The Great Bridge (56 page)

There was no explaining what happened, Martin and Paine told reporters as they walked about the anchorage yard where Supple fell. Henry Murphy had rushed over from Brooklyn at first word of the accident and told the reporters they could go up on top of the anchorage to look about for themselves if they wished. The Bridge Company had nothing to conceal. But he refused to offer any possible explanations. The rope had been used maybe fifteen times before this for the exact same purpose and had been tested for a strength six times the load it had been carrying.

In another couple of days the engineers had completed their investigation and solved the mystery, to their satisfaction at least. The rope, they said, had somehow slipped out of place as it was running through one of the pulleys and the sharp edge of the pulley had cut into it, damaging it badly enough to cause the break. Blake, the dead man, should have seen this, but obviously he had not. The steel rope was not to blame, perhaps even Blake was not wholly to blame. The consensus was that it was one of those chance things that happen.

Still the episode had put a scare into people that they would not soon forget and made a number of those who had some say in bridge matters even more skeptical than they had been before. The work went right on. Farrington was back seeing to other things that same afternoon. But the critics would grow increasingly louder now, and more numerous, and Roebling’s burden of worry, which was supposed to be lessening as the final phases of the work grew nearer, became greater than ever.

Only a week or so before, the New York
World
had questioned in big headlines whether the bridge was a failure. For some nine millions of dollars, the paper claimed, the people of New York and Brooklyn had acquired nothing but a lot of disgusting scandal and two stone towers with a few wires dangling between. The
Times
had joined in saying that for all the money poured into the bridge, the ferries could have been offered free to the people for a lifetime.

But of far greater seriousness was the hostility growing in that old seedbed of bridge enthusiasm, Tammany Hall. Anxious to disown any previous connection with Tweed, Connolly, and Sweeny, and reportedly exercised over how much the bridge was costing, the new boss of the Tammany, “Honest John” Kelly, was letting it be known that the city of New York just might refuse to spend anymore money on the bridge. The move was seen by many as nothing more than a political maneuver to replace some of the bridge trustees with Tammany men and to subjugate Boss McLaughlin. No one had taken Kelly very seriously at first. But an installment from New York of half a million dollars was already three months overdue. (Brooklyn had met its obligation of one million dollars right on schedule.) Kelly, regarded as “a warm advocate” of the bridge only a few years before, was now making public remarks about withholding New York’s payment until he was sure the bridge was being managed competently, and sensational accidents killing innocent laborers only aggravated his “grave concern.”

Kingsley, Stranahan, and Henry Murphy claimed no knowledge of Kelly’s motives, nor did they care even to speculate on the subject. But if he persisted, Henry Murphy said, they would take him to court, since the law required that New York meet its financial obligations. Part of the problem, Murphy said, was that too many people still failed to comprehend the sort of bridge this was going to be and were listening to a lot of baseless nonsense from second-rate engineers whose only motivation was publicity. “It will not sway from side to side nor rock up and down,” he said. It was to be “a great street,” he said, solid and stationary. Kelly claimed to have heard from reliable sources that another immense pier would soon be needed to prop up the center span of the bridge. Besides, Kelly said, he was listening with increased interest to the arguments of Abraham Miller and others who were predicting that the bridge would destroy commerce on the East River.

Perhaps in his quiet room overlooking the river, Washington Roebling recalled something his father had written when the same issue was raised at Cincinnati. “I have no fears of those who
honestly
believe the bridge to be injurious to the navigation,” John Roebling had said, “the opposition of cavilers I most dread.”

By the end of June, New York had still not met its payment. July came and went and still there was no money from New York. By the first week in August, when the trustees convened for their monthly meeting, it was obvious that something would have to be done soon. There was virtually no cash on hand.

At the close of the workday, Saturday, August 10, Murphy took what he viewed as his only course of action. He shut the work down except for the strand making. Approximately a hundred men were kept on. Some six hundred were laid off.

Times were still hard, jobs scarce, and the idea of six hundred men suddenly idle and a great and costly public work standing unfinished was not going to be very well received by the public, as Murphy fully appreciated. The decision, he said, was entirely his own. He did not want to bankrupt the Bridge Company by carrying on, and he did not wish to see Brooklyn spend any more of its money until this trouble with New York was straightened out once and for all.

Kelly said he was now convinced the bridge would do New York little good anyway and that it had been a great mistake for the city to get so financially involved in the first place. And since the costs were running ahead of what had been projected in the original agreements, then New York was no longer legally bound to its side of the bargain. As far as he was concerned, he would be very happy to settle the issue in court. So he held out, as tempers in Brooklyn kept mounting.

With another accident to explain away and “Honest John” Kelly testing his newly gained power, Henry Murphy appeared to be coping with about all the trouble one man could handle during that summer of 1878. And yet this was but part of the story. For on July 22 he had been presented, privately, with what must have appeared to be the most devastating piece of news in all his nine years of administering the business affairs of the bridge.

He was informed by the Chief Engineer that J. Lloyd Haigh, contractor for the cable wire, had been perpetrating a colossal fraud.

The deception had been suspected by the engineers as early as mid-June, but they had had no real proof until July 5. Four days later, when the whole pattern was clear, Roebling had written a long letter to Murphy disclosing what had been going on, but then put off sending it for two weeks, to be absolutely certain his case was solid. So the letter Murphy received on the 22nd was dated July 9 and it told the following story.

“From the known reputation of this man [Haigh], I deemed it necessary from the first to test
every
ring of wire made by him…” (instead of every tenth ring or so, as had been planned). Roebling had also warned Paine and the others that Haigh would probably try to bribe the inspectors, which was exactly what Haigh had done, without success.

