 The Cavalcade of America presented by DuPont. This evening the DuPont Cavalcade brings you the story of a bridge engineer who in his day won a claim throughout the civilized world. James Buchanan Eads was one of the first American engineers to be consulted by Europeans. His writings on river currents from the control of waters were accepted everywhere as masterpieces of their kind. And his perseverance and inventiveness have been a model for men who have since built roadways of steel and concrete over American waters. These qualities are also attributes of the research chemists who work quietly and efficiently so that we may enjoy more comforts and conveniences in our daily lives. Or as it is aptly expressed in the DuPont pledge, better things for better living through chemistry. As an overture, Don Voorhees and the DuPont Cavalcade Orchestra play a special setting of the famous spiritual Deep River. The DuPont Cavalcade moved forward. James Buchanan Eads was born at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, May 23, 1820. Our story begins 17 years later on a pond near St. Louis. Sitting on a six-foot replica of a river steamboat as young Jim Eads laboring over the last engineering detail. A young boy, Sammy Dobbs, son of a farmer, comes running up. Hello, Sammy. I'd like to be here at the pond today. Gosh, it ran like anything to get here. Well, good you're running for young and I'm here every Saturday. Yeah, but maybe this is the last time. Oh, no, Jim, why? Oh, I waste too much time out here. You call it a waste of time to build a steamboat like this? I just about feel like this boat belongs to me, too. Well, you can have about a tenth interest in it, Sammy. Yeah? The James Buchanan Eads Steamship Company. Assets, one steamboat, the city of St. Louis, six feet long. Mm-hmm, with real decks and cabins. Honest, Jim, she looks just like a real Mississippi steamboat. She's not a bad boat for a pint size. Well, it's all I got to work on anyway, so I may as well like it. Six feet old, boards are floating to brook. Jim, I know it kind of wakes her down when you're sitting up on the afterdeck, but would you mind watching while I climbed out on the log and got onto the deck forward? Now, you wait a bit. I want to get the engine started first. You haven't got the engine so she'll run. Oh, gee, Jim, I didn't understand she was exactly like a steamboat, engine and all. Jesus nears, I can get on poor materials and not much money. This is how she runs. Well, we're ready. How's that? Hey, look at her paddle wheel go around. Oh, Jim, let me aboard her. Hey, stop, stop, Sammy. Is this Reed? Are you listening to me? What is it, Mr. Dowdy? What's the matter? When I said you could use this pond, I was naming to have my Sammy out here loafing with you. Sorry, sir, I didn't know you had chores this afternoon. No, I didn't tell him, Pa. Farmer boys always got chores. Not fooling around machines either. Sammy, if you want to live an example of what you don't want to be when you get older, is this young man here who's still playing with toy boats at 17? I don't think you understand, Mr. Dobbs. I'm not playing. You're not, eh? What you call it then? Well, this is school for me, Mr. Dobbs. I'm practicing how to build machines and engines and the mechanical compromises that go with them. I read every night and on Saturday I come out and build. Well, your little boat's faithful to the truth. It looks a might like the General Clinton that I took once from St. Louis in New Orleans. He's broader than the Clinton, sir. I mean, it would be if it were full size. Watch while I solder up again, Mr. Dobbs. Listen to that, Pa. You want to show me off, Sam? This is the maiden voyage. Pa, can I ride on her? Oh, gosh, Pa. Oh, go ahead, go ahead and get on. Thanks, Pa. Here's a hand, Sammy. Take care now. Don't go leaping off that log too fast. I can get on easy like without sweater, Jim. All right, let's go. Here we go. You blow the whistle, Sammy. Oh, sure. James Buchanan Heads made up for lack of money and little education with unusual talent and hard work. Daytimes he was a clerk. At night, lost in books on engineering, he dreamed of future accomplishment. And when the Sundays were fair, he was master of a toy steamboat. At 18 he became a purser, and in every free moment could be seen leaning over the deck, studying the great streams, treacherous curbs and rapids. Four years of that, and he was ready for his opening adventure. It is 1842. On a barge in the river near a small town in Iowa, young James Heads is talking to Mr. Campbell, a business associate. Well, Mr. Campbell, have you finished that boat you were building for me yet? Finished. Heavens, man, you know it isn't finished. It wasn't supposed to be. I can't build a bell-diving boat in a month. You haven't taken a definite contract to start salvage work for somebody before you add any equipment. Don't be angry with me, Mr. Campbell. Nelson and Casey and I got a rush offer for some people in St. Louis to come up here