Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/358

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344
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cold and physical distress. Its constructors have had to face death in its most repulsive form. Death, indeed, was the fate of its great projector, and dread disease the heritage of the greater engineer who has brought it to completion. The faith of the saint and the courage of the hero have been combined in the conception, the design, and the execution of this work.

Let us then record the names of the engineers and foremen who have thus made humanity itself their debtor, for the successful achievement which is not the result of accident or of chance, but is the fruit of design, and of the consecration of all personal interest to the public weal. They are: John A. Roebling, who conceived the project and formulated the plan of the bridge; Washington A. Roebling, who, inheriting his father's genius, and more than his father's knowledge and skill, has directed the execution of this great work from its inception to its completion; aided in the several departments by Charles C. Martin, Francis Collingwood, William H. Payne, George W. McNulty, Wilhelm Hilderbrand, Samuel R. Probasco, and E. F. Farrington, Arthur V. Abbott, William Van der Bosch, Charles Young, and Harry Tupple, who, in apparently subordinate positions, have shown themselves peculiarly fitted to command, because they have known how to serve. But the record would not be complete without reference to the unnamed men by whose unflinching courage, in the depths of the caissons, and upon the suspended wires, the work was carried on amid storms, and accidents, and dangers, sufficient to appall the stoutest heart. To them we can only render the tribute which history accords to those who fight as privates in the battles of freedom, with all the more devotion and patriotism because their names will never be known by the world whose benefactors they are. One name, however, which will find no place in the official records, can not be passed over here in silence. In ancient times when great works were constructed, a goddess was chosen, to whose tender care they were dedicated. Thus the ruins of the Acropolis to-day recall the name of Pallas Athene to an admiring world. In the middle ages the blessing of some saint was invoked to protect from the rude attacks of the barbarians and the destructive hand of time the building erected by man's devotion to the worship of God. So, with this bridge will ever be coupled the thought of one through the subtile alembic of whose brain, and by whose facile fingers, communication was maintained between the directing power of its construction and the obedient agencies of its execution. It is thus an everlasting monument to the self-sacrificing devotion of woman, and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long debarred. The name of Mrs. Emily Warren Roebling will thus be inseparably associated with all that is admirable in human nature, and with all that is wonderful in the constructive world of art.

This tribute to the engineers, however, would not be deserved if there is to be found any evidence of deception on their part in the