But as Roebling expected he might, Haigh then tried another maneuver. Inspection of the wire was carried on by Paine and his assistants at Haigh’s big brick mill at Red Hook, near the Atlantic Docks. Once the wire was passed, it was loaded onto wagons and hauled up to the bridge. But in June it was found that rejected wire was also getting to the bridge. Wire that had been accepted, but held in the mill overnight, would be replaced before morning by rejected wire, which then went off to the bridge. The trick was discovered by secretly marking the good wire. Haigh was informed of the discovery and given a strong warning. Paine was assured there would be no more of that, but he remained suspicious. The rule from then on was that no more wire was to be inspected than could be delivered on that same day.

But a little later it was noticed that the great pile of rejected wire, instead of increasing as it should have, with rings failing to pass inspection every day, was growing steadily smaller. The bad wire was going somewhere obviously and the assumption was that it was going to the bridge. But how, since all departing wagonloads were being carefully watched to see that they carried good wire only? The solution, the engineers decided, had to be that wagonloads were being switched on route, somewhere between Red Hook and the bridge.

“A watch was therefore set on the morning of the 5th of July,” Roebling wrote, “and the trick discovered. The wagonload of wire as it left the inspector’s room, with his certificate, in place of being driven off to the bridge, was driven to another building, where it was rapidly unloaded and replaced with a load of rejected wire, which then went to the bridge with the same certificate of inspection.”

When these rings reached the bridge—eighty in all—they were immediately tested. Only five out of the total were up to standard.

Two days later the Haigh people were caught trying the same thing again. This time Paine and three others, concealed behind a fence, had watched a wagonload of good wire being unloaded, then replaced with rejected wire, which was all very carefully weighed to be sure the weight of the shipment tallied exactly with what it had been when it left the mill. The good wire was then returned to the mill, where it was submitted to an inspector once more, who, supposing it to be new wire, tested it all over again, gave it another certificate of approval, and sent it on its way, only to go through the same routine.

“The distressing point of this affair,” Roebling told Murphy, “is that all the rejected wire which has come to the Bridge has been worked into the cables, and cannot be removed.” How long Haigh had been practicing his little scheme, Roebling could not say. “We know that it has been going on for two months, and the probability is that it extends as far back as last January.” According to the inspectors’ books, nearly five hundred tons of wire had been rejected to date. Most of this, Roebling suspected, had gone into the cables. To determine the precise quantity would be extremely difficult he said. “An engineer who has not been educated as a spy or detective is no match for a rascal.”

For the time being he had ordered that a man on horseback accompany each load of wire from Haigh’s mill to the bridge and he had instructed Paine to withhold his signature to Haigh’s monthly estimates and thereby prevent Haigh from receiving any more money until the extent of the fraud had been more thoroughly investigated.

This, Roebling said, was the first instance of deliberate, incontrovertible fraud that had come to his notice in the nine years he had been Chief Engineer and he urged the trustees to make it known publicly without delay. But in the brief covering note to Murphy that he included with the letter, Roebling made a rather different point: “…in case a want of strength shall in the future be found in the cables I wish the responsibility to rest where it belongs, with the Board of Trustees.” And this appears to have troubled Murphy about as deeply as the fraud itself.

Murphy took three days to answer Roebling. His concern was very great, clearly enough, but so too was his instinctive caution. No action ought to be taken he said until they had a better notion of the real damage done and until he was clear on the technical remedies Roebling might have in mind. It was a lawyer’s letter. “I have waited with much anxiety for the report of Col. Paine,” he wrote, in regard to the wire on hand and not used, which he has been engaged in retesting, since the suspicions arose in regard to the action of Mr. Haigh, and to the possible extent to which any rejected wire has been foisted upon us in the cables…. It is manifestly proper, before any definite course be taken by us, that we should know the nature and extent of the injury, and that so far as the work itself is concerned, we should have your distinct recommendation in the premises.” In the meantime, he wanted to know what possible responsibility Roebling could conceive of resting with the trustees.

“The responsibility of any weakness that may be found in the cables,” Roebling answered, “rests with the old board of trustees, because they awarded so important a contract as the cable wire to a man who had no standing, commercially or otherwise, and the same responsibility must be assumed by the present board if they fail to at once put an end to Mr. Haigh’s contract…” Out of tact, perhaps, or out of sympathy for the position Murphy was in, Roebling did not remind Murphy that he had warned him about Haigh, quite explicitly, well before the wire contract was awarded.

Given a week’s notice, the Cleveland Rolling Mill or Washburn’s of Worcester could supply all the wire needed to finish the cables, Roebling assured Murphy. The price would be about the same and the quality could be relied upon. As for Haigh, a committee of trustees and an engineer should be appointed to assess the damage to the cables and fix the value of the condemned wire. That sum should then be deducted from the money currently being withheld from Haigh as security. “This,” said the engineer, “is a straightforward way of dealing with a dishonest contractor.”

But the trustees chose not to do that. The trustees, in fact, decided not to do anything at all about Mr. Haigh. The whole unfortunate affair would be very neatly and quietly swept beneath the carpet.

…They gathered for their regular monthly meeting on the afternoon of August 5, and the record states that the president read letters from Engineer Roebling “relating to alleged frauds practiced by the contractor for cable wire”—no more. And nothing on the matter was released to the press. Several years later, however, William Marshall, the one trustee who had voted against granting Haigh the contract in the first place, said Paine appeared before the board that afternoon and told the entire story of what Haigh had been up to. “I was in favor at the time,” Marshall said, “and so said in the Board, of giving the whole history of the matter to the public, but was overruled.”