Amalgamated Society of Engineers

“ Let me ask how could the various and complicated operations which alone render modern trade, and therefore modern civilization, possible, be carried on without the aid of the mechanic, alias the civil engineer?
The object of the Smeatonian Society was merely a social gathering in the form of a club, to assemble the members at dinner at certain times, when they could discuss in a friendly manner the various subjects connected with their profession, and to endeavour to obliterate all those rivalries and jealousies which [430] unfortunately are too common amongst professional men of all classes. ”

“ In reality there should be but two classes of engineers, and the distinction should be drawn only between civil engineers and military engineers. As a matter of fact, fate and inclination determine the specialty that a man takes up after his preliminary training, and so far as the degrees are concerned, the only one that has any right to carry weight, because it is a measure of accomplishment, is that which is granted by this Society to its corporate members. ”

“ Nor will any one branch be occupied to the exclusion of any other branch or branches. Civil and structural engineers will, as a matter of course, have the first call; but with the work of these men well under way—consisting of the reconstruction of towns and cities—mechanical and electrical men will necessarily be called upon, with, no doubt, liberal demand for mining engineers. Each branch will have its place and serve its usefulness in the order as the reconstruction work itself will fall, with the result that all branches of the profession will be busily occupied. ”

“ But the development of engineering-works in America has been effected successfully by American engineers only because they have appreciated another side of the problem presented to them. A past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a man of rare judgment and remarkable executive ability, the late Ashbel Welch, said, in discussing a great undertaking proposed by an eminent Frenchman: "That is the best engineering, not which makes the most splendid, or even the most perfect, work, but that which makes a work that answers the purpose well, at the least cost." ”

“ The society was to serve as a rallying point for the profession, and it was believed that when their members increased sufficiently (for there was little more than a dozen engineers in the kingdom at the time who were counted as such) the society might extend its usefulness by reading papers, discussing them, and publishing them regularly to the world, in the same manner as the already established scientific societies ”

“ We can say that matters outside of the known are not our concern, and we can look with pride at our individual achievements, and of course, if this satisfies, there is nothing more to be said. But it is because I feel that engineers of to-day are not satisfied with their position, that I wonder whether we have either fulfilled our obligations to the community, or secured proper recognition from it; whether, in fact, the engineer can become the force that he should be, until he brings something into his equations besides frozen figures, however diverting an occupation this may be. ”

“ The most hopeful sign in this direction is rather the fusion of the engineers into a large federation of societies, with425 service to the community, State, and Nation as their motto; a growing tendency, collectively, at least, to investigate the conduct of national industrial enterprises; and, finally, an attempt at a rapprochement, in the interest of society, between labour and the engineers. ”

“ There is still a great scarcity of engineers. All branches feel the need—civil, mechanical, mining, chemical, automotive, electrical—the call goes out. It is a call just now, owing to the vast reconstruction period confronting the world, lifted in strident voice. ”

“ Actually, they should be debarred from practice, just as the legal fraternity takes effective action against members of the bar who go outside the pale, though nothing is ever done to engineers. Engineering organizations in this regard are weak. The man's name should at least be posted, or, better still, published in the society's bulletin, so that the fraternity at large could know, and, knowing, could warn men with capital to invest—the trickster's especial prey—for its own welfare. ”

“ But that is no reason why we should do nothing. No one in touch with engineering practice will deny that there are plenty of problems that S.A. engineers would like to have solved, many of them, like that of our brown coals, being local problems that we can scarcely expect outsiders to solve for us.
Let me illustrate the value to the nation of scientific research, combined with engineering invention, by a story from our own recent history. ”

“ In its first days the Society paid 30s, as contribution to the Trade Union Congress, but in 1886 it sent £10, and asked the committee to forward all possible information upon the Engineers' Certificate Bill. This was a Bill designed to forbid any but experienced and trained men handling locomotives and steam boilers. The examination systems imposed by companies caused a renewed demand for model engines to assist young members, and in 1887 a deputation of three members of the Executive was appointed to wait upon engineering firms to secure the necessary models. ”

“ The prestige of the Engineer Corps, upheld by the good work of the civil engineers, would have carried them through any crisis, if the latter class had seriously cared to continue the partnership longer, and if the scientific world had approved of so unequal a distribution of rewards as prevailed there. ”

“ But it is only on its mechanical side that the industrial organization so comes in touch with modern science and the pursuit of matter-of-fact knowledge; and it is only in so far as their habits of thought are shaped by the discipline of the mechanical industries that there is induced in the industrial population the same bent as goes to further or to appreciate the work of modern science. But it would be quite nugatory to suggest that the governing boards of the universities should be made up of, or should comprise, impecunious technologists and engineers. ”

“ Soc. C. E., and George S. Webster, M. Am. Soc. C. E. Among representatives of other engineering societies, or of Government Bureaus, the membership of the National Advisory Board includes other members of this Society, as follows: General William Crozier, Frank T. Chambers, Professor W. K. Hatt, Richard L. Humphrey, Robert W. Hunt, H. G. Kelley, Robert W. Lesley, John B. Lober, Hunter McDonald, and Frederick H. Newell. ”

