James B. Eads Part 3

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 Pa.s.s. 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 Pa.s.s, which Eads begged to open and was not allowed to. It is said that in that pa.s.s 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 compet.i.tion 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 compet.i.tion 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 Ca.n.a.l. 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 ca.n.a.l 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 3500, 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 Ca.n.a.l, to familiarize myself more thoroughly with the question of a ship ca.n.a.l across the American isthmus, having previously visited the Amsterdam ship ca.n.a.l 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 a.s.sociation, 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 Inst.i.tution of Civil Engineers, Great Britain, and of the British a.s.sociation, and of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce; a fellow of the American a.s.sociation 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 ca.n.a.l. 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 ca.n.a.l. 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 Ca.n.a.l, 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 a.s.sistance 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. .h.i.tched 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.

In January, 1887, when his bill was to come up, he went to Washington.

He was in such poor health that he was not able to remain there, but on his doctor's advice he went with his wife and one daughter to Na.s.sau.

While sick there, he was still at work on improvements for his ship-railway. He was wont to say to his intimate friends, "I shall not die until I accomplish this work, and see with my own eyes great ships pa.s.s from ocean to ocean over the land." But in Na.s.sau it was soon known that he was dying; and still he said, "I cannot die; I have not finished my work."

He died March 8, 1887, not quite sixty-seven years of age. No one has finished his work.

In any career there are three main elements of success: talent, education, work. Eads's life, like that of so many other self-made men, seems to show us that education is less important than the other two.

But while it is true that he had not the formal education of an engineer, he had a certain very broad training gained in experience, and had read hard. Education, after all, is nothing but a summary method of teaching the lessons of life; therefore, while less insistent, it is often swifter than practical experience. And there is no doubt that a man like Eads would be the first to deplore a young man's failing to appreciate its value. When he himself was young, he never supposed that he was a genius; but if he had thought this, he would have striven to be the best-read and the best-equipped of geniuses; believing that though he might be mistaken about his talent he could make sure of his culture.