ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION - BY ERNEST McCULLOUGH, C.E. Consulting Civil Engineer; Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers; Western Society of Engineers; American Water Works Association; American Society of Municipal Improvements; National Association of Cement Users; American Society of Engineering Contractors; Illinois Society of Engineers and Surveyors; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; etc., etc. NEW YORK DAVID WILLIAMS COMPANY 239 WEST 39TH STREET 1911 Copyrighted, 1911 BY DAVID WILLIAMS COMPANY THE SCICNTinC PRESS DRUMMOND AND COMPANY BROOKLYN, N. Y. To 'B Wtfc THIS BOOK is MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY HER FRIEND AND SINCERE ADMIRER AND SYMPATHIZER, ^t .Autljmr And Ruth said " Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; . . . 260043 SPECIFICATIONS FOE A GOOD ENGINEER "A good engineer must be of inflexible integrity, sober, truthful, accurate, resolute, discreet, of cool and sound judg- ment, must have command of his temper, must have courage to resist and repel attempts at intimidation, a firmness that is proof against solicitation, flattery or improper bias of any kind, must take an interest in his work, must be energetic, quick to decide, prompt to act, must be fair and impartial as a judge on the bench, must have experience in his work and dealing with men, which implies some maturity of years, must have business habits and knowledge of accounts. Men who combine these qualities are not to be picked up every day. Still, they can be found. But they are greatly in demand and when found they are worth their price; rather, they are beyond price and their value cannot be estimated by dollars." Chief Engineer Sterling's Report to the Mississippi Levee Commissioners. PREFACE THE subject matter of this work has been rearranged (with additions) from a number of addresses given before technical schools and asso- ciations of engineer assistants. It is published for the information of parents in order that they may act wisely in selecting a career for their sons. Semi-technical periodicals and daily newspapers are bureaus of information consulted frequently by ill-informed parents ; and, perhaps, more than half the students now in technical schools are there because of opinions obtained as valuable advice from such sources. The reason for the opinions expressed by writers in such publications is hard to ascertain. A care- ful reading of the back numbers of technical periodicals and transactions of technical societies will prove the statements in this book to be accurate, and the advocates of wholesale technical education have always had these sources from which to obtain information. The reader is to bear in mind that when the average engineer is men- tioned it is the average in numbers and not in ability that is meant. THE AUTHOR. Chicago, 111., June, 1911. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE ENGINEER . CHAPTEE II THE WORK OF THE ENGINEER 18 CHAPTER III THE EDUCATION OF THE ENGINEER 36 CHAPTER IV HOME STUDY COURSES 95 CHAPTER V How TO HUNT AND HOLD A JOB 112 CHAPTER VI DOES IT PAY TO STUDY ENGINEERING? 131 APPENDIX THE OPINIONS OF ENGINEERING EDITORS. . , 181 "THE fact that a competent engineer can make a little money go much further than it would go without his advice and aid is one which the general public is slow to comprehend. The average man congratulates himself upon the dollars he saves by dispensing with an engineer's services, and knows nothing of the dollars lost in exorbitant prices, or work poorly executed." From an editorial in Engineering News, July 11, 1895. ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION CHAPTER I THE ENGINEEK THE average person is puzzled over the exact meaning of the word "Engineer" after some acquaintance with the many sorts of men who so style themselves. To engineers the confusion is often humorous, but none the less occasionally mortifying. A fond mother whose son was a student in engineering at one of the leading tech- nical schools was asked by a friend how she could contemplate having her son work in greasy clothes around an engine, "like a common laborer." The same mother was asked by another friend if she did not think it a great waste of money to educate her boy at such an expensive school "to be only a com- mon surveyor after all." Engineers enjoy the story of the payroll. The name was not Smith, but it does for the story. On a certain payroll appeared : Smith, Aaron, Engineer. .$15 per week. Smith, James, Asst. Eng. .$75 per week. 2 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION Aaron Smith was a colored man unable to read and write. His duty was to run the steam launch that carried James Smith, C. E., the principal assistant of the Chief Engineer up and down the river where he had charge of important improve- ments costing several millions of dollars. What's in a name ? For years professional engineers have tried to designate men like Aaron Smith as " launch tenders," men who operate stationary engines as " engine runners," and men who operate locomo- tives as " engine drivers." Such terms are used in some countries, but are being gradually supplanted by the word " engineer" with a qualifying word before it. In the United States the locomotive engineer is styling himself a "traveling engineer," although that term should be applied exclusively to men employed by railways to travel and instruct loco- motive engineers. By this time the public knows that a " stationary engineer" operates engines in power houses and on contractors' plants. A "hoisting engineer" runs a hoisting engine. A man in charge of an entire power plant is known as an "operating engineer." This does not always fully explain, for the operating engineer who takes a contract to look after a number of large plants in important factories or large office buildings, may be a graduate mechanical or electrical engineer, while the "operating engineer" in a sawmill may ENGINEEKING AS A VOCATION 3 be illiterate and his entire power plant consist of a second-hand fifty horse-power engine. At present an " electrical engineer" may be a man who designs, or sells, or installs electrical machinery, or he may be a man in temporary charge of a five horse-power motor. Some bell hangers are called electrical engineers and so advertise themselves. In Great Britain an " engineer" may be one of the greatest men in the empire or he may be merely an employetin an engineering works, or, as we term them in the United States, machine shops or factories. With all the confusion the public, through the medium of the press is coming to a better realiza- tion of the engineer and his work so that the pro- fessional engineer is taking rank among educated people, with the lawyer, the surgeon, the physician and the clergyman. With this better conception of the professional side of the calling there has also crept in the idea that it is a remarkably well-paid business, embracing the romance and adventure of the soldier's life with that of Aladdin, who merely rubbed an old lamp when he needed money. The engineer only incidentally is tied to an engine, either as designer, builder or operator. A search of the dictionary for roots yields the follow- ing definitions : ENGINE, French, engin; from Latin, Ingenium, a genius, an invention. 4 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION ENGINEER, English, engin-er; Old . French, enginier; French, ing&nieur. A person of genius or ingenuity. In the Latin-English dictionary we find : IngSnlosus-a-um. (ingenium) Naturally clever, talented, acute, able, ingenious. Students of engineering history accept the fore- going definitions as satisfactory root forms of the word " Engineer." Thus we find the engineer is "the ingenious man." This broad definition brings all characteristically energetic, able men into the category of engineers. When a man is said to have engineered a deal it is understood he obtained his own way after the exercise of con- siderable ingenuity. There are to-day many fool- ish persons who display a silly affectation in assuming the title of engineer, such as social engineers, who are persons engaged in studying social conditions; advertising engineers, who are persons engaged in handling advertising on a large scale, etc., ad nauseum. Other words, equally, if not more, effective in conveying the intended mean- ing might be used, for the English language is very rich. To the writer and other men in the pro- fession there are two definitions which exactly describe the engineer, and these definitions, if properly acknowledged, would break down the artificial lines of separation between the numerous " specialties" of engineering work which are ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 5 damaging and tend to make of the school-bred engineer an automaton and an illy-paid, hardly- treated person. In 1828, Thomas Tredgold, in England, defined civil engineering as "the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and cop- venience of man." This definition is incorporated in the constitution of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Great Britain. In 1885, A. M. Wellington, a prominent Amer- ican engineer, for many years editor of Engineer- ing News, said in the preface of his classic " Economic Theory of the Location of Railways," that ' ' engineering ... is the art of doing that well with one dollar, which any bungler can do with two after a fashion." The second definition is really the more broad. Any man who directs the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man is prac- tising engineering. A partly educated man may do this. The fresh often too fresh young graduate of an engineering school may do this. The engineer, however, has been so well trained in engineering that he can do a thing well with one dollar which a bungler can do in a bungling manner with the expenditure of two dollars. Ability+Education+Training+Experience=Engmeer. There was some spice, perhaps unintentional, in the definition of civil engineering. To one, how- 6 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION ever, who appreciates th6 grim humor of strong, self-tutored men, the spice was, no doubt, intended. From the beginning of civilization men had houses built by builders who came to form a distinct order and were known after a while as architects. These men wrought for the comfort and convenience of mankind. Engineers, however, were military men whose structures were for warlike purposes. Their bridges were not erected for peaceful use and as an embellishment of the landscape were never looked on with favor. Only architects built beauti- ful bridges, following the plans of the engineers, whose bridges were erected so that armies might attack a province or defend a city. For many cen- turies engineers were employed to plan campaigns and lay out works to defend or to attack forts and cities. Many great soldiers in the past preferred the title of " Engineer" to that of "General." Military engineers showed their ingenuity in the invention of engines and implements of war and the use of every means at hand to kill men and destroy the works of their hands. In times of peace, or when the engineer corps of an army was quartered in cities, the engineers were employed to construct water works and drainage works for large districts. This was not done primarily for the purpose of making conditions tolerable for the inhabitants, but to provide water and guard health during a possible siege, for sieges in those old days sometimes lasted for years. The engineer, the mili- ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 7 tary engineer, might have been defined as one "who practised the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the harm and destruction of man.' Somewhat more than one hundred years ago some Englishmen engaged on construction work intended for the advancement of civilization, such as the building of roads, bridges and canals, and the erection of great buildings, learned that many Italian, French and Spanish architects and bridge builders, the latter work by this time having become a distinct specialty, were in the habit of terming themselves engineers without any qualify- ing designation and military engineers were mak- ing strong objection. These Englishmen concluded that since much ingenuity was required in civil as well as military construction, the term "Civil Engineer" was eminently proper and it was adopted. There being strong opposition to the use of the word engineer by civilians it was necessary to exactly define the civil engineer, the definition of Thomas Tredgold being the result; somewhat insulting to the army as well as to the naval engineer, who, at that time, had no engines to care for, but who built docks, designed ordnance, etc., and assisted the naval architect in the design and construction of war vessels. To-day the distinction is disappearing. Mili- tary engineers have so little employment of the old sort that most of their time is spent in work of a 8 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION civil engineering nature, the internal improve- ments of the country. The army engineers of all armies are selected from the honor graduates of the national military academies. They constitute a body of well-trained men on whom the govern- ment may call for any duty. Their pay is the highest of all soldiers and the engineers are the ranking branch of the military service. Naval engineers are highly trained mechanical and elec- trical engineers. For the construction and main- tenance of ship yards, docks, etc., there is a special corps of Civil Engineers of the Navy, Robert B. Peary having been a member of that honorable corps of men who have a relative rank, with uni- forms and all the honors pertaining to the rank, but who have no right to the use of the title. For example when Robert E. Peary was a Commander he was borne on the Navy lists as a Commander ; wore the uniform of a Commander ; took rank in a procession or at a reception in accordance with his relative rank ; got the pay of that rank, and yet among naval officers he was Mr. Peary, Civil Engi- neer, U. S. N. To-day, while retired as an Admiral he has no right to have the word Admiral engraved on his calling card, unless the act retiring him with that rank was so worded as to confer that right. But we digress while discussing the strange cus- toms of the least democratic of all the institutions of the American government. Shortly after the Civil Engineer appeared the ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 9 steam engine was improved to such an extent tliat its rapid development led to the most wonderful changes the world has ever witnessed. The power of men to achieve was multiplied a millionf old and manual labor gave way to mechanical effort, whereby comforts hitherto unknown were brought within the means of everyone. Need was had for men trained in mathematics and the physical sciences and such men were found in the ranks of the engineers, civil, naval and military. The first men to make a specialty of engine design and operation were known as Mechanical Civil Engineers, but for only a short time was the awk- ward title used, the word civil being dropped so that the Mechanical Engineer became an indi- vidual. The first mining men who called them- selves engineers were Mining Civil Engineers, but it was a cumbersome title soon abandoned for that of Mining Engineer, or Engineer of Mines. The Electrical Engineer was an electrician when that science first came into prominence and the Elec- trical Engineer as such did not appear upon the scene until about seventy-five years after the Mechanical Engineer dropped the word civil from his title. " Farther than runneth the memory of man," every nation had schools for the training of mili- tary engineers and the professors were men who wrote many books so that some of the rules of con- struction followed to-day date back several cen- 10 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION turies. The first school, however, to teach the new profession of civil engineering, as such, with the degree of Civil Engineer, was the Eensselaer Poly- technic Institute of Troy, K Y., founded in 1826. It has had a most successful career and is to-day a leading school, courses in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering having been added within the last five years. Engineers have not been particularly impressed with the value of the history of their profession and all the facts are not exactly known, or are not easily accessible. It is believed that the second civil engineering school was established in France a year or two after the establishment of the Eensselaer Polytechnic Insti- tute in Troy, although the famous Ecole des Ponts et Chausses for the training of engineers to care for the French highways, was essentially a civil engineering school, the military school of St. Cyr educating military engineers and artillerymen. Between 1830 and 1840 the University of Glasgow, Scotland, established a course in mathematics and the natural sciences for the theoretical training of young gentlemen apprenticed to civil engineers, and from this school was graduated William John Macquorne Rankine. Rankine practised as a civil engineer for several years and, in 1856, upon the retirement of the great Professor Gordon, suc- ceeded him as professor of civil engineering. Rankine was a phenomenal man who wrote many books covering the entire field of engineering, ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 11 establishing it upon a sound basis as a mathemat- ical science. There were many great investigators and writers on engineering subjects in Europe, especially in France and Germany, whose work he made free use of, but by all of these men he was looked up to as a leader and might be said to have been the father of the civil engineer. Before his time the engineer " picked up" his education and received his theoretical and scientific knowledge as best he could while burning the midnight lamp. Kankine made it possible to study engineering with the least loss of time and wasted effort. The fourth school of civil engineering was Union College, now Union University, Schenectady, N". Y. In Great Britain it was the custom for many years, which custom has not entirely died out, to apprentice boys to some engineer for a definite term of years, paying a fee for the privilege, the amount of the fee being governed by the degree of eminence of the engineer. The boys were sup- posed to receive practical instruction through helping around the office and out in the