HARRY F. PORTER, JUN.  AM.  SOC.  C. E. (by letter).—­Mr. Godfrey has brought forward some interesting and pertinent points, which, in the main, are well taken; but, in his zealousness, he has fallen into the error of overpersuading himself of the gravity of some of the points he would make; on the other hand, he fails to go deeply enough into others, and some fallacies he leaves untouched.  Incidentally, he seems somewhat unfair to the Profession in general, in which many earnest, able men are at work on this problem, men who are not mere theorists, but have been reared in the hard school of practical experience, where refinements of theory count for little, but common sense in design counts for much—­not to mention those self-sacrificing devotees to the advancement of the art, the collegiate and laboratory investigators.

Engineers will all agree with Mr. Godfrey that there is much in the average current practice that is erroneous, much in textbooks that is misleading if not fallacious, and that there are still many designers who are unable to think in terms of the new material apart from the vestures of timber and structural steel, and whose designs, therefore, are cumbersome and impractical.  The writer, however, cannot agree with the author that the practice is as radically wrong as he seems to think.  Nor is he entirely in accord with Mr. Godfrey in his “constructive criticism” of those practices in which he concurs, that they are erroneous.

That Mr. Godfrey can see no use in vertical stirrups or U-bars is surprising in a practical engineer.  One is prompted to ask:  “Can the holder of this opinion ever have gone through the experience of placing steel in a job, or at least have watched the operation?” If so, he must have found some use for those little members which he professes to ignore utterly.

As a matter of fact, U-bars perform the following very useful and indispensable services: 

(1).—­If properly made and placed, they serve as a saddle in which to rest the horizontal steel, thereby insuring the correct placing of the latter during the operation of concreting, not a mean function in a type of construction so essentially practical.  To serve this purpose, stirrups should be made as shown in Plate III.  They should be restrained in some manner from moving when the concrete strikes them.  A very good way of accomplishing this is to string them on a longitudinal rod, nested in the bend at the upper end.  Mr. Godfrey, in his advocacy of bowstring bars anchored with washers and nuts at the ends, fails to indicate how they shall be placed.  The writer, from experience in placing steel, thinks that it would be very difficult, if not impractical, to place them in this manner; but let a saddle of U-bars be provided, and the problem is easy.