Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1910-08-17

tured to fill the contracts which are Sc
cured at the Omaha office.
The business carried on by most of the
Omaha firms Is essentially a contracting
business. These firms send representatives
TO the lettings which are held by the vari-
Gus county boards Of supervisors and town
shrip trustees and commissioners and the
fortunate bidder closes a contract TO fur
nish to that county or township all the
bridges they may require during the per-
iod, generally a year. at certain price
per lineal foot for each kind of bridges.
Then as the counties or townships call
upon the firms for bridges, they In turn,
place a contract for their manufacture
with some iron and steel manufacturing
company.
Time was when practically all the bridges,
large or small in this section Of the United
States, we're made Of wood and this con-
dition still holds largely true of Nebraska.
1t is only very recently that the bridges In
this state even those over the Platte, began
to be constructed Of steel
In most of the other states, however,
steel has, in the last decade, come rapidly
to the front as a bridge building material,
especially in Iowa where only the smallest
bridges are made of wood, 1t looked for a
time, few years ago, as though concrete,
with its rapid development, would supplant
the most costly steel in bridge construction
work. but II now shows much less indica-
ton of doing so. Today concrete is used
much with steel for the building of such
parts of the bridge as the floor or sub
structure, but for the remainder of the
bridge 1t has not proved satisfactory.
There are reasons for this. The main
reason is that in many parts of the country
the facilities for making concrete work
cheaply are not at hand Such work re-
quires an abundance of gravel and sand
and when 1t Is not present, for every cubic
yard Of concrete construction, about 500
pounds of material must be shipped which,
as will readily be seen, cuts down consid-
eraby Its advantage over steel from the
standpoint of cost.
Another thing which has worked against
the adoption of concrete more universally
is the fact that in many places contracts
have been let for concrete work to ire
sponsble or poorly equipped contractors
who have, by faulty building or by the use
OF too little or too poor cement, given the
whole concrete business a BLACK eye"
with those who use bridges.
The local contractors do not confine their
attention, in most cases, to bridge work.
The Western Bridge and Construction com
pany, for example, make foundations and Is
just now completing a foundation for the
street railway company at Fifth and Jones
streets. The Standard people devote a good
deal Of attention to steel culvert pipe and
to steel construction work of all kinds
such as water tanks, Jail Innings and fire.
escapes. 1t Is in the oulvert pipe line that
concrete Is giving steel its strongest COM
petition, these days, in places where ma
terial suitable for concrete lie abundant
The amount of contracting business which
passes through the various Omaha bridge
firms will total between 81 100000 to g. ,OCC
! in value for q year. The amount OF steel
consumed and lumber used is enormous
One of the companies which reports a
yearly business of approximately $5O0,OOO
uses 100000 tons of steel and about 100000
feet of lumber in the same period
And the business is every year increasing