Arizona republican., 1909-10-27

| ton that started Mir. McAdoo on his | career of tunnel building. Necessity was truly the mother of his invention. For years he lived in New Jersey and was daily commuter between his home and his office. Many times he
 was delayed on the river by fogs or | fields of ice that made ferry naviga- tion slow and dangerous How could Y these delays and perils be avoided? | The answer was obvious-by running | cars through tunnels under the Hud-
 son river. MT. McAdoo began to study the problem. And the first thing he came upon was a sad history of bright | hopes that ended in failure and tragic death of men engaged in the task
 Dewitt Clinton Haskins had actually begun to build a tunnel from Hobo ken toward New York in 1878, but a serious disaster almost at the outset had cost many lives. Work was re- sumed but after two years of effort and the building of eighteen hundred feet was stopped for lack of money Again the task was undertaken, in 1891. but when the tunnel heading had
 been advanced thirty-seven hundred
 feet from shore it had to be aban-
 doned because the company had failed.
 There is no need to recall here all
 the history of that time. for much of
 it has been published recently. For
 many months MT. McAdoo studied the
 problem of tunnel building. examined
 with great care the work done In the
 New York Subway. consulted eminent
 engineering authorities, and at last
 convinced himself that the project was
 feasible. But how was he to convince
 men with money that the project was
 feasible? There was a task as gigantic
 and formidable as the physical task
 of carrying the railroad under the river
 bottom. Through what a troubled sea
 of rebuffs, disappointments, doubts
 and heart breaking refusals this man
 swan for many weary days any one
 who has tried to finance proposition
 in coldest New York can easily inn
 agine. One guesses the magnitude Of
 the job and the bitterness of hopes
 often dashed to the ground by MT
 McAdoos reticence on the subject
 All that his friends have ever heard
 him say about it is that "it was a pe-
 riod of great difficulty"-which Is a very gloomy admission for one of his temperament to make. Nevertheless his persistent striving achieved its just reward, and a company of supporters. headed by Walter G. Oakman and Pliny Fisk, was organized in 1902 to take up the work where 1t had been left off.
 When the old enterprise was aban- doned in 1892 the tunnel was approach ing a point in the river where the wa ter was deepest. and where rock reef stood athwart its path. rising at no place above the diameter. of the tun- nel, so that an unusual engineering problem was presented. namely. to construct the bottom of the tunnel through this rock reef and the top of it through the silt under the Hudson. at a point where the water was sixty five feet deep. and where the amount of cover between the top of the tunnel and bottom of the river was only about thirteen feet in thickness. The blast | ing of the rock in the bottom together with the use of compressed air in the tunnel, agitated the silt overhead at all times. causing great danger of caye-in of the silt and the flooding of the tunnel itself. After Mir. Mc- Adoo's company took hold of the work
 this actually happened on two occa- sions. but not a life was lost nor was
 there any injury to the work itself. How the first tunnel was carried to successful completion in the face of | many difficulties. and it in turn be-
 came the predecessor of many others already built. building or about to be built are facts known to everybody. The incidents given here are recited l merely to form a background against
 which we can get clearer view of
 the man who planned the battle and | bore the brunt of it.