How many times have you heard President Obama and his minions pat themselves on the back for their noble investments in roads and bridges? Without government infrastructure spending were incessantly reminded we wouldnt be able to conduct our daily business.
Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive Vice President Joe Biden infamously asserted. Private enterprise he sneered lags behind.
As always the Beltway narcissists have it backward. Without private enterprise and free-market visionaries public infrastructure wouldnt exist. Take the iconic Brooklyn Bridge which turned 132 years old this week. Its not a government official whose vision built that. Its a fierce capitalist who revolted against unimaginative command-and-control bureaucrats in his home country.
Before he went on to pioneer aqueducts and suspension bridges across America culminating in the Brooklyn Bridge John Roebling was a government engineer in the German province of Westphalia. A cog in the Prussian building machine he chafed under autocratic rule. No decisions could be made no actions taken he complained in his diary without first having an army of government councilors ministers and other functionaries deliberate about it for ten years make numerous expensive journeys by post and write so many long reports about it that for the amount expended for all this reckoning compound interest for ten years the work could have been completed.
Fed up with innovation-stifling conformity subordination and red tape the ambitious 25-year-old Roebling set sail for the U.S. in 1831 aboard the American-built ship August Edward. During the 78-day journey he wrote of his hopes and dreams to found a new home in the western continent beyond the ocean a new fatherland free from tyranny. Upon arriving in Philadelphia he celebrated his adopted lands free-market economy.
The numerous hindrances restrictions and obstacles which are set up by timid governments and countless hosts of functionaries against every endeavor in Germany are not to be found here he reflected in a letter to friends and family.
The foreigner must be astounded at what the public spirit of these republicans has accomplished up to now and what it still accomplishes every day. All undertakings take place through the association of private persons. In these the principal aim is naturally the making of money. The pursuit of self-interest was in of itself a source of public good he concluded principally (as) a result of unrestricted intercourse in a concerted action of an enlightened self-governing people.
Roebling failed at silkworm-farming fabric-dying rape seed oil farming and canary-raising before embarking on his engineering career. He patented an improved boiler for steamships a safety gauge for a steam-boiler flue and a steam-powered motorcycle. He traveled wherever he could utilize his skills -- constructing dams on the Beaver River consulting on hydraulics on the Croton River Aqueduct knocking on doors for work across Pennsylvania.
With unbridled determination to build a lucrative family business he patented and pioneered Americas first commercially successful wire rope company. Frugal and financially savvy Roebling operated on saved capital and refused to borrow. Several of his new clients paid him in stock and he soon had a thriving investment portfolio. Coal mining companies in the anthracite region snapped up his sturdy cables.
Did he have help along the way? Plenty -- from other capitalists that is.
Roebling purchased his wire from industrial pioneer Robert Townsend who had founded the first iron wire mill west of the Allegheny Mountains in 1816. Townsend who had learned the wire-making trade from Baltimore wire weaver Hugh Balderson manufactured rivets nails fasteners and telegraph wire in addition to supplying Roebling with wire for his early experiments and projects.
Samuel Wickershams Pittsburgh Wire Works also supplied wire as Roebling gained more project work. And Sligo Iron Works made charcoal blooms for Roeblings wire: large blocks cast from molten iron and later steel which were then hot rolled at high temperatures between two rotating cylinders into wire rods.
Later Roeblings sons Charles and Ferdinand built a 200-acre state-of-the-art manufacturing campus steel plant and village outside Trenton N.J. Employing 8000 workers Kinkora Works produced everything from chicken wire and telegraph wire to tramway and elevator cables.
The suspension cables on the Golden Gate and George Washington bridges were manufactured by the Roeblings. So were the control cables in the Spirit of St. Louis the first airplane to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the tramway and construction cables used to build the Panama Canal. Even the wires used to stabilize the wings of the Wright Brothers aircraft used Roebling trusses.
Heres the lesson White House progressives and Common Core historians wont teach: Roeblings Brooklyn Bridge is a towering legacy of the countless pursuits of individual American innovators who benefited the public by benefiting themselves and their families. The wealth-shaming social engineers in Washington will never understand. Private profit is a public good.
Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2010).