field or in the works, becoming engineers through the operation of a gradual " soaking in" process. The schools were so conducted as to give one, two, or three years' instruction for a few months each year in mathematics and science, to enable the "articled" pupil to acquire the theoretical knowl- edge he actually needed. Since the instruction given at the schools was wholly along theoretical 12 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION lines it was not looked upon with much favor, the British being a great people to laud practical ( ?) methods. Some of the old feeling against schools crops out once in a while, but the majority of the British engineering schools to-day are not very different in aims and methods from the schools of other countries. In continental Europe young engineers received all their theoretical instruction in schools having five- and six-year courses before going into prac- tical work. To-day a certain amount of practical work, or shop training, is insisted upon as a pre- requisite to graduation, this work being sand- wiched between school years. In the United States the apprentice system was never in favor and the schools in this country from the first endeavored to complete the scholastic training of the students before they went into practice. Engineers were in demand and for a great many years the schools could not turn them out fast enough, so there was lacking the intense thoroughness of the German and Frenchman and the practical training of the Briton. The differences in methods of instruc- tion f ormerly common in the schools of different countries were well illustrated in a remark made by a prominent educator a few years ago to the effect that the British engineer was a technically trained mechanic, the continental European engineer a technically trained scientist and the American engineer a technically trained busi- ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 13 ness man. It was said that these differences were plainly shown in South Africa and other frontiers of civilization where the British engineer was an outside superintendent at good pay bossing labor- ers ; the continental engineers were in the drafting office and computing desk getting much less pay and the American engineer was drawing a large salary as general manager. Actually such a view of the matter was a most unjust slur on the engineers trained in British, German and French schools. In those countries no railway was built or any great public work undertaken until it was deemed a necessity. When decided upon it could not be started until many tedious legal formalities and governmental requirements had been complied with. It was not a gamble, and, therefore, no expense was spared to make it permanent. The young men trained in the schools of such countries naturally were drilled in methods that were hardly adapted to pioneer countries where every railway and other enterprise was a gamble and the item of first cost most important. Americans have never been particularly noted for willing acquiescence in regulations of any sort that interfere with a man doing as he pleases, so, of course, American engineers were the best for newly exploited coun- tries. In old countries the idea of having to rebuild anything is viewed with horror. In the United States, especially the United States of a couple of generations ago, the very cheapest work was 14 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION wanted as it was believed the profits would enable the work to be done over in a few years if neces- sary. The differences, therefore, between the engineers of the different countries were not due wholly to the training received in schools, but were due primarily to environment, heredity, custom and habit. To-day engineers in all countries read and study papers and books written by men in other countries. Translators are busy everywhere so that each week the up-to-date engineer receives by mail a paper containing an account of everything of value to him in his own and other countries. The schools are gradually getting together and there is very little difference between first-class schools, whether they are in England, Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Austria, Eussia, ffctpa^i, Argentine or in the United States. In all will be found the leading works of the leading instructors in all countries and Rankine's works have been translated into many languages and have formed the basis of hundreds of standard text books. Considerable criticism of engineering schools is heard. " What is the trouble with our engineer- ing schools ?" is a cry frequently heard, but if there in any trouble it is farther back and the cry should be "What is the trouble of our engineering schools?" The answer being "The false ideals and the lack of consistency and coordination in the ENGINEEKING AS A VOCATION 15 public schools.' 9 It is not fair to expect the engineering schools of the United States to take that illy-digested product, the average grammar or high school graduate, with his smattering of many things, including plain sewing, and expect to get as perfect a product in the way of an edu- cated man as the German schools turn out. Much of the criticism, however, of our engineering schools is a survival of the days when few engineers were school bred and a college education was not common. No employer cared to have in his employ a man better educated than himself, for they were autocratic, were the successful men of the days of our fathers and grandfathers. The old practical (so-called) engineer was preferred whenever an engineer was employed. A strong stream of engineering graduates has been poured out over the world within the past thirty years and numbers of them have deserted technical (pro- fessional technical) engineering to go into con- tracting and manufacturing. Their success has been so marked that the heads of the largest manu- facturing establishments and the heads of the most progressive contracting companies are men who received engineering educations. If their training had not been as practical as it is possible to make school training, they would not have succeeded. Some men ask that the school courses be made more practical and yet are unable to explain just what they mean. Some are merely echoing an old com- 16 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION plaint and some graduates are crying from disap- pointment, when, perhaps, the school was not responsible. Accidents of birth have much to do with lack of success in life. No school can supply a man with common sense and intelligence if these very desirable qualities were omitted in his make- up, but education can do much to enable one to make good use of all the intelligence he may have. The modern engineer must have a college train- ing or something that is equivalent. The equiva- lent is very, very hard to obtain. Teaching is a distinct profession and the practising engineer cannot always obtain the viewpoint of the teach- ing engineer. The curricula of the numerous engineering schools bear a very close resemblance to each other, yet many men have taken positions as professors with the idea of revolutionizing mat- ters. Many of these men have had the privilege of organizing new schools in old colleges and uni- versities and have had, some of them, the oppor- tunity to start out on new lines in entirely new institutions unhampered by traditions. With the free hand given them and the splendid opportunity offered for reform it is significant that the courses in such schools gradually bear a very strong resem- blance to those in older schools. All heads of engineering schools pay great attention to old graduates and the average engineering school of to-day, with all its reputed shortcomings is really ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 17 the product of the alumnae, much as some of them will dispute it. There is really nothing serious the matter with our engineering schools that will not be corrected in time. The Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education is doing good work and many eminent practising engineers belong to this society, which invites helpful criticism. If any- thing is a fault with the training given in the schools it is that many schools have paid entirely too much attention to outside criticism and the students are narrowly trained specialists, who have been cheated in their unfortunate attempt to get a proper education. However, this does not belong in the chapter which is supposed merely to define the engineer. In a later chapter the subject of the scholastic training of the engineer will be discussed. This present chapter has defined the engineer in the words of two eminent engineers. A third definition is by some unknown and reads : "An engineer is a compound of common sense and mathematics. If he has not enough mathematics his lot in life will be hard. If he has not enough common sense God pity him." CHAPTER II THE WORK OF THE ENGINEER THE old-time civil engineer, before lie was known by that title, built roads and bridges and helped architects erect great buildings. During the middle ages when the wonderful cathedrals and monumental bridges of Europe were built, the greatest architects were engineers and often pre- ferred to be called engineers. Some were able mili- tary engineers and conducted many campaigns and great sieges of history. Leonardi da Vinci was an architect, an engineer, a painter and sculptor; of commanding rank in each calling. The knowledge of the world was not so great in those days, but that one man could know practically all that was necessary in many callings. For a long period architecture was a sleeping art for nothing new was developed and the archi- tects grew proud and drew away from the engineers and courted the society of artists. Archi- tects were delighted when their art was called " frozen music," little recking that things are gen- erally dead when frozen. For centuries architects did nothing but measure and copy and try to develop schools without placing proper emphasis on the fact that architecture is "The art of build- is ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 19 ing pleasingly." To build pleasingly the material must be recognized. The long spans of Grecian architraves were possible with the strong stone used by the Greeks and imitations in the weaker limestones and sandstones of other countries were but imitations after all, beautiful as some were. The greatest buildings were erected and archi- tecture made advances only when the engineer and architect worked together or were one and the same person. With the invention of the steel- framed building, the introduction of reinforced concrete and structural tile, all due to the engineer, architecture has been reborn and the moderns, in America, at least, are developing styles which will some day eventuate in something as good as the Greek pillar and lintel, the arch of the Etruscans and Romans and the pillared vaults of the Goths. Since the " engineer has joined hands with the unwilling architect there is no limit to the possi- bilities of realizing dreams and embodying them in lasting materials. The old-time civil engineer also improved rivers and harbors and constructed canals. This ends the list of his achievements. He, of course, had to know how to make surveys so he could lay out his work and make estimates of cost and pre- pare plans. It is well known that the science of geometry arose from the necessity for recovering land lines and boundaries buried in the mud at the times of the annual rises of the Mle. The 20 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION geometers (earth measurers), land surveyors or engineers, call them what you please, were always employed to set out work and no doubt from very early times surveying was a large part of the work of practical builders, architects and contractors, later of engineers. The old-time civil engineer had to be a draftsman also, for drafting is a universal language understood alike by the trained engineer, the architect and the building mechanic. The sur- veyor had also to be a draftsman in order to make maps of his surveys. To be a good surveyor and draftsman implied a good knowledge of mathematics. The student in a modern American high school receives more instruction in mathe- matics than the best engineer of two hundred years ago. The old-time engineer then was a man of ingenuity and common sense with little mathe- matics. The engineer of to-day must have fully as much ingenuity and common sense as the engineer of olden time, together with much more mathe- matics. Hero of Alexandria is styled the first engineer of recorded history. He invented a fountain and a steam engine, besides many other things of service to mankind, although his steam engine remained a toy and the principle has only lately been applied in the turbine engine, which is regarded by many as the coming engine. His writings consisted of fourteen books treating on the whole of practical surveying and construction work as they were ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 21 understood in those early days, but all the books did not survive the numerous wars and raids of the intervening years. A book in the days of the ancients was generally about as full as a thin pamphlet or a chapter in a modern book. The author of fourteen books hardly wrote as much as the author of a ten-chapter treatise on the design of a plate girder to-day. Be this as it may, Hero is reputed to be the author of fourteen books which for some centuries were a veritable cyclopedia of engineering and of these books we have only his surveying in full, with parts of three or four other books. His treatise on surveying contains many of the problems taught to-day and his methods of solution are unchanged, except as changes have been made by the introduction of algebra and trigonometry, two subjects of which the ancients knew nothing. Hero was not regarded highly by his brother mathematicians in Alexandria because he believed in " practical, applied" mathematics and wrote books for the purpose of educating the common herd. He profaned a most noble science when he disclosed the grave secrets of the mathe- maticians and made a science of what was a philosophy. It is said that to-day the first toast at the annual banquet of a certain mathematical society is " Here's to pure mathematics. Cursed be he who attempts to find use for it." Let us see how modern this wonderful pro- fession of engineering is. All knowledge of stress 22 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION and strain was empiric up to a very late date. In 1678, Robert Hooke published his famous law of stress and deformation in materials, namely, "As the extension, so is the resistance," which he claimed to have discovered eighteen years pre- viously and kept secret for the purpose of obtain- ing some patents. It is still termed Hooke 's Law, but is now known to be true only within the elastic limit of any material. Prom that date until 1857, when Saint- Venant gave a complete analysis of the strength and elasticity of beams, engineers fol- lowed many strange hypotheses, which they digni- fied by styling them theories, and tried to preserve many individual secrets. Self-tutored mechanics to-day bring forth startling ideas, startling at least to modern engineers, because so many of them read reprints of books written fifty and sixty years ago. The self-tutored man should never buy a book without examining the copyright page for the date. [If the copyright was obtained prior to 1895 he should not purchase the bookj When the first man wanted to cross a river without swimming and found a fallen tree span- ning from bank to bank, the first bridge existed. It may have been many centuries before the human race developed to a point where it was possible to fell trees and build bridges. The bridges as late as Roman times were built of horizontal beams and girders resting on piles, with no attempt at intelligent trussing. That is, of course, wooden ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 23 bridges were so built, for stone and brick arch bridges are very ancient. In the course of time it was discovered that the triangle was the ideal form of framework and the truss was developed. Bridge building became the work of a craft, like the building of cathedrals, and men went all over Europe erecting bridges, yet no real principles underlay their work, which consisted in a/cut-and- tryj method of design. The art of building truss bridges developed through correction of errors of judgment, but methods for computing the strength of suspension bridges were known fairly well about 1780. When railways commenced to supplant navigable canals and bridges were required to carry something more than light wagons many strange patents were obtained for trusses com- bining the principles of the truss, the arch and the chain. In the summer of 1846 a Yankee school teacher, Squire Whipple, sat on the bank of a stream fish- ing and idly watching some carpenters repairing a wooden highway bridge close by. The school teacher learned that the foreman was a noted bridge builder, so he stopped fishing to converse with him. It was with considerable surprise that he learned there was no certain method then known for calculating stresses in bridge trusses. Upon his return home Whipple made a model of the bridge with small pieces of wood, joined at the angles with pins, having strings for counterbraces. 