Page:Walker - An Unsinkable Titanic (1912).djvu/31

AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC be local and passing. It takes a "horror"—a "holocaust" of human life, with all its attendant exploitation in the press and the monthly magazine, to awaken a busy and preoccupied world to the danger and beget those stringent laws and improved constructions which are the earmarks of progress towards an ideal civilisation.

Not many years ago, there was being erected across the St. Lawrence River a huge bridge, with the largest single span in the world, which it was believed would be not only the largest but the strongest and most enduring structure of its kind in existence. It was being built under the supervision of one of the leading bridge engineers of the world; its design was of an approved type, which had long been standard in the Western Hemisphere; and the steelwork was being fabricated in one of the best equipped bridge works in the country. Nevertheless, when one great cantilever was about completed, and before any live load had been placed on it, the structure collapsed under its own weight. One of the principal members—a massive steel column, five feet square and sixty feet long—crumpled up as though it had been a boy's [ 9 ]