From that time the "Man from Maine" began to be heard of. His political advance was rapid. The fact that he was not born a New Englander was not a detriment to him, for, as one of his contemporaries said, "There was a sort of Western dash about him that took with us Down-Easters." In 1862 he was elected to Congress, and began his long and distinguished career of public service at Washington.
BUILT HUDSON TUNNEL.
Resourceful Engineer Also Completed the
Bore Under the East River from
Manhattan to Brooklyn.
Charles M. Jacobs, the builder of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel under the Hudson River, is an Englishman, fifty-six years of age. His father wished him to go to Cambridge University, but the youth preferred to go to work, and he did so when sixteen years old.
He entered the office of a ship-building and engineering firm in Hull, England, and there he became thoroughly grounded in mechanical work and drafting. He was an earnest worker, and he established a precedent in the office by getting work to do that was usually assigned to the head men. It was not customary then to place such reliance on young men.
"Jacobs can do it," his employers were accustomed to say when surprise was expressed at his being placed in command of big operations. "He knows what is to be done, and he knows how to handle his men."
When he was twenty-one he went to India as the firm's representative in some big engineering work, and he did so well that he was sent to China, Australia, and the European continent. He helped build several tunnels in London, and in 1889 Austin Corbin, then president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, brought him to this country to superintend several important changes that were to be made in the road.
Jacobs liked this country so well and was so favorably impressed by the outlook for big engineering work that he has remained here, and has become a citizen.
His First American Success.
He made his first notable success in the construction of the East River gas tunnel. It was a difficult piece of work, for instead of the river-bed of solid rock that was supposed to exist, it was found that the bed was full of fissures through which flowed the mud and water of the river. The contractors wished to give the bore up and try one fifty feet deeper. Jacobs refused to do it, and the board of directors of the company, after listening to his arguments, sided with him.