24 ENGINEEKING AS A VOCATION By rolling balls in grooves along the top chord he discovered how the frame work deflected and thus learned how to design a bridge to carry a prede- termined load. He wrote a " Practical Treatise on Bridge Building," which was printed in Utica, 1ST. Y., in 1847. In 1851, Haupt, in America, and Bow, in England, produced books on bridge design, the forerunners of a literature which justifies one in saying with the old Hebrew "Of the making of books there is no end." Tramways were first built in England about two hundred and fifty years ago for the purpose of transporting coal from collieries to the sea. They were first made of two lines of flat stones to afford a track for the wagons. Civil engineers, or rather surveyors, were employed to secure proper curves and grades. Longitudinal timbers enabled heavier loads to be drawn and when iron rails were placed on the timbers, thus further reducing resistance and wear and permitting still heavier loads to be drawn, the tramways became railways. The first rails were channeled, or grooved, and it was~a stroke of real genius when some man used a plain rail and put the flange on the wheel. It effected great economy and was very simple, but then the really great things in this world are very simple in their inception. In 1821 the Stockton and Dar- lington Railway was incorporated in England, this road being operated by steam locomotives in 1825. The success of the steam locomotive caused a ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 25 boom in railway building and the demand for civil engineers was so great that for many years it was almost impossible to find enough to go around. At the same time the need for skilled designers of engines and machinery led the mechanical engineers to form a distinct body as distinguished from civil engineers. The old distinction between civil and military engineers was lost forever and to-day we have engineers. The old qualifying terms remain but the lines, for a time so distinct, are each day becoming fainter. The real dis- tinction now exists as between engineers who design and build stable structures and those who design, build and sell engines and machines. By common consent the man who is to-day known as a civil engineer is one who deals with statics, and the man who is known as a mechanical engineer is one who deals with kinetics, the elec- trical engineer being a cross between a physicist and a mechanical engineer, having a marked strain of conceit common to youth ; the electrical engineer being comparatively an infant, but very husky. Mechanics is that part of the science of dynamics which treats of the laws governing the interaction between forces and solid matter. Statics is a branch of mechanics treating of the action of forces upon bodies at rest, or in a state of static equilibrium ; that is, of balanced forces. Kinetics is a branch of mechanics treating of the action of unbalanced forces and the movement of solid 26 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION bodies. Statics, therefore, applies to bridges and all stationary frames, as well as embankments, retaining walls, river and canal improvements, etc. Kinetics deals with engines and machines. In hydraulics the engineer has been employed from time immemorial. At first his employment on harbor work was in the government service, connected with the navy, but later he was employed as a civil engineer to design and build harbors for vessels of commerce. Centuries of dock and wharf building developed rules and styles which have not been much changed by the advance in scientific instruction of engineers in the past century. Navi- gable canals were for a time the great training schools for engineers, but they are everywhere giv- ing way to railways, except where interested agita- tion keeps alive public interest in old-fashioned things. A few canals are kept up at enormous expense to satisfy artificially created public demands, supposedly to act as a deterrant upon railway rates. Sentiment, however, rather than common sense business principles, keeps the small navigable canal in existence. The present day hydraulic engineer finds his chief employment in the design, construction and operation of water works for towns and cities ; canals, reservoirs and dams for irrigation; canals and ditches for land drainage; the improvement and regulation of rivers. The first writer of note on public water supplies ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 27 was Sextus Julius Frontinus, water commissioner in Rome during the reigns of Nerva and Trajan. He possessed a shrewd knowledge of the flow of fluids, but hardly more than that which any observ- ing man may pick up by working around a water works system to-day. In 1628 Castelli published a small pamphlet on the flow of fluids, followed in 1643 by a pamphlet giving more important dis- coveries. In 1828 Fourneyron invented the turbine and from that time to this important discoveries on the flow of water have been announced at intervals. The past twenty-five years have seen the knowledge respecting the flow of water placed on nearly as satisfactory a basis as a knowledge of the stresses in structures, although for fifty years prior enough was known to enable engineers to carry out great hydraulic works with reasonable certainty and economy. Hydraulic engineers were formerly employed in large numbers on the design and construction of power plants operated by water wheels. After the introduction of the steam engine the water wheel declined in importance and many mills replaced their hydraulic plant with steam plants. To-day the hydraulic engineer is again in demand to design and erect water power installations in which the wheel picks up the power from falling water and carries it to huge electric generators, to be converted into electricity which is easily transmitted for long distances. The term 28 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION " Hydraulic Engineer" is now borne by three classes of engineers : Hydraulic civil engineers are skilled in the sur- vey, planning, designing and construction of canals, dams and power houses ; also in the design, construction and operation of water works for municipalities, irrigation and drainage projects. Hydraulic mechanical engineers are skilled in the design and construction of all kinds of hydraulic machinery, including hydraulic presses, water wheels, turbines, etc. Hydraulic electrical engineers are skilled in the design, installation and operation of hydro-electric plants. The sanitary engineer is an important man to-day and his value to the community is increas- ing. He may be employed to design and construct systems for the sewering of municipalities and the purification of sewage, and he may be employed to design and construct water works systems and plants to purify water. The tendency, however, is marked to limit the sanitary engineer to the design and construction of plants to purify sewage and domestic water supplies. The municipal engineer is charged with the planning and construction of water works, sewer- age systems and street improvements within the corporate limits of municipalities. For the puri- fication of sewage or water he calls in the consult- ing sanitary engineer and for the bringing of the ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 29, water to the city limits he calls in the hydraulic civil engineer. If large pumping stations are required he employs the hydraulic mechanical engineer. For the ordinary work required in the average town and city the local municipal engineer is usually competent, if his training has been broad and of the approved kind. One defect in many cities is the employment of imperfectly trained men of limited experience because they work for low pay. The position of the average town and city engineer is not enviable, for his office is the prey of politics. On a railway the civil engineer surveys the routes, makes estimates of cost and constructs the lines. He designs all buildings and terminal yards and on many roads designs all the bridges, while on other roads he merely prepares specifications for the design of bridges and supervises their erection. Maintenance-of-way engineers have charge of the upkeep of the railway, look after repairs and in general have charge of all renewals and reconstruction. The engineering department is almost wholly connected with the surveying and construction of new lines, the maintenance-of-way department being separate. Some old railways have no chief engineer, the maintenance-of-way department doing all the civil engineering work, for these roads make no important extensions. The mechanical engineer on a railway has charge of the purchase and repair of rolling stock and all 30 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION machinery; and machines required in the repair of machinery. The mechanical engineer also pre- pares specifications for such equipment as the rail- way may have made to order or purchases under contract. Bridge engineering is practically a distinct profession, for many companies are engaged exclusively in the design and erection of bridges for railways and highways. Structural engineering is also a distinct pro- fession for few important buildings are erected to-day without steel or reinforced concrete frame- work and floor systems. Numbers of men trained as engineers go into surveying work, but not so many that it is right to say "A civil engineer is nothing but a surveyor," as so many illy-informed or mendacious mechanical and electrical engineers remark to parents who make inquiries with reference to selecting careers for their sons. Some surveyors work for the gov- ernment and are employed in making accurate surveys for the purpose of marking national boun- daries, determining the size and shape of the earth, topographical surveys as a basis for the develop- ment of sections of a country, etc. Some engineers go into private practice and specialize on surveys for determining land lines, settling property dis- putes, setting grades for ditches, for drainage or irrigation, etc. Others work all their lives for railways and other corporations, running instru- ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 31 ments, making maps and doing work of a similar nature in the development work upon which all such corporations are engaged. This latter class does not receive steady employment, the unfor- tunate wanderers never knowing how long a job will last and not receiving very high pay. The United States Government is doing a great deal of work in connection with irrigation develop- ment and within a very few years the drainage ques- tion has assumed wonderful importance. A num- ber of young graduates enter government employ each year in the irrigation and drainage depart- ments. Numbers of companies are engaged in pri- vate irrigation and land drainage enterprises, but the employment is uncertain and the pay poor. The demand for improved highways has led to the formation of an important department. The Bureau of Road Inquiry conducts investigations and gives free information on the subject, besides, giving young engineering graduates special train- ing in highway work, in order to prepare them to enter the employ of states in which highway improvement is a live issue. The pay for the rank and file is low, but state highway commissioners generally receive high salaries, which means a mingling of politics and efficiency, generally to the impairment of the latter. Members of the Engineer Corps of the United States Army are educated at West Point, the man standing at the head of the graduating class being 32 ENGINEEEING AS A VOCATION sent for a post-graduate course to an advanced engineering school. Civil engineers in the United States Navy, in charge of navy yards, etc., are selected after severe competitive examinations from graduates of good civil engineering schools. Naval engineers and naval architects are graduates of Annapolis who stand at, or near, the head of the graduating class and are then sent to special schools for more instruction. The greatest opportunities for engineering graduates to-day lie in the field of contracting and general construction work and the best training for this employment is to be had in the civil engineer- ing and mining engineering courses. The four great divisions of engineering, mili- tary and naval engineers being ranked merely as engineers, are: Civil Engineering, Mining Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering. mm Each is divided into numerous specialties, but the young man who takes a specialty in one of the above branches makes a mistake, unless he is preparing himself to fit into a certain position already provided. Every engineer ends by specializing to a greater or less extent. This is unavoidable in the conduct of the work of the world, but the fundamentals are ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 33 the same in all branches and for every specialty in each branch. For the average graduate several years must elapse before a permanent line of work is entered upon. Frequently this is not along the line of the specialty selected while at school. It is an axiom with experienced engineers that the specialty selects the man by a process of chance, rather than the man the specialty. ^Knowing this it seems the height of absurdity for schools, as many do, to require a student upon the completion of his freshman year to make a selection for the following three years' work from a bewildering list of specialties, when he has not really made up his mind as to why he chose the hard engineering course instead of the easy courses in which memory, rather than reasoning ability, enables one to secure high marks and make the honorary fraternities. The writer does not decry any desire on the part of ambitious young men to pursue some special subject after adequate preparation, pro- vided this is done in the same way that a man collects stamps, becomes a high-grade amateur photographer, or pursues any other hobby. A specialty, after adequate preparation, selected in such manner is a splendid thing and if the student finally makes it pay well he is to be congratulated. A specialty selected after a supposedly due con- sideration of the question, " Which specialty do you think pays best?" is frequently, in fact, gen- 34 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION erally disappointing. Proper consideration must be paid to other inclinations than the desire to earn money. The following clipping from The Chicago Tribune shows the point of view of practically all newspaper writers on the subject of the pro- fession of the engineer. This was taken from a page containing advertisements of schools, some technical schools being represented, but, of course, this fact cannot be supposed to have influenced the writer of the article clipped : FUTURE DEMANDS TRAINED ENGINEERS The field for the labors of the engineer constructive or electrical are practically unlimited. The student graduating from the accredited technical school is assured of good posi- tions months before he graduates. Indeed, it is a true embarrassment of riches when, as is repeated yearly with the graduating classes of every technical school, the youthful engineer has to choose between several enticing and profitable offers of employment before he has ceased to breathe school- room air. Only one among the multiplied advantages of engineering as a profession compared with the older professions of medi- cine and the law, is that the young engineer is entirely and comfortably self-supporting from the beginning earning a good salary from the start. The technical school trained engi- neer holds the world in his hand. Employers are waiting for him. Opportunities for ultimately becoming independent or his own employer, are legion. There does exist just the demand mentioned in the article, but there also exists a demand in ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 35 the business world for stenographers, clerks, book- keepers, and all classes of employes at entering pay. When the supply is large many employers have no hesitancy in dismissing older employes to make room for the younger men. This active demand will continue just as long as the supply is continuous of fresh young men, who work at low pay "to gain experience," hence the demand is largely artificial and fostered by the readiness with which it is supplied. A large employer of engineering graduates told the writer that 90 per cent, of his work was of such a nature that it could be acceptably done by young men, with little or no experience, provided with a good technical educa- tion. Consequently he did not pay very high salaries, wages he termed it, for there was a con- stant supply of just the sort of men he wanted, and at the first signs of dissatisfaction with pay he let men go. This fact is known by many engi- neers to satisfactorily explain the standing adver- tisements of large companies for draftsmen and designers. The following advertisement was clipped from another page of The Chicago Tribune: SITUATION WANTED Massachusetts Institute of Technology civil engineering graduate, 1911, age 26, having had several years' business experience as a bookkeeper and timekeeper for a contracting firm, desires a position where he can make use of his training and experience; salary no object. Address N 206, Tribune. CHAPTEE III THE EDUCATION OF THE ENGINEER engineering course comprises: Bight years grammar school, Four years high school, Four, five or six years technical school. The standard course in technical schools has been four years in length, but within the past ten years many American colleges and universities have established five- and six-year courses. Some have done this in order to give the students more purely cultural studies and some have added to the courses many things that seem to be essential nowadays to the education of the engineer along professional lines. In all colleges and universities offering a selection of courses for different degrees the engi- neering courses are avoided by lazy students and "the engineers" are looked upon as being the hardest worked students; their courses the most difficult. If a man cannot undertake such a train- ing as is above outlined he had better go into a business where the training is not so severe and expensive, for an engineering education costs from two thousand dollars up to any amount the student ,36 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 37 may be able to secure from his parents or guardians. By giving up the idea of studying engineering the man not perfectly adapted to the work will help the profession by enabling thou- sands of illy-paid, highly educated men to get bet- ter pay and steadier employment, besides giving them more zest in the doing of their work. While the regular method above outlined is the very best, there exist splendid opportunities for the men who missed their chance earlier in life. For such men good courses of instruction are given by some reputable correspondence schools, evening classes in the Y. M. C. A., evening classes, in high-grade technical schools, and in a few pri- vate schools giving individual instruction. Young fellows who can afford the time to go to college and study engineering in the proper manner have no place in these schools intended solely for men who missed early chances and now want instruction in special subjects. The man who works by day and studies in odd moments cannot possibly cover properly the broad and comprehensive schedule of studies provided by specialists in engineering- teaching for young fellows whose sole object, when under their instruction, is to prepare for their life work. The man studying