The record-union., 1897-08-22
NEW EAST RIVER BRIDGE.
1T WILL COST SEVEN MILLION
DOLLARS.
One of the Greatest Bridges in the
World Will Span the
East River.

| street, two blocks above Grand-street
ferry, one of the most interesting pieces
of engineering work that New York has
/ seen for a dozen years and more has
just been started. A high board fence
shuts off the view from the passer-by,
and not one person out of a thousand
knows what is going on behind it,
| though the curious have only to walk
another block along the bulkhead to
! get the scene completely before them.
Here the first of the four great cais-
sons on which the steel towers of the
new East River bridge are to stand
| is being sunk, and the work has just
reached that early stage where people
who know little of bridge science but
1 delight in the picturesque, can best ap-
preciate it.
To the north of the end of the pier
on which a derrick has been rugged and
4 an engine house and executive offices
placed, a huge wooden box without a
cover lies in the water. It's dimensions
are 60x10 feet, and this is the caisson
which, loaded down with masonry, will
! be sunk deeper and deeper until it final
/ ly rests on the solid rock far below
the rivers bottom. 1t sinks by its
own weight, the mud and sand on
/ which it rests being loosened by the
men down in the caisson's Depths who,
with pickaXe, shovel, and water jets,
tear up the bottom and send out the
soil through shafts with airlocks or
else through bloWholes.
In caisson work on land pig iron has,
as a usual thing, to be heaped atop of
TH0 !. l. tr
the ground But in sinking a caisson
in water, the difficulty is not to get it
to go down at all, but to keep it from
sinking too rapidly. With this end in
view, the weight of stone has to be
nicely and evenly distributed.
Only the preliminary part of the work
has been done SO far This first cais-
son, put in place the latter part of May,
Is as yet only resting on the mud at
the bottom of the river AS has been
said, it seems to the onloOker simply a
huge wooden box without a cover, but
upon close examination there is seen to
be much more to it, The blocks of
limestone from Saugerties quarries, in
| weight from two to six tons, that lie
| in picturesque heaps within the cais-
| son and whose numbers are added to
by yet other blocks swung over from
scows alongside, rest, when they are
fitted and masoned in courses" or
layers, upon six and half feet of con-
crete, which in turn is directly upon
the caisson chambers roof
This chamber" unseen from the
outer world, and only indicated by the
shafts up and down which men and
of caisson sinking is done It's bot
tom is the rivers bottom itself It's
! hight is twelve and a half feet The
doors of the shafts have 'airlocks, .
that is, two doors, which effectually
keep out the outer atmosphere. The
chamber is filled with compressed air
this by its pressure keeping the water
away from the bottom of the caisson
driving it through the mud out into the
river again.
No work, to any extent, has yet been
| done in the caisson chamber itself. A
little more weight, a few more blocks
Of stone, are yet to be piled upon the
concrete before the caisson will be
ready to sink Then the force of
sand hogs" now in readiness. will be
marshaled and a gang will be sent
through the man shaft down under
| the river with this constantly increas-
ing weight of masonry over their heads.
These sand hogs" or caisson men are
perhapsNhe most unique body of labor
ers in the world Working in COM
pressed air far below the surface of
land or water is a difficult, often, in
deed, dangerous trade, and the
I VIZ -, Ii
hogging'' is not skilled labor, but few
/ skilled laborers and master workmen
get higher pay than these men,
They have a union of their own,
and sand hog never does any other
sort of work when there is caisson work
in any part of the country that he can
! get. They travel from one section of
! the United States to another, wherever
a job offers itself, and despite the
chance of THE Bend" seldom change
! into other trades
The Bend" is the fate that awaits
nearly all of the pressure workers" as
the. caisson chamber men are also
called. 1t is known, too, as the ''cais-
son disease and much resembles acute
rheumatism. Men are taken with it
anywhere from ten seconds to ten min
utes after coming out of the caisson
| into the outer air. The sand hogs
| have their own remedies for this They
/ give their comrades whisky in large
quantities, they make them walk and
rub their limbs vigorously. The engi-
neers, too, are we'll aware of the neces-
/ stiles of their sand hogs" and it is an
/ invariable custom to have steaming
| cups of the hottest coffee awaiting a
/ gang when it has finished a shift and
comes up.
/ Danger and discomfort to the men in
| the>caisson increase proportionately ac-
cording to the depth reached. This is
shown by the scale of wages the men
receive The further down the caisson
! goes the less each man can work a
! day Nevertheless his pay keeps on
going up. To the depth of 50 feet the
wages are 81 30 a day for eight hours
work Between 80 and 20 feet it is
| 81 rs for six hours work Between 20
| and so feet So is paid for four hours
| work From so to so feet down So %
! for three hours work AT a depth of
/ 90 to 100 feet the sand hog" gets SO 80
| for two hours work and from 100 to
/ 10 feet 50 rs for eighty minutes work
1 a day, in two shifts of forty minutes
1 each. When the caisson finally rests
upon rock and the task being complet-
i ed, all that is needed now is to fill the
/ chamber with concrete, the pressure
| man. has % cents a day added to
! these wages.
| It is an animated scene that this
/ bridge building in its earliest stage Of
| fers to the view daily. Over the caisson
/ huge, creaking beams slowly revolve,