Much has been written of late of the engineer as a citizen—of his civic responsibilities, of his relation to legislation, to administration, to public opinion, and the like. It is timely writing. The engineer is about due for active participation in civic affairs other than a yearly visit to the polls to register his vote. He has not done much more than this since his inception. His work alone has sufficed, for him, at least, though the time is past when he can bury himself in his professional work and, in the vernacular, get away with it. Men of the stamp of Herbert Hoover have demonstrated the very great need for men of scientific training in public affairs. Such places heretofore have been filled with business men and lawyers. These men served and served well. But since administration of public affairs to-day is largely a matter of formulation and execution of engineering projects, it is assuredlythe duty of engineers to take an active part in these public affairs.
Exact knowledge, which in a manner of speaking is synonymous with the engineer, is needed in high places in our nation. Men of technical education and training have demonstrated their fitness as servants of the people in the few instances where such men have taken over the reins of administration in certain specified branches of our government. Trained to think in terms of figures and the relation of these figures to life, engineers readily perceive the true and the untrue in matters of legislation and administration, though as a body they have never exerted themselves to an expression of their opinions on matters coming properly under the head of public opinion. Engineers have felt that they have not had the time. Or, having the time, that the public at large, chiefly owing to the engineer's self-imposed isolation, would not understand a voice from this direction, and so engineers have kept silent. The day has arrived, however, when this silence on the part of engineers must be broken.
The World War has been an awakening in this as in other directions. Lawyers and politicians have successfully dominated ourgovernment from its beginning, with a single beautiful exception in George Washington at one end and another admirable exception in Woodrow Wilson at the other. Washington was a civil engineer, and Wilson, while trained as a lawyer, was an educator. In between these two men there may have fallen a scattering of others who were not lawyers or politicians; the writer is not sure. Of one thing he is sure, however, and that is that engineers in the future will dominate politics to the betterment of the nation as a whole. For engineers are idealists—otherwise they would never have entered upon an engineering career—and idealism has come, as it were, into its own again. The man of vision of a wholesome aspect, the man who can so completely forget himself in his work of service as to engage in tasks whose merits nobody save himself and those pursuing like tasks can or will understand—which is pre-eminently the engineer—is the one man best fitted to administrate in public affairs. More important still than this statement is the fact that the world at large is beginning to realize the truth of it. Engineers as a body stand poised upon the rim of big things. Nor will they as a body stoop to the petty in politics, once they are fairly well launchedin active participation of civic affairs. Neither their training nor their outlook, based upon their training, will permit it. For engineers, more than any other group of professional men, are given to "see true." And seeing true, being, as it is, the essence of a full life, is what is needed in our public administrators.
Engineers in the past who have become more or less prominent in the public eye—and there are some who have—have demonstrated their ability to see things as they are. Westinghouse was the first man in this country to foresee the coming of the half-holiday Saturday as an innovation that promised general adoption. He granted it to all his employees at a time when lesser industrial captains believed him to be at least "queer." Ford set the pace for a minimum rate of five dollars a day in his plant, and lesser captains still frown upon him for having perpetrated this "evil." Edison, among other things, has told of the importance of loose clothing—loose shoes and collars and hats—to a man who would enjoy good health. The list is not long, but the insight of those who form this short list cannot but be recognized. What these men have said and done concerning matters freely apart from the subject ofengineering reveals them as members of a fraternity well qualified to lead public opinion rather than to follow it, as has been the province of engineers in the past. Each when he has spoken or entered upon action having the public welfare in mind has pronounced or demonstrated a truth which fairly crackled with sanity.
Engineers belong in civic affairs. The world of humanity needs men of their stamp in high places. Humanity needs men in control of state and national affairs who would hold the interests of humanity sacred. Engineers are such men. Not that engineers more than any other professional men are sprouting wings—not that. But engineers do see things in their true light—cannot see them in any other light than the one imposed by the law of mathematics, which is that two and two make four, never five or three—and this involuntarily would admit of decisions and grant graces from the point of view of absolute truth, which is, of course, the point of view of humanity—the greatest good for the greatest number. With such men occupying high places in the nation's affairs, the world of men and mankind would leap forward ethically and spiritually at a pace in keeping with the pace at which civilizationhas progressed under the impetus of engineering thought since the days of Watt. Nobody can denythatprogress. Nobody could well deny the fact that ethical progress under engineering guidance would be equally great.
