James B. Eads

Hard as these conditions were, they were based on his own proposal, and he was glad even on such terms to undertake the great work he had longed to do. He at once busied himself in raising money for beginning the Jetties, and here again his peculiar talents helped him. One of his friends has said, "His powers of persuasion, his charm of address, and the magnetism of his personality opened the hearts and purses of whomever he pleaded with in support of his engineering devices. He was a most lovable man." Moreover, he was an excellent business man. He had indeed a marvelous faculty for obtaining funds with which to carry on his works; and in that time of financial distress such a faculty was very necessary.

The theory on which he based his jetties was really extremely simple. He said that, other things being equal, the amount of sediment which a river can carry is in direct proportion to its velocity. When, for any reason, the current becomes slower at any special place, it drops part of its burden of sediment at that place, and when it becomes faster again it picks up more. Now, one thing that makes a river slower is an increase of its width, because then there is more frictional surface; and contrariwise, one of the things that make it faster is a narrowing of its width. Narrow the Mississippi then, at its mouth, said Eads, and it will become swifter there, and consequently it will remove its soft bottom by picking up the sediment (of which it will then hold much more), and by carrying it out to the gulf, to be lost in deep water and swept away by currents; and thus, he said, you will have your deep channel. In other words, if you give the river some assistance by keeping its current together, it will do all the necessary labor and scour out its own bottom.

Today, since this theory has been proved, it seems as simple as A B C. And it is almost impossible to believe what opposition it then aroused. People were not only set on blocking the undertaking, but they were actually ignorant enough to deny that the velocity of water had any connection with its sediment-carrying power. Even if the narrowing process should happen to give a channel through the present bar, they said, a new one would presently form beyond, and so the jetties would have to be extended every year.

However, Eads had his contract and his backers and his ideas and his faith in them; and he set to work on the little pass. The actual delta of the Mississippi consists of nothing but water, marsh, and some sandy soil bearing willows. At the sea end of South Pass Eads extended the low banks out over the bar, by driving rows of guide-piles and sinking willow mattresses close alongside them on the riverside. The mattresses were sunk in tiers, and each tier was weighted well with rock, put in as soon as each mattress was in position. As usual he invented many of the requisite mechanical appliances and contrivances himself, and generally such good ones that his methods came to take the place of earlier ones. The South Pass was not only the smallest and shallowest of the mouths, but it was besides more difficult than the other two in having a bar at its head as well as at its sea end. And although by his contract Eads was not required to remove that bar, by the exigencies of the case he was. Like the other it had to be attacked with water, guided by dikes and dams, which were similar in construction to the two parallel banks, the jetties proper. The scheme was always to force the river itself to do all the real work; and though there was, to be sure, a good deal of planning and building, the main idea, as already explained, is exceedingly simple. Eads never pretended to have originated this idea. He had studied many jetties in Europe. He had had the eye to see that they could be adapted to the Mississippi, and the skill to adapt them. For simple as the bald theory is, there was need of the nicest appreciation of laws and forces in applying it, and the result has been called the greatest engineering feat ever accomplished. The problem of making the quantity of water needed run up into the smallest pass "through a narrow, artificially contracted channel, located immediately between two great natural outlets,"—this problem being complicated by many "occult conditions,"—has been called, by no mean engineer, perhaps the most difficult problem ever dealt with successfully. "There is no instance, indeed, in the world where such a vast volume of water is placed under such absolute and permanent control of the engineer, through methods so economic and simple."

To the non-mechanical mind the control of such a multitude of abstruse, minute, and exact details as combine in the making of a bridge seems perhaps more marvelous than the mere bending of nature's forces to serve the ends of man. In Eads the power to do both existed.

On piles in the marsh houses were built for the engineers and the workmen, and the Jetties were begun. Eads was not able to be there in person all the time, but as usual his choice of competent and faithful lieutenants was noteworthy. His plans were approved by an advisory board of very eminent engineers; and by the end of one year the value of the work began to show. As yet it was not very strong or solid, but it had deepened the water on the bar from nine to sixteen feet.

