Here’s an 1867 Check Document Signed with a Brooklyn Bridge “WIRE SCANDAL” Connection Signed by Charles C. Harrison, US Inventor, Patent Holder and Officer of American Wire Rope Company, the

“EAGLETON MANUFACTURING COMPANY”
 in Brooklyn, New York

The first company contracted to install the wire rope needed to construct the Brooklyn Bridge.  The company’s Project Manager, Joseph L. Haigh, effected a massive fraud knowingly using lower strength cable not meeting Architect and Chief Engineer Washington Roebling’s specifications.

Specifcally, in 1878, 221 tons of fraudulent wire were spun into the Brooklyn Bridge cables — wire that had failed inspection, pulled from reject stock and smuggled past watchmen in a wagon switch that Washington Roebling uncovered and then had to decide what to do about. That decision shaped the bridge still standing today.

To solve the problem of the initial lower quality wire rope used for the Brooklyn Bridge, Roebling directed that more wire strands than originally planned for be added to the bridge's cables to give them the desired strength. Joseph L. Haigh did end up going to jail, but for financial irregularities.

 

Frank Leslies's Illustrated Newspaper, "The New York and Brooklyn Bridge: Making the Wire for the Great Cables" [by the Eagleton Co.) 5-17-1877.

The Core Historical Context

• Eagleton Manufacturing Company: Also known as Eagleton & Co., the Eagle Wire Mills & Skirt Works, or the Brooklyn Wire Mill, this company operated a factory on Imlay Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It primarily manufactured furniture springs and hoop skirt crinoline wire. Records indicate that a Charles C. Harrison of New York (who wrote and signed this check) was an agent of the company and also a patent applicant during this mid-to-late 19th-century era of booming manufacturing innovation.
• The Brooklyn Bridge Wire Scandal: Under plant manager Joseph L. Haigh, the company infamously won the contract to supply the massive steel wire cables required to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Haigh systematically manipulated the inspection process to reject good wire and weave millions of feet of rejected, brittle, and substandard wire into the bridge's main suspension cables. The fraud was eventually discovered, but because the compromised wire was already woven in, it remains buried inside the cables to this day (compensated for by safety margins built into the architecture by Washington and John Roebling). 

Brooklyn Wire Mill - The scandalous story of the making of the cables for the Bridge

[the “wire scandal” - - fraud by the eagleton manufacturing company]

The Brooklyn Bridge is a suspended by four main steel wire cables. It became the first major bridge of its kind when it opened for service in May 1883 and its unique design remains essentially the same today.

The concept of suspending a bridge with steel cables was cutting edge technology of its day, and no one was producing anything of sufficient length. In part due to local politics, the contract to make the wire was given to the Eagleton Manufacturing Company's facility on Imlay Street, Brooklyn very near Red Hook's Atlantic Basin. The factory, generally called the Brooklyn Wire Mill, made furniture springs and hoop skirt crinoline wire for the oversized costumes of Victorian era ladies - not the wire of the caliber and length needed for the bridge. Under the plant management of Joseph L. Haigh the operation did not go smoothly or without scandal.

Washington Roebling, the bridge's architect and builder wrote up the specification for the bridge cable and put Wilhelm Hildenbrand in charge of that aspect of the project. A plan for rigorous testing the cable was set up, for as Roebling explained “If a weak wire is spliced to a strong one and stretched from tower to tower, the strength of the weak wire is the measure of the whole length.”

Production seemingly started out well but in 1878, it was discovered that Haigh had been secretly shipping lower strength wire to the splicing yard. Haigh was repeatedly caught and cautioned to stop delivering inferior cable but his company continued to find ways of sneaking in lesser cable as inspected lengths. Roebling and the Bridge's trustees were aware of the problem but no action against Haigh was made.  Focusing on just the issue of functionality, Roebling directed that more wire strands than originally planned for be added to the bridge's cables to give them the desired strength. Haigh did end up going to jail, but for financial irregularities.

The factory building located at 163 Imay Street, still exists, used for different purposes over its history.

 source: the red hook waterstories team

The Eagleton Manufacturing Company are the largest manufacturers of Iron and Cast Steel Wire, for all uses, in the State of New York. The Company have two mills employed in the manufacture, the principal one, known as the “Eagle Wire Mills,” being located on Twenty-second Street, between First and Second Avenues, and the “Brooklyn Wire Mills,” in South Brooklyn. The former covers the greater part of six city lots, containing fifteen thousand square feet, and is five stories in height. In the numerous rooms there are nearly two hundred wire blocks, principally employed in drawing Steel Wire of all sizes, including about forty machines for drawing very Fine Wire, some as fine as No. 36.

The machinery is propelled by an engine of two hundred and fifty horse power, through the agency of an immense belt three feet in width. In the boiler room there are six boilers of large size. The annealing ovens have a capacity for annealing seventy-two thousand pounds of steel a day. This is converted principally into Crinoline Wire of which great quantities are made; and this is one of the few establishments in the United States where may be witnessed all the operations incidental to converting a rough bar of steel into a finished Hood Skirt.

In close proximity to the Wire Mills are the “Eagle Skirt Works,” owned by this company, where about two hundred dozen Skirts are finished weekly. The scene presented in the rooms where fifteen hundred Braiding Machines are employed in covering the Wire, and a half dozen Jacquard Looms are busy in weaving the Tape, is one of unusual interest and animation. Each Skirt in the process of manufacture passes through eighteen or twenty hands before it is ready for market.

In the mill in South Brooklyn, Iron Wire is principally made. The building is of brick, one hundred and eighty-six feet long by one hundred and ten wide, and the machinery is of sufficient capacity to turn out seven tons of Wire daily. Telegraphic Wire, galvanized and plain, is made here, but the leading item of production is Spring Wire, which is manufactured into Sofa and Furniture Springs in the upper rooms of the Company’s Warehouse, 81 John Street, New York.

The Eagleton Manufacturing Company was incorporated in 1864, but its President, J. J. Eagleton, has been engaged in the. Wire manufacture since 1849. This enterprising Company employs from six hundred to seven hundred hands. The present officers are, J. J. Eagleton, President; E. G. Angell, Treasurer; and R. A. Peck, General Superintendent.

SOURCE: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURES FROM 1608 to 1860…

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Note: The Eagleton Patent Case: The Eagleton Manufacturing Company became the focal point of a major United States Supreme Court legal precedent (Eagleton Mfg. Co. v. West &c. Mfg. Co., 1884). The company attempted to enforce a patent for tempering steel furniture springs. Because the original inventor (J. Eagleton) died and amendments to the patent application were filed after his death without a proper oath from his administratrix, the Supreme Court ruled the patent invalid, altering how amendments and patent administration were handled in U.S.

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