The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

by David McCullough

There were other things he found annoying. He had been receiving inquiries, for example, from Abram Hewitt, who wanted help with his speech. In a letter written in early May (a letter in which Hewitt, or his secretary, misspelled Roebling’s name), Hewitt said he intended to take up “the social and political considerations involved in the creation of new avenues of transportation.” He wanted the engineer to send him “comparative examples of great engineering works, which would show that by scientific appliances the cost of the bridge is very much below what would be possible in any preceding age.” He wanted a table of wages from Roebling and other technical information. Hewitt planned to present the bridge as a symbol of progress. But the builder of the bridge did not see it that way. Or perhaps he was in no mood to be of any assistance to Abram Hewitt. In any event, Roebling’s answer went as follows: To build his pyramid Cheops packed some pounds of rice into the stomachs of innumerable Egyptians and Israelites. We today would pack some pounds of coal inside steam boilers to do the same thing, and this might be cited as an instance of the superiority of modern civilization over ancient brute force. But when referred to the sun, our true standard of reference, the comparison is naught, because to produce these few pounds of coal required a thousand times more solar energy than to produce the few pounds of rice. We are simply taking advantage of an accidental circumstance. I...