“ These men, for the most part, are engineers embracing all branches of the profession, and each is a man especially well qualified to serve in his branch. In a way he is a specialist. He may represent a giant structural organization, or a machine-tool manufacturer, or an electric-lighting and power concern—any one of the many fields of industrial enterprises whose product is needed to place demoralized France and Belgium back upon a productive basis. ”

“ Very wisely, it seems to me, the medical profession and the legal profession, with histories far older than ours, and with as wide variations in practice as we have, leave the variations in name to the individual taste of the practitioner, in a manner which we would do well to copy. The Society itself has adopted very broad lines in admission to membership, classing as civil engineers all who are properly such ”

“ Just as the cultivation of science in the United States was first taken up in the technical schools, like the School of Mines of Columbia College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and many others, and not in colleges or universities, so the organization of scientific associations took place first among the engineers, the graduates of the technical schools. ”

“ Where no precedent exists the successful engineer is he who makes the fewest mistakes." At Newcastle, last year, when delivering the workmen's lecture of the British Association to an audience of 4000 men, he remarked that the success of the work was due as much to the individual and collective pluck and ingenuity of the workmen as to the scientific labours and organisation of the engineers and contractors ”

“ 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. ”

“ Note.—The invention and development of machinery and the marvellous range of mechanical art, through chemical, electrical, and other superhuman agencies, afforded the American Government an immediate opportunity to supplement its Engineer Corps in 1898, with skilled auxiliaries. In fact, the structure of American society and the trend of American thought and enterprise, invariably demand the best results. What is mechanically necessary, will be invented, if not at hand. ”

“ The original function of the engineer, especially in the first days of his systematic training, was to deal scientifically with purely mechanical problems. Thus the oft quoted definition of the British Institution of Civil Engineers that “Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man” reveals quite clearly the legitimate field within which the engineer was supposed to operate. He was to harness the untamed energies of nature. ”

“ What these men have said and done concerning matters freely apart from the subject of58 engineering reveals them as members of a fraternity well qualified to lead public opinion rather than to follow it, as has been the province of engineers in the past. Each when he has spoken or entered upon action having the public welfare in mind has pronounced or demonstrated a truth which fairly crackled with sanity.
Engineers belong in civic affairs. The world of humanity needs men of their stamp in high places. ”

“ Today the number runs into the thousands. It would be practically impossible to make a list of them all. This is the age of specialists. Men no longer call themselves shoemakers but cutters, lasters, welters, sole-makers. Even in the engineering profession we have electrical engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, locomotive engineers, stationary engineers, mining engineers, marine engineers, and chemical engineers. ”

“ I had to keep in order, repair, and sometimes construct culverts, one-arched bridges, regulate drift-ways, clean and sometimes open ditches, lay out bounds, and answer questions about the planting and felling of trees. Such are the principal and sometimes the only occupations of ordinary engineers, together with a little levelling which the government obliges us to do ourselves, though any of our chain-bearers with their limited experience can do it better than we with all our science. There are nearly four hundred engineers-in-ordinary and pupil engineers ”

“ While I appreciate very fully, however, the honor of being able to address you, I am going to look trouble in the face in an effort to convince you that, in spite of great individual achievements, engineers are behind other professional men in professional spirit, and particularly in collective effort. ”

“ The commercial and executive side of the work cannot be taught; it must be absorbed by actual participation in the industry. Nor is it impossible to rise to great eminence in the profession without university training, as witness some of our greatest engineers. The university can do much; it can give a broad basis of knowledge and mental training, and can inculcate moral feeling, which entitles men to lead their fellows. It can teach the technical fundamentals of the multifold sciences which the engineer should know and must apply. ”

“ I may here be allowed to remark that we owe the greatest advances in mechanical invention to Free Trade in Ability. If we look carefully into the narratives of the lives of the most remarkable engineers, we shall find that they owed very little to the seven years' rut in which they were trained. They owed everything to innate industry, energy, skill, and opportunity. ”

“ We think it probable, however, that with a little more snap, a journal like Engineering might possibly attain a circulation, in this country, of 500 or 1000 copies weekly.
Why, American engineers have scarcely yet been able to organize themselves into an association for mutual advancement in their profession, much less to give the reading public the benefit of their experience and labors! This fact alone ought, of itself, to satisfy Engineering that no such journal could profitably exist in this country. ”

“ But a single member of that committee on the part of the House was from the West. All the other persons reside on the waters that flow into the Atlantic Ocean, or near to it.
Now, sir, I am not dwelling here upon the difference as to the ability of the engineers in civil life or in the military department of the Government; but it is not saying much to say that the civilians have exhibited an amount of engineering skill, to say the least, equal to the Army; and indeed they have exhibited more ability in the accomplishment of great works of improvement in every portion of this country. ”