There is no one thing more important in this matter than that we should be able to fix precisely the blame in case of disaster upon some person to whom the proper punishment may be applied. If every railway director, or town or county officer, knew that he was held personally accountable for the failure of any bridge in his charge, we should soon have a decided improvement in these structures. If we could show that a certain bridge in a large town had been for a long time old, rotten, worn out, and liable at any moment to tumble down, and could show in addition, that the public officers having charge of such a bridge knew this to be the case, and still allowed the public to pass over it, we can see at once, that, in case of disaster, the blame would be clearly located, and the action for damages would be short and decisive. Once let a town have heavy damages to pay, and let it know at the same time that the town officers are clearly accountable for the loss, and it is possible that it would be willing to adopt some system that should prevent the recurrence of such an outlay.
To see what may be accomplished by an efficient system of public inspection, it is necessary to know something in regard to the structures to be inspected. We have now in common use in this country, both upon our roads and our railroads, bridges made entirely of iron, bridges of wood and iron combined, and occasionally, though not often nowadays, a bridge entirely of wood; and these structures are to be seen of a great variety of patterns, of all sizes, and in every stage of preservation. Of late so great has been the demand for bridge-work, that this branch of engineering has become a trade by itself; and we find immense works fitted up with an endless variety of the most admirably adapted machine-tools devoted exclusively to the making of bridges of wood, iron, steel, or all combined. As in all division of labor, the result of this specialization has been to improve the quality of the product, to lessen the cost, and to increase the demand, until many of our large firms reckon the length of bridging which they have erected by miles instead of feet. As usual, however, in such cases, unprincipled adventurers are not wanting, who, taking advantage of a great demand, do not hesitate to fit up cheap shops, to buy poor material, and to flood the market with a class of bridges made with a single object in view, viz., to sell, relying upon the ignorance--or something worse--of public officials for custom. Not a year passes in which some of these wretched traps do not tumble down, and cause a greater or less loss of life, and at the same time, with uninformed people, throw discredit on the whole modern system of bridge-building. This evil affects particularly highway bridges. The ordinary county commissioner or selectman considers himself amply competent to contract for a bridge of wood or iron, though he may never have given a single day of thought to the matter before his appointment to office. The result is, that we see all over the country a great number of highway bridges which have been sold by dishonest builders to ignorant officials, and which are on the eve of falling, and await only an extra large crowd of people, a company of soldiers, a procession, or something of the sort, to break down.