all practical uses," accepted it, paid for it;
and in less than ten years it broke down under a single team and a
little snow, weighing in all not over one-tenth part of the load the
bridge was warranted to carry, and not over one-half the load with
which it had been previously tested. If this bridge had been "tested"
by five minutes of honest arithmetic, it would have been promptly
condemned the very day it was finished.

In view of the preceding, what shall we say of a bridge company that
deliberately builds a bridge in the middle of a large town, where it
will be subjected to heavy teaming, and, owing to its peculiar
location, to heavy crowds, and warrants to the town that it shall
safely hold a ton per running-foot, when the very simplest
computation shows beyond chance of dispute that such a load will
strain the iron to 40,000 pounds per square inch? We are to say,
either that such a company is so ignorant that it does not know the
difference between a good bridge and a bad one, or else so wicked as
to knowingly subject the public to a wretchedly unsafe bridge. The
case referred to is not an imaginary one, but existed recently in the
main street of a large New-England town. The joints in that bridge,
which could safely hold but 20,000 pounds, were required to hold
60,000 pounds under the load which the builders had warranted the
bridge to carry safely. The case was so bad, that, after a lengthy
controversy, the town officers had a thorough expert examination of
the bridge, which promptly condemned it as in imminent danger of
falling, and as having a factor of safety of only 1-15/100, which is
practically no factor at all. Notwithstanding all this, and in the
face of the report, the president of the bridge company came out with
a letter in the papers, in which he pronounced the bridge "perfectly
safe." Thus we actually have the president of a bridge company in
this country stating openly that a factor of safety of 1-15/100 makes
a bridge perfectly safe, or, in other words, that a bridge can safely
bear the load that will break it down, for he very wisely made not
the slightest attempt to disprove any of the conclusions of the
commission; and this company has built hundreds of highway bridges
all over the United States, and is building them to-day wherever it
can find town or county officers ignorant enough to buy them.

It might be supposed, that, under the above condemnation, the
authorities controlling the brid