"I am here, Mr. Brooks, to make the surveys ordered." "What order? What surveys?" "The surveys ordered by the governor and council." "I have ordered no surveys and want none. When I need your services I will send for you. Go about your business."
Even those who have never reckoned Mr. Bird a man of strict veracity will be surprised to learn that this story is a pure fabrication, that no such conversation, and no such interview ever took place. The communications between the two gentlemen were a letter from Mr. Laurie, who was at Hartford, and a reply by telegraph from Mr. Brooks, who was in Boston. Mr. Laurie wrote, "Presuming that you wish me to make these surveys, I will come to Boston," &c. Mr. Brooks telegraphed,--"The new survey has not been acted upon by commissioners."
On the same page of the pamphlet it is stated that Mr. Brooks, not being satisfied with Mr. Laurie's conclusions, "demanded the suppression of some portions of the report, and the modification of others." "Mr. Laurie, after making such concessions as he could honestly make, resolutely refused to yield to Mr. Brooks' imperious demands upon material points." Now' this representation is just as false as the story about the colloquy. Mr. Brooks did not make any such demands. An exposure of both these fabrications is made in a communication to the Boston Advertiser of March 10th, which contains copies of all the correspondence on these subjects, between Mr. Brooks and Mr. Laurie.
On page 23, we are requested to "look at the item of the amount of the people's money applied by Mr. Brooks to the payment of Mr. Haupt's debts," than which "there never was a more atrocious swindle." By referring to the records of the executive council for May, June and July of 1863, it will be seen that the subject of paying these claims was referred to a committee of the council, consisting of Alfred Hitchcock, F. W. Bird and Joel Hay den for special investigation. Upon the question of the meaning and intent of the Act of 1862, and its legal interpretation, the committee took counsel of Dwight Foster, Emory Washburn, and Isaac R. Redfield, lawyers who had been designated by the governor, as a commission to whom should be referred such questions upon legal points as might arise in prosecuting the work, and in accordance with the advice of these gentlemen, and their own convictions, a majority of the committee (Mr. Bird of course opposing) reported that the claims ought to be paid. A majority of the council and the governor being of the same opinion, the claims were paid. The part performed by Mr. Brooks and his associates was merely to audit and allow them. They could not draw a dollar from the state-treasury for any purpose except upon the governor's warrant. If the payment of these claims was "an atrocious swindle," then the governor, a majority of his council, and the three lawyers, as well as the commissioners, were the atrocious swindlers. It would appear that the incorruptible and virtuous Bird was the only person about the state house, at that time, who could make any pretension to honesty or fidelity.
The motives of Mr. Bird, in these unscrupulous attempts to disparage the judgment and asperse the character of Mr. Brooks are best known to himself, but it will be remembered that when Mr. Brooks received his appointment he was thought to be opposed to the tunnel enterprise. He has proved to be one of its ablest and most resolute friends. The disappointment and grief of Mr. Bird may have been rendered more poignant by his defeat last fall as a candidate for the honor of representing his district in the Legislature, a defeat which he has publicly attributed to the opposition of Mr. Brooks.
The only noteworthy thing in this pamphlet concerning the Deerfield Dam, is an absurd attempt to misrepresent the commissioners' report of its cost. They state that it is $125,919.74. It was finished last fall. Mr. Bird says "the dam will have cost when finished, at least $275,000," and thereafter to the end of his chapter on that topic, assumes that sum to be the actual cost. He obtains these figures by adding to the real cost of the dam, that of all the canals; buildings and machinery which are being constructed between the dam and the tunnel. He might, with equal propriety, have added the cost of the Walpole meeting house, or that of his own paper mill. In a supplementary note we are informed that the dam across the Connecticut at Holyoke, 1017 feet long, cost about $115,000. We may assume that Mr. Bird applies these figures to the present dam, and not to the one which gave way some years since. The cost of the first dam is not given, and the inquisitive reader might ask what that was, or whether the $115,000 should not with more propriety be considered as an expenditure for repairs of an old dam rather than the cost of a new one. However that may be, the cost of labor and material at the time the new dam was built, or the old one repaired, was less than one half of the cost of labor and material, at any time since the Deerfield dam was commenced. It is possible that a cheaper structure might have been built, which would answer the purpose, but the commissioners and their engineers, warned perhaps, by the Holyoke disaster, may be excused for constructing a work that will not be washed away, though done at some additional cost for its security.
If there is one thing which Mr. Bird absolutely loves it is "porridge," and he returns to this topic with great vivacity. It may be briefly stated that in December last, after the heading from the West portal had been carried forward 111 feet, progress was stopped by an inlet of water from a brook overhead and a spring below. This water operating on the rotten rock, produced what Mr. Bird calls "porridge." It was a difficulty which had been foreseen, but was never regarded by the commissioners or engineers as of a formidable character. Soon after work was suspended at this point, responsible parties came forward with an offer to construct an arch lined with solid masonry through the "porridge" to the Western shaft, a distance of about 2000 feet, for less than $700,000; and to furnish satisfactory security for the performance of their contract. The offer was declined.
When Mr. Bird learned that work at this point was suspended, he became jubilant. He has filled ten pages of his two pamphlets with "porridge," and excited some fears on the part of his friends that the stuff has found access to the thinking part of his own person, and "muddled" it badly. But of this the reader may judge by noting on page 34 of the last pamphlet an assertion that the distance from the West portal to the shaft is all demoralized rock; and on pages 36 and 37 a calculation that it will cost $5,430,300 in gold, to construct this section of 2000 feet! But "porridge" is unreliable, and that at the Hoosac, has given out; and so Mr. Bird's hopes and calculations, which were based upon it, fall to the ground. Work has been recently resumed, and twenty-seven feet beyond the point at which it was discontinued, solid rock was reached, in which the workmen are now drilling and blasting without molestation or fear of "porridge." The brook is passed, and in the artesian well about half way from the portal to the shaft, solid rock has been reached at 130 feet above grade. "Porridge" has served its friends a mean trick and "well might Mr. Bird exclaim in the language of Woolsey (slightly altered,)"
"Had I but served the truth with half the zeal
I served my porridge, it would not, in my need,
Have left me naked to mine enemies."
The theoretical capacity of the Western Railroad is a fruitful subject for speculations and array of figures, but facts and demonstrated truths are what practical men wish to deal with. A comparison of the Tunnel and Western lines is of no significance, when both are urgently needed. In 1847, when the Western Road was opened to Albany, it transported from Albany to Boston 88,438 tons of freight, and last year, only 87,254 tons, 1184 tons less. Yet in 1847 it had no double track, and in 1865 it had 116 miles of double track. The greatest tonnage was 116,288, in 1864: and that same year, 588,207 tons of through Eastward freight arrived at Albany and Troy, and the total amount to those two points was 3,866,025; nearly three fourths of which was transported on the Erie canal, an institution which is entirely left out of Mr. Bird's calculations. More than six million tons of freight were brought from the West last year to the Hudson river. Of this vast amount only a little more than one sixtieth found its way to Boston over the Western Road. In 1864, 471,919 tons of freight were transported from Albany and Troy to Boston by the circuitous routes we have mentioned.