"Can it be done at the present depth?" he was asked.
"Give me the men and plant, and I'll put it through myself," he answered.
The contractors sued the company and produced a score of experts to prove that the tunnel could not possibly be built in the way Jacobs wanted it built.
While the courts were considering the question Jacobs kept right on digging. He had to encounter difficulties that would have turned most engineers back. But in the end he pushed the bore through, and the courts, with this evidence before them, decided against the contractors. He built the tunnel big enough for trolley-cars in case it might be wanted for that purpose, and he constructed it so solidly that none of the silt or water of the East River has been able to filter in.
Another Difficult Task.
In 1877 an attempt was made to tunnel the Hudson River, but the work moved along fitfully. In July, 1880, an accident that resulted in the death of twenty men temporarily put an end to it. Two more attempts were made, and again the work was abandoned. A fourth company revived the scheme, and made Jacobs the engineer. The work was just in his line, for it gave him the opportunity to overcome big obstacles and to carry through a project that would be of big benefit to humanity.
It was an appalling task, for the course was through shifting sand, mud, and rock, and before it was completed it was necessary to make more than nine thousand blasts. All these were in the tunnel direct, under the mud and sand and fifty or sixty feet of river water. Yet the undertaking resulted in few accidents, for Jacobs knew how to take care of his men, and he has established a reputation for never sending one where he will not go himself.
In his early days of wandering in India, China, and Australia he had learned how to accomplish much by simple means. It was simply learning to do what he called the obvious thing. But the simple, little, obvious thing is often the hardest for most people, including engineers, to see.
How He Met an Emergency.
In the building of one of the trolley tunnels under the Hudson, a careless opening of the doors of the shield—the cylindrical cup pushed along at the head of the bore, and by means of which all the digging is done—caused the flooding of one hundred feet of the tunnel. It would be as hopeless a task to try to bail that mixture of mud and water out as it would be to drain the Hudson River and the bay adjacent thereto. Jacobs saved the situation by a very simple expedient.