I hold a brief for engineers, of course. Engineering has been my major work for twenty years and more. It has been my privilege to associate intimately with two men—yea, three—possessed of great engineering ability. The third man failed of great repute, owing chiefly to his advanced—rather too much advanced—visionings. He wanted to talk across the ocean by telephone at a time when the cable interests successfully prevented him from commercializing his apparatus. And he died a disappointed inventor. But he had the stuff in him, the thing that makes for human greatness, just as had the other and more successful two men with whom I as a designer was privileged to work. All were men of kindly spirit, of broad outlook, of unselfish devotion to worldly interests. Each was a humanitarian. Each saw things as they are, and each saw things as they should be, and each thought much on problems of human welfare and betterment. Of such men in civic affairs the nation,and indeed the entire world of nations, has had but a sad too few in the past. It is to be hoped, and it is the belief of the writer, that engineers will become more plentiful in civic life in the future.
I have always believed that the man who reached an advanced age without a sizable bank-account is a fact which would well serve as a definition as to what constitutes an idealist. There are many such men—meaning, of course, men having a level set of brains, and not mental incompetents. Such men are inclined to things other than the accumulation of bank-accounts. They strive toward goals which to them are more worth while—self-improvement, for instance, spiritual growth being a better term. Of such men were the world's acknowledged saviors. A man who can wilfully thrust oars against the current of a stream flowing currency-wise, in such a way as to force himself into a back eddy or pool more or less stagnant, is a man pronouncedly great among men. The world is loath to recognize such a man for what he is; yet such men have lived and still live and will continue to live, always more for others than for themselves—seeing life in the true, in other and more gracious words.
Engineers, in the abstract, are such men. The accumulation of money is secondary with them. Their work holds first place in importance. Possessed of that professional pride which will not permit a man to set aside his work and enter a more lucrative and materially satisfactory field of endeavor—if he starve in his obstinacy—engineers are men of the temperament, aside from the training, to minister to public needs and desires. Self-effacement is the engineer's chief characteristic. He views largely and without bias. He can see things from the other fellow's angle because he is not an engineer if he has not the gift of imagination. The successful engineer has this most precious of endowments, and, having it, cannot but be possessed also of kindliness and sympathy, which are imagination's own brothers. Kindliness and sympathy are needed in the high places of our government for the people by the people. And because men in time gravitate to their rightful sphere of usefulness through the workings of an all-wise Providence, engineers already have turned and are turning toward the administration of public affairs.
All engineering societies have a code of ethics for the guidance of their membership bodies. In each case it is a code based upon other and older codes, codes long in practice among professional men, such as lawyers and doctors. It is a code built up on Christian principles, as it should be, and rarely is it ignored among men of the profession. To do unto others as you would have others do unto you is the basis of its precepts, though more concretely it aims to guide the engineer in his business intercourse with other men in such a way as to give all an equal chance without transgressing the law. The so-called building codes in effect in large cities are intended to hold engineers to restrictions for the greatest good of the greatest number, and the code of ethics in practice among each of the engineering professions likewise was devised toward this end. There seems to be need for it.
Perhaps by pointing out where engineerssometimes transgress, the writer more effectively can indicate the need of a code and the principles of which the engineering code of ethics consists. Even to-day there are engineers digressing from the path indicated by the professional body, though in such a way as to benefit still by the protection of the law, and to be not openly susceptible to admonition from the engineering societies' committees. Engineers of this stamp at best are but tricksters. Actually, they should be debarred from practice, just as the legal fraternity takes effective action against members of the bar who go outside the pale, though nothing is ever done to engineers. Engineering organizations in this regard are weak. The man's name should at least be posted, or, better still, published in the society's bulletin, so that the fraternity at large could know, and, knowing, could warn men with capital to invest—the trickster's especial prey—for its own welfare.