under the severe handicaps incident to earning a living is apt to be hyper- critical and has neither the patience, nor the time, to take up any study from which he sees no hope 38 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION of immediate financial return. Night schools, therefore, arrange courses of study to meet the needs of these strictly utilitarian pupils. The young man going to a regular resident engineering school makes a mistake in taking up a specialty. The man who later in life endeavors to study the things he feels he sorely needs, is of necessity the most narrow of specialists. Occasionally men take up one subject after another in special schools, gradually getting the equivalent of a fairly com- plete engineering education. The percentage, however, is small and the result of the widely advertised special courses in engineering subjects has been to crowd the ranks with partly trained men who keep down pay and lower the dignity of the calling. It is sometimes a serious question whether it is wise to give the few who are worthy a chance, when in the giving of it so many are injured. There is a third way by which a man may obtain a fair engineering education, and that is by self -tutoring. The self -tutored man is one who endeavors to educate himself from books, without the assistance of teachers or correspondence schools. All honor to the man who succeeds in this stupendous undertaking which many start upon and few accomplish. It was the way in which 90 per cent, of the engineers were educated more than fifty years ago and a large percentage of engineers now living, who are past middle age, -ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 39 were self -tutored. That many achieved great suc- cess was due rather to the fact that the country needed them and they were instinctive engineers, than that they were ' ' practically educated. ' ' With the advent of the well-trained college graduate the self -tutored men are not so highly thought of as was once the case. Prior to the civil war there was considerable activity in railway building, and the engineering schools of the country were so few that it was hard to hold the graduates of West Point and Annapolis in the service of the army and navy, their education being so good along the lines of applied science. General McClellan, a graduate of West Point was chief engineer and manager of a railway when the war broke out. After the war ended the whole country, especially the west, experienced such a boom and there was so much railway building that the schools were again unable to supply enough engineers, so boys with the most elementary training were placed at drafting boards and bright young fellows were given a few lessons in handling surveying instruments, the result being that the country in dull times was crowded with "engineers," many of whom were hardly more than automatons, doing all the routine work connected with railway surveying and build- ing in a mechanical manner. One panic period lasting three or four years sufficed to enable the engineering schools, enormously increased in num- bers from the half dozen existing in the late 60 's, 40 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION to catch up and more than supply the legitimate existing demand, a condition of affairs that still exists. Much of the work done in engineering offices is of a nature which does not demand the full train- ing required by an engineer. Much of this work is drafting of a kind that merely requires a fair knowledge of standard methods of construction and the man who has worked around an office long enough "to soak it in," manages to eke out a fair living and is employed pretty constantly at pay which is about that of an average clerk. There are others who do nothing but make tracings, and obviously they do not require any more education than is given in grammar schools. Their pay is not high. Others are employed as blue printers, filing clerks, statisticians, timekeepers, rodmen, chain- men, etc. Nearly all enter upon the work with the idea of "learning it practically," the result being an imitation of the old-time British engi- neer, a technically trained mechanic. It is only an imitation, for in the case of the British boy a high premium was paid for the privilege of get- ting him into an office and some pains were taken to see that he managed to get the rudiments of an engineering education for the credit of the office, if for no other reason. The present-day boys and young men in American offices are not taken in as pupils. They are employed to do certain definite work that calls for no particular education and is ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 41 never more highly paid than is the work of a com- mon laborer, frequently not so highly paid as the work of a union laborer. It is this class of assistants that supports the correspondence schools, the evening classes, the private " practical" schools. A pitifully small number do amount to something after a while and from the very nature of engineering work a large percentage of engineers to the end of time will be men who have not received an education in resident technical schools. Some men prove by statistics based on records of men applying for membership in the national engineering societies, that very few men engaged in engineering work to-day are self- tutored. Their deductions are false, for, in the first place, the successful self -tutored men have to be urged to apply for membership in such societies, having a feeling that a prejudice exists against engineers who are non-graduates. In the second place a man has only to canvass the offices of engineers and make inquiries to discover that a large percentage of the engineers and their assistants to be found to-day are non-graduates. Many are high school graduates and many have had only one or two years in resident schools, while a great many have simply grown up in the business, starting in as office boys. The writer made a canvass of one hundred engineering offices and sixty architects' offices and the drafting offices 42 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION of forty manufacturing establishments to deter- mine these facts. The percentages were as follows : Graduates. Non-graduates. % % Engineers' offices 80 20 Architects' offices 22 78 Manufacturing plants 18 82 In engineers' offices the permanent positions are few and when an engineer has to increase his force he must have men already trained. This accounts for the high percentage of graduates in the offices of engineers in private practice. With architects the conditions of employment for drafts- men are better than with engineers in private practice. In manufacturing establishments there are many permanent positions for low-grade drafts- men. If this canvass had been made in the works and offices of the great electrical companies the percentages would probably have been ninety-five graduates to five non-graduates, but conditions of pay not improved. In manufacturing lines much of the work has been standardized and the drafting consists in tracing and making slight alterations in existing drawings to adapt them to other uses. There is very little high-class designing, empirical methods developed by many years of practice in a particular specialty being used. In electricity there is greater need of well-trained men than in mechanical work, for electrical practice has not vet been fully standardized. ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 43 The majority of men, however, who are trying to secure an engineering education by night study will never succeed, for their trouble is tempera- mental. They went into practical work instead of going to a technical school, because they imagined four years was too long a time to spend in study and thought there was some royal road to learn- ing. Some, in fact many, believed there was no necessity for all the studies the technical student must take. The desire to begin earning money led them to neglect the preliminary school training. Later in life they take up night study, but the impatient spirit still stirs within them and pre- vents rapid or great progress. Such men are gen- erally pretentious to a degree and are a positive detriment to the profession. A man succeeds in the present day because of one or all of three things, as compared with his com- petitors. They are : Superior intelligence, Greater energy, Superior preparation. The superior intelligence must be proven and it takes many years generally for a young chap to prove he has ordinary intelligence. The possession of greater energy must be proven and this takes years of hustle in competition with seasoned veterans in the battle for existence. Adequate preparation along lines which a century of experi- 44 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION ence in training engineers has shown to be good, is the finest backing that intelligence and energy can have. It is a mistake to permit a young fellow to go into a profession like engineering without the best technical training it is possible to secure. Sometimes the man who has a good training can make a small amount of energy and a mediocre brain carry him through life splendidly. What sort of an education does an engineer require ? In the first place he should be an excellent draftsman. Drafting is a universal language by means of which the designer conveys instructions to the workman. The graduate is employed for the first few years after graduation in minor posi- tions in which drafting is his principal occupation. If he is not a good draftsman he seldom has an opportunity to get a foothold in his chosen work. The engineer is lost without a sound knowledge of mathematics. The amount used in routine work is not great and there is a class of "rule of thumb" and "pocket-book" engineers, which decries the great stress laid upon a sound knowledge of mathe- matics by the men who head the engineering schools. It is a puzzling thing that the actual amount of mathematics required in daily work is so small, yet the men who have received the broad- est training in mathematics are the most reliable, and, in late life, are the most successful engineers. The first few years out of school are spent in ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 45 detail work and it is the young fellow, generally, who is intrusted with most of the research work requiring a knowledge of mathematics; work of a nature to seriously tax the patience of an older man. With the passing of years the work of the engineer becomes more executive and his knowl- edge of mathematics less sure. The fact that few eminent engineers can pass a satisfactory examina- tion in elementary mathematics and would flunk badly in the higher branches is no argument against the value of a thorough training in mathe- matics. It may be that the reason the men achieve marked success who acquire an understanding knowledge of mathematics is that they are instinctive engineers and so took the mathematical instruction intelligently as a necessary part of the preparation for their life work. Mathematics enable a man to investigate scientifically many things which might otherwise wait years for experimental proof. The rapid growth in the use of reinforced concrete as a structural material is an evidence of this. The invention of reinforced concrete was not due to an engineer. A gardener used wire netting- embedded in concrete in the construction of some large jars and an engineer saw the possibilities in such material. He possessed a sound knowledge of mathematics and mechanics and developed some theoretical formulas to explain the action of the internal stresses and to arrive at the correct 46 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION amount of steel required to reinforce concrete. Other engineers and mathematicians also worked at the problem and a number of hypotheses were worked out, differing slightly in detail, but prac- tically all giving nearly like results. In Europe the material Had a wider use than in the United States, which is naturally a backward country in taking up new ideas, and in which besides, certain patents gave a monopoly to a few con- cerns. When the patents expired the material came into common use and so many uneducated and half -educated men went into the business with empirical and rule of thumb methods of design that many accidents happened. A number of experiments were made from which simple for- mulas were derived, and it was discovered that the formulas and methods of the mathematicians of Europe were to all intents and purposes safe and their reasoning in the main correct. The presence of thousands of half-educated, self-styled engi- neers in this country was responsible for many disasters, the public having great confidence in the " practical" man and being fearful of the "theoretical" man. The writer has observed this strange sentiment for many years and has dis- covered that to be a practical man it is merely necessary for a man to style himself "practical" and rail at men who have spent good money to acquire an education. The public makes no inves- tigation into the qualifications of the self-styled ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION "practical" man, taking his word that he is prac- tical and that the trained man is a fool, and " theoretical." Because the word theoretical is used in an awesome manner it is thought to mean something dreadful. Barnum once made a state- ment that the people like to be humbugged. Theory is a plain statement of a law that has been proven. Hypothesis is an idea advanced as a theory. The man who takes a thorough engineer- ing course studies the theories underlying his work and thereby obtains a practical understanding of it. In engineering schools a large part of the instruction consists in a study of the work done by engineers and contractors in many parts of the world and during all the centuries. When a young fellow who has conscientiously pursued his engi- neering studies graduates, it does not take him long to acquire a first-hand practical knowledge of his work and to this he adds a knowledge of what other men have done. It is plain to see, therefore, that the theoretically trained man is the practical man. The man who has no school training in the underlying theory of his work and merely learns by seeing, without doing much, if any, reading, or without doing any reading under proper guidance, has only his own experience to guide him. He is practical to the extent that he has " picked up knowledge" by doing. Not being a student he knows little of what other men have done, except 48 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION men situated like himself whom he occasionally meets. Sometimes an idea strikes him and he pro- duces an hypothesis, dignifies it by the term of " theory" and starts on a wild goose chase, fre- quently finding men of means to advance money to push his wild ideas. The man who follows true theory is the practical man, for he follows what others before him proved to be true. The man who works by hypothesis will distort facts to attempt to prove himself right and is really the theoretical man in the sense that the average individual understands the meaning of theory. The " theoretical" man is not the educated man and the " practical" man is not the uneducated man. Anything which will enable a man to think soundly and act with intelligence has a place in the curriculum of an engineering school. Mathematics is, therefore, entitled to first place when it is taught as a tool and not as an end. In school a grade of 70 will carry a boy through and 90 gives him extremely creditable standing. In business a grade of 100, or perfect, is necessary to hold a position. Intelligence, plus a grade of 100, is absolutely necessary for advancement. The well- known " Gentleman's grade of C," of the old-time classical course is an inferior grade in the engi- neering course. A careful study of the biographies of successful engineers, appearing frequently in technical papers, will show that a surprisingly large number won prizes and had excellent stand- r ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 49 ing in many, if not all, of their studies while in school. Their careful, conscientious work at school enabled them to secure satisfactory positions upon graduation. When men were laid off in dull sea- sons these well-trained workers were retained.^ They were not all " greasy grinds," in spite of their~7 high standing, for many won enviable records on the athletic field. The engineering student must not forget that his training is for service and if he does not acquire industrious habits in school he will hardly change in character and acquire them later in life. The standards of schools exist- ure must not be permitted to dominate the schools intended for utilitarian training. Many young chaps fail in offices not only be- cause they are poor draftsmen, but because their training in mechanics has not been thorough. The training in mathematics is for the purpose of enabling mechanics to be properly studied and the two are essential. A common complaint against engineering graduates is that they are often able to chase "the elusive x through the mazes of a cubic equation" and yet cannot perform an ordi- nary problem in arithmetic. The time in school has been spent on the study of principles and laws with insufficient time for an application of the principles. The writer does not wonder at this very much, however, as he is well acquainted with a number of instructors in mathematics. Their 50 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION interest does not lie in teaching, but in the study of this, their favorite science. Each student is put through a course of instruction without any idea on the part of the instructor that he is to regard it as a tool, but merely because it is a part of the prescribed course of instruction. There are a few professors and instructors who rail bitterly at life because they must teach to earn a living. They think college is a fine place were it not for the students and their idea of happiness is to sit and study all day and night. The head of the insti- tution may require certain text books to be used, but an examination of the books will reveal the word "omit" written on every page where prac- tical examples are given, and at the beginning of every chapter filled with applications of the theory taught. It is not an uncommon thing to find a 300- page text book used and only a part of it given to the students when there are plenty of abridged works on the market which the teacher could use, supplementing the book with personal instruction were he not too lazy. Instead of using large books and giving a "skim" course, it would be better to give a short course from a small book and give it thoroughly. The writer believes that tutorial methods should be used to some extent in engineer- ing schools, so that the instructors in mathematics, graphics and mechanics could be changed every semester and thus the teachers of mathematics would learn to know what their students require. ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 51 If an instructor in mathematics were required to teach his poorly instructed class the following semester in mechanics he would improve as a teacher of mathematics. This lack of coordination is marked in small colleges where there is an engi- neering course newly established and the professor of engineering must rely upon the other older established departments to train his students in the fundamentals. It is also a fault in some large schools. Physics, of which mechanics is a branch, is a most important subject and chemistry is becoming daily of more importance as a part of the knowl- edge an engineer must possess. The engineer deals with materials and a proper study cannot be made of materials without thorough grounding in physics and chemistry. Every engineer must know how to lay out work and make surveys through strange countries. This requires a knowledge of surveying and exploratory surveying presupposes a knowledge of astronomy, which is, therefore, a part of the curriculum of all engineering schools. Sometimes it is taught as astronomy and sometimes it is a part of the course in surveying, enough of astronomy being given to determine latitude, longitude and time. A knowledge of geology is necessary to enable the engineer to extract metals and ores from the earth, form his excavations and embankments 52 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION properly, construct dams and reservoirs and put in stable foundations. All engineering studies such as the design of structures, the flow of water, sanitation, etc., are based upon mathematics, physics and chemistry, and the mathematical, physical and chemical sciences. Thoroughly grounded in these the student can study by himself, if need be, the higher sub- jects comprised in practical work. The men who have the most to do with the framing of courses of study for engineering schools are safe guides for the young men who seek infor- mation as to electives. The individual professors are wretched advisers, for each professor is a slave to his own course and magnifies its impor- tance. For instance, nothing more useless to an intending engineer can be imagined as an elective than the offered graduate courses in higher mathe- matics ; the prescribed courses are amply sufficient. If the head of the mathematical department, how- ever, is consulted he will generally advise mathe- matics. The professor of chemistry will sing the praises of advanced chemistry when the principal reason for the study of chemistry by an engineer is the acquisition of information. The professor of mechanics will advise technical mechanics and then more technical mechanics. These men all mean well, but they have deliberately chosen to withdraw themselves from the outside world and immure themselves in walls to deal forever with ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 53 immature minds and teach narrow special subjects. They are not qualified to advise the young man who is going out into the world to guard a home against the attack of the wolf. Neither can the professor of bridge design, of structural design, of sanitary engineering, of hydraulic engineering be counted a safe adviser, for each will unduly magnify his specialty. The entire course is arranged to give each of the subjects a proper representation and if there is any time left for electives the young man should take them in the humanities, literature, political economy, sociology, etc. The engineer changes the very face of nature. He makes millions of blades of grass grow where none grew before. He builds railroads which peo- ple the deserts. He erects factories and equips them. Thousands of people are employed through him and his employment. History, sociology, economics and philanthropy are studies with which he should be familiar. He deals with materials and for four years his studies are arranged to give him a proper knowledge of materials. His largest dealings are with men and until a very late period nothing was taught him about mankind. The study of English is most important. Engi- neers must make reports on the feasibility of pro- jects involving the expenditure of vast sums. The men who have the money to invest are usually of a class that cannot tolerate poor English and who 54 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION also like to have men in their employ who can act, speak and write like gentlemen. The ability to write a readable report is a valuable asset. It is becoming necessary nowadays for engineers to study the laws of business and the law of contract so that litigation may be avoided. The average lawyer is sadly lacking in the ability to write intelligible English and in earlier days when every engineer assumed it to be part of the work of a lawyer to prepare all legal papers, there was much litigation over contracts. To-day few contracts and specifications are seen by lawyers and the ability to properly express his meaning, together with the marked lessening of litigation over con- struction work, has strengthened the engineer with his employers. The work of the engineer often takes him to foreign lands. There are also numer- ous international conventions. In every country there are many technical societies holding frequent meetings to describe and discuss work in progress and publishing bulletins containing reports of these meetings and discussions. Science has no national boundaries and all men of science, pure and applied, are brothers. The modern engineer, therefore, should possess a reading knowledge, at least, of French and German, while a knowledge of Italian and Spanish will wonderfully increase his power for research. The training of engineers is so broad at the best schools and the overlapping of the various ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 55 branches is so marked, that it is not uncommon to see graduated civil engineers employed on work considered the proper employment for mechanical or electrical engineers, while the latter are often put on work of a strictly civil engineering char- acter. The mining engineer receives such a diver- sified training that he is to be found everywhere doing all kinds of work. In every school where various branches of engi- neering are taught it is usual to have the courses identical for the freshman and the first half of the sophomore year. In the second half of the sopho- more year there is a slight difference and a final separation in the junior year. However, a num- ber of studies are the same even in the third and fourth years, but the hours are different, some branches taking a three-hour course while others take only one or two hours. Each school varies the standard curriculum slightly according to local influences. The majority of graduates find employment near the school and the curriculum naturally reflects to some extent the industry of most importance in that section of the country. Some of the older schools have a large number of the alumnae employed in a certain line of work, and as the alumnae are always loyal to their alma mater and give her graduates the pref- erence when assistants are required, it is natural that the school will lay stress on the line of work in which the greatest number of graduates find 56 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION employment. Here is a slight hint as to the selection of a school. A very old school with an honorable name is a splendid place-finder for grad- uates likely to do it credit. The newer schools find it somewhat more difficult to place graduates. A disadvantage often found in old schools is intense conservatism and an overabundant supply of " inbred" instructors. Frequently a new school is good because all the teaching staff has been selected for proved ability and a desire to start a new school thoroughly abreast of the times, unhampered by traditions. This is excellent if the departments of mathematics, physics and chem- istry in the older part of the institution will arrange courses of value to engineers and not con- sider the " culture" requirements of budding theologues, lawyers and physicians as sufficient for technical men. The man who tries to start a school to satisfy critics in the ranks of practical engineers is fore- doomed to failure. The wisest men recognize that no school can turn out engineers, but that all schools should turn out young fellows trained to be good engineering assistants and having enough education to be ready for advancement when it comes. The chief criticism against the schools is that the boys are not well enough drilled in prac- tice, lack of time preventing more than the instill- ing of principles. It is a serious criticism, but unjust, for all men are not endowed with the brains ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 57 to be good engineers. All the young chaps who study engineering are not entitled to be termed "ingenious," for many are one degree removed from extreme simplicity. Because of the very large number of engineering school graduates there is quite a respectable sprinkling of those who lack ordinary intelligence in practical affairs; enough of them to bring undeserved reproach upon the schools. The best reply possible to some severe critics is to remind them that they are themselves grad- uates of the schools they criticise. Many of them who met with trials after graduation may have been mistaken in taking up engineering and stuck to the work simply because they did not like to feel their time had been wasted, and, as the years rolled by, they gradually developed into engineers. The training, after all, was their salvation. This, of course, is merely a personal opinion formed after studying some men who would like to try their hands at revising engineering curricula. They are the sort of men who come always unprepared to class and want the notes of the lesson in advance to study instead of the longer text. Men who only learn to study after many bitter experiences, their early experiences having led them to rely always upon a teacher. Faults in schools do exist and the writer will touch upon a few on other pages, but these faults are being remedied each year as teachers come together and as more of the 58 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION high-class professors combine teaching and the practice of engineering. The courses of study have been so well tried out in the years gone by, and the number of men successfully educated at the schools is such a large per cent, of the whole that inferior instructors and assistant professors cannot do much harm when there is a real man at the head of the department. It is only when the head of the department is weak that the school suffers this being true of any business. Typical courses of engineering may be repre- sented by the following, taken from the annual catalogue of the University of Illinois, Urbana, 111. The figures following the subject indicate the num- ber of recitation hours per week, each hour of recitation being assumed to require two hours of preparation. The university receives aid from the United States Government so a certain amount of military instruction is given. All engineering schools do not have military instruction. FRESHMAN YEAR Common to all courses. First Semester General Engineering Drawing 4 Trigonometry 2 Advanced Algebra 3 French, German, Spanish or English 4 Shop Practice 3 Military Drill 1 Gymnasium 1 Total semester hours. . . 18 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 59 Second Semester Descriptive Geometry 4 Analytical Geometry 5 French, German, English, Rhetoric or Spanish . . 4 Shop Practice 3 Military Drill 1 Military Regulations 1 Gymnasium 1 Total semester hours 19 SOPHOMORE CIVIL ENGINEERING First Semester Differential Calculus 5 Physics, Lectures 3 Physics, Laboratory 2 Rhetoric 3 Surveying 5 Military Drill 1 t Total semester hours 19 Second Semester Integral Calculus 3 Physics, Lectures 2 Physics, Laboratory 2 Rhetoric 3 Analytical Mechanics 3 Topographical Surveying 4 Railroad Curves 1 Military Drill 1 Total semester hours. . , 19 60 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION JUNIOR CIVIL ENGINEERING First Semester Engineering Materials 1 Analytical Mechanics 2.5 Eesistance of Materials 3.5 Railroad Surveying 5 Chemistry 4 Total semester hours 16 Second Semester Hydraulics 3 Eoad Engineering 2 Graphic Statics 2 Astronomy or Geology 5 Steam Engines and Boilers 3 Principles of Economics 2 Total semester hours 17 SENIOR CIVIL ENGINEERING First Semester Masonry Construction 5 Bridge Analysis 2 Bridge Details 3 Tunnelling 1 Metal Structures 1 Water Supply Engineering 4 Thesis 1 Total semester hours. . . 17 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 61 Second Semester Masonry and Reinforced Concrete Design 2 Bridge Design 5 Advanced Bridge Analysis 2 Engineering Contracts and Specifications 2 Seminary 1 Sewerage 3 Thesis 2 Total semester hours 17 Every senior student must prepare a thesis to defend Ms right to receive a degree in engineering. Modern thesis work generally is of a research nature. The time given above to thesis work rep- resents the time given by the instructional staff in assisting the students in this work. The seminary item refers to the time devoted by the dean of the school in leading topical discussions on articles appearing in technical papers, thus making the boys ready against the time when they will leave school and must thereafter depend upon them- selves in hunting up authorities, etc. If a tech- nical school does nothing more than guide a student in the selection of and inspire a dis- criminating taste for good technical literature it accomplishes much, as was recently said by the editor of Engineering News. 62 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION SOPHOMORE MECHANICAL ENGINEERING First Semester Similar to Civil Engineering, with the omission of sur- veying, substituting : Machine Shop 3 hours Machine Design 2 hours Second Semester Similar to Civil Engineering, with the omission of topographical surveying and railroad curves, substituting : Machine Shop 2 hours Steam Engineering 3 hours JUNIOR MECHANICAL ENGINEERING. First Semester Engineering Materials 1 Analytical Mechanics 2.5 Eesistance of Materials 3.5 Power Measurements 2 Mechanism 3 Integral Calculus 2 Chemistry 4 Total semester hours. . , 18 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION Second Semester Thermodynamics 3 Machine Design 3 Seminary 1 Analytical Mechanics 3 Dynamo Machinery 4 Engineering Chemistry 3 Total semester hours 17 SENIOR MECHANICAL ENGINEERING First Semester Heat Engines 2 Mechanics of Machinery 3 Machine Design 3 Mechanical Laboratory 3 Seminary 1 Alternating Currents 2 Principles of Economics 2 Total semester hours 16 Second Semester Design of Power Plants 3 Seminary 1 Thesis 3 Kailway Engineering or Surveying 2 Economic Problems 2 Elective 2 Total semester hours 16 SOPHOMORE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING Same as Mechanical Engineering. 64 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION JUNIOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. First Semester j Engineering Materials 1 Analytical Mechanics 2.5 Eesistance of Materials 3.5 Dynamo-electric Machinery 3 Electrical Engineering Laboratory 2 Electrical and Magnetic Measurements 2 Chemistry 4 Total semester hours 18 Second Semester Hydraulics 3 Alternating Currents 4 Electrical Engineering Laboratory 2 Electrical and Magnetic Measurements 2 Steam Engineering 3 Total semester hours 16 SENIOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING First Semester Seminary 1 Advanced Alternating Currents 3 Electrical Distribution 3 Electrical Engineering Laboratory 2 Electrical Design 2 Thermodynamics 3 Principles of Economics 2 Total semester hours 16 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 65 Second Semester Power Plants 3 Seminary 1 Electrical Engineering Laboratory 2 Power Plant Design 1 Thesis 3 Mechanical Engineering Laboratory 3 Economic Problems 2 Electives 2 Total semester hours 17 A course in mining engineering has been established at the University of Illinois within the past two years and reflects the principal mining industry, coal, of the state. The following fairly typical mining course is that of the Montana State School of Mines, Butte, Mont. : FRESHMAN YEAR First Semester First Term Second Term Hours per week Hours per week Higher Algebra 3 3 Trigonometry 5 5 Chemistry, Lectures 3 3 Chemistry, Laboratory 9 9 English 2 2 Descriptive Geometry 2 2 Mechanical Drawing 6 6 Total . . 30 30 66 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION Second Semester First Term Second Term Hours per week Hours per week Analytical Geometry 5 5 Plane Surveying, Theory 3 3 Descriptive Geometry 2 2 Chemistry, Lectures 3 3 English 2 2 Chemistry, Laboratory .6 6 Mechanical Drawing 9 9 Total 30 30 SOPHOMORE YEAR First Semester Calculus 5 5 Physics 6 6 Chemistry, Lectures 2 2 Mineralogy, Lectures 2 2 Mineralogy, Laboratory 6 Surveying, Field Work 15 Topographical Drawing 9 Total 30 30 Second Semester Calculus, Analytical Mechanics ... 5 5 Physics 4 4 Chemistry, Lectures 1 1 Chemistry, Laboratory 9 9 Mine Surveying, Theory 2 2 Mineralogy, Lectures 3 Geology, Lectures 3 Mineralogy, Laboratory 6 16 Total . . 30 40 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 67 JUNIOR YEAR First Semester First Term Second Term Hours per week Hours per week Mechanics 5 5 Mining 2 2 Geology 5 5 Metallurgy, Lectures 3 3 Mine Surveying, Practice 15 Chemistry 6 Graphics 9 Total 30 30 Second Semester Mechanics and Hydraulics 5 5 Mining 2 2 Geology, Lectures 5 5 Metallurgy, Lectures 3 3 Engineering Design 6 6 Geology, Field Work 3 3 Metallurgy, Laboratory 3 3 Chemistry, Laboratory 3 3 Total 30 30 SENIOR YEAR First Semester Geology 5 5 Mining 2 2 Ore Dressing, Lectures 3 Metallurgy 3 2 Power Transmission 3 3 Assaying 15 Geology, Field Work 3 Ore Dressing, Laboratory 3 Engineering Design 6 Total . . 