since that time the Board has
been controlled by trustees, some of whom are thorough experts in
bridge building, and the others men of such high character that the
suggestion of malpractice is improbable to absurdity.
The Bridge has not only been honestly built, but it may be safely
asserted that it could not now be duplicated at the same cost. Much
money might, however, have been saved if the work had not been delayed
through want of means, and unnecessary obstacles interposed by
mistaken public officials. Moreover, measured by its capacity, and the
limitations imposed on its construction by its relation to the
interests of traffic and navigation, it is the cheapest structure ever
erected by the genius of man. This will be made evident by a single
comparison with the Britannia Tubular Bridge erected by Stephenson
over the Menai Straits. He adopted the tubular principle, because he
believed that the suspension principle could not be made practical for
railway traffic, although he had to deal with spans not greater than
470 feet. He built a structure that contained 10,540 tons of iron, and
cost 601,000 pounds sterling, or about $3,000,000. Fortunately he has
left a calculation on record as to the possible extension of the
tubular girder, showing that it would reach the limits in which it
could bear only its own weight (62,000 tons), at 1,570 feet. Now,
for a span of 1,595-1/2 feet, the Brooklyn Bridge contains but 6,740
tons of material, and will sustain seven times its own weight. Its
cost is $9,000,000, whereas a tubular bridge for the same span would
contain ten times the weight of metal, and though costing twice as
much money, would be without the ability to do any useful work.
Roebling, therefore, solved the problem which had defied Stephenson;
and upon his design has been built a successful structure, at half the
cost of a tubular bridge that would have fallen when loaded in actual
use. It is impossible to furnish any more striking proof of the genius
which originated, and of the economy which constructed this triumph of
American engineering.
We have thus a monument to the public spirit of the two cities,
created by an expenditure as honest and as economical as the
management which gave us the Erie Canal, the Croton Aqueduct, and the
Central Park. Otherwise, it would have been a monument to the eternal
infamy of the trustees and of the engineers under whose supervision
it has been erected, and this brings me to the final consideration
which I feel constrained to offer on this point.
During all these years of trial, and false report, a great soul lay in
the shadow of death, praying only to stay long enough for the
completion of the work to which he had devoted his life. I say a great
soul, for in the spring-time of youth, with friends and fortune at his
command, he gave himself to his country, and for her sake braved death
on many a well-fought battle-field. When restored to civil life, his
health was sacrificed to the duties which had devolved upon him, as
the inheritor of his father's fame, and the executor of his father's
plans. Living only for honor, and freed from the temptations of narrow
means, how is it conceivable that such a man--whose approval was
necessary to every expenditure--should, by conniving with jobbers,
throw away more than the life which was dear to him, that he might
fulfill his destiny, and leave to his children the heritage of a good
name and the glory of a grand achievement? Well may this suffering
hero quote the words of Hyperion: "Oh, I have looked with wonder
upon those, who, in sorrow and privation, and bodily discomfort, and
sickness, which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the
accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling much, enduring much,
fulfilling much; and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all
unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept the sleep
of death, and the world talks of them while they sleep! And as in the
sun's eclipse we can behold the great stars shining in the heavens, so
in this life-eclipse have these men beheld the lights of the great
eternity, burning solemnly and forever!"
And now what is to be the outcome of this great expenditure upon the
highway which unites the two cities, for which Dr. Storrs and I have
the honor to speak to-day? That Brooklyn will gain in numbers and in
wealth with accelerated speed is a foregone conclusion. Whether this
gain shall in any wise be at the expense of New York, is a matter in
regard to which the great metropolis does not concern herself. Her
citizens are content with the knowledge that she exists and grows
with the growth of the whole country, of whose progress and prosperity
she is but the exponent and the index. Will the Bridge lead, as has
been forcibly suggested, and in some quarters hopefully anticipated,
to the further union of the two cities under one name and one
government? This suggestion is in part sentimental and in part
practical. So far as the union in name is concerned, it is scarcely
worth consideration, for in any comparison which our national or local
pride may institute between this metropolis and the other great cities
of the world, its environment, whether in Long Island, Staten Island,
or New Jersey, will always be included. In considering the population
of London, no one ever separates the city proper from the surrounding
parts. They are properly regarded as one homogeneous aggregation of
human beings.