There was an engineer brought to the attention of the writer whose activities were devoted to securing for his clients men of no mechanical knowledge who yet wanted something done by machinery. A manufacturer of paper dolls, say, having entered upon this phase of manufacturing only because he hadmoney to invest and not because he was interested in mechanics, would see the need in his plant for additional mechanical devices to cut down manufacturing costs. The engineer to whom I have reference would find this type of manufacturer his particular "meat," because of the man's ignorance of mechanics, and, after clinching him with a contract drawn up by the engineer's lawyer, would undertake to devise for this manufacturer a perpetual-motion machine, if that happened to be what the manufacturer wanted. The engineer conducted a machine-shop in connection with his "consulting" office, where, at a dollar an hour for the use of his machine-tools, he would "develop" his ideas, as passed upon by the manufacturer who knew no more of construction or the reading of mechanical drawings than he did of the chicanery of the engineer, and in this way roll up the costs against the unfortunate. In the end the engineer might and might not produce a satisfactory working machine. There was nothing in the contract about this—save only as it protected the engineer. What was indeed produced was a list of costs for the development often of several designs of a given idea that to say the least were heartrending.
Then there is the engineer who for a consideration will bear false testimony against his neighbor, or his neighbor's ox. This happens most frequently in municipal traction or lighting wars, set before tribunals under the caption of "The Peoplevs.the S. S. Street Railway Company," or in a battle of alleged infringement of patent rights. There are engineering experts, just as there are legal experts, who deem it within their code of ethics to address themselves and their energies toward the refutation of such claims, however wrong or right these claims may be. Engineering is an exact science. It is based on principles hardly refutable. Yet there are engineers who will and can confound these principles before a court of law in such manner as to win for their clients a decision of non-suit where the facts point glaringly to infringement—in the matter of mechanics—or to win for their clients a favorable decision in the matter of costs of maintenance and operation of a railway, in a case of this kind. As has been said, figures don't lie, but figurers sometimes do.
Other instances of breach of engineering ethics, however otherwise secure from the clutches of the law, occur to the writer, but the two just cited ought to serve. At best,the topic is unpleasant and by no means indicates the character of the profession as a whole. Where there is one engineer who will perjure himself in the fashion as set forth above there are many thousands of engineers who could not be bought for this purpose at any amount of money. The profession of engineering is notably clean; its code of ethics rigidly adhered to; the rights of others, both in and out of the profession, regarded with something akin to sacredness. Engineers, as a body, for instance, possess a peculiarly rigid idea concerning themselves in relation to branches of the profession outside their own and yet intimately close to their own. Called in as an expert in the matter of heating and lighting a building, say, the heating and lighting engineer will rigidly confine himself to this phase of the engineering venture and to no other, however he may find his work again and again overlapping the work of the structural engineer or the industrial engineer—phases concerning which he may possess important knowledge. He regards these things as strictly none of his business, and in doing so conserves the esteem and friendship of his confrères.
The code of ethics is a liberal one among the engineering groups. It has been laid downwith an eye to fairness both for the practitioner and the client. Rigidly held to, it will admit of no engineer going far wrong in the practice of his profession, and, broken, will not land him in jail. It is presupposed that engineers are men of intelligence. A man of intelligence will hold himself to the spirit of the Ten Commandments if he would attain to success, and to the letter of them if he would be happy during the declining days of his life. Most engineers realize this and accept it as their every-day working creed. Life to them, like the medium through which they give expression to their ideas, is a matter of mathematics. Two steps taken in a wrong direction mean an equal number of steps forcibly retraced—or the whole problem goes wrong. Engineers rarely take the two steps in the wrong direction. When they do take wrong steps they are quick to right them. For the code is always before their eyes.
Just at present the future of the engineer is more richly promising than it might otherwise have been but for the war. Due to the period of reconstruction now confronting the world, a work almost wholly that of the engineering professions, engineers for a period of a decade at least are destined to be overburdened with projects. Nor will any one branch be occupied to the exclusion of any other branch or branches. Civil and structural engineers will, as a matter of course, have the first call; but with the work of these men well under way—consisting of the reconstruction of towns and cities—mechanical and electrical men will necessarily be called upon, with, no doubt, liberal demand for mining engineers. Each branch will have its place and serve its usefulness in the order as the reconstruction work itself will fall, with the result that all branches of the profession will be busily occupied.
Manufacturers have been ready or are getting ready for this unprecedented promised activity for some little time. Representatives are flocking abroad on every boat sailing from these shores with schemes and plans for the rapid upbuilding of devastated Europe. These men, for the most part, are engineers embracing all branches of the profession, and each is a man especially well qualified to serve in his branch. In a way he is a specialist. He may represent a giant structural organization, or a machine-tool manufacturer, or an electric-lighting and power concern—any one of the many fields of industrial enterprises whose product is needed to place demoralized France and Belgium back upon a productive basis. For when the construction period is over with there will be need for machine-tools and equipment for operating these tools, such as engines and boilers and motors, all of which come properly under the head of engineering productive enterprises.