28 27 68 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION Second Semester f First Term Second Term Hours per week Hours per week Mining 3 3 Ore Dressing, Lectures 2 2 Ore Dressing, Laboratory 3 3 Metallurgy, Lectures 3 3 Metallurgy, Laboratory 3 3 Mechanical Engineering 5 5 Engineering Design 6 6 Petrography 5 5 Total 30 30 The attention of the reader is directed to the number of hours per week at the school of mining engineering as compared with the hours per week at the University of Illinois. Thirty hours is a pretty heavy course to carry, yet it is done in many schools and the students seem to be none the worse for it. Their work is no more arduous than that of youths of the same age employed in offices and shops and around mines. Assuming seventeen hours per week, each hour supposed to involve two hours of preparation and we have a total of fifty-one hours per week spent on studies. Assuming that four of the seventeen hours were laboratory work, which counts one-half, the stu- dent has then actually put in about fifty-nine hours per week on his work. This is an average of prac- tically ten hours per day for six days. In the mining course above described the laboratory; ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 69 periods may be deducted, that is, only the time placed in the schedule may be counted. It will be seen then that there is not a great difference. The work, however, at all mining schools is much heavier than the work at other schools. There is one item, however, to be fully considered in all statements regarding work at all colleges and universities. Very few students actually spend two hours in preparation for one hour of lecture or recitation. The children in the grammar schools put in five hours per day for five days and many of them spend two hours per day in home work, thus getting in thirty-five hours per week. Very few men who have gone through the average schools have considered themselves hard worked, except while in school, saying in later years that they could easily have carried more work if com- pelled to do so. Eighteen hours class and six hours laboratory, a total of twenty-one catalogue hours, is not too much to ask of engineering students, and if this were done and a longer course given, a more general education would make them better men and increase their opportunity to earn a living after leaving school. The fact that students are required at many institutions to select a specialty at the end of their Freshman year, before they have a realizing sense of what the profession is, has been referred to. This happens for several reasons. In the first place there is a certain amount of advertising done 70 ENGINEEKING AS A .VOCATION, by all schools to attract students and when one school advertises a certain special course all the other schools near by feel compelled to follow suit or fall in the estimation of the public. The newspapers are greatly to blame for get- ting parents of growing boys excited. A large city constructs a vast water works system and the project attracts the attention of special newspaper and magazine writers who play the thing for all it is worth. Little wonder when some of these men receive $50 per page. In the descriptions a great deal of attention is paid to the picturesque side of the engineer's work and the few engineers who receive large salaries are paraded before the pub- lic until the fathers and mothers begin to believe that their sons must study hydraulic engineering. The schools hunting for students scent the popular demand and immediately thereafter it is announced that courses in the highly paid specialty of hydraulic engineering are to be started. The work of the United States Bureau of Eoad Inquiry compelled the starting of many special courses in highway engineering. A great piece of sanitary work like the Chicago drainage canal or the Wash- ington filtration plant calls for special courses in sanitary engineering. The wonderful interest in concrete work during the past ten years, due to the advertising of the cement manufacturers, has stimulated interest in concrete engineering and thousands of boys are specializing in reinforced ENGINEERING AS A .VOCATION 71 concrete design. Always the same idea to get into line on some kind of work that is exciting public interest with the idea that bigger pay may be had. Few of the young fellows who take up a specialty are really imbued with a love for engineering work, but are going into it with the mistaken idea that it pays well, provided a fellow can select the most popular line. In the larger schools, owing to the sizes of the classes it is impossible for any teacher to teach more than one subject, so the schools are full of specialists, each clamoring to be the head of a department and this, added to the will-o'-the-wisp search of parents for remunerative vocations for their offspring hurts the profession. The writer, in common with the majority of engineers who have had a fairly broad experience, believes the desig- nations of Civil, Mechanical, Electrical and Min- ing Engineer should disappear in the curriculum of the schools and there should be given one gen- eral engineering course, with special courses which the graduates may take later. This general course could be so arranged as to afford considerable choice of subjects in the last year, thus enabling a student to specialize along certain lines only after he has completed the fundamentals of all engineering work, and has had sufficient vacation experience to enable him to choose intelligently among a lot of offered courses those which he feels sure will be of the greatest value to him immedi- 72 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION ately upon graduation. The schools might also drop the three months' vacation and adopt the plan of the Michigan College of Mines, Houghton, Mich., and the University of Chicago, in which the year is divided into four twelve-week terms. The student may take three terms each year and complete the course in four years, or, by taking four terms each year complete the course in three calendar years. A proper engineering course, however, cannot be completed in four school years, or three calendar years if the greatest good is to result to the student. As will be referred to further on the managers of large corporations and special interests are also largely responsible for the numerous specialties in engineering schools. The profession is now so well stocked with embryo engineers that the schools can well afford to cease adopting methods for attracting students and devote more time to turn- ing out the very best possible product. The slogan of the advanced woman is "Not more children, but better children," and the schools having more than caught up with the legitimate demand for engi- neers can afford to say "Not more engineering graduates, but the best possible quality of grad- uates." How the state universities will be able to do this the writer will not attempt to answer, but the privately endowed institutions can well afford to do it. By a reduction in the size of the classes they will require smaller quarters and less equip- ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 73 ment and can afford to employ a smaller number of instructors, who should receive larger pay. Owing to the very large number of students and the result- ing large number of underpaid instructors the best trained engineers are not always to be found among the graduates of the larger institutions with their well-equipped laboratories and shops. Many kings among engineers have been turned out of schools not sufficiently equipped according to modern standards, but with the log on which Mark Hopkins sat and the faithful old teacher whose heart is in his work sitting at one end, ready to prove that after all a sound training in the funda- mentals of engineering science goes a long way when the material to work upon is of proper cali- ber. A good workman can do fine work with a very lean equipment of tools when his material is good. The best workman with the finest tools, however, does only a botch job with poor material. More care should be exercised in the admission of students and the publicity managers should be cautioned to be careful in advertising the engi- neering courses. In European schools there seems to be no rule about the granting of degrees. The custom seems to be to give a diploma to a graduate, who then styles himself "Dipl. Eng.," and after he has acquired some standing and presents a thesis to show he possesses capacity to do original work, he is granted the degree of Doctor of Engineering, 74 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION the word " Doctor" signifying "A person of great learning; a superior teacher." In America the degree awarded depends to some extent, in fact, largely, upon the attitude of the advertising department of the school. A false estimate is placed upon the salary attracting value of a degree by the boys who attend engineer- ing schools and by their parents. Students are attracted to a school by the advertisement that upon graduation they will receive the degree of C.E. (Civil Engineer) ; M.E. (Mechanical Engi- neer) ; E.E. (Electrical Engineer), or E.M. (Engi- neer of Mines). The school, therefore, that is anxious to attract students is apt to give the pro- fessional degree upon graduation. The absurdity of this, however, is gradually filtering into the heads of the advertising managers of the best schools and the professional degree is being shelved by some and has been abandoned by others. No school can graduate an engineer. The engi- neer must have experience added to the school training. The school can only give an education in the fundamentals of engineering science. Engi- neering is not wholly an exact science, but is mainly an art depending upon scientific methods for its existence and growth. The school gives only the scientific groundwork and hence should confer degrees only in science. The engineer supplements this scientific training with practical experience so that, by and by, the scientist sent out by the school ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 75 becomes a man who practises an art in a scientific way. A few good schools still give the professional degree instead of a bachelor degree upon com- pletion of the four-year course. The majority, however, of the better schools now grant the degree of Bachelor of Science. A student taking one or two years additional work in residence receives upon completion of this work the professional degree, but few except those who intend to become teachers take any graduate work. An attempt was made a year or two ago to have the schools abandon the professional degree altogether, for the letters C.E., M.B., etc., are merely abbreviations of the words Civil Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, etc., and, as such, are assumed by a great many men without college training, who are practising engi- neering. There are no laws to prevent them from doing so if they wish, so the professional degree is now not only an absurdity, but it is also meaning- less. The men who have received it by doing extra work prize it, but wish there was some protection afforded the rightful owners. Instead of the professional degree it is pro- posed to substitute the degree of Master of Science as a second degree, for graduate work. For a third degree the degree of Doctor of Science in Engi- neering is proposed for additional work of a research nature to engineering teachers and the degree of Doctor of Engineering for research work 76 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION for men who are practising engineering and have taken this additional work in residence. This degree of Doctor of Engineering to be also an honorary degree to be conferred on engineers eminent in their profession who have been in active practice not less than twenty-five years. Degrees are academic affairs and the younger engineers are just as well off with a diploma or almost any kind of a certificate setting forth the extent of the engineering education received. Older men prize degrees as an attest of standing. With teachers the degree is purely a matter of business and engineering should have degrees like any other university subject. A great many men seek degrees and prize them so the way the matter often works out was called to the attention of the writer some time ago. A young chap who was a " shark" at mathematics and all the purely theoretical subjects and purely scientific subjects in his course, graduated from a high-class engineering school and tried to work as an engineer. To explain things that happened it is well to say that among many of his classmates he was known as " Kitty," the name being intended to designate something real nice and dainty. He was a positive failure as a practising engineer. He lacked tact. He lacked real horse-sense. He made people feel as if he might be soiled if touched or might cry if spoken to rudely. He lacked accuracy in most of the common-place work he was given ENGINEEKING AS A VOCATION" 77 and was a hair splitter of the most exasperating kind. He was also greatly given to argument and had a poor sense of proportion, as applied to com- parisons of school-bred and practically trained men. As an instance of how abjectly he failed to satisfy his employers he worked in five offices in a period of seven months in a busy year when men were in demand. He got a job finally as time- keeper on a construction job and held it one week after making a number of mistakes and showing plainly that he did not fit in with the rough work. The rush and hurry bothered him also, for he was, by nature and cultivation, made for the schoolroom and the library. In fact, he should really have studied for the ministry. He was a good-looking chap and had a kind heart, so that the men imposed on him with hard-luck stories everywhere he worked. Finally he landed a job as a tracer and general helper in a railway office, which job he held until the following fall, when he went back to school to take advanced work and obtain the degree of C.E. His experience of fifteen months in "prac- tical" work enabled him to get a billet as instructor upon graduation. His short experience proved that he had not the makings of an engineer in him, or perhaps that what he might have had originally had been educated out of him. Although his col- lege dubbed him "Civil Engineer" and the diploma hanging in his bedroom attests the fact, he is not one and never will be one in the sense that an 78 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION engineer is generally meant. To do the man justice it is fair to say that he is a shining success as a teacher. Rankine, however, the greatest professor of engineering, was a practising engineer for years and resigned as chief engineer of a railway to become a professor. Prom the school which graduated " Kitty" another man of the same age graduated a year or two earlier. He made friends on every piece of work on which he was employed. In the office and in the field he seemed to be equally at home. When he was laid off it was because the job had ended and all his past employers praise him highly, except one, who was a pretentious man of small parts on whose pet hobbies the better educated young man, pardonably bumptious because of his youth, stepped rather hard a few times. After several years of successful work he applied to his Alma Mater for the professional degree. It had so happened that opportunity had, as yet, thrown no important work his way, his positions having all been minor ones as assistant. He made good, how- ever, and is a graduate of whom a school should feel well satisfied. He will do big things some day when the opportunity comes, for it is in him. His request for the professional degree was not granted " because his ability to do original work is not proven and the work he has so far been engaged upon has been in minor positions carrying little responsibility." The reasons for declining to give ENGINEERING AS A .VOCATION 79 him the coveted degree may be good, but he was further informed that if he put in one year of resi- dence work he could obtain it. It is plain to any- one that the man who is now sporting the degree of " Civil Engineer" is really a Master of Science and such should have been the degree given to him. If he did not feel the incongruity of the matter the second young man, the real engineer, would not fee! so bitterly over it. He does not object in the least to the school placing a high value on the pro- fessional degree, but he feels queer when he meets " Kitty" and knows that the school calls him an engineer while practical men under whom he tried to work call him things not so complimentary. The graduate of a technical school should be able to think and reason mathematically. He should not think in mathematics, which is some- thing different ; the man who does the latter being better fitted to become a physicist, or a teacher of mathematics. No student should become absorbed in the tools, for, if he does, he will forget their proper use. Too many graduates come out with very vague ideas of their life work and this is due to the fact that even the best school cannot make an engineer of the unfit. It is a reminder of the old proverb about the silk purse and the sow's ear. Many practical men, unaware of the difficulties under which a teacher must labor, condemn whole- sale the American schools and praise the schools of Europe, especially of Germany. No one doubts the 80 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION very high standing of the German schools, but the difference is in the lower grades rather than in the higher schools, the technical high school in Ger- many corresponding to our technical schools here. Many eminent Germans have said the American engineering schools are as good as any in the world, as engineering schools, but that as schools devoted to research and research methods they are inferior to the schools of Europe. The American public school system is based on the idea that each male pupil has an equal chance to occupy the Presi- dential chair and that each girl has an equal chance to become the wife of the President. This idea is carried out to some extent in the engineer- ing schools, where the endeavor seems to be to train boys to fill positions as chief engineers. Rest- lessness, envy and discontent are marked American traits and these, in part, account for the success of so many foreign engineers who come to the United States and succeed, even with the handicap of having to learn a new language. Few teachers in American engineering schools tell the truth to their pupils about conditions as they actually exist. Nothing is said about the ninety-nine