Part 3 (1/2)
Omitting from the count every day of deficient channel, these twenty years are now (1900) almost over; the results in the channel and in the part of the gulf just beyond the Jetties have been precisely and entirely what the projector of the works predicted when he began them.
The bar has never formed again. The Jetties themselves, so far from having to be lengthened, are shorter than they were originally designed. In a word, the sole legitimate objection that can be made to them is that they do not furnish a great enough depth. Of course they furnish the required depth, and as great a depth undoubtedly as can possibly be had in the little South Pa.s.s. s.h.i.+ps, however, now draw more water than they did twenty-five years ago, and a still deeper channel is needed. The best proof of the success of the present one is that the government is preparing to apply the same plan to the big South West Pa.s.s, which Eads begged to open and was not allowed to. It is said that in that pa.s.s he would have produced thirty feet in one year. But nothing is more useless to discuss than what might have been. What Eads has accomplished with his Jetties is certain.
One result of his achievement was a quick improvement in prices. Every acre, mill, farmhouse in the whole of the Mississippi Valley was increased in value by the impetus which the open river-mouth gave to commerce. New Orleans rose from the eleventh to the second export city in the country. Consequently there was a great increase in the number of lines of s.h.i.+ps going there, and in their tonnage. And as a result of that there was a rapid increase in railway facilities. In twenty years from the commencement of the Jetties there was a gain of one hundred per cent. in the total commerce of New Orleans, nearly all of it due to these works. This boom has, despite the marvelous multiplication of railways, preserved the river traffic; and the river traffic, as always, has by compet.i.tion lowered freight rates. The effect has spread to remote districts; and by this reduction in rates and prices there is no doubt that the Jetties have made living cheaper on the Atlantic seaboard as well as in the Mississippi Valley.
Even more: in another way they have made living cheaper. The half-rail-and-half-water route from the Pacific coast to New York via New Orleans, which the Jetties first made possible, forced the transcontinental railways to cut down their time for s.h.i.+pping freight over one half. The tonnage by this newer route has increased enormously, and its compet.i.tion has affected commerce by reducing all rates from the Mississippi Valley and the West and the Pacific slope to the Atlantic seaboard and to Europe. As a consequence bread has been made cheaper to all the great populations that require the food products of the central zone and the Pacific slope.
Another very different but curious change is probably largely due to the Jetties. Before their construction only very light-draught s.h.i.+ps could safely reach New Orleans; but it was so favorite a cotton port that many owners would build vessels of unusually light draught, in order that they might make one trip a year to New Orleans with them, although the rest of the time they sailed to deeper ports. As soon as it became known over the s.h.i.+pping world that New Orleans was now open to deep-draught vessels, a great many new ones were built. Thus the Jetties, as much as any other cause, brought in the era of great s.h.i.+ps.
It has been calculated from statistics, which it is not necessary to give here, that the annual saving to producers of the Mississippi Valley brought about by the fall of rates, the saving in marine insurance, and the saving in time, due to the Jetties, is $5,000,000; and it is furthermore calculated that the annual money value of the Jetties to the people of the country at large is, by a very conservative estimate, $25,000,000.
Even the Jetties, however, were not the end of Eads's efforts toward the improvement of the Mississippi. For several years before their completion he had been delivering addresses urging the application of the same system to the entire alluvial basin of the river from the gulf to Cairo. People were in despair as to what to do to prevent the breaking of the levees (the results of which are as ”terrible to the dwellers on those flats as the avalanche to people who live on the sides of steep mountains”), and the distress and prostration created by the awful spring floods. Most people thought there were two possible remedies,--to build more and higher levees, and to drain off some of the volume of the river through the Louisiana bayous. But Eads insisted that the requisite move was to reduce the excessive width of certain stretches of the river with willow mattresses; by uniformity of width to produce uniformity of depth, and consequently uniformity of current.
This would facilitate the discharge of floods, and would tend to lessen the need of any levees, whereas drawing off any of the volume of water, he said, would increase the elevation of its surface slope, and thus necessitate higher levees.