and raise a barge for them. Sang last week with a load of pig lead. And you just neglected to mention to them that you had no boat to salvage it with, eh? Well, I've got this barge. A barge, man, to all pig lead out of the Mississippi. Here you are, starting a new salvage company, and the first thing you do is to rush off before you're prepared. This will ruin you. We've got the money to pay you for the bell-diving boat, no matter how our business goes, Mr. Campbell. Maybe I did rush into this impetuously, but business isn't as easy as you think it is to get, you know? We had this offer and we had to take it right away. Well, I don't see anything but an awkward failure ahead of you. Well, we bought this barge, and we've brought a diver up from the Great Lakes with his own equipment with him. That wasn't such a bad idea. It was a great idea, except that the current's too strong. The diving bell is no good. That about finishes the whole venture, I suppose. No, sir. I got a big hog's head, knocked out one end and rigged up a slat in it. A hog's head? Heavens, man. When do you look at over, sir? You'll see. Ready, Mr. Reed? Ready any time you are. Sure, Dick. Come on, Mr. Campbell. We're going to lower my hog's head over the side just to see how she works. You shouldn't try this, Mr. Reed. Oh, Mr. Campbell. Meet our diver, Joe. Hello, Joe. This is the rest of my outfit. All right, now, just help me into this. Wait a minute. Are you getting in there, Reed? Why doesn't your diver get in? I should say not. He doesn't think it's safe, Mr. Campbell. Well, if he doesn't think it's safe for a professional diver, I've got to go down on his hog's head, Mr. Campbell. It's the only possible chance to lift that piglet off the bottom and save the company I started. I think I'm safer. I wouldn't do it. Not safe at all. I know you don't think so, Joe. And I wouldn't ask any man I hired to do something I wouldn't do myself. All right. Here I go, boys. All right. Right now. Seems like I'm pretty well settled in here. Reed, don't do it. Take the loss. All right. James, Reed sits quietly. The barrel bubbles slowly below the surface into the treacherous currents. He can sense the heavy pressure of the rushing waters and knows that he should be near the bottom now. The air in the barrel has now become denser. He sees the deck of the wrecked vessel below him. On the next descent, he must reach it in order to get some of the freight. He gives the signal to be raised to the surface. Nothing happens. The moment he waits, he feels his heart beat faster. But in that second of worry, the barrel begins to rise. Steadily, he ascends through the water. Once again, the barrel stops. Suddenly, beneath the rim of the barrel, a hand appears. He grasps it, holds it steadily, ducks down into the water and finds himself equally pulled into the surface. Oh, thank the Lord each. I've never been glad to draw anything out of a hog. All of you look kind of worried. Well, weren't you nervous yourself, Jim? Well, I would like to know why you pulled me up near the surface and let me sit for a while to think it over. Well, Derek got stuck wide at the service. We were run around here like we're crazy. Listen, everybody. That first test is over. And it didn't hurt any of us. I haven't invented the best diving bell in the world, but it's perfectly safe. I'm sorry I didn't stick on the job and get on myself. No, Joe, you were right to stay up. And from now on, any fancy inventions I think up will be used by me first, without question. Now we all get busy. We can certainly drag that freighter piglet off the bottom of the Mississippi. James Eads have no diploma in hydraulic engineering, but often on for 20 years, he lived close to the Mississippi, studying her rapids and currents, her hidden shoals, and her shifting riverbed. In 1865, Congress passed a bill authorizing a bridge across the Mississippi at St. Louis. But enemies of the project succeeded in amending the bill so that it called for a 500-foot center span and 50 feet of clearance because they thought that no one could build such a bridge. But James Eads had been appointed the engineer of one construction company, and he insisted that the bridge could be built. A few months later, in the St. Louis office of the James Eads Company, he appointed the company's young lawyer and to a fellow engineer. You know, Mr. Eads, you can't blame people for not being able to imagine what you're promising them. Well, if they'd only leave the imagination of Mr. Eads and have a little faith in him, it would be better. Oh, I agree, Mr. Slater, but besides believing it's impossible to put an arch across the Mississippi, they're mindful of the expense also. The reason I want to throw an arch over the river instead of building with trusses is because the arch will be cheaper. I planned it for cheapness. I think, too, that the rival company is winning some favor for its bid because their plans don't insist on, uh, well, on details like basing their foundations on