None the less the storm of detraction continued. There were enough difficulties to meet without this, but none of them was met more forcibly. It was never Eads's way to attack other people in a malicious spirit, for he was never jealous; nor did he often deign to answer purely personal attacks. But in defense of his undertakings, to protect them and the people who had put money into them, he was ready to fight. His defense commonly took the form of criticism of his critics, and in such writing his pen was decidedly trenchant. Probably no man ever incurred more foolish criticism, and probably none ever pointed out more plainly how foolish it was. Even "the ablest of his adversaries confessed themselves afraid of his pen." Besides this parrying of attack, he was continually writing and talking to show the simplicity and feasibility of his method; and one man phrased what it is likely many exemplified, that a few minutes' conversation with Eads had done more to convert him to the Jetties than any amount of writing and of talking with other people could have done. Always modest and unassuming, he was so thoroughly in earnest that he convinced others by his own conviction.

Never was a man less afraid to work. Years before, in the diving-bell days, he had set himself the precedent of never asking an employee to do what he himself would fear to do. And, on the other hand, he did not hesitate to ask an employee to do as much work as he himself would have done. His former confidential clerk has told me that sometimes, after evenings of discussion, Eads on starting to bed, perhaps at midnight, would say to him, "Now, have that figured out for me in the morning," which meant three or four hours of scrupulous figuring or writing to be done by eight the next morning.

Undoubtedly he could not have worked so hard as he did himself had he not been able to throw aside his cares and problems when he was not actively engaged with them. A very sociable man, he liked not only to be with people, but to be making them enjoy themselves. Thus he was both generous and jovial. No one loved more to give presents; no one knew more droll stories and more poetry. Nor was his joviality by any means a descent; for not only before royalty was he dignified, but in the most democratic assembly. His was not, however, a forbidding dignity. Simple-hearted as a child, he was fond of children, and they were fond of him.

Of course, he kept up his miscellaneous reading. He was specially devoted to poetry; and loved not only to recite verse upon verse aloud, but also to read to his friends and associates. As usual, his enthusiasm spread to others. One old lady has told me that she never had thought much of poetry till she heard him read it. Burns and Edwin Arnold and Tennyson were favorites; and there is a letter written by Eads to Tennyson, apparently to send him a clipping in which the one was described reciting from the other's poems. Eads excuses himself for intruding with his tribute, and remarks that both of them have built works destined to outlive their authors. He says it quite modestly and candidly, "as equal comes to equal; throne to throne."

Yet despite the confidence of their builder, despite his cheerfulness, the Jetties were not getting along well. To be sure, they were steadily deepening the channel, and thereby proving to all ingenuous persons who were undeceived that jetties were what had long been needed, and that they should be helped along and finished. But the Jetties were situated far off in a remote marshland where few people saw them; consequently nearly everybody was either deceived or was disingenuous. People who had no business to interfere did interfere. Every hitch was shouted abroad, every success was concealed or twisted. Concrete difficulties were enormous. Sudden storms at just the wrong time delayed and undid the work. The need for more money was pressing, and it could be borrowed only at exorbitant rates of interest. The newspapers were clamoring that the rash experiment was a failure; and though, of course, it was not a failure, still it might have fallen through, when one day the Cromwell liner, Hudson, drawing over fourteen feet of water, came in through the Jetties, and they were saved.

Although the prestige of the undertaking was thus established, Eads realized that his contract with the government was too severe. Not that he asked to be paid beforehand for his work, but he did ask to be paid as the work was actually done. So evident were his energy, skill, and good faith that Congress promptly voted him an advance of a million dollars. It also sent a commission to inspect and to report on the progress and efficiency of the works. This commission, while reporting favorably, advised against any further advance payments. But Congress, nevertheless, voted him three-quarters of a million more. It is said that this is the only instance where the government has voted money to an individual in advance of the specific terms of his agreement. Moreover, his contract was re-arranged so as to be less oppressive.

It has been said that if Eads had failed with the Jetties he would not only have destroyed his reputation, but he would have been a beggar,—though, some one added, he would still have deserved everlasting gratitude for his efforts and sacrifices. And now he had already succeeded in changing the little pass into a grand channel of commerce sufficient for the largest shipping that visited New Orleans. Yet the violent opposition and the calumnies still continued. There was a wonderful persistency in the false reports which came from bitter opponents who would not be convinced. The foolishness and ignorance of their arguments are almost incredible. But however foolish, they had to be disproved; and Eads set himself patiently to work to point out the errors in logic and in physics; and in doing so he wrote what those who know call one of the greatest works on river hydraulics.