It is only when we come to consider the problem of governing great
masses that the serious elements of the question present themselves,
and must be determined before a satisfactory answer can be given. The
tendency of modern civilization is towards the concentration of
population in dense masses. This is due to the higher and more
diversified life, which can be secured by association and co-operation
on a large scale, affording not merely greater comfort and often
luxury, but actually distributing the fruits of labor on a more
equitable basis than is possible in sparsely settled regions and among
feeble communities. The great improvements of our day in labor-saving
machinery, and its application to agriculture, enable the nation to be
fed with a less percentage of its total force thus applied, and leave
a larger margin of population free to engage in such other pursuits as
are best carried on in large cities.
The disclosures of the last census prove the truth of this statement.
At the first census in 1790 the population resident in cities was 3.3
per cent. of the total population. This percentage slowly gained at
each successive census, until in 1840 it had reached 8.5 per cent. In
fifty years it had thus gained a little over five per cent. But in
1850 it rose to 12.5 per cent.; in 1860 it was 16.1 per cent.; in 1870
it was 20.9 per cent., having in this one decade gained as much as in
the first fifty years of our political existence. In 1880 the
population resident in cities was 22.5 per cent. of the whole
population.
With this rapid growth of urban population, have grown the
contemporaneous complaints of corrupt administration and bad municipal
government. The outcry may be said to be universal, for it comes from
both sides of the Atlantic; and the complaints appear to be in direct
proportion to the size of cities. It is obvious, therefore, that the
knowledge of the art of local government has not kept pace with the
growth of population. I am here by your favor to speak for the city of
New York, and I should be the last person to throw any discredit on
its fair fame; but I think I only give voice to the general feeling,
when I say that the citizens of New York are satisfied neither with
the structure of its government, nor with its actual administration,
even when it is in the hands of intelligent and honest officials.
Dissatisfied as we are, no man has been able to devise a system which
commends itself to the general approval, and it may be asserted that
the remedy is not to be found in devices for any special machinery of
government. Experiments without number have been tried, and
suggestions in infinite variety have been offered, but to-day no man
can say that we have approached any nearer to the idea of good
government, which is demanded by the intelligence and the wants of the
community.
If, therefore, New York has not yet learned to govern itself, how can
it be expected to be better governed by adding half a million to its
population, and a great territory to its area, unless it be with the
idea that a "little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." Is Brooklyn that
leaven? If not, and if possibly "the salt has lost its savor,
wherewith shall it be salted?" Brooklyn is now struggling with this
problem, it remains to be seen with what success; but meanwhile it is
idle to consider the idea of getting rid of our common evils by adding
them together.
Besides it is a fundamental axiom in politics, approved by the
experience of older countries, as well as of our own, that the sources
of power should never be far removed from those who are to feel its
exercise. It is the violation of this principle which produces chronic
revolution in France, and makes the British rule so obnoxious to the
Irish people. This evil is happily avoided when a natural boundary
circumscribes administration within narrow limits. While, therefore,
we rejoice together at the new bond between New York and Brooklyn, we
ought to rejoice the more, that it destroys none of the conditions
which permit each city to govern itself, but rather urges them to a
generous rivalry in perfecting each its own government, recognizing
the truth, that there is no true liberty without law, and that eternal
vigilance, which is the only safeguard of liberty, can best be
exercised within limited areas.
It would be a most fortunate conclusion, if the completion of this
Bridge should arouse public attention to the absolute necessity of
good municipal government, and recall the only principle upon which it
can ever be successfully founded. There is reason to hope that this
result will follow, because the erection of this structure shows how a
problem, analogous to that which confronts us in regard to the city
government, has been met and solved in the domain of physical science.