Roebling's 100th

Arriving in Princeton, N.J. one night last week, Leon Henderson's heart was warm with pride and sentiment. Thinking of the nice things old Barney Baruch had said about him that day, he joined his dinner hosts in a glowing mood. Before the evening was over, Leon's cup of sentiment was overflowing. For the dinner celebrated the 100th anniver sary of John A. Roebling's Sons Co. of Trenton. And Leon (born in Millville) is a Jersey boy.

Every Jerseyman is proud of Roebling's. John August Roebling was a bearded, philosophy-loving German engineer who led a group of his friends to the U.S. in 1831 to escape political and religious oppression. Once the farming community they established at Saxonburg, Pa. was a success, he went back to engineering, made America's first wire rope. Soon he adapted it to building suspension bridges. After he spanned the gorge of the Niagara River at Buffalo in 1850, he and his company were famous.

During the bitter winter of '66-'67, which choked off ferry traffic in New York harbor, it took longer to reach Manhattan from Brooklyn than from Albany. This gave John Roebling a chance to carry out a pet project which previously had been laughed down: the great Brooklyn Bridge with its 1,600-ft. center span. Brooklyn Bridge cost him his life: a ferryboat crashed into a pier on which he was standing, crushed his foot, gave him tetanus.

Son Washington A. Roebling, a Civil War colonel, took over. He finished the Brooklyn Bridge nearly lost his life too. From supervising work in the caissons, he got the bends. He directed final stages of the work by peering at the bridge through a telescope from his sickbed in a rented room on Brooklyn Heights.

Since then Roebling cables and wire rope--and often Roebling engineering--have gone into almost every important U.S. suspension bridge. Roebling has 6,200 employes, 21 plants. It also makes electric cables, woven wire cloths and screens, special types of wire used in typewriters, machinery, hardware, etc.

Last week, as it was in every U.S. war since 1831, Roebling was busy with defense orders--some 75% of its current work. It was turning out huge harbor defense nets, degaussing cable, wiring for battleships and cantonments, signal wire, anchor cables for captive balloons, instrument parts. At the dinner were three great grandsons of John Roebling--Joseph M. and Major Ferdinand W. Roebling III, both vice presidents, and Charles Roebling Tyson, secretary-treasurer. The Roebling family still owns all but a few shares of Roebling stock.

Jerseyman Henderson, tough, veteran New Dealer, was the speaker of the evening. For nearly an hour, his heart aglow, he talked about the system of free enterprise, pledged it should not perish in the U.S.

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