ms." What he does condemn is bending up the
bars with a sharp bend and ending them nowhere. When they are curved up,
run to the support, and are anchored over the support or run into the
next span, they are excellent. In the tests mentioned by Mr. Mensch, the
beams which had the rods bent up and "continued over the supports" gave
the highest "ultimate values." This is exactly the construction which
is pointed out as being the most rational, if the rods do not have the
sharp bends which Mr. Mensch himself condemns.

Regarding the tests mentioned by him, in which the rods were fastened to
anchor-plates at the end and had "slight increase of strength over
straight rods, and certainly made a poorer showing than bent-up bars,"
the writer asked Mr. Mensch by letter whether these bars were curved up
toward the supports. He has not answered the communication, so the
writer cannot comment on the tests. It is not necessary to use threaded
bars, except in the end beams, as the curved-up bars can be run into the
next beam and act as top reinforcement while at the same time receiving
full anchorage.

Mr. Mensch's statement regarding the retaining wall reinforced as shown
at _a_, Fig. 2, is astounding. He "confesses that he never saw or heard
of such poor practices." If he will examine almost any volume of an
engineering periodical of recent years, he will have no trouble at all
in finding several examples of these identical practices. In the books
by Messrs. Reid, Maurer and Turneaure, and Taylor and Thompson, he will
find retaining walls illustrated, which are almost identical with Fig. 2
at _a_. Mr. Mensch says that the proposed design of a retaining wall
would be difficult and expensive to install. The harp-like reinforcement
could be put together on the ground, and raised to place and held with a
couple of braces. Compare this with the difficulty, expense and
uncertainty of placing and holding in place 20 or 30 separate rods. The
Fink truss analogy given by Mr. Mensch is a weak one. If he were making
a cantilever bracket to support a slab by tension from the top, the
bracket to be tied into a wall, would he use an indiscriminate lot of
little vertical and horizontal rods, or would he tie the slab directly
into the wall by diagonal ties? This is exactly the case of this
retaining wall, the horizontal slab has a load of earth, and the
counterfort is a bracket in tension; the vertical wall resists that
tension and derives its abil