privates in the company, to use a military simile, but the cap- tain is a hero. The captain himself, however, is only a minor officer and it is the colonel over twelve captains and the generals over three or nine colonels, who are held up as examples for the emulation of the boy. The majority of the schools ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 81 do not aim to fit the boys to fill the positions in the ranks and fill them acceptably, so that finally the private may become a corporal, the corporal a sergeant, the sergeant by hard effort becomes a lieutenant and then having placed his feet on the lower round of the ladder of promotion, his future is secure. The majority of the graduates look upon themselves as cadets in training for a com- mission which is theirs by right of scholastic train- ing, upon graduation. The boys may be taught to do the work that belongs to the minor positions, but they are taught no respect for the work, it being regarded as some- thing disagreeable which all young fellows must do for awhile, but which should not be done for a long time, nor be considered as anything more than a bit of perfunctory training. The German studies for the power that education gives him. The American boy studies to enable him to earn big money and escape drudgery. This is shown by the rush toward specialties reflecting big work being done in the vicinity of the homes of the students. The German does not grumble at the prospect of six years of severe training, during which time he imbibes a love for the work, while the constant cry of Americans is that vocational courses in portions of engineering work be cut down to two years. A prominent educator, in addressing a class of engineering students said, "Our aims are high. If 82 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION I thought that this school will turn out any men who will be nothing better than draftsmen and detail men all their lives, I would feel ashamed and deem the school a failure." It is unfortunate remarks such as this that cause many men to fail, "For who hath despised the day of small things." The German idea of education is different from the American, so that boys going to the technical high schools are better trained in the minor things than the average American boy is trained. At the higher schools there is also a difference due to the fact that the "private docent" in Germany, the "tutor" in Great Britain, have no prototype in American schools. The student here is wholly at the mercy of the lazy or incompetent instructor for his drill in mathematics and the studies lying at the foundation of the training for his future life work, seldom coming in contact with the high- grade professor until in the two final years he has good stiff courses to take with him, predicated upon perfect preparation. If he flunks he must go to a private tutor and pay him $1 per hour for cram work. In the foreign schools he can desert the regular instructor when he has taken his measure and go to the outsider, the "privat docent," who is, however, a recognized institution and not wholly an outsider. The higher teachers are often recruited from the ranks of the "privat docents," or "tutors," who have demonstrated their fitness. It is no uncommon thing in a ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 83 European university to find a "privat docent" in fairly active competition with a well-known pro- fessor. The writer has no wish to be ranked with the men who are wholesale in their condemnation of American schools of engineering. He has no wish to be ranked with the men who condemn at all, but he is not blind to some grave defects which are easily remedied and which exist because few teachers are . able to realize that their former students have grown to be men, and actually have a better knowledge of conditions than the teachers themselves. Few men whose opinions are worth anything care to see much of a change from stand- ard curricula. Engineering teachers have organizations, as before mentioned, in which many prominent practitioners hold membership. In many schools the alumnae are represented on the governing- boards and these men endeavor to correct defects they observed while students. There are many teachers who are not graybearded book worms, but who are live, energetic men who made a success of practical work and later took up teaching from choice. Many of them are of high rank as con- sulting engineers, and in conventions of engineers are listened to with respect and are placed at the heads of good committees. " Common sense and mathematics" are a good combination. Considering the fact that the financial reward 84 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION of the teacher is limited and fixed in amount, a deadening influence on most men, it is gratifying to meet so many high-minded, energetic teachers whose fondness for their work leads them to stay with it when everyone who meets them knows they are able to compete with the best men on the outside. The writer never visits an engi- neering school without experiencing the charm that holds men in the walls and believes that in many ways the rewards of the profession are greater for the high-minded, high-grade teacher than for the leading practising engineer. All suc- cess cannot be measured in financial terms. One amusing thought, however, is that all engineering teachers class themselves with the best of the active practitioners and thus count themselves very much underpaid, this having considerable to do with their lack of results. The principal defect in engineering schools is the " inbreeding" caused by a too rapid growth of the engineering department and lack of sufficient funds to procure proper instructors. Many instructors are of the " God-to-be-pitied" class, so that a home is necessary for them. The pay in the grade of instructor is so low that a man who is well adapted to go out into the world and win a living in competition with other men in the same line of work will not consider it. The result is that numbers of young men graduate from a school in the spring and in the fall enter the same school ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 85 as instructors, their knowledge limited to what is taught within the walls of that institution, and, like all small men, become vainglorious and prideful within a few years so that progress for them is impossible. The boys who pass under their hands are in a pitiful plight. In mathematics and physics especially, these men are bad, for after conducting one class through the text book the teacher can rest his brain and become just as lazy as he likes, and that is often very lazy indeed when a man's brain begins to atrophy, so that many professors actually get the idea strongly fixed in their heads that "once a teacher, always a teacher," regardless of whether their work is productive of real results. On this point the reader is referred to an editorial entitled "About Dismissing Professors," in the Popular Science Monthly for March, 1911. Many instructors did try practical work for a short time after graduation, as will be remembered was the case with "Kitty," but returned to the school, like a cat to a comfortable home, when opportunity offered. Teaching is a distinct call- ing and many do make excellent teachers finally, but the present hap-hazard way of holding on to teachers without requiring definite results from their work is not seemly when taken in connection with such a practical profession as that of engi- neering. Teachers should be better paid and should be retained, as other workers are, only 86 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION when they prove their ability. Many teachers resent very strongly the idea that their work should be measured by results. The college to a teacher is a home, and sometimes a graduate, smarting under insult, injustice and incompetency, has to wait twenty years before he can get on the governing board of his Alma Mater and attend personaly to the discharge of a teacher he knows to be unfit. Practical men frequently state that in no line of work can a man make a living with less real effort and smaller results than as a member of a teaching force in a college, engineering schools not excepted. The same trouble is found in pub- lic offices and in the offices of all large corporations where there are enough good, earnest, hard workers to enable a lot of lazy incompetents to hold down jobs without detection. The pay of a professor lags about ten years behind the average of the pay of engineers in active prac- tice. At the start there is scarcely any difference, but the teaching engineer has an advantage in that he holds practically a life position, where he may, if he wishes, work with all the enthusiasm and energy of the clock-watching clerk. The pay of a good professor never rises above the average the first-class, successful engineer may figure con- fidently on securing after fifteen years' work. A good professor however, often makes a great deal of money as a consulting engineer, his work ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 87 for the school being the finest sort of advertise- ment. A vast improvement might be made in many schools by making it a rule to require all instruc- tors to be graduates of other schools, with not less than two years' practical experience after graduation. The instructors should not be employed upon one study, but should be required to be prepared to teach at least four subjects, one subject each semester, thus compelling them to grow. It is deadening for a man to teach graphics all his life, or to carry advanced algebra year after year, or to teach any subject in which the advance to-day is small, if there is any advance. Too much specialization is the trouble with the schools, not alone in the courses taught, but in the teachers. In American schools there is a class of teachers known as "flunkers," who seem to think that about 25 per cent, is the minimum number to " flunk" at examination. What would be thought of a workman in a factory if 25 per cent, of his product day after day were condemned? How many days would he last ? A teacher who regularly flunks a high number of his students is a misfit, for a real teacher will soon remedy the trouble, if there be any other trouble than laziness on his part. Sometimes it appears to an outsider that instead of the teachers who handle the students during the first two years being the most poorly paid, the case should be reversed and the pro- 88 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION fessors in the foundation studies should receive the highest pay and take charge of the students from the day they enter college. The graduate requires his mathematics during the last two years of school and during the three years immediately following graduation. The higher engineering problems, for which he is most carefully trained by the highest paid men in school, are things he cannot hope to approach for many years after graduation, for the outside world deems con- siderable experience is first necessary. When ready finally to take up such problems there should be no difficulty in reading up and studying the matter, for on such projects one is seldom unduly hurried. It is really in the fundamentals, th.e tools of his work, he should be best trained. Require not less than two years' practical experience before appointing a man an instructor and also require recommendations from his employers, to insure getting an intelligent man. Do not select as an instructor a graduate of the institution. No man should be appointed an assist- ant professor until he has been an instructor at least five years, and in the case of an assistant pro- fessor there is no objection to taking a graduate of the institution, providing he has had not less than two years' practical work, and has taught in another engineering school not less than five years. This will do away with " inbreeding" and should keep men alive. ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 89 To ascertain just how well the teachers are doing their work permit the graduates to help improve conditions. The fifth year after grad- uation, thus allowing time for the clearing away of youthful bitterness and animosity, each grad- uate should be sent a blank to be carefully filled in, in which he is to reply categorically to a list of inquiries respecting the members of the teaching force at the school while he was there. This report to be confidential between the man who makes it and the President of the institution. The grad- uates can thus have full opportunity to help their Alma Mater and show-up the weak points of the teaching staff, and if the head of the institution is fit for his position he will know what to do, and how to do it. In studying such reports he is not dealing with immature graduates, but with men who are experiencing the hard knocks of life, after having supposedly been prepared for their life work at the school whose instructors they are invited to criticise. The essential difference between engineering instruction in Germany and America is that the attempt is made in Germany to give a complete scientific course and train men in the application of science to industry. They graduate technicians there. Even with the amount of practical work now required, the graduate is a technically-trained scientist, who understands that his education is for power, and that it alone does not entitle him 90 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION to high pay, but that it does open wide for him the door of opportunity. The American ideal has been lower and too much the result of listening too closely to criticism. In fact, the principal faults in the American schools are due to the endeavor of the teachers to give the students what a century of training has shown to be about right, and, at the same time, try to satisfy the selfishness of men who want well-trained, narrow specialists without bearing any of the expense of training them. When specialties are discussed it is well to remember that it is difficult to train a man thor- oughly in a minor subject without causing him to lose the sense of proportion he must maintain, if he is ever to be more than a part of a machine. Whether all the boys are fit to be engineers or not, they represent a select lot of humanity when they finally finish the grind and get their diplomas. A large percentage of them should amount to something later in life. That more do not meet with considerable success is due to the wilful blind- ness of the deans, who act as employment agents for large corporations, in their anxiety to advertise to the world that "this school, owing to its excellent methods of instruction, cannot supply the demand for graduates." It requires the use of the short, ugly word to properly characterize these state- ments in many cases. Many large corporations like to fill their offices ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 91 and works with well-educated men, because the average young educated man has been advised by his instructors to work for low pay during the first years after college "to gain experience." Thus these chaps give rather more for the money than men not so well trained. When a man has been selected for a place because he has exhibited superior qualifications he naturally expects a regular increase in salary, year after year, even if small. When, as so often happens, he finds he has been put into a position where there is no hope of advancement and little hope for better pay he becomes discontented. The discontented ones' are marked for discharge and when the next annual crop of graduates is harvested, a spell- binder from the corporation goes to the school and leads the entire class to the slaughter house, the dean rubbing his hands gleefully and taking never a thought in after years for the poor, misguided victims, who might have been spared if he had carefully investigated in advance the positions offered and had acted like a father to his boys. The process is just one little remove more cruel than the merciless processes of nature, as set forth in the works of Dr. Darwin. Out of it a few men do succeed, but the waste of effort is needless and the waste of money represented by the sacrifices of the parents of the slaughtered boys is criminal. Some students enter American schools with so poor an idea of what engineering involves, and 92 ENGINEEKING AS A VOCATION are so plainly adapted to the calling, that the problem of the often insufficient preparation is most important. Dr. W. G. Kaymond, Dean of the Engineering Schools, Iowa State University, Iowa City, Iowa, has adopted a method which is similar to what is known as " Seminary" in European schools. The student, unable to keep up with the class, is taken from the class and taught topically, practically individually, until his sense of per- ception is dilated, when he goes back into the class, and it has been the experience that such men are leaders in class work for the remainder of the course. This is "unit" instruction, and, as the engineer works on the "unit" system in after life, it is good that some of his instruction, especially if he be backward or deficient, should be on this system. Professor Schneider of the University of Cincinnati has been very successful in establish- ing combined courses, wherein the students and instructors alternate between the school and manufacturing establishments, the length of the courses being six years instead of four, in order to enable the student to sandwich in the practical work without losing what he requires of theory. These combined courses are now becoming stand- ard in other schools, the "Seminary" method of Dr. Raymond requiring more work on the part of the teacher and also requiring, on an average, a better grade of teacher in the minor subjects. The engineering course of the future will be not less ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 93 than six years in length, and will combine the schools, the shop and the topical study and dis- cussion. The engineering course of the future will not all be given in the engineering schools. Since fully 90 per cent, of the men employed in engineering work do not require the complete education the engineer should have, much of the work of pre- paring the large majority can be done in the high schools. Two years can readily be added to the courses in the high schools, so that boys wanting to go into technical work may be specially trained. In the additional two years can be given all the algebra, trigonometry and analytical geometry now given in