The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1902-01-01

: toh'G, and ai.e. TIE most wearing
worries ana The h.r,icst Of Lar4, work
! ;ho glass works were shut lowa.
Fad, was left with heavy debt. III
in body, bat inGoinitahie in pluck,
back he went to the Mississippi: and
in ten years every debt was paid off,
and he and his partners were worth
half a million.
At thirty seven he was an expert in
his profession, and proposed to Con
gresS to remove all snags, wrecks, ct
cetera, not only from the Mississippi,
but from it's larger tributaries, and
keep their channels clear for a term
of years. But Congress was rent with
the approach Of the Civil War, and
when Eads was called upon at last it
was for different purpose. President
Lincoln felt that the Mississippi was
the key Of the whole situation" when
the war broke out and I;ads was chosen
to build gunboats for the government,
with which to control the great river
Eads signed the contract on August
seventh, 1861, for seven gunboats to
be delivered at Cairo on October
tenth The timber was yet growing
in the woods, the iron yet unmincd; it
was time Of great financial distress,
and many mechanics had left their
work to enlist. But in two weeks
Eads had four thousand men at work,
and his own fortune went to pay cx-
pcnscs. The seven boats were not
finished in time, for the specifications
were changed and it proved physically
impossible; but they were only thirty
nine days late; and Eads, although
terribly embarrassed financially, had
the JOY Of seeing his boats the "back-
bone Of the river fleet throughout the
war and Of knowing that his prompt
ness had saved the Mississippi to the
Union. In later years the government
paid him in full; but the feet, when
it was doing its patriotic work, was
literally his private property.
After the war, his next work was
to bridge the river he had saved. The
great Saint Louis bridge marks an era
in bridge building, and pioneer work
is ncycrLcasy. Alone among other
engineers, l:ads insisted that to stand
| firm it must BE- built on the bed rnck:
, and there were 10 engineering prcce-
{ dents for tie thr,r tremendous SPINS
be p!anncu. l. lpok AL his rncrr,
ani iuHuonrr g. br allowed 10 carr
out hi, lca> and the b.i]e ,pul
seven year, Of toll in build One Of
| the piers wa, sunk one hundred ANA
ten feet beow the surface Of the river,
| through ninety feet of sand and mud.
All other bridge builders since have
learned from Eads, and the finishing
of this tremendous achievement made
him rightly famous, the wor!l over, as
an engineering genius.
But he was not through with the
Mississippi, yet. The worst problem
Of the great river was the choking
bars as its mouth. They stopped the
trade that might otherwise have
brought wealth to the whole Mssis-
sippi valley. Eads set himself to con-
quer the stream by its own laws, and
succeeded where every one else had
failed. marrow the river just here" I"
he said, "and it will scour out it's own
bed there" The idea was not entirely
his own, for he had seen many jetties
in Europe, but the adoption Of the jet
ties to the Mississippi was new, and
nobody believed in it. Eads had to
offer to do it himself, and do it for less
than half the estimated cost of any
other plan, before Congress would lis
ten to his ideas at all, and even then
the contract was grudgiogly made.
In year the channel had deepened
from nine to sixteen feet. In four
years, the United States inspector re.
ported maximum depth Of thirty
feet, and the bar practically swept
away. 1t has never formed again.
Eads had mastered the Mississippi in
this, his last achievement for his gen.
Grafton.
So, with that mastery proved, his
work was done. He died in 1887, not
quite sixty seven years Old William
Rittenhouse, IN For,card.