precisely what constitutes engineering success. The details may differ,
but the principles and the rewards will be the same, whether you enter
upon civil or mechanical or mining or electrical engineering. Success in
engineering constitutes certain satisfactory money rewards and an even
more satisfactory recognition by one's associates and fellows. Success
in anything is that. A man must work for them, however. There never was
and never will be a rainbow path to the heights. Toil and an abiding
faith in one's own capabilities--these make for success. Success makes
for happiness, and happiness, as everybody knows, is all there is to
this life.
I wish all men happiness.
XII
THE PERSONAL SIDE
As to the personal side of engineering as a career, if it would be a
source of gratification to you to know that you were helping to build up
the civilized world, then you should enter the engineering profession.
Because men differ in their ideas as to what constitutes a full
life--some placing ideal homes above all things, some seeking
continuously diversified sources of pleasure, some wanting nothing
better than a fine library or freedom to cultivate taste in pictures,
some wishing only to surround themselves with interesting people, some
wanting nothing but an accumulation of dollars, some wishing but for
power of control over others--all men would not find the full life in
engineering. Yet the majority of men would, because the profession holds
that which would appeal to a great many different ideas as to what a
complete life consists of. Engineering as a profession is scientific,
idealistic, constructive, profitable. It is combative--in the sense
that it shapes nature's forces--and it calls for a sense of artistry in
its practitioners. Added to these, it embraces a certain kind of
profound knowledge the possession of which is always a source of pride
to the owner.
Let me explain this last. The engineer, being as he is a man who views
things objectively, notes details in everything that comes under his
eye, be it dwelling or automobile, or bookbinding or highway. The layman
does not. The layman, outside his work, sees only the thing itself, when
looking at it--the general outline. But the engineer, trained to note
details in construction, observes detail at a glance, and does it almost
subconsciously, if not immediately after leaving school, then assuredly
later, after he has been practicing his profession for a time. His
outlook is objectively critical. Entering a house for the first time,
and trained as a mechanical engineer, he will note the character of the
woodwork, the decorations, the atmosphere, the arrangement of the
furnishings, all with the same facility that he will note details upon
entering for the first time a power-station or a manufacturing
plant--things within his own province.
Nor is this faculty confined to the concrete. Engineers are of that
deeply instinctive race of folk who perceive cause in effect with the
lightning swiftness of a wild animal. If they are not this when entering
upon the profession, assuredly they become so after a period spent in
the work. Something about the practice of engineering breeds it--breeds
this objective seeing and abstract reasoning--and to be possessed of it
is to get more out of life than otherwise is possible. Which possibly
accounts for the fact that engineers as a group seem to have a
common-sense viewpoint of things, one that is frankly acknowledged and
drawn upon when needed by men in other walks of life. Engineers are
extremely practical-minded, and this makes for a certain outlook that
will not permit of visionary scaring away from the common sense and the
practical on the part of its possessor. Engineers know why things occur
without having witnessed even the occurrence itself. Their powers of
reasoning are developed to degrees beyond the average--or they seem to
be--and out of this comes one of the sources of gratification on the
personal side to the man who pursues engineering as a profession.
The thing spreads out as I contemplate it. I would make so bold as to
say that the man 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. On the other hand, the mining
or the civil man would view the wreckage of a locomotive accident and
see in the debris, select from the snarl of tangled wheels and
driving-arms and axles a ready picture of the nature of the accident and
how much of the wreckage offered possibilities for repair. Again, the
engineer sees in a tree, with its tapering trunk, the symbol of all
tower construction, just as he sees in the shape of a man's arm the
pattern to follow when devising a cast-iron lever for an automatic
machine. He sees things, does the engineer; sees objectively; follows
nature throughout.
All this being true, the engineer has a rather interesting life of it.
For not only does he see a little more clearly than otherwise would be
possible to him without his education and training, but also he does
things with his hands that come easy to him without previously having
undertaken them. The engineer can do much around his own home, if he so
choose, that of itself is a source of great satisfaction. Engineers can
swing doors, build fireplaces, landscape, erect fences, make garden, and
can perform these tasks with a degree of neatness and skill that brings
favorable comment from journeymen whose vocations this work is, and do
the work without training whatsoever in the work. Wall-papering,
painting, carpentering, laying up of brick, or the placing of a dry
wall--plastering, glazing--the list is endless that as side-plays are
possible to the man with an engineering training. He need not do these
things, ever; but if he wants ever to do them, he finds that he can do
them and do a creditable job of each, and this without his ever having
turned his hand to the work before.
Which sums up in a measure the personal side. The engineer is not a
superior being. Merely he is a man possessed of a highly specialized
education and training which peculiarly fits him for any practical work,
and out of this work, for practical thinking of the kind known as
constructive. Being constructive with his hands, he cannot but in time
become constructive with his brain. Being constructive as a thinker
first, he cannot but become constructive as a doer later. The one hinges
closely on the other, and having both, as the engineer must who would be
a successful engineer, he has as much of the world under his control as
comes to any man, and, in a great degree, more than is the favorable lot
of most men. For the engineer is both a thinker and a doer. Ponder
that--you. Men are either one or the other--most men--and rarely are
they both