There were accidents and drawbacks and political complications, as there are always bound to be in public works; there were believer and unbeliever, booster and knocker, as now, but the work went on to its completion and in 1883 the day of realization came. Wire was king. Doubters and malcontents murmured for a time, but little by little subsided. The opening of the bridge was one of those memorable days of which New York has had so many in her brief history, a day when President and Governor and many lesser dignitaries, who have now passed from the stage, strutted their little hour to hail the passing of a milestone, and there were “fireworks in the evening.”
THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA
A new era had now definitely begun. There was a recognized agent in the world strong enough, with engineering guidance, to shoulder its most staggering burdens, and the name of Roebling began to weave itself in letters of wire through the whole web of modern industry. Thirty-seven years have come and gone since the Brooklyn Bridge was finished and thrown open to the swarming people. Even when they saw they wouldn’t believe it; many of them mounted to its span with their hearts in their mouths. There had been a world of carping and prophecy of disaster. A public that clutched at novelty as an addict does for stimulant could not assimilate the idea that there could be safety in wire where such enormous weight was laid upon it. Its frailty of appearance fooled them. For years after the Bridge had taken up its load and was carrying without protest or misbehavior the traffic of two cities, there came periodical alarms regarding the discovery of strange faults in construction, or disintegration of the wires caused by vibration. It was the one dependable theme for the alarmist and sensational writer.
But the proof was in the using. The slender span has stood the test of time and tide and wind and wear, and stood them all so well that it has fixed for a century at least the type of the super-bridge.
TWO MORE BRIDGES TO BROOKLYN
Wire bridges have become a familiar thing in the lives of cities. Two more have come to give the crowding population of New York freeway over the East River, as the city’s life has spread northward. For the Williamsburg the Roebling firm furnished the wire and installed the cables. In the Manhattan Bridge it had no part save the making of the wire, not a trivial task, since in the cables alone there are 12,000,000 pounds.
These bridges are bigger than the Brooklyn Bridge with which the troublesome river was first overcome, but it will be many a day before the glamour that surrounded the earlier creation will have worn away, or people the world over cease to speak of it with wonder and a certain measure of awe. Anybody, perhaps, can build a wire bridge now; perhaps, too, somebody some day can build one with more of simple grace and slender beauty, but it is certain nobody ever has.
CHAPTER IV
WHERE WIRE IS MADE
To measure the growth of wire, with its many forms and composites, during the last forty years would be to trace in detail not alone the progress of science, invention and mechanical industry, but the myriad conceits that have come ostensibly to facilitate the process of living. In the search for new comforts, for means of avoiding physical exertion, the world has been littered with novelties, and most of them depend on wire. Personal life as well as commerce and industry is interlaced with wire. With the opening of new countries, the increase of populations, the flocking of outland people to the cities and the consequent lack of farm labor, ingenuity has been more heavily taxed to find the quick and easy way of doing the world’s work and keeping food in its mouths. Wire, so adaptable to the heaviest as well as the lightest tasks, has labored from year to year under an increasing demand.
It is not surprising therefore that a company which in such an impressive way had fixed itself in recognition as the first exponent of wire’s usefulness should have grown in this period from modest commercial stature to a high place in its field and to the enjoyment of large production.