The Great Bridge (63 page)

On the afternoon of August 17 Mayor Low sent each of the Brooklyn trustees a note saying there would be a meeting of the board on Tuesday the 22nd. “Please make it convenient to be present, as business of importance is to be considered,” the mayor wrote. Right away reporters at the Brooklyn City Hall wanted to know what this meant, but Low replied that there was nothing more to be said in advance. In another couple of days, however, before the meeting, it was reported on good authority that Low planned to move for the dismissal of the Chief Engineer.

The trustees met as planned promptly at three in the afternoon. It was noted by one reporter that Henry Murphy “did not look nearly so eager to proceed as did the youthful, bright-faced Mayor Low of Brooklyn…Nor did the venerable member of the Board, Mr. James S. T. Stranahan…appear as thirsty for information as did the affable business-intending Mayor Grace of New York.”

Low made a little speech. “I am convinced,” he said, “that at every possible point there is a weakness in the management of the Brooklyn Bridge. The engineering part of the structure—the most important—is in the hands of a sick man.” He went on to say what a serious handicap this was and told how he had gone to Newport to reason with Roebling but had failed. He had made an eminently fair proposition to Roebling “in order to facilitate the completion of the work,” but the man “would not accede.” Therefore action had to be taken. So Low said he had held a private conference on the issue with two other ex officio members of the board (the mayor and comptroller of New York) and they were “of the opinion that the change ought to be made, notwithstanding Mr. Roebling’s unwillingness.” He had, therefore, Low said, prepared certain resolutions, which he immediately presented:

Mayor William Grace rose to his feet and said he “heartily seconded” the resolutions of Mayor Low. “It is our duty to set aside all other considerations in seeing that nothing shall interfere with the progress of this work.” The elected heads of the two cities building the bridge and paying for it had decided the time had come to dispense with Washington Roebling.

But at that point the Comptroller of Brooklyn, Ludwig Semler, a new man on the board, asked for the floor. “I also think the work should be pushed,” he said, “but I do not think it would be using Mr. Roebling justly to oust him from his position now that he is about to reap the full benefit of his labors. If he had been in any way guilty of delaying the bridge, I should be in favor of retiring him, but there is not a shadow of a charge upon which to base such action. In fact, Mr. Roebling has done much toward pushing the bridge along. Let us not act summarily toward him after his thirteen years of service. If someone will tell me how an engineer is going to build a bridge without material I shall be pleased. Mr. Roebling did not have the material and so he is made a scapegoat for others’ sins.”

Semler, who had had almost nothing to say at the few previous meetings he attended, spoke with great feeling and was strongly commended for it by Stranahan, who had gotten up from his customary seat on a sofa that stood against the wall and began addressing the group, as one man said later, “with the manner and voice of a speaker at a funeral.”

“I cannot but remember at such time as this,” Stranahan said, “the eminent abilities of the elder and younger Roebling. When I think that that ability has given us the finest bridge in the world I cannot help but feel that there is something yet due to the Chief Engineer. True, his health is not as sound as we could wish, but it is as good as it has been for many years past—years wherein we could not dispense with his services because of the accurate knowledge of the enterprise which he alone possessed. The older trustees will comprehend the truth of what I say. If this matter is to be referred to another meeting I should be much obliged, so far as I am personally concerned, to have it come up at the next regular meeting. I have traveled one hundred and eighty miles to attend this one, and I must travel one hundred and eighty miles tomorrow to join my family.”

Stranahan, who had returned to Brooklyn from Saratoga, where he customarily spent part of the summer, was, in his usual fashion, stalling for time, banking on a “maturing of judgment” among those trustees who had not as yet made up their minds about what to do.

It was then moved that the subject be “laid over” until September 11 and the motion carried.

All Brooklyn was talking about it by the time the sun went down and in the next several days virtually every newspaper on both sides of the river began taking sides. The New York
Tribune
said the bridge had been “tainted at the start” and linked Roebling with Murphy, Kingsley, and Stranahan as the proper parties to blame. Things would have been far better, the paper said, had they all been pensioned off years before. “This is the day for sharp decision and vigorous action.”

The
Star
said it was obviously time to get a new Chief Engineer. “Had Mr. Roebling done his duty instead of becoming the cat’s-paw of the Bridge Ring, he might have saved millions of dollars to the two cities, and his zeal would not have gone unrewarded.”

The New York
Evening Post
said Mayor Low’s resolutions had been made not a moment too soon. The
Daily Graphic
reasoned that since Roebling’s special knowledge of suspension bridge construction was no longer essential to the work, and the bridge was too far along for anyone to mistakenly alter the plan, there was no real reason to keep him on. “That a man has been supervising a structure like this from its beginning gives him no right to delay the completion, as Mr. Roebling is now delaying this bridge,” concluded the editorial writer of the
Daily Graphic.

