Word: mcculloughs
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...York shareholders in the bridge (Brooklyn was a separate city--the third largest in the country--until 1897). At the wedding of Tweed's daughter, his millionaire friends gave her $100,000 in gifts. New York's "permanent floating population of homeless children, beggars, petty thieves, and prostitutes." McCullough continues, "was said to be perhaps 100,000." Clearly something had gone wrong...
...McCullough gives detailed and sometimes tedious accounts of the infighting at the Bridge Company, which came under investigation when Tweed was exposed. The Company was not exactly a model of probity. Most of its funds came from the cities treasuries, but under its charter it was entirely controlled by private shareholders--which was not terribly surprising. The original impetus for a bridge came from a profit-minded contractor named William C. Kingsley, a good friend of Boss McLaughijn of Brooklyn...
Actually, the scandals at the Bridge Company--many of which McCullough minimizes anyway--seem pretty tame by Watergate standards, and some of the book's most interesting material has nothing to do with the bridge. Few readers will object to hearing about New York's first subway system, a block-long pneumatic tube built in dead secrecy to avoid having to bribe Tweed (who stopped it cold when he found out). It was to be a far cry from today's IRT, according to McCullough...
Thousands of people turned out to see President Chester A. Arthur walk from New York to Brooklyn. McCullough gives the day a chapter of its own, and it deserves it, not only as an epic story's culmination, but as the story of a more optimistic age. Presidents were far-off heroes, almost royalty (even when, like Arthur, they were political hacks), and progress, however tarnished, meant the Bridge and not the Automated Battlefield. The scene is not only fascinating history, it is also great and bittersweet fun, reminding us of a time when we were less betrayed...
...McCullough suggests, we didn't even feel this way about the moon landing. The twentieth century has robbed us of our "wildest enthusiasm" as well as our innocence. We still have the bridge--it became a National Historic Landmark in 1964--and it carries 121,000 trucks and automobiles a day. The bridge is still beautiful. But it is no longer the beauty of a glorious future; it has become the beauty of a glorious past...