Page:The History of the Standard Oil Company Vol 1.djvu/227

Rh the reports of General Haupt and General Butler. The authority and seriousness of the scheme as set forth at this meeting alarmed the railroads. If this seaboard line went through it was farewell to the railroad-Standard combination. Oil could be shipped to the seaboard by it at a cost of 16 2-3 cents a barrel, General Haupt estimated. All of the interests, little and big, which believed that they would be injured by the success of the line, began an attack.

Curiously enough one of the first points of hostility was General Haupt himself. An effort was made to discredit his estimate in order to scare people from taking stock. They recalled the Hoosac Tunnel scandal and the fact that the General once built a bridge which had tumbled down, ridiculed his estimate of the cost, etc., etc. The "card" in which General Haupt answered his chief critic, one who signed himself "Vidi," was admirable:

What are the charges that I am requested to "smash"?

They are, as I understand them from others, for some I have not seen:

1. That I once built a bridge that tumbled down.

2. That I was connected with the Hoosac Tunnel that cost seventeen millions of dollars.

3. That my estimates of cost of transportation are ridiculously low and unreliable.

1. I did design a bridge some twenty years ago, and constructed a span near Greenfield, in Massachusetts, which gave way, owing to a defective casting, while being tested. The bridge was not finished; had not been opened to the public; had not been accepted from the contractor, who repaired the damage in such a manner that a recurrence of a break would have been impossible. I have built spans of bridges and tested them until they broke, to ascertain their ultimate strength, but I supposed that this was a matter that concerned myself and not the public. If the bridge had been thrown open for public use, and an accident had then occurred from defective design or material, the engineer might have been censurable, but not otherwise. In experience of nearly forty years I have never had a bridge to fail, after being opened for travel, or a piece of masonry to give way. No accident occurred even upon the temporary military bridges constructed during the war, which President Lincoln used say were built of bean poles and corn stalks.