Engineers—especially American engineers—will be in great demand, as they are already. Nor will the close of the reconstruction period witness an abatement of this demand. Having once entered the foreign field on a large scale, they will of necessitycontinue to be in demand not only for the furtherance of industrial projects, but for purposes of maintaining that which has been installed at their hands. Machinery has a way of needing periodical overhauling—even the best of machinery—and this will entail the services of many engineers for long after the machinery itself has been set up. The services of erecting engines, operating engineers, supervising engineers—known more properly as industrial engineers—following, as the need will, close upon the heels of the constructing and selling men—will keep the many branches alive and in foreign trade for much more than a decade—or so it seems to the writer. Other nations may, of course, whip into the field and in time crowd out the more distant—meaning American—engineers and engineering products. But I don't think so, because of the acknowledged supremacy of American engineers in many directions. The war itself taught the world that we possessed such a supremacy, and the world will be slow to forget—especially the purchasing side of nations themselves so crippled of man-power as to be for a generation well-nigh helpless.
So the immediate future of the engineer is richly promising. It is so rich with promisethat a young man could hardly do better than to enter upon engineering as a life-work, provided he has no particular choice of careers, and would enter upon an attractive and scopeful one. His work is already laid out for him. Taking up a course of study leading to the degree of M.E., or C.E., or E.E., in four years, upon graduating, he can retrace his way, or the way of his brother, over the battle-fields of Europe, a constructive rather than a destructive agent now, a torch-bearer, a pilgrim, a son of democracy once again advancing the standard in the interests of humanity. He may do this as a mechanical engineer, as a civil engineer, as an electrical engineer, as a mining engineer; it matters not. What does matter is that he will be carrying Old Glory, in spirit if not in the letter, to the distant outposts—the especial province of the Anglo-Saxon race, anyway, from the beginnings of this race—and so serving to maintain the respect and affection already established in these countries by our soldiery. To the writer the thing looks mighty attractive.
Yet the young engineer's future need not lie in distant places necessarily. He may stay at home and still have his work cut out for him. The promised unparalleled activityin the field of engineering on the other side cannot but enlarge and accentuate the activity on this side of the water. Plants will be operating full blast to catch up with the demand imposed by this abnormal activity, and thus the engineer will perforce bear the burdens of production. He will bear them in all directions, since industrial activity means engineering activity, and the work of production cannot go on without him. In the mines, the mills, the quarries, the foundry, the machine-shop, the pattern-shop, the drafting-room, the engineering offices, the consulting divisions—all these, necessitating as they do the employment of one or more engineers in at least a supervising capacity, will have urgent need for his services. Constructive work always, he will grow as his work grows, and because the growth of his work under these abnormal conditions will be of itself abnormal, his own growth under these conditions will be abnormal. He will find himself a full engineer before his rightful time.
Right here it would be well to point out to the young graduate the importance of getting under a capable engineer. For, much as the writer dislikes to admit it, there are engineers who are not capable and who yet occupy positions of great responsibility. Theyoung engineer, fresh from college and a bit puzzled as to the game as a whole, if he accept a connection under an engineer, for instance, whose inventive ideas are impractical, will unwittingly absorb such a man's viewpoint on construction, and so spoil himself as an engineer for all time to come. Cases like this are not rare. The writer personally knows of more than one young man who enlisted under an engineer whose ideas on administration probably accounted, being as they were good ideas, for his position of authority over matters not strictly of an administrative nature. The man wanted to exercise his authority over all things within his department—not the least of which was machine design—with the result that the young graduate's normally practical viewpoint on matters of construction became warped into that of the man over him, and continued warped for so long as he remained under this man, and frequently longer, indeed, to the end of his engineering career. The young engineer must pick his boss as our young men are facetiously advised to pick their parents. The wrong selection will prove disastrous to him in after-life.
Which is but an aside—though a very important one. To emulate a weakling inwhatever walk of life, be it painting or writing or engineering, means to begin wrong. Everybody knows the importance of a right beginning. It is no less true of the young engineer than of others.
