ies which would insure a
twenty-eight foot channel, but to do all this for less than half the
cost the board had estimated, and on a contract which should provide
for his being paid only in case he succeeded. From this remarkable
offer his own confidence in his plans may be inferred. A purpose which
he had reasoned out as practical became an inspiration to him which
nothing could shake, for his courage equaled his convictions.

But so bold was his proposition that he was considered a wild
enthusiast. Never at a loss to solve any problem, again, as when he
planned the bridge, he undertook to do what was commonly held to be
impossible. Of course, all the backers of the canal scheme opposed him
bitterly. New Orleans was of that faction. Saint Louis, on the other
hand, upheld him because of his personal popularity and his signal
success with the bridge. The army engineers were against him as a civil
engineer. Thus the controversy was sectional, personal, and
professional. Up to this time the government had invariably intrusted
all works of river and harbor improvement to the military engineers;
and to hand over the most important one it had ever undertaken to a
private citizen, and to permit him to apply a method that had just been
condemned in a report signed by six out of seven of the most
distinguished army engineers, met with decided opposition. So the
government hesitated. Certainly this was a proposal to make them
consider, promising, as it did, an open river mouth, at a cost much
lower than that of the canal, and in case of failure leaving the total
loss to fall upon the contractor. Besides, several eminent civil
engineers supported Eads's theory. The House, nevertheless, passed the
canal bill; but the Senate, more thorough, after calling Eads and two
of his principal opponents to state their views before a committee,
passed a bill appointing a commission to reconsider the entire subject
once more. The discussion before the Senate committee was one of the
crises in Eads's life. The fate of the jetty enterprise hung on the
outcome of it. Fortunately for himself and for the good of the country,
he was a most magnetic and persuasive man. His theories and arguments
were sound and logical, his experience of the river was vast; and
beyond his aptitude for making technical reasoning simple and clear,
his skill as a diplomatist was equal to his ability as an engineer.

So the commission was appointed; and, ultimately, on ac