James B. Eads

sburg--then a long journey by boat, stage, and rail--to get trained workmen and to learn the process himself. Almost all of the necessary ingredients and apparatus had to be sent for to Pittsburg, to Cleveland, or to New York; and they were often slow in arriving and thereby made matters drag considerably. Still there was always something to do, and Eads, the only one of the partners who understood the trade, was forced to work extraordinarily hard. With his usual persistence he stuck to it pluckily, often staying up late into the night and rising the next day before dawn to oversee operations. He was also indispensable for his faculty of managing men; and a letter to his wife written on his twenty-seventh birthday (1847) shows how strong the man already was in that power of getting the most from a workman, which was afterwards to count for so much in his best work. An employer, he says, must "have constant control of his temper, and be able to speak pleasantly to one man the next moment after having spoken i