bedrock. Let them base it anywhere else. The bridge they built at St. Louis will be down at New Orleans. Yeah, you're dead right, Jim. You convinced me on that. You think the very river bottom, is safe? Mr. Dunlap, I ran a diving outfit for several years. I know the better than Mississippi as well as its surface. The usual river bottom is three feet of constantly shifting sand. In my experience, 100 feet of sand are sometimes swept away, cleared of bedrock. Well, you can make it seem very real, Mr. Eads. Certainly, we don't need to give up hope yet. Unlike a lot of men with mechanical talent, you know how to argue for your beliefs. Yes. But the trouble with an engineer is he can talk just so long and, uh, then he wants action. Well, a word might come tonight, Jim. Or it might come next year. I'm going outside and look at the river a minute. Well, we'll fail you come back, Jim. You know, Dunlap, eh, people take a long time to get convinced. Mr. Reed. Huh? What is it? Oh, I'm sorry if I startled you. Well, you wouldn't know me in the dark. I reckon you wouldn't know me anyway after all these years, but I was your whole crew on the city of St. Louis. Well, boy, heaven's sake. Little Sammy Don. What have you been doing with yourself? Oh, working on construction crews in Chicago. I've done some case on work. I'm a good sandhawk. I reckon you can guess why I'm back in St. Louis. I heard that you were planning to put a saddle on the old Mississippi. Oh, well, well, I did have it in mind, but the committee of experts seemed to think differently. Well, Mr. Reed, if the company you work for gets the job, can I work on it? You'll have more applicants than you can use, but I've been your man for a long time. That's so, Sammy. You helped me over some difficult times with a toy steamboat. If the bridge goes up, you can work on it. Jim! Jim! That fool young lawyer in there is having hysterics. I've got to break the news to you. Work from Washington, Slater? We get the contract. Mr. Reed, gosh, congratulations. We'll save the congratulations till later, Sam. How long, Jim? Well, about seven years, I think. Yes. I give myself seven years as congratulate ourselves then, boys. Eads and his workers started to construct the bridge. In his long years on the river, Eads had become more and more aware of the laws which determined the waters flow and regulated its deposits. But only his inventive genius and industry could have overcome the obstacles he was to meet. Three years later, in a chamber far under the river, Eads watches a crew of his workers. Isn't this shift nearly due to go off, Sam? Yeah, Mr. Eads, I think we're almost to the river bottom. Every scoop full of sand, I think we've made it. We've been having that feeling every hour for the last month. I think that's why we're all wearing ourselves out. Two men are down sick now, Sam. Well, last week, we were so sure that we'd hit bottom that we all got careless about staying down here too long at a time. Now there's no excuse for that, Sam. I'll be the man blamed for any sickness or deaths. I've planned everything to protect you people, and yet you take risks. Well, I reckon people know by now that there's danger in building a bridge, Mr. Eads. And if they got sense, no matter what happens, they won't blame anybody. Maybe they'll think about the poor devils that suffered for it when they're riding across what we've built for them. Yeah, let's hope so, Thompson. Well, send the men up now. Tell them to spend enough time in the air chamber. All right, sir. Hey, what's that? It's rock, Jim! Are you sure? It's rock, solid rock, like you think it'd be. Let me look at it. Now listen, all of you. This dense air is no place to celebrate. Keep calm now. Don't get excited. Don't get excited. That's the good thing to tell us, but try to keep them down at yourself. We're deeper down under water than anyone's bricked before. Ain't that over three? Yes, it's true enough, but the bridge hasn't built yet. Hey, what's happened? My candle's out again. There's no way to get the candles lit in this air pressure. Feel your way up the stairs, boys. All right. Take it easy. The men say he's been down here on too long a stretch, Jim. Why hadn't one of you told me that? Well, he's the foreman. He wanted to stay. All right, get busy, all of you. Hunter on the floor for him. Every second he's down here, listen to his chances. Hurry up. I found him. All the rest of you. While you're safe. I'll help you carry him later. I'm over here, Jim. We can carry him easy. Open the door there. This is better than this air chamber. Close the door, someone. I am done. Sammy. Sammy? This river will beat us yet. You can't whip the Mississippi. You're a weapon, Mr. Ease. Sammy, don't talk. Don't you talk either. We're a weapon. The men aren't afraid because you aren't. We're a weapon. Come on. We're a weapon. Easy. Together with Ease's care pulled him through. Ease kept the casualty list down to his careful insistence on safety measures and his own construction of underwater air chambers. As Ease met each apparently insuperable obstacle, he invented some appliance to help him overcome it. When he finished the bridge, the center span was 520 feet long. One pier was 136 feet below high water. 