While there were so many men's hands against Eads, it is pleasant to record that there were also many for him. It was the "Scientific American" which first suggested his name for the presidency. It advocated him as a fearless, honest, and forceful man; but the peculiar compliment in it was that this was a technical paper that upheld him. The proposal was repeated in many newspapers, but Eads had no more intention now than ever of going into politics. He knew in what line he could do most for his country, and had an ambition rather to be a supremely useful engineer than to be president.

Another of his admirers was the late Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II., who, after a visit to the Jetties, first tried to persuade Eads to go to Brazil to do some very important work for him, and who then, failing that, sent him a personal letter asking him to recommend an engineer. And he engaged the one whom Eads recommended.

In 1879, a little over four years from the time the Jetties were begun, the United States inspecting officer there reported the maximum depth of thirty feet and the required width and depths throughout the channel. Thereupon all the remainder of the price agreed was paid over to Eads, excepting a million dollars, which was kept, at interest, as a guarantee, during twenty years' actual maintenance of the channel. Omitting from the count every day of deficient channel, these twenty years are now (1900) almost over; the results in the channel and in the part of the gulf just beyond the Jetties have been precisely and entirely what the projector of the works predicted when he began them. The bar has never formed again. The Jetties themselves, so far from having to be lengthened, are shorter than they were originally designed. In a word, the sole legitimate objection that can be made to them is that they do not furnish a great enough depth. Of course they furnish the required depth, and as great a depth undoubtedly as can possibly be had in the little South Pass. Ships, however, now draw more water than they did twenty-five years ago, and a still deeper channel is needed. The best proof of the success of the present one is that the government is preparing to apply the same plan to the big South West Pass, which Eads begged to open and was not allowed to. It is said that in that pass he would have produced thirty feet in one year. But nothing is more useless to discuss than what might have been. What Eads has accomplished with his Jetties is certain.

One result of his achievement was a quick improvement in prices. Every acre, mill, farmhouse in the whole of the Mississippi Valley was increased in value by the impetus which the open river-mouth gave to commerce. New Orleans rose from the eleventh to the second export city in the country. Consequently there was a great increase in the number of lines of ships going there, and in their tonnage. And as a result of that there was a rapid increase in railway facilities. In twenty years from the commencement of the Jetties there was a gain of one hundred per cent. in the total commerce of New Orleans, nearly all of it due to these works. This boom has, despite the marvelous multiplication of railways, preserved the river traffic; and the river traffic, as always, has by competition lowered freight rates. The effect has spread to remote districts; and by this reduction in rates and prices there is no doubt that the Jetties have made living cheaper on the Atlantic seaboard as well as in the Mississippi Valley.

Even more: in another way they have made living cheaper. The half-rail-and-half-water route from the Pacific coast to New York via New Orleans, which the Jetties first made possible, forced the transcontinental railways to cut down their time for shipping freight over one half. The tonnage by this newer route has increased enormously, and its competition has affected commerce by reducing all rates from the Mississippi Valley and the West and the Pacific slope to the Atlantic seaboard and to Europe. As a consequence bread has been made cheaper to all the great populations that require the food products of the central zone and the Pacific slope.

Another very different but curious change is probably largely due to the Jetties. Before their construction only very light-draught ships could safely reach New Orleans; but it was so favorite a cotton port that many owners would build vessels of unusually light draught, in order that they might make one trip a year to New Orleans with them, although the rest of the time they sailed to deeper ports. As soon as it became known over the shipping world that New Orleans was now open to deep-draught vessels, a great many new ones were built. Thus the Jetties, as much as any other cause, brought in the era of great ships.

It has been calculated from statistics, which it is not necessary to give here, that the annual saving to producers of the Mississippi Valley brought about by the fall of rates, the saving in marine insurance, and the saving in time, due to the Jetties, is $5,000,000; and it is furthermore calculated that the annual money value of the Jetties to the people of the country at large is, by a very conservative estimate, $25,000,000.

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. People were in despair as to what to do to prevent the breaking of the levees (the results of which are as "terrible to the dwellers on those flats as the avalanche to people who live on the sides of steep mountains"), and the distress and prostration created by the awful spring floods. Most people thought there were two possible remedies,—to build more and higher levees, and to drain off some of the volume of the river through the Louisiana bayous. But Eads insisted that the requisite move was to reduce the excessive width of certain stretches of the river with willow mattresses; by uniformity of width to produce uniformity of depth, and consequently uniformity of current. This would facilitate the discharge of floods, and would tend to lessen the need of any levees, whereas drawing off any of the volume of water, he said, would increase the elevation of its surface slope, and thus necessitate higher levees.

