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Updated: May 25, 2025
Their rapid completion then was a proof not only of Eads's masterful energy, but of his self-sacrificing patriotism as well. Ultimately he was paid most of the money for the gunboats, and as a result of his patriotism won back the fortune he had risked; but at the time of course it hampered him intolerably to be without funds. He had, besides, other difficulties to contend with.
The House, nevertheless, passed the canal bill; but the Senate, more thorough, after calling Eads and two of his principal opponents to state their views before a committee, passed a bill appointing a commission to reconsider the entire subject once more. The discussion before the Senate committee was one of the crises in Eads's life. The fate of the jetty enterprise hung on the outcome of it.
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.
That they were all launched within a hundred days of the signing of the contract is amazing enough, but if they had been built after designs of Eads's own, so that he would not have been delayed by sudden changes necessitated when he found weaknesses in the plans furnished him, or when the designer changed the specifications, and if the government, harassed and driven as it then was, had been able to pay him according to its part of the contract, there is little doubt that he would have had the vessels finished in time according to his agreement.
Unless Bates was a prophet, we may well think the first of these statements unduly strong. To be sure, when in a crucial moment the gunboats were needed, and needed quickly, Eads's unparalleled haste in building them certainly did an inestimable service to the country.
In 1874 the bridge was finished. After it had satisfactorily stood the severe tests put upon it, it was formally opened on the 4th of July. The celebrations of that day were the first public outburst of approval given to Eads's work. And to-day the strong and graceful bridge stands as his most beautiful and lasting monument.
One of the piers was sunk 110 feet below the surface of the river, through ninety feet of gravel and sand. Eads's theories were justified by finding the bed-rock so smooth and water-worn as to show that at times it had been uncovered. This was the deepest submarine work that had ever been done, and Eads tells us in his reports many interesting experiments he made in the air-chambers.
Giving to others seemed a trait in Eads's character which afforded him an intense pleasure; and though a man of great dignity, he used with his intimate friends a charming playfulness and affection. He could be extremely mild in correcting faults; and while he was inclined to bear with others, he could be stern.
For some men one great undertaking at a time is enough, but Eads's energies were such that his works overlapped one another. It is hard to see how one man can have time, even if he has brains, to do all he did. But apparently he never lived an idle day. The bridge, with its many extraordinary solutions of new problems, made its builder's permanent reputation.
One of these, which was located in Illinois, after calling a convention of engineers, who considered the question for ten days, without an examination of Eads's plans, adopted a plan for a truss bridge. The other, the Saint Louis company, from the first had Eads as its chief engineer.
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