And what with the example set by Herbert Hoover and other dollar-a-year men, mostly engineers, in the nation's administrative affairs during the war, the future of the engineer looks bright in these quarters as well as in quarters embracing engineering constructive work wholly. The engineer of the future undoubtedly will take active part in municipal and national affairs, more likely than not in time entering upon a political career as a side interest, as the lawyer enters upon it to-day, within time—so it seems to the writer—members of the engineering professions occupying positions of great trust, such as state governorships and—who knows?—the Presidency itself. Certainly the hand points this way. More and more engineers are coming into prominence in the public eye, and with every member of the profession so coming, the respect for men of his profession multiplies among laymen. It is not too much to say, therefore, that engineers are destined to fill places of great political power. It is to be hoped that theyare. Whether they do or not, the future at this writing amply promises it, and so forcibly that it may well be included as existing for the engineer, as being a part of the future of the engineer.
A graduate of Cornell, in the class of '05, after placing away his diploma where it could not trouble him through suggestiveness, accepted a position with a large manufacturing concern in western Pennsylvania. He was twenty-three years old. He went into the shop to get the practical side of certain theories imposed upon his receptive nature through four long years of study in a mechanical-engineering course. The concern manufactured among other things steam-turbines, and this young man, having demonstrated in school his particular aptitude for thermodynamics—the study of heat and its units in its application to engines, and the like—entered the erecting department. Donning overalls, and with ordinary rule in his hip pocket—as against the slide-rule with which he had worked out his theoretical calculations during his collegeyears—he went to work at whatever was assigned him as a task by his superiors—shop foremen, assistant superintendent, occasionally an engineer from the office.
This young man did many things. He helped to assemble turbine parts; carried word of petty alterations to the proper officials: assisted in the work of making tests; made detailed reports on the machine's performance; screwed up and backed off nuts; in short, got very well acquainted with the steam-turbine as manufactured by this company. He knew the fundamentals of machine construction, and an understanding of the details of this particular type of turbine therefore came easy to him. He worked shop hours, carried his lunch in a box, changed his overalls every Monday like a veteran. Usually his overalls more than needed changing, because he was not afraid of the grease and grime with which he came into contact throughout the day. He liked the work and went to it like a dog to a bone. He was applying in a practical way what he had learned in college of a theoretical nature, and finding the thing of amazing interest.
He made progress. In time his work was brought to the attention of the chief engineer, and one day, when the president of thecompany, who was also an inventor of national repute and responsible for the design of the turbine being manufactured by the organization, wanted to make certain bold changes in the design, the chief engineer sent for the young engineer whose work in college in thermodynamics had won for him certain honors, with the result that our hero found himself presently seated opposite the president at a table in the latter's office, engaged in working out calculations on his slide-rule—calculations beyond the powers of the president, because he was not a heavy theoretician. This call was a big advance indeed, for it marked him as a man of promise—a "comer"—in the concern. The president liked the ease with which the young engineer "got" him in the matter of the proposed changes, and quite before either realized it both were talking freely, exchanging ideas, in the field of turbine construction generally. The young man unconsciously was driving home the fact that he was a capable engineer, one who, while still lacking in broad experience, was nevertheless possessed of the proper attitude toward engineering as a whole to compel the interest and attention of his superior.
The young man eventually was sent out upon the road as an erecting man. In thiswork he discovered certain operating faults in the design, and, reporting these faults to the home office, observed that not a few were remedied in subsequent designs. He moved about the country from place to place, setting up and operating steam-turbines, until there came the blissful day when he was called back to join the engineering staff in work covering design. Laying aside his overalls, he emerged as a crisp young engineer in a linen collar and nifty cravat—although not till later did he don a cream-colored waistcoat—and thereafter his hours were seven instead of nine. With a desk and a stenographer he entered upon work of a somewhat statistical character. He followed the designs of rival companies as best he could through their advertising and articles covering their respective designs appearing in the technical journals, and about this time also applied for admission, and was granted it, in the foremost engineering society embracing his particular branch of the profession. He was still making progress.
