Years later, at Quebec, a huge bridge partly designed by Cooper, by then an engineer of national prominence, would collapse during construction, killing seventy-five men. On hearing the news Roebling would write scathingly of engineers who design bridges but do not give the actual construction their personal attention. “It is one thing to sit in your office and split hairs,” he would write, “but a different thing to get out and command men and meet the realities of great construction.” Ironically, Roebling was unaware, it seems, that Cooper had not been at Quebec because of his health.
