WHICH TELLS OF MEN WHO HAVE FALLEN FROM GREAT HEIGHTS
THERE is this to note about falls from bridges, that the very short ones often kill as surely as the long ones. They told me of one case where a man fell eight feet and broke his neck, while other men have fallen from great heights and escaped. A workman of the Berlin Bridge Company, for instance, fell from a structure in New Hampshire, one hundred and twenty feet, and lived. And I myself saw Harry Fleager on the East River Bridge, New York, and from his own lips heard his remarkable experience. Fleager is to-day a sturdy, active young man, and when I saw him he was running a thumping niggerhead engine on the end-span. Nevertheless, it was only a few months since he had fallen ninety-seven feet smash down to a pile of bricks.
"It happened this way," said he. "One of the big booms broke under its load just over where I was standing, and the tackle-block swung around and caught me back of the head. That knocked me off the false work, and I went straight down to the ground. Just to show you the force of my fall, sir, I struck a timber about thirty feet before I landed; it was eight inches wide and four inches thick, and I snapped it off without hardly slowing up. After that I lay for a week in the hospital with bruises, but there wasn't a bone broken, and I've been at work ever since."
Several times while I was seeking permission to go up on the structure I was treated to stories like this and to mild dissuasion. It was too dangerous a thing, they said, for a man to undertake lightly. And I did not succeed until I met the engineer in charge, Charles E. Bedell, a forceful, quiet-mannered man, who, after some talk, granted my request. He did not dwell so much on the danger as the others had, although he did say: "Of course you take all the risks."
"Do you think they are very great?" I asked.
"Not if you use ordinary caution and are not afraid."
Fear was the fatal thing, he said, and he told me of men who simply cannot endure such heights. Every day or two some new hand would start down the ladders almost before he had reached the top, and come into the office saying he couldn't stand the job.
"But you go ahead," said Mr. Bedell; "you'll come through all right. Just take it easy and be careful." Then he handed me a permit.
We have seen how I fared on the bridge; let me show now what befell this brilliant young engineer a couple of months later, and observe how his own case illustrates the paralyzing effect of fear upon a man. For months he had gone over the structure daily, as sure of himself at those giddy heights as on the ground. He never took chances, and he never felt afraid. But one day a workman fell from far above him and was crushed to death right before his eyes, and this was more of a shock to him than he realized.