Likewise, he was rapidly becoming an expert in the field of steam-turbines. His work in the shop, together with his experience on the road, both as an erecting man and operating engineer, had eminently fitted him forvaluable service in the home office as an engineer overseeing design. His work in charge of design, where his knowledge of what had given service both good and bad in details of construction while he was in the field, was extremely valuable to the designer himself, was rapidly rounding him out as a steam-turbine man. His salary had gone up apace with his progress; he had met the right girl at a club dance in the suburban town where he had taken modest quarters; he was rapidly headed toward success both as an engineer and a citizen. He had been out of school probably six years, and was still a very young man, with all the world practically before him.
One day he was asked by the chief engineer of the concern to journey to New York, and read a paper before his engineering society at one of the regular annual meetings, on the subject of thermodynamics in its relation to the company's own product—the turbine. He tipped over his chair in his eagerness to get out of the office and on the train. He realized the importance of this opportunity. He was to appear before his fellow-engineers—the best and most capable and prominent in the profession—and to appear as an authority on his subject! The thingwas another step forward. He prepared a paper, basing it on his six years' experience in steam-turbines, and when he reached New York had something of value to tell his brother engineers. The meeting was held in the afternoon, and, dressing for the part, he stepped out upon the platform before a gathering of some eight or nine hundred engineers and delivered himself of his subject with credit to himself and to his organization. Not only that. In the rebuttal, when engineers seated in the auditorium rose to confound him with questions—engineers representing rival turbine concerns—he proved himself quick at the bat and more than once confounded those who would confound him.
He was making his mark on the industrial times. His paper was reviewed in the technical journals and almost overnight our young hero found himself recognized as an authority in his chosen branch. He was sought out for other articles by technical editors, his associates in the home plant generously commended him for his work; his salary received another elevation; he called on the girl that night and had her set the date. Then he plugged for salvation—further knowledge as a turbine man—harder thanever. Having won the full confidence of the officials of the company by this time, he was given free voice in all matters having to do with the design of their product, and shortly after his first little boy was born was promoted to the position of assistant chief engineer. He served in this capacity for two years, and then, realizing that he had gone as far up in the organization as it was physically possible to go, owing to the fact that the chief engineer was the president's sister's husband—or something like that—he accepted an offer from one of the rival concerns manufacturing turbines and entered the organization as chief engineer at a salary too big to mention. Our young friend had at last arrived.
Yet his success was not quite complete, nor will it be complete, until he sets up, as he assuredly will some day, as a consulting engineer. When he at last does this, when he swings out his shingle to the breeze, he will then have attained to the maximum of possible success as an engineer. Already recognized as being possessed of a fine discrimination in matters of engineering moment, especially in thermodynamics as related to turbines, he has but gone up in channels early laid out for him, and indicated to him, inhis college days. His direction even then was clearly marked. All he had to do, and all he did do, was to develop himself in this single direction. He did nothing that would be impossible to any other engineering graduate. Merely he hewed to the line—persisted in remaining in the one branch of the game—met with his reward in time just as any young man would meet with it. There was nothing of phenomenal character, nothing of the genius, revealed in what he did. His way is open to all. And it is a way both worthy and admirable, for to-day this engineer stands high in his profession and is meeting with financial reward in keeping with his position among engineers.
There you have in the tracing of one engineer's progress to success precisely what constitutes engineering success. The details may differ, but the principles and the rewards will be the same, whether you enter upon civil or mechanical or mining or electrical engineering. Success in engineering constitutes certain satisfactory money rewards and an even more satisfactory recognition by one's associates and fellows. Success in anything is that. A man must work for them, however. There never was and never will be a rainbow path to the heights. Toil and an abidingfaith in one's own capabilities—these make for success. Success makes for happiness, and happiness, as everybody knows, is all there is to this life.
I wish all men happiness.
As to the personal side of engineering as a career, if it would be a source of gratification to you to know that you were helping to build up the civilized world, then you should enter the engineering profession. Because men differ in their ideas as to what constitutes a full life—some placing ideal homes above all things, some seeking continuously diversified sources of pleasure, some wanting nothing better than a fine library or freedom to cultivate taste in pictures, some wishing only to surround themselves with interesting people, some wanting nothing but an accumulation of dollars, some wishing but for power of control over others—all men would not find the full life in engineering. Yet the majority of men would, because the profession holds that which would appeal to a great many different ideas as to what a complete life consists of. Engineering as a profession is scientific, idealistic, constructive,profitable. It is combative—in the sense that it shapes nature's forces—and it calls for a sense of artistry in its practitioners. Added to these, it embraces a certain kind of profound knowledge the possession of which is always a source of pride to the owner.