His arguments on the question are clear and forcible; and it is likely that his plan, if carried out, would solve the important question of the Mississippi. But enough money to try it thoroughly has never been appropriated; and so little effect has patching had, that at this very day there are still advocates of the scheme of drawing off some of the water,—a scheme which Eads blasted years ago.

In 1879 the Mississippi River Commission was created, consisting of one civilian and six military and civil engineers, of whom Eads was one. But for him the government would not have undertaken, at any rate at that time, its very comprehensive system of river improvement, founded primarily on his theory. Besides giving a regular, deepened channel, and putting an end to overflows, he contended that his system would reclaim about 30,000 square miles of rich alluvial lands subject to inundation. For two years he served on this commission: for many years before he had been working and fighting for the same grand result,—grand though almost fruitless. "He had no selfish interest to subserve" in this; "no contract to execute; nothing himself to gain." But when, on returning from a trip to Europe, he found that the work was no longer being carried on as he thought it should be, he resigned from the commission. Deploring the wrong methods used, he still was most deeply interested in this great work up to the time of his death. If, some day, the Mississippi is conquered, it will doubtless be through the means he pointed out.

V

THE SHIP-RAILWAY

When the Jetties were finished and paid for, Eads found himself in a very good situation. Not only was his bold scheme proved to be a complete success, but it had in the end paid him well; and he was promised still further payment for maintaining his works twenty years longer. His reputation was world-wide. He was now fifty-nine years old. Five years later, in 1884, he went to live in New York. It is not hard to imagine why so busy a man wished to be more in the centre of things, though, for that matter, he had not for some years past spent much of his time at home. There was too much to make him travel. Besides the frequent voyages which he was ordered to take for the sake of his health,—and which, as he was a very bad sailor, he said were real medicine,—he was in demand here and there, in places miles apart, for professional services; and then, too, he visited many engineering works in various remote lands,—river improvements, docks, the Suez Canal. It was not alone that his curiosity was always healthy, but also that his education—the broad, useful education that he gave himself—was never ended.

We have seen how he refused to go to Brazil. He was also wanted at Jacksonville, Florida, where the citizens called him in 1878 to examine the mouth of the Saint John's River, and to report on the practicability of deepening the channel through the bar with jetties. He went there, and, after a personal examination, presented a very elaborate report. In 1880 the governor of California had requested him to act as consulting engineer of that State, and he accordingly visited the Sacramento River, and reported upon the plans for the preservation of its channel and the arrest of débris from the mines. In 1881 he was consulted by the Canadian Minister of Public Works on the improvement of the harbor of Toronto, which he also examined. This was the first instance in which the Canadian government had ever employed an American engineer. When he was in Mexico, the government there asked him for reports on the harbors of Vera Cruz and Tampico and suggestions for their improvement. Although he did not examine these two harbors personally, he drew up plans on surveys furnished by engineers whom he sent there; and the work which has since been carried out after his instructions has proved eminently satisfactory. Again, it was the people of Vicksburg who sent for him to tell them how to better their harbor; and at another time he was consulted about the Columbia River in Oregon and about Humboldt Bay. In 1885 the Brazilian Emperor made a second attempt to secure his services for an examination of the Rio Grande del Sul, but ill health and pressing business prevented his acceptance of the offer; nor was he able to undertake the examination of the harbor of Oporto requested by the Portuguese government. It seems superfluous to say that all the reports he did make "were exhaustive and eminently instructive in their treatment of the subjects discussed."

Perhaps the two most important professional cases submitted to him were those in 1884 on the estuary and bar of the Mersey River and on Galveston Harbor. In the case of the Mersey he was called in, at the solicitation of the Mersey Docks and Harbor Board of Liverpool, to settle a dispute. Appearing before a committee of the House of Lords, he gave his testimony as to the effect which the proposed terminal works of the Manchester ship canal would have upon the estuary of the Mersey and the bar at Liverpool. "He brought to the solution of this question that same keen insight into hydraulics and the same close application that had made him so successful in this country." He showed so plainly what would inevitably be the deleterious results of the proposed plans that the committee decided against them. Subsequently they were changed to conform to his suggestions. For this report he received £3500, said to have been the largest fee ever paid to a consulting engineer.

