Charles M. Horton

“ The engineer, being as he is a man who views things objectively, notes details in everything that comes under his eye, be it dwelling or automobile, or bookbinding or highway. The layman does not. The layman, outside his work, sees only the thing itself, when looking at it—the general outline. But the engineer, trained to note details in construction, observes detail at a glance, and does it almost subconsciously, if not immediately after leaving school, then assuredly later, after he has been practicing his profession for a time. ”

“ The inventor is something else—a wilding in the profession—and as such cannot be considered in a paper of this kind, save only as to say that he is the presiding genius among engineers, the Shakespeare or Milton among his kind, a man whose path to the heights is nowhere known of men. The consulting engineer, on the contrary, representing, as he does, the zenith of slowly attained power in some certain branch of engineering, a vantage—point open freely to all, is the embodiment of the goal toward which all graduates should strive. ”

“ The engineer can do much around his own home, if he so choose, that of itself is a source of great satisfaction. Engineers can swing doors, build fireplaces, landscape, erect fences, make garden, and can perform these tasks with a degree of neatness and skill that brings favorable comment from journeymen whose vocations this work is, and do the work without training whatsoever in the work. Wall-papering, painting, carpentering, laying up of brick, or the placing of a dry wall—plastering, glazing—the list is endless that as side-plays are possible to the man with an engineering training. ”

“ It matters little—save only that he who gets the practical side first is earning his way while getting it, while the man who goes to college is in the majority of cases being supported from outside sources while getting what he wants. But in the end it balances. Merely, the "full" engineer must have both. Having both, he has, literally, the world within his grasp. For engineering is—to repeat—the adapting of discoveries in science and art to the uses of mankind. And both art and science reflect and are drawn from Mother Nature. ”

“ To build a bridge, to design an automatic machine, to locate and bring to the surface earth's wealth in minerals—surely this is service of a most gratifying kind.
And it pays. The arts rarely pay; science always pays. And engineering being a science, a science in the pursuit of which also man is offered opportunities for the exercise of his creative instincts, like art, is therefore doubly gratifying as a life's work. I know—and it will bear repeating—no other profession that holds so much of bigness and of fullness of life generally. ”

“ Where there is one engineer who will perjure himself in the fashion as set forth above there are many thousands of engineers who could not be bought for this purpose at any amount of money. The profession of engineering is notably clean; its code of ethics rigidly adhered to; the rights of others, both in and out of the profession, regarded with something akin to sacredness. Engineers, as a body, for instance, possess a peculiarly rigid idea concerning themselves in relation to branches of the profession outside their own and yet intimately close to their own. ”

“ Trained to think in terms of figures and the relation of these figures to life, engineers readily perceive the true and the untrue in matters of legislation and administration, though as a body they have never exerted themselves to an expression of their opinions on matters coming properly under the head of public opinion. Engineers have felt that they have not had the time. Or, having the time, that the public at large, chiefly owing to the engineer's self-imposed isolation, would not understand a voice from this direction, and so engineers have kept silent. ”

“ Engineers are extremely practical-minded, and this makes for a certain outlook that will not permit of visionary scaring away from the common sense and the practical on the part of its possessor. Engineers know why things occur without having witnessed even the occurrence itself. Their powers of reasoning are developed to degrees beyond the average—or they seem to be—and out of this comes one of the sources of gratification on the personal side to the man who pursues engineering as a profession. ”

“ Civil engineering is a profession which keeps its followers pretty well out in the open. A civil engineer will go long distances, and frequently must, in order to get to his work, and, having reached the scene of his labors, enters upon a rugged outdoor life in camp where he remains until the job is completed. The Panama Canal was a civil-engineering job—probably the largest of its kind ever undertaken—and its success, after failure on the part of another government, is a high tribute to the genius of our own civil engineers. ”

“ The profession is crowded with men who have worked up from equally humble beginnings. Indeed, one of the foremost efficiency engineers in the country to-day began as an apprentice in a foundry, while another, fully as well known in efficiency work, began life in the United States navy as a machinist's mate. Automobile engineers, whose names, many of them, are household words, in particular have gone big in the profession and from very obscure beginnings. ”

“ Because men differ in their ideas as to what constitutes a full life—some placing ideal homes above all things, some seeking continuously diversified sources of pleasure, some wanting nothing better than a fine library or freedom to cultivate taste in pictures, some wishing only to surround themselves with interesting people, some wanting nothing but an accumulation of dollars, some wishing but for power of control over others—all men would not find the full life in engineering. ”

“ The wonderful progress in this field made within the past twenty years is one of the marvels of the engineering profession. Dynamos, motors, arc-lights, alternating current, the X-ray—these are a few of the things which followers of the profession have created for the uses of mankind. The field is yet practically unexplored, and offers to engineering students an outlet for their energies—provided they enter this branch of engineering—second to none of the other branches. ”

“ Engineers are such men. Not that engineers more than any other professional men are sprouting wings—not that. But engineers do see things in their true light—cannot see them in any other light than the one imposed by the law of mathematics, which is that two and two make four, never five or three—and this involuntarily would admit of decisions and grant graces from the point of view of absolute truth, which is, of course, the point of view of humanity—the greatest good for the greatest number. ”

