A short time ago the builders of a wretchedly cheap and unsafe highway bridge, in order to quiet a fear which had arisen that the structure was not altogether sound, tested a span 122 feet long with a load of 58,000 pounds; and inasmuch as the bridge did not break down under this load, which was less than a quarter part of what it was warranted to carry safely, the county commissioners considered the result eminently satisfactory, and remarked that the test was made merely to satisfy the public that the bridge was abundantly safe for all practical uses. The public would, no doubt, have been satisfied that the Ashtabula bridge was abundantly safe for all practical uses had it stood on that bridge in the morning and seen a heavy freight-train go over it, and yet that very bridge broke down directly afterwards under a passenger-train. Now, according to the common notion, that was a good bridge in the morning, and a very bad bridge, or rather, no bridge at all, in the evening. The question for the public is, When did it cease to be a good bridge, and begin to be a bad one? A test like the one referred to above can do no more than illustrate the ignorance or lack of honesty of those who make it, or those who are satisfied with it. Such a test might come within a dozen pounds of breaking the bridge down, and no one be the wiser. The entire absurdity of such testing has recently been illustrated in the most decided manner. The very same company that built the bridge above referred to, made also another one on exactly the same plan, and of almost precisely the same size, and tested it when done by placing almost exactly the same load upon it. The bridge did not break down; and the county commissioners, for whom the work was done, were satisfied that it was "abundantly safe for all practical uses," accepted it, paid for it; and in less than ten years it broke down under a single team and a little snow, weighing in all not over one-tenth part of the load the bridge was warranted to carry, and not over one-half the load with which it had been previously tested. If this bridge had been "tested" by five minutes of honest arithmetic, it would have been promptly condemned the very day it was finished.