How many times have you heard President Obama and his minions pat themselves on the back for their noble investments in roads and bridges? Without government infrastructure spending were incessantly reminded we wouldnt be able to conduct our daily business.
Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive Vice President Joe Biden infamously asserted. Private enterprise he sneered lags behind.
As always the Beltway narcissists have it backward. Without private enterprise and free-market visionaries public infrastructure wouldnt exist. Take the iconic Brooklyn Bridge which turned 132 years old this week. Its not a government official whose vision built that. Its a fierce capitalist who revolted against unimaginative command-and-control bureaucrats in his home country.
Before he went on to pioneer aqueducts and suspension bridges across America culminating in the Brooklyn Bridge John Roebling was a government engineer in the German province of Westphalia. A cog in the Prussian building machine he chafed under autocratic rule. No decisions could be made no actions taken he complained in his diary without first having an army of government councilors ministers and other functionaries deliberate about it for ten years make numerous expensive journeys by post and write so many long reports about it that for the amount expended for all this reckoning compound interest for ten years the work could have been completed.
Fed up with innovation-stifling conformity subordination and red tape the ambitious 25-year-old Roebling set sail for the U.S. in 1831 aboard the American-built ship August Edward. During the 78-day journey he wrote of his hopes and dreams to found a new home in the western continent beyond the ocean a new fatherland free from tyranny. Upon arriving in Philadelphia he celebrated his adopted lands free-market economy.
The numerous hindrances restrictions and obstacles which are set up by timid governments and countless hosts of functionaries against every endeavor in Germany are not to be found here he reflected in a letter to friends and family.
The foreigner must be astounded at what the public spirit of these republicans has accomplished up to now and what it still accomplishes every day. All undertakings take place through the association of private persons. In these the principal aim is naturally the making of money. The pursuit of self-interest was in of itself a source of public good he concluded principally (as) a result of unrestricted intercourse in a concerted action of an enlightened self-governing people.
Roebling failed at silkworm-farming fabric-dying rape seed oil farming and canary-raising before embarking on his engineering career. He patented an improved boiler for steamships a safety gauge for a steam-boiler flue and a steam-powered motorcycle. He traveled wherever he could utilize his skills -- constructing dams on the Beaver River consulting on hydraulics on the Croton River Aqueduct knocking on doors for work across Pennsylvania.
With unbridled determination to build a lucrative family business he patented and pioneered Americas first commercially successful wire rope company. Frugal and financially savvy Roebling operated on saved capital and refused to borrow. Several of his new clients paid him in stock and he soon had a thriving investment portfolio. Coal mining companies in the anthracite region snapped up his sturdy cables.
Did he have help along the way? Plenty -- from other capitalists that is.
Roebling purchased his wire from industrial pioneer Robert Townsend who had founded the first iron wire mill west of the Allegheny Mountains in 1816. Townsend who had learned the wire-making trade from Baltimore wire weaver Hugh Balderson manufactured rivets nails fasteners and telegraph wire in addition to supplying Roebling with wire for his early experiments and projects.
Samuel Wickershams Pittsburgh Wire Works also supplied wire as Roebling gained more project work. And Sligo Iron Works made charcoal blooms for Roeblings wire: large blocks cast from molten iron and later steel which were then hot rolled at high temperatures between two rotating cylinders into wire rods.
Later Roeblings sons Charles and Ferdinand built a 200-acre state-of-the-art manufacturing campus steel plant and village outside Trenton N.J. Employing 8000 workers Kinkora Works produced everything from chicken wire and telegraph wire to tramway and elevator cables.
The suspension cables on the Golden Gate and George Washington bridges were manufactured by the Roeblings. So were the control cables in the Spirit of St. Louis the first airplane to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the tramway and construction cables used to build the Panama Canal. Even the wires used to stabilize the wings of the Wright Brothers aircraft used Roebling trusses.
Heres the lesson White House progressives and Common Core historians wont teach: Roeblings Brooklyn Bridge is a towering legacy of the countless pursuits of individual American innovators who benefited the public by benefiting themselves and their families. The wealth-shaming social engineers in Washington will never understand. Private profit is a public good.
Michelle Malkin is the author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats Crooks & Cronies (Regnery 2010).
