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Some ten years ago the author wrote and published a pamphlet entitled "General Specifications for Highway Bridges of Iron and Steel," the object of which was to effect a much-needed improvement in the designing and building of highway bridges. Through the Engineers' Club of Kansas City, at that time a flourishing society, but now, alas, defunct, the pamphlet was placed in the hands of a great number of bridge engineers throughout the country, with a request that they discuss it for publication. Many of them complied. and their discussions were published in the Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies for November 1888. Soon afterwards the first edition of the pamphlet was exhausted, so the author issued a second edition, revised and enlarged, and incorporated therein most of the said discussions. Now, although both editions were circulated widely among county commissioners, and although the author's specifications received the general indorsement of the civil-engineering profession, the effect of the pamphlet on the methods of bridge-building has been practically nil; for we continue to read in nearly every issue of Engineering News accounts of highway-bridge failures, many of them accompanied by loss of life.
In truth, the number of highway-bridge failures is on the increase. This is undoubtedly partially due to the greater number of such structures in existence; but it is also due considerably to the reckless manner in which highway bridges continue to be designed and built, owing to the rapacity of the builders, the ignorance and dishonesty of
the commissioners, and the low moral state into which the designers of high-
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