MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS’ REMINISCENCE IN WATERWORKS

MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS’ REMINISCENCE IN WATERWORKS

当一个人达到了他experienc时代es pass back beyond the memory of those with whom he is associated, his mind becomes retrospective. This is a very great privilege, and I have often envied the last surviver of the Civil War as I recount my experiences from 61 to '65, and think what a heroic figure a soldier could carve out of himself if he had no one to check off the events. Personal experiences, however, are of no value here except so far as they relate to our common pursuit, so in this glance back of half a century over the field of waterworks construction in all its details, my aim. in the main, is to compare what we are doing to-day with the practices of the past, to determine, so far as we can, how much progress we have made. Bear in mind that you are pursuing a profession that is older than we know the history of man, so old that we have but the ruins of great aqueducts to inform us that hydraulic engineering was a profession ages back. In this, you are wholly unlike the electrical engineer, or he who builds the great power plants, for they arc dealing with elements that were practically unknown a century ago, and the development of which has been almost entirely within the time of which I speak. You are simply studying to do each year better work than the year before, and to make each generation better than the preceding one, and it is by evolution, not startling new discoveries, that you reach your end. Yours is a profession which deals with the uplifting of the man far more than theirs, as cleanliness, we are taught by the Scriptures, is akin to Godliness. To you is intrusted the lives of the urban population of this entire continent. The bacteriologist may chase down in his laboratory the typhoid germ, or some other deadly foe to human life, but it remains with you to exterminate him and guard against these invading armies that are threatening every community and whose victims number, despite all your watchfulness and skill, more than all the wars of the world. In view of this, it is not wholly for your pleasure that we halt on our onward march, and from this height look backwards upon the road by which we have attained this eminence, but in part, for encouragement and renewed strength for greater endeavor. Thus looking back to my first introduction to a waterworks job, in 1857, I can think of but one man living who was then active in work of this character, and I am not quite sure of him, so you will observe, that in my earlier experiences I am on safe ground. It will be considered, however, that I was interjected into the situation very early in life, whereas the active list were then young men. It happened in this way. By the death of my father in California, in 1853, I was removed from that promised land, then in its virgin state, and brought to Brooklyn, a suburb of New York My uncle. Moses Lane. an engineer on the original Brooklyn Waterworks, undertook the thankless task of shaping my education, and generally bringing me up; a sort of continuous colt breaking performance, with which I fear no one was entertained. During the school term this was comparatively easy, as he divided his responsibilities with the master. But in vacation time, the problem in a small city with a swimming hole as big as the East river, and its fleet of ships with beautiful yard arms to dive off of, was too much for any one man to do, and do well. So, in despair, he put me with one of the field parties out at Baisley’s pond to be cuffed around by half a dozen young engineers. I could drag a chain, drive a stake and carry water as well as a full grown hand. It was here that I got my first experience in pumping and conveying water, as when at home, my special chore was to fill and carry six or eight buckets of water from the public pump on the street corner to the house a long block away and this had to be done every morning before I went to school. With this service. I can fairly say that my waterworks experience began more than one-half a century ago. It is interesting that in this period I held the tape and helped stake out the location of the original Ridgewood pumping station, and over forty years later, as manager of the pumping engine department of the Worthington Company, was concerned in the building of the new station at that location, but with a vastly different character of engine. The Brooklyn waterworks was considered, and it was a great work for that day, second only to the Croton of New York, and I remember how the natives of Long Island viewed it with wonder. One of them stopped my uncle when I was with him and said, “Mr. Lane, all this bringing water from way up the island seems nonsense to me. Why don’t you build the works all right here?”

* Paper read at the American Waterworks Association Convention, Louisville.