In the Galveston case, the same year, he was requested, not only by the city but by the state legislature, to formulate a plan and to take a contract from the United States government for improving that harbor. The government had already been carrying on works there for several years and accomplishing nothing. Indeed, it was the jetty method—by this time more highly thought of than ten years before—which was being attempted, but not in proper form. Eads, after long and careful study of the situation, made a plan, which he offered to carry out on conditions very similar to those adopted in the case of the Mississippi Jetties, but Congress was not willing to grant the contract. Since then, however, the works there have been altered according to his suggestions, and have consequently been more successful.

For a good many years, owing to the weakness of his lungs and to other illness, Eads had not only had to travel much for his health, but to take special care of himself generally; and yet, to judge from the following account, in the first person, of how he had spent the year 1880, it seems that his wondrous energy had not failed: "I inspected the River Danube about 800 miles of its course; and investigated the cause and extent of the frightful inundation at Szegedin, in Hungary, which involved an examination of 150 miles of the Theiss River. I also examined the Suez Canal, to familiarize myself more thoroughly with the question of a ship canal across the American isthmus, having previously visited the Amsterdam ship canal and the one at the mouth of the River Rhone. As a member of the Mississippi River Commission I also aided in perfecting the plans for the improvement of that river, and the preparation of its report now under consideration before Congress. As consulting engineer of the State of California I made a thorough inspection of the Sacramento River, to consider the best method of repairing the injury to its navigation caused by the hydraulic mining operations there, and submitted a lengthy report upon it. On my way back I visited the wonders of the Yellowstone Park, crossing the Rocky Mountains in that excursion six different times. Within this time I have thrice visited the Jetties at the mouth of the Mississippi, besides my visit to the city of Mexico, Tehuantepec, and Yucatan.... I have also, at the request of the mayor and council of Vicksburg, twice visited that city during the last year, to examine its harbor with a view to its improvement."

In 1884 Eads received perhaps the most distinguished honor of his career—the award of the Albert Medal. As it came only two or three months after the report on the Mersey, it was undoubtedly due to that as its immediate cause, although the Jetties were almost specifically named as the reason for this honor,—and Eads had not by any means lacked even earlier appreciation in England. Three years before, at a meeting of the British Association, he had been urged, nay pressed, to deliver an impromptu address on his works, both completed and projected. Nevertheless, it was not until after the Mersey report that the Albert Medal was conferred upon him. This medal, founded in 1862 in memory of the Prince Consort, is awarded annually by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. It was in Eads's case awarded "as a token of their appreciation of the services he had rendered to the science of engineering," to the engineer "whose works have been of such great service in improving the water communications of North America, and have thereby rendered valuable aid to the commerce of the world." He was the second American citizen and the first native-born American to receive this medal.

Of course he belonged to many scientific organizations. He was a member of the Engineers Club of Saint Louis, and for two years president of the Academy of Science there; he was also a member of the American Geographical Society, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Great Britain, and of the British Association, and of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce; a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and a member, fellow, and for a year vice-president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

He was now a person whose return from Europe, with plans for river improvement, and news about a fresh engineering scheme, was an item in the small as well as the large newspapers. For, since the Jetties were finished, he had a new scheme,—a decidedly new one it seemed to most people,—though, as formerly, he made no pretense of having originated the idea. Instead of resting content, now that he was almost sixty,—rich, and honored, and frail,—instead of resting content on his laurels of the gunboats, the Bridge, the Jetties, he was as active as ever, with the hope of opening more roads to commerce and prosperity. The publication of the proceedings of De Lesseps's Interoceanic Canal Congress in 1879 gave Eads an opportunity to propose, in a letter to the New York "Tribune," his own project for spanning the isthmus. The Tehuantepec route from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific would be, in the general lines of travel, about 2000 miles shorter than the Panama route, or 1500 miles shorter than the Nicaragua. And it was at Tehuantepec that Eads proposed building, not a canal, but a ship-railway. The proposition was astounding. It certainly suggested very picturesque visions of transportation; but at first sight it did not sound very practicable. However, Eads held that it presented six great and purely practical advantages: First, it could be built for much less than the cost of a canal. Secondly, it could be built in one quarter of the time. Thirdly, it could, with absolute safety, transport ships more rapidly. Fourthly, its actual cost could be more accurately foretold. Fifthly, the expense of maintaining it would be less than for a canal. Sixthly, its capacity could be easily increased to meet future requirements.