The Iron Age
said the only thing wrong with Low’s action was the idea of replacing Roebling with C. C. Martin. “If new life is to be infused in that comatose engineers corps, it must come from the outside—for inside it there is no leaven of redemption left. No wonderful or even exceptional engineering talent is required to bring the work to completion; but what is required is some man with good executive ability, of great force of character, and complete independence of all possible future political preferment.”

Even the Newport
Daily News
felt obliged to report on the situation. “Mayors Grace, of New York, and Low, of Brooklyn, are getting tired of waiting for the completion of the celebrated East River Bridge,” the little paper announced the morning of August 24. “The monster connecting link between the two cities has already cost them too much and it is about time that something was done to prevent anymore such delays as have hindered its completion.”

Only the Trenton
Daily State Gazette
and the Brooklyn
Eagle
rose immediately and angrily to Roebling’s defense. “His spotless integrity and high sense of honor are unquestionable,” wrote the
Daily State Gazette,
“his great skill as an engineer is established, and his devotion to this work has been attended by the sacrifice of his health.”

The
Eagle,
not surprisingly, had more to say. How, asked Thomas Kinsella in a two-column editorial, could Low present a proposal to appoint Roebling the consulting engineer, when Roebling, as Low himself reported to the trustees, had said explicitly he would not accept the job? And what earthly good would such a change accomplish? “Is it possible that the existence of Mr. Martin himself is now in the nature of a discovery, while the fact is that he has had practical executive control of the work for many years past? If he is not a ‘natural channel’ of information, who is?”

As for Roebling’s competence, that was not even an issue, Kinsella asserted. His past contributions to the work were enormous. There had not been a single failure on any part of the work that could be chargeable to the engineers. Furthermore it would be a rotten thing to degrade the man and deny him his rightful honors on the very eve of his triumph.

And that pretty much summed up the case for Roebling as it was being presented in Brooklyn—except for the strongly and privately expressed opinion of several on the board who claimed to know Roebling personally that he had been kept alive all these years only by his intense interest in the work and the desire to see it finished properly. The implication was that a vote to discharge him would be as good as a death sentence.

A very important question, of course, was whether the voice of Kinsella was the voice of William Kingsley. A few years before, the immediate assumption would have been that it was, but not so now, for the influential editor had grown increasingly independent. Not long before, when he felt there was too much interference in editorial matters on the part of the owners, Kinsella had threatened to resign and start a rival paper and ever since he had been left to decide things pretty much on his own.

The one other argument in Roebling’s behalf was, of course, the actual progress still being made on the bridge itself, progress that Henry Murphy kept presenting in formal reports to the two mayors. A hundred and fourteen intermediate chords had been put up in a week, 72 diagonal stays, 60 posts, 21 intermediate floor beams, 21 bridging trusses, 16 intermediate promenade floor beams, 12 lower chord sections, 2 upper floor stay bars. At the end of the Brooklyn approach, work had begun on the foundations for the iron viaduct and terminal station building.

But the question of Roebling’s mental and physical health had not been put to rest. If anything, rumors and innuendo on the subject were more plentiful than ever before. The three most prominent trustees of long standing—Murphy, Stranahan, and Kingsley—said they could vouch for Roebling’s state of mind, but their word was not only not enough any longer, it was outright suspect among the younger trustees. The only one of the younger men who had seen Roebling and talked to him in person was Seth Low and he would make no comment on Roebling’s condition one way or the other.

Toward the end of the month of August Comptroller Ludwig Semler received the following letter from Newport, from Mrs. Washington Roebling:

On Tuesday, September 5, a week before the trustees were to meet to vote, Comptroller Semler suddenly announced he was leaving for Newport that evening to see Roebling and judge for himself.

“Nobody should be convicted before he is tried,” Semler said. “As I have undertaken to defend Mr. Roebling to a certain extent against the attempt to remove him, I want to make his personal acquaintance and see what impression he makes on me. It seems from certain statements made in connection with this matter that an impression has gone abroad that he was not only suffering physically but that his mental faculties were also impaired. Of course, if this were so, his plans should not be relied upon, and the work should be suspended until an investigation could be had; but physicians tell me his intellect is all right. I am today more convinced than ever of the great injustice of displacing a man of his merit and standing without giving him an opportunity to defend himself. The idea that he could not do his duty without being at the bridge office is preposterous.”

De Lesseps had been in Paris while the Suez Canal was being built, Semler said, and so why was it so unreasonable for Roebling to remain in a house a few blocks from the bridge. “There is nothing sentimental in my feelings in this matter. The question is simply one of justice.” Semler told reporters he would be back in his office Thursday morning.