That Was Why the Man Who Was to
Build the Subway Resigned His
Position as a Municipal Clerk.
John B. McDonald, the builder of the New York City Subway, began work in
the New York office of the Registry of Deeds. The work was easy and the
pay was fairly good. On the whole, it was just such a place as thousands
would look upon as highly desirable. McDonald thought otherwise, and
during his spare time he studied hard at scientific subjects. He had been
in the place a year when he came home one night with the announcement:
"I've thrown up my job."
"Why?"
"I want real work, and I'm going to have it."
He got it as timekeeper at the building of Boyd's Dam, part of the Croton
water system. The work was just what he wanted, and it was not long before
he became a foreman. Here his real ability showed itself, and he made such
progress that when he was twenty-three he was inspector of masonry on the
New York Central tunnel. Here he made his first bid for a sub-contract,
and it was accepted. The first work he ever did as a builder was the big
arch at Ninety-Sixth Street. He got other big contracts on the Boston and
Hoosac Tunnel, the building of the Lackawanna road from Binghamton to
Buffalo, the Georgian Bay branch of the Canadian Pacific, and a dozen
other roads in various parts of the country.
All this was easy for him, and it was not until he began the tunnel under
Baltimore for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that he got the real work he
wanted. It was a tunnel through mud and quicksands, a tunnel that
subterranean streams threatened constantly to destroy. Every day, in
rubber coat and hip-boots, for five years, he worked at it, surmounting
one obstacle after another, and finished a winner, having carried through
one of the hardest underground jobs ever attempted.
While he was doing this he built the Jerome Park Reservoir--so as to keep
himself busy, he said.
When he put in a bid five million dollars lower than his next competitor
for the building of the New York Subway there was at first some hitch over
the seven-million-dollar security demanded, and his rival was asked if he
expected to get the contract by default.
"No," he said, "McDonald has that contract and he'll keep it. He never
lets go."