His arguments on the question are clear and forcible; and it is likely that his plan, if carried out, would solve the important question of the Mississippi. But enough money to try it thoroughly has never been appropriated; and so little effect has patching had, that at this very day there are still advocates of the scheme of drawing off some of the water,--a scheme which Eads blasted years ago.
In 1879 the Mississippi River Commission was created, consisting of one civilian and six military and civil engineers, of whom Eads was one.
But for him the government would not have undertaken, at any rate at that time, its very comprehensive system of river improvement, founded primarily on his theory. Besides giving a regular, deepened channel, and putting an end to overflows, he contended that his system would reclaim about 30,000 square miles of rich alluvial lands subject to inundation. For two years he served on this commission: for many years before he had been working and fighting for the same grand result,--grand though almost fruitless. ”He had no selfish interest to subserve” in this; ”no contract to execute; nothing himself to gain.”
But when, on returning from a trip to Europe, he found that the work was no longer being carried on as he thought it should be, he resigned from the commission. Deploring the wrong methods used, he still was most deeply interested in this great work up to the time of his death.
If, some day, the Mississippi is conquered, it will doubtless be through the means he pointed out.
V
THE s.h.i.+P-RAILWAY
When the Jetties were finished and paid for, Eads found himself in a very good situation. Not only was his bold scheme proved to be a complete success, but it had in the end paid him well; and he was promised still further payment for maintaining his works twenty years longer. His reputation was world-wide. He was now fifty-nine years old.
Five years later, in 1884, he went to live in New York. It is not hard to imagine why so busy a man wished to be more in the centre of things, though, for that matter, he had not for some years past spent much of his time at home. There was too much to make him travel. Besides the frequent voyages which he was ordered to take for the sake of his health,--and which, as he was a very bad sailor, he said were real medicine,--he was in demand here and there, in places miles apart, for professional services; and then, too, he visited many engineering works in various remote lands,--river improvements, docks, the Suez Ca.n.a.l. It was not alone that his curiosity was always healthy, but also that his education--the broad, useful education that he gave himself--was never ended.
We have seen how he refused to go to Brazil. He was also wanted at Jacksonville, Florida, where the citizens called him in 1878 to examine the mouth of the Saint John's River, and to report on the practicability of deepening the channel through the bar with jetties. He went there, and, after a personal examination, presented a very elaborate report.
In 1880 the governor of California had requested him to act as consulting engineer of that State, and he accordingly visited the Sacramento River, and reported upon the plans for the preservation of its channel and the arrest of debris from the mines. In 1881 he was consulted by the Canadian Minister of Public Works on the improvement of the harbor of Toronto, which he also examined. This was the first instance in which the Canadian government had ever employed an American engineer. When he was in Mexico, the government there asked him for reports on the harbors of Vera Cruz and Tampico and suggestions for their improvement. Although he did not examine these two harbors personally, he drew up plans on surveys furnished by engineers whom he sent there; and the work which has since been carried out after his instructions has proved eminently satisfactory. Again, it was the people of Vicksburg who sent for him to tell them how to better their harbor; and at another time he was consulted about the Columbia River in Oregon and about Humboldt Bay. In 1885 the Brazilian Emperor made a second attempt to secure his services for an examination of the Rio Grande del Sul, but ill health and pressing business prevented his acceptance of the offer; nor was he able to undertake the examination of the harbor of Oporto requested by the Portuguese government. It seems superfluous to say that all the reports he did make ”were exhaustive and eminently instructive in their treatment of the subjects discussed.”
Perhaps the two most important professional cases submitted to him were those in 1884 on the estuary and bar of the Mersey River and on Galveston Harbor. In the case of the Mersey he was called in, at the solicitation of the Mersey Docks and Harbor Board of Liverpool, to settle a dispute. Appearing before a committee of the House of Lords, he gave his testimony as to the effect which the proposed terminal works of the Manchester s.h.i.+p ca.n.a.l would have upon the estuary of the Mersey and the bar at Liverpool. ”He brought to the solution of this question that same keen insight into hydraulics and the same close application that had made him so successful in this country.” He showed so plainly what would inevitably be the deleterious results of the proposed plans that the committee decided against them. Subsequently they were changed to conform to his suggestions. For this report he received 3500, said to have been the largest fee ever paid to a consulting engineer.