90 feet under sand and gravel resting on bedrock. In 1874, on the day of the dedication, thousands had come to view the modern marvel. Ease and his wife are watching the celebration. Ease is going to give the dedication. Are you looking at it? Huh? Oh. It's the bridge. My, as though you hadn't seen it a few times before. Well, it looks different to me today. All the crowds on it band flaying. You know, I wish I were down below Aways so I could see the set arch against the sky. Questions. You ought to be seeming to pay attention. I'm not so interested in what people say about my bridge. I'll feel better when they start going across it. I wish I could see some of my men. Well, there must be all around us in the crowd. You know, they couldn't all be as into this dog. Oh, the governor stopped me speech. Sammy, some of the men my dear, I'm going to leave for a minute. I think I see dogs here. I'd like to talk with him. Whatever I should think. And to all of you, all right. I'll slip out of this box. Be back right now. Uh, Oh, say, Jim, for Pete's sake. Quiet, quiet. I thought I'd be more comfortable here than up in that box being still. So you come here with your friends to see the great bridge open, Mr. A. Well, hello, Sammy. Son, you're shooting more, eh? Yeah. Going back to Chicago soon? Uh, afraid anything I do will be a letdown after helping to lasso the Mississippi. Well, you both stay with me, Al. You don't want to, Jim? Well, something will come up. And I'm getting pretty lonesome today. This bridge, it doesn't belong to us anymore. No. What I was thinking myself. Listen now. Sammy, you remember the day when I said to save your congratulations till we could do it on a finish bridge? They cut the ribbon. And the governor's carriage crosses first. Ah, neat pair of grays he's got. That sure gives you a funny feeling to see somebody on that bridge. Yeah, sure does. I think the Mississippi can toss her main old she wants to now. But the bridge is safe. Yes. We did it, boys. And now we can shake hands. James Buchanan Ede placed himself in the first rank of bridge engineer with the Ede Bridge at St. Louis. Foreign government thought his advice and many cities in the United States retained his services as one of the first great American experts on the flow of water and on river improvement. Jupont is proud to salute James Buchanan Ede's pioneer American engineer as a leader in the cavalcade of America. To people living at the time the Ede Bridge was built, the word plastic was only an adjective defined by the dictionary as capable of being molded into a desired form. But today the term plastic is used as a noun to describe a group of materials said to have 25,000 different uses and more than 300,000 different shapes. The first commercially useful plastic was the result of an attempt to make the most of the earlier balls. But now plastics are important and beautiful materials in their own right. The colorful handle of your toothbrush is usually plastic. This material is used in making the scuffless heels on women's shoes. You'll find plastics used extensively throughout the modern automobile. The knob on the gear shift is easy to handle steering wheel on the instrument panel and numerous interior accessories. The first is the safety glass. One of the outstanding contributions to safety in motor car driving of recent years is made possible by a sandwich of transparent plastic between two sheets of glass. Dupont chemists have greatly reduced the cost of making this particular plastic, thereby protecting millions of people against injury due to shattered glass. If you play bridge you've probably seen the new cards available and last indefinitely because they're made of plastic. Household articles made with plastics range from children's toys to beautiful toiletware set, fountain pens and pencils with colorful barrels, transparent hat boxes, costume jewelry and many others. Indeed, plastics have come out of the chemical laboratory to become a major industry contributing much to better living. The Dupont company alone normally employs more than 3,000 people in its plants at Lemmonster, Massachusetts and Arlington, New Jersey where a whole family of Dupont plastics are made. Six million pounds of cotton linters annually as well as two and one half million pounds of camphor, most of which is made from the turpentine of southern pine trees by chemistry are used as raw materials thus providing a new force of income for that section of the country. The plastics industry is a good example of how research chemistry has created new products, new conveniences, new standards of beauty and in so doing has also created new jobs. Here again we see what Dupont chemists mean by their pledge to provide better things for better living through chemistry.