the technical school. The high school, in the additional two years should also give descriptive geometry and drawing, the drawing course being so arranged that finished draftsmen, not designers, may be turned out fit to do the ordinary work in the offices of engineers, archi- tects and manufacturers, such work as the younger men are given. The high school can also give as much chemistry and physics as the average engineering school now gives. The use of survey- ing instruments and the elements of land survey- ing can also be taught in the high school. The shop work of the average engineering school, which is generally an advertising feature of ridiculously little practical use, can be given in the high school. This additional work on the part 94 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION of the high school will answer the wide-spread demand for short-term vocational courses and relieve engineering schools of much elementary work. The engineering schools can then maintain their courses at four years, demanding as entrance requirements all the above work in the high school. The first three years of the engineering school will then be a general technical training, with plenty of culture studies, the students specializing in the final year only, and not specializing narrowly. CHAPTER IV HOME STUDY COURSES IN an earlier chapter the writer has said some- thing about men who take up engineering studies in order to improve their standing and provide for advancement. He has no sympathy with the man who can afford the time and expense to attend a resident school and yet deliberately neglects such an opportunity in order to learn the business " practically," whatever that may mean. For the man who is really fit to be an engineer and who is unable to do anything more than study alone he has the utmost sympathy. For many years the writer has conducted classes in evening schools, where the service, rather than the small salary, is considered to be compensation, and he is now a member of the educational committee in the Y.M.C.A. Institute, so that he thinks he has a pretty fair understanding of the men who imagine they would like to " learn more to earn more." There are enough mature earnest men to justify him in giving up a chapter to guidance in home study, but he is frank to say that an enor- mous number of men are filled with desire and not with ambition, the difference not being plain to many. 95 96 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION The advantage of being able to attend a night school is that one has the help of a teacher, a great boon to men taking up the different studies con- nected with engineering. In some " practical" schools the instruction is individual and the schools are open all the year. They exist to supply a demand for education from men who wish to quickly increase their earning ability and many of them labor under the disadvantage that the teachers do not guide the students in a course of study. The students dictate to the teachers as to what they want and if the teacher thinks dif- ferently some other school gets them. A few of these schools are excellent, but the majority are run solely to make money and for the good of the profession should be suppressed. Many high-class institutions now have eve- ning courses, but as the income of the school is not dependent upon the money received from the students, the cost generally being far higher than the amount charged for tuition, each student is expected to enter a class and receive class instruc- tion. The courses extend over practically as many months as the courses in the day school, but this in years means more than double, for the evening classes continue for only about six months in each year and for two or three evenings in each week. Mght-class students generally want something in a hurry and the course that only occupies their time for half the year, and is arranged to cover ENGINEEKING AS A VOCATION 97 from three to six years looks apalling. Another drawback is the class method, due to the necessity for keeping down instructional cost, so that when the student misses an evening once in a while, he becomes discouraged. The Association Institute in Chicago has adopted an excellent method in which courses in the night school are arranged so that each may be fully completed in a season. Instead of compelling a student to start in at the rudiments of all engi- neering science, he is taken as far as his previous training will permit in the subject he has chosen, endeavors being made to have him later take more of the fundamentals and finally pursue inter- mediate and advanced courses covering the same ground. This may be radical and a copy of the methods of the schools run for profit, but the aim of the school is to help the student and the small fees charged indicate sufficiently that there is no financial profit in the enterprise. Correspondence schools are a great improve- ment over night schools, on account of the all-year study, but they do not furnish a flesh and blood teacher in the room with the student. The man who takes a correspondence course in a reputable school has well-prepared lessons regularly mailed to him and his progress depends wholly upon him- self. If he requires help he has only to write to receive it. The courses, however, are stiff and a 98 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION marvellously small per cent/of those who start remain to finish. Before the days of evening and correspondence schools many men studied alone, poring over books, in the course of many years acquiring enough knowledge of the essentials of engineering science to get along well. It is a solitary way and not to be preferred to the well-organized methods by class or through correspondence. Many, how- ever, prefer to study alone, and to the end of time there will be those who would rather buy a book and be self -tutored in spite of the easier and better ways. For the men who insist upon being self- tutored the following courses are offered, the writer vouching that he knows a number who have achieved considerable success by home study. The main difficulty in studying alone lies in knowing just what books to buy, many expensive trials being made. Few men know how to advise a young fellow in the purchase of books for self study, and, as a rule, most men will advise books away above the comprehension of the inquirer, because of his insufficient grounding in the rudi- ments. The self -tutored man finds plenty of books dealing with the particular specialty in which he is interested, but runs afoul of the mathematics plentifully besprinkled over the pages. The first thing required is that the student be expert in common fractions, decimal fractions, ratio and proportion. The best way to study these ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 99 subjects is to resurrect the old school arithmetic and go through the sections dealing with the fore- going subjects. The higher branches of mathe- matics will be of no practical benefit and cannot be properly studied by a student not fairly expert in ordinary arithmetical operations. At the present writing there is no good book on the market written for the instruction of self -tutored men in arithmetic. There are some excellent British books for the purpose, but the American student finds them exceedingly hard to use because of the absurd monetary system and system of weights and measures used in all the examples for prac- tice. The examples themselves would be most excellent practice were it not for the fact that the American student feels he is wasting his time deal- ing with subjects for which he will never have practical use. During the present year (1911) a new book has appeared entitled " Mathematics for the Prac- tical Man," by George Howe, M.E. ($1.25), which explains in simple language the fundamentals of Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Logarithms, Coordinate Geometry and the Calculus. This, it is seen, must be preceded by Arithmetic. The author gives numerous examples to be worked and his manner is extremely lucid. No better book can be taken up by the self -tutored man who wishes to study mathematics. One book, however, is not enough, for the 100 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION views of another man are helpful, the teacher being able often to make clear things not plain from a study of the text book. The self -tutored man has no teacher, so for additional explanation he should buy " Algebra Self Taught," by Paget Higgs (60 cents). This is rather an old book, con- taining no examples to be worked out, the writer confining himself solely to the philosophy of mathematics. Study Howe thoroughly, working out all the examples, and use Higgs for reference and collateral reading. When Howe is completed, study those subjects in Higgs which Howe does not treat so fully. At this point the courses separate. Students studying civil engineering or architecture should follow with " Elementary Practical Mathematics," by M. T. Ormsby ($2.25). Students in mechanical engineering should study " Practical Calculations for Engineers," by Larard and Grolding ($2.00), following with "A Primer of the Calculus," by E. Sherman Gould (50 cents). Students in electrical engineering should study "An Introduction to Practical Mathematics," by R M. Saxelby (60 cents), and then take, by the same author, "A Course in Practical Mathe- matics" ($2.25). The student should now be able to read intelli- gently and enjoy any mathematical book published. An interesting book for reference and home study ENGINEEKING AS A VOCATION 101 after one has completed the first two books men- tioned, is " Practical Mathematics," by Knott & Mackay ($2.00). The section on Strength of Materials should be studied first and then that on Trigonometry. The other subjects may be studied as the student's interest in the matter dictates. After completing the books above mentioned it often happens that a man wishes to learn more about mathematics, and an excellent book to buy in such case is " Higher Mathematics for Students of Chemistry and Physics," by J. W. Mellor ($5.00), a book intended for self instruction. In studying mathematics no real power is gained by reading until the principles are understood. To thoroughly understand the subject means many hours of monotonous drill on problems. It is always assumed that the self -tutored man is employed in some capacity in the office of an engineer or architect, or in the office or shops of some manufacturing concern. If he is engaged in mercantile pursuits he should not try to get into engineering work by home study or even by means of the correspondence school. He will meet in his books a great many statements which will be fully intelligible only to men in the business. The writer makes a special plea to every man to stick" to his trade or calling. After completing the course in mathematics take UD: 102 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION Elements of Mechanics, Merriman ($1.00). Strength of Materials, Merriman ($1.00). There is a larger book by the same author having the same title, but the small one is best adapted for self -tutored men. Materials of Machines, Smith ($1.00). Mechanics' Problems, Sanborn ($2.00). Chemistry and Physics of Building Materials, Munby ($2.00). The student having completed the above list and having presumably studied each book thoroughly, is in a position where he is free to select for himself. No technical book should bother him because of the mathematical expres- sions or references to certain statements in mechanics. Drawing is a most important subject, and the most complete book for the self-tutored man is "Mahan's Industrial Drawing," new edition by French ($3.50). All engineers, and also architects, will require the information given in: Elements of Graphic Statics, by Cathcart & Chaffee ($3.50). Steam Power Plants, by Meyer ($2.00). Power and Power Transmission, by Kerr ($2.00). Elements of Electrical Engineering, by Kinz- brunner ($2.00). ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 103 For general information on subjects of great value buy : A Text Book on Physics, by W. Watson ($5.00). Descriptive General Chemistry, by Tillman ($3.00). The man wishing to study surveying should be in the employ of a surveyor, or of a civil engineer doing considerable surveying, and study: The Surveyor's Hand Book, by Taylor ($3.00). A Manual of Land Surveying, by Hodgman ($2.50). Hodgman deals with the laws governing the recovering of lost corners and boundaries, a very important part of a surveyor's work. The sur- veyor, however, should not limit himself to one or two books, but should have in his library the books of Johnson and of Gillespie. Major Eees of the Corps of Engineers of the United States Army has written a remarkably good book on Topo- graphical Surveying and Gribbles' " Preliminary Survey" ($3.00) is full of methods of considerable value and interest. The civil engineering student should read thoroughly : Civil Engineering as Applied in Construction, by Vernon-Harcourt ($5.00). Engineering Work in Towns and Cities, by McCullough ($3.00). Water Supply, by Folwell ($4.00). 104 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION Sewerage, by Folwell ($3.00). The student interested specially in structural work should study : Bridge and Structural Design, by Thomson ($2.00). Typical Steel Railway Bridges, by Thomson ($2.00), following with: Steel Mill Buildings, by Ketchum ($4.00). Walls, Bins and Grain Elevators, by Ketchum ($4.00). Highway Bridges, by Ketchum ($4.00). The student of mining engineering will require all the preceding mathematics, physics, chemistry, drawing and surveying before taking up : A Manual of Mining, by Ihlsing & Wilson ($5.00). Prospecting for Gold and Silver, by Lakes ($1.00). Prospecting, Locating and Valuing Mines, by Stretch ($2.50). Mining, Mineralogical and Geological Law, by Shamel ($5.00), following with any of the books already mentioned, which he believes might be helpful to him. It is, of course, understood that no attempt has been made here to give a list even approximately complete of the best books on any particular sub- ject. The only thing the writer has endeavored to do has been to assist the reader in selecting good first books. ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 105 For the encouragement of men who missed earlier opportunities and are determined to sup- plement the deficiencies in their earlier education, the two diagrams here presented are interesting studies. The first is a copy of a diagram frequently used by modern contractors for the purpose of rating their foremen, and is taken from a job of which the writer had charge. The horizontal lines rep- 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Working Days FIG. 1 Labor Cost Per Unit of Product. resent percentages and the vertical lines represent days. On the first day the cost of the product, assumed here to be a yard of concrete, is taken as a maximum, for the men are green and the fore- man not acquainted with his crew, it being the first day of the work. Therefore at 100 per cent, the start is made for cost of product. The crew was small and the cost of the foreman was 20 per 106 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION cent, of the total expense for labor. It will be noticed that actual costs are not given, everything being represented in percentages. The second day the crew was increased in size and the percentage cost of foreman was consequently reduced and there was a considerable reduction in cost of product. With each succeeding day there is a reduction in percentage cost of foreman, with a corresponding increase in percentage cost of laborers, the cost of the product falling. Finally, as the men become well trained and accustomed to the work and the foreman also gains in experience, the cost reaches a minimum and becomes fairly constant. An ideal diagram would show all the lines smooth. This diagram is made each day from the reports of the timekeeper and cost clerk and plotted for the information of the supertintendent ; and the foremen themselves. The percentage cost of the foreman is expected to be fairly smooth after getting started, but the cost of the product varies, owing to accidents, or to a neglect by the foreman of his work. When the superintendent reads the diagram each day and finds the cost of the product rising, he can find the cause and quickly stop the waste. By means of such dia- grams all modern manufacturing business is kept track of, contracting being merely migratory manufacturing. If all workmen are well trained and so intelli- ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION 107 gent that little guidance is required, the cost of foremen becomes very low. All workmen are not intelligent and the most intelligent are not always the most industrious. Intelligent directors of work are, therefore, required, and they are, of course, the specially trained men. Such diagrams show that education and training pay. In order to direct the vast numbers of poorly-trained men there must be numbers of better-trained men, and, as technical education becomes more common and the general intelligence of ordinary laborers rises, the educated men must be far better educated than the average if they are to receive better than the average pay. The second diagram is taken from the Trans- actions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. XXV, 1904. This diagram was prepared under the direction of Mr. James M. Dodge, to illustrate his Presidential Address before that society in December, 1903. Mr. Dodge assumed that all boys have a potential value of $3000 at the age of 16 years. He con- siders four groups of men working in the mechanic arts the unskilled labor group, the shop-trained or apprentice group, the trade-school group and the technical school group. Data is lacking as to the progress of the unskilled labor group from the age of 16 to the age of 22, when the average weekly wage is $10.20. This con- tinues to be fairly level for a few years and then, 108 ENGINEERING AS A VOCATION of course, will drop as the laborer becomes weak- ened through disease, excessive labor or age. The apprentice or shop-trained worker has a 40000 35000 30000 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 1 43.00 r __^-'" 3 ^**~~ SL x* 41.00 C3-O jr It y^ X g S *> 7 36.00 / -tj~^~ / "^ o L_3_2,00. cs S-i_^ o ^_ /% s -rt <2 / * Ipl / 27.00 / cJ 03 / H y 23 . 35* S /^ ^^~-~ ** & - A sy2 r --X^! 81 O.-20-pe i-wwlJ if n 5^ / 9.00 ^ J^* Labor Groui / jjj 72S \& / , cr*^ 22 V^<\*^ c $ 2S s^ P V W L-