“ While to a fourth group of prospective students the quiet career, as represented in that of mechanical engineering, always a more or less thoughtful, studious life, may hold out its inviting side. The mechanical engineer, like the electrical engineer, is a man who generally commutes, a man who comes and goes daily between office and home, doing his work at regular hours within the four walls of his office—a quiet, professional man. ”

“ There you have in the tracing of one engineer's progress to success precisely what constitutes engineering success. The details may differ, but the principles and the rewards will be the same, whether you enter upon civil or mechanical or mining or electrical engineering. Success in engineering constitutes certain satisfactory money rewards and an even more satisfactory recognition by one's associates and fellows. Success in anything is that. A man must work for them, however. ”

“ Engineering is engineering, whether it be mining or electrical or civil or mechanical, and this fact alone is not without its confusions. Yet if the young man decides for a mining career, say, the choice may take him, after graduating, off to South Africa, whereas if his choice lay in the electrical field he may never get any farther from home than the nearest electrical manufacturing plant in his town or state—and remain there for the duration of his life. ”

“ If it be a concern manufacturing steam-turbines, say, the young engineer in time becomes expert and a specialist in steam-turbines. So, too, with graduates in mining engineering, in electrical engineering, in civil engineering, although the opportunities for specialization in any of these latter branches are not so good as in the mechanical field. However, entering upon a certain kind of work, the student usually follows this work to the end of his days, which is probably what engineering schools expect. All strive to educate only in the principles of each of the major branches. ”

“ On the other hand, the mining or the civil man would view the wreckage of a locomotive accident and see in the debris, select from the snarl of tangled wheels and driving-arms and axles a ready picture of the nature of the accident and how much of the wreckage offered possibilities for repair. Again, the engineer sees in a tree, with its tapering trunk, the symbol of all tower construction, just as he sees in the shape of a man's arm the pattern to follow when devising a cast-iron lever for an automatic machine. He sees things, does the engineer ”

“ He likewise has had wrists and arms to match with such hands, and—in the practical engineer—that is, the engineer whose particular gift is coping with ordinary problems of construction, as against the genius who blazes new trails, like Watt and Westinghouse and Edison and Marconi and the Wright brothers—a head whose contour was along the "well-shaped" lines. The so-called genius usually has an odd-shaped head, I've noticed, but for purposes of this book we shall confine ourselves to the average successful man in engineering. ”

“ Rough, rugged, gray-eyed; with frames close-knit and usually squat; generous with money, and unconcerned as to the future; living each day regardless of the next, and living it—steel-workers are as distinct from the clerical type—slender, tall, a bit self-conscious, fearful of themselves and of the future—I say, the steel-worker is as different from the clerical worker as the circus-driver is from the cleric. Their work marks them for its own, if a man lack it upon entering the work, just as the school-room marks the teacher in time for its own. ”

“ For engineering is above all other things the interchange of ideas among men having an equal training but a vastly different quality of experience. Men of diverse experience thus drawn together make for a balanced engineering staff, and a balanced engineering staff makes for a well-organized whole. The young engineer must conduct himself in such a way that his superiors will like him for what he is, as indicated by his personality, rather than for what he knows or does in his daily work. ”

“ The engineer is about due for active participation in civic affairs other than a yearly visit to the polls to register his vote. He has not done much more than this since his inception. His work alone has sufficed, for him, at least, though the time is past when he can bury himself in his professional work and, in the vernacular, get away with it. Men of the stamp of Herbert Hoover have demonstrated the very great need for men of scientific training in public affairs. Such places heretofore have been filled with business men and lawyers. ”

“ For the upbuilding of the home, for the continuance of the home, men of this calling also it was who conceived and shaped, among other things, the cook-stove, the chimney, the wheel, the steam-engine, the spinning-jenny, the suspension-bridge, the bedspring-oh, boy!—the bicycle, the sandblast, the automobile, the airplane, the wireless.
Thus it will be seen that engineering is a distinctive and important profession. To some even it is the topmost of all professions. ”

“ The man of vision of a wholesome aspect, the man who can so completely forget himself in his work of service as to engage in tasks whose merits nobody save himself and those pursuing like tasks can or will understand—which is pre-eminently the engineer—is the one man best fitted to administrate in public affairs. ”

“ If they are not this when entering upon the profession, assuredly they become so after a period spent in the work. Something about the practice of engineering breeds it—breeds this objective seeing and abstract reasoning—and to be possessed of it is to get more out of life than otherwise is possible. Which possibly accounts for the fact that engineers as a group seem to have a common-sense viewpoint of things, one that is frankly acknowledged and drawn upon when needed by men in other walks of life. ”

“ I would make so bold as to say that the man88 of engineering training will see more at a glance when first viewing the Grand Cañon, say, than will any other professionally trained man. Should the Cañon collapse, he would know instantly why it collapsed. He could give an opinion on the wonderful color effects that would interest the artist, and he would know without hesitation how best to descend to the bottom and wherein to seek the easiest trail. All this, without his being a civil or a mining engineer, understand; merely a man trained in constructive mechanics. ”

“ In the mines, the mills, the quarries, the foundry, the machine-shop, the pattern-shop, the drafting-room, the engineering offices, the consulting divisions—all these, necessitating as they do the employment of one or more engineers in at least a supervising capacity, will have urgent need for his services. Constructive work always, he will grow as his work grows, and because the growth of his work under these abnormal conditions will be of itself abnormal, his own growth under these conditions will be abnormal. He will find himself a full engineer before his rightful time. ”