Let me explain this last. The engineer, being as he is a man who views things objectively, notes details in everything that comes under his eye, be it dwelling or automobile, or bookbinding or highway. The layman does not. The layman, outside his work, sees only the thing itself, when looking at it—the general outline. But the engineer, trained to note details in construction, observes detail at a glance, and does it almost subconsciously, if not immediately after leaving school, then assuredly later, after he has been practicing his profession for a time. His outlook is objectively critical. Entering a house for the first time, and trained as a mechanical engineer, he will note the character of the woodwork, the decorations, the atmosphere, the arrangement of the furnishings, all with the same facility that he will note details upon entering for the first time a power-station or a manufacturing plant—things within his own province.
Nor is this faculty confined to the concrete.Engineers are of that deeply instinctive race of folk who perceive cause in effect with the lightning swiftness of a wild animal. If they are not this when entering upon the profession, assuredly they become so after a period spent in the work. Something about the practice of engineering breeds it—breeds this objective seeing and abstract reasoning—and to be possessed of it is to get more out of life than otherwise is possible. Which possibly accounts for the fact that engineers as a group seem to have a common-sense viewpoint of things, one that is frankly acknowledged and drawn upon when needed by men in other walks of life. Engineers are extremely practical-minded, and this makes for a certain outlook that will not permit of visionary scaring away from the common sense and the practical on the part of its possessor. Engineers know why things occur without having witnessed even the occurrence itself. Their powers of reasoning are developed to degrees beyond the average—or they seem to be—and out of this comes one of the sources of gratification on the personal side to the man who pursues engineering as a profession.
The thing spreads out as I contemplate it. I would make so bold as to say that the manof engineering training will see more at a glance when first viewing the Grand Cañon, say, than will any other professionally trained man. Should the Cañon collapse, he would know instantly why it collapsed. He could give an opinion on the wonderful color effects that would interest the artist, and he would know without hesitation how best to descend to the bottom and wherein to seek the easiest trail. All this, without his being a civil or a mining engineer, understand; merely a man trained in constructive mechanics. On the other hand, the mining or the civil man would view the wreckage of a locomotive accident and see in the debris, select from the snarl of tangled wheels and driving-arms and axles a ready picture of the nature of the accident and how much of the wreckage offered possibilities for repair. Again, the engineer sees in a tree, with its tapering trunk, the symbol of all tower construction, just as he sees in the shape of a man's arm the pattern to follow when devising a cast-iron lever for an automatic machine. He sees things, does the engineer; sees objectively; follows nature throughout.
All this being true, the engineer has a rather interesting life of it. For not only does he see a little more clearly than otherwisewould be possible to him without his education and training, but also he does things with his hands that come easy to him without previously having undertaken them. The engineer can do much around his own home, if he so choose, that of itself is a source of great satisfaction. Engineers can swing doors, build fireplaces, landscape, erect fences, make garden, and can perform these tasks with a degree of neatness and skill that brings favorable comment from journeymen whose vocations this work is, and do the work without training whatsoever in the work. Wall-papering, painting, carpentering, laying up of brick, or the placing of a dry wall—plastering, glazing—the list is endless that as side-plays are possible to the man with an engineering training. He need not do these things, ever; but if he wants ever to do them, he finds that he can do them and do a creditable job of each, and this without his ever having turned his hand to the work before.
Which sums up in a measure the personal side. The engineer is not a superior being. Merely he is a man possessed of a highly specialized education and training which peculiarly fits him for any practical work, and out of this work, for practical thinkingof the kind known as constructive. Being constructive with his hands, he cannot but in time become constructive with his brain. Being constructive as a thinker first, he cannot but become constructive as a doer later. The one hinges closely on the other, and having both, as the engineer must who would be a successful engineer, he has as much of the world under his control as comes to any man, and, in a great degree, more than is the favorable lot of most men. For the engineer is both a thinker and a doer. Ponder that—you. Men are either one or the other—most men—and rarely are they both. Either side of their brain has been developed at the expense of the other side. Not so with the engineer. The successful engineer is both thinker and doer—must be in his profession. It seems to me that engineering has many beautiful attractions as a profession.