In 1880 he appeared before a committee of the House, and in reply to De Lesseps, who was advocating the Panama Canal, he stated his plan for the ship-railway. A few months later he went to Mexico, where the government gave him, besides a very valuable concession for building the ship-railway, its cordial assistance in his surveys. It was at this time that Mexico requested his aid in improving its two harbors, and when he returned home, sent him in the Mexican man-of-war, the Independencia. The next year he proposed to Congress to build the ship-railway at his own risk, and to give the United States special privileges, which had been arranged for in his Mexican charter, provided the government would, as he proved the practicability of his plan by actual construction and operation, guarantee part of the ship-railway's dividends. Although this arrangement would have laid as little risk on the government as the jetty arrangement had, it was not accepted.

Strange and even unnatural as the idea itself appeared, it was adapted from perfectly simple ship-railways already in existence and in satisfactory use. Science, he said, could do anything, however tremendous, if it had enough money. In the magnified form contemplated, the plan provided for a single track of a dozen parallel rails, and a car with 1500 wheels. On this car was to be a huge cradle into which any ship might be floated and carefully propped. The car having then been hauled up a very slight incline out of the water, and monster, double-headed locomotives hitched to it, by gentle grades it and the ship were to be drawn across to the other ocean a hundred miles away, where the ship could be floated again. To obviate any chance of straining the ships, all curves were to be avoided by the use of turn-tables.

Nevertheless, many people believed that such a journey would strain a ship so much that it would never float afterwards. On the other hand, there is so imposing an array of names of distinguished engineers, shipbuilders, and seamen, who declared that the plan was feasible in every particular, that it is hard to think they could all have been mistaken in thus supporting the leading engineer of the day. It may easily be supposed that every other imaginable and unimaginable objection was raised, but to one and all Eads gave an answer that sounded conclusive.

As usual he was willing to back up his ideas with money, and he had the most elaborate surveys made, and remarkable models prepared to show the working of the ship-railway. He preached this new crusade of science with his customary vigor. So many men were financially interested in the project, or were ready to be, that it would at all events have been tested, had not its leading spirit, the very life of it, died.

Even though he was at the same time engaged in investigations so important as those at the Mersey and at Galveston, Eads devoted the last six years of his life mainly to this daring and tremendous enterprise. In 1885, after obtaining from the Mexican government a modification of his concession, guaranteeing one third of the net revenue per annum, he had a bill introduced in Congress, whereby, when the ship-railway should be entirely finished and in operation, the United States was to guarantee the other two thirds. Though this bill was favorably reported, Eads finally decided to withdraw it, and to ask after all for a simple charter, which would doubtless have been granted. During those six years there was perhaps not another man in the country who was so able to persuade others of the scientific, financial, commercial soundness of his projects. If, more than any one else, he could make a scheme appeal, it was not that it was in any sinister sense a scheme, but because his tact and his address were pleasing, his reputation firmly grounded for honesty and common-sense as well as for thorough scientific knowledge, so that his enthusiasm was contagious. His enemies might call him a lobbyist, but his sole means of persuasion were the soundness of his views, the clearness of his arguments, and the fervor of his wish to benefit his country.

For this undertaking, as for his previous ones, Eads invented many devices. All in all he held nearly fifty patents from the United States and England for useful inventions in naval warfare, bridge foundations and superstructure, dredging machines, navigation, river and harbor works, and ship-railway construction.

In January, 1887, when his bill was to come up, he went to Washington. He was in such poor health that he was not able to remain there, but on his doctor's advice he went with his wife and one daughter to Nassau. While sick there, he was still at work on improvements for his ship-railway. He was wont to say to his intimate friends, "I shall not die until I accomplish this work, and see with my own eyes great ships pass from ocean to ocean over the land." But in Nassau it was soon known that he was dying; and still he said, "I cannot die; I have not finished my work."

He died March 8, 1887, not quite sixty-seven years of age. No one has finished his work.

In any career there are three main elements of success: talent, education, work. Eads's life, like that of so many other self-made men, seems to show us that education is less important than the other two. But while it is true that he had not the formal education of an engineer, he had a certain very broad training gained in experience, and had read hard. Education, after all, is nothing but a summary method of teaching the lessons of life; therefore, while less insistent, it is often swifter than practical experience. And there is no doubt that a man like Eads would be the first to deplore a young man's failing to appreciate its value. When he himself was young, he never supposed that he was a genius; but if he had thought this, he would have striven to be the best-read and the best-equipped of geniuses; believing that though he might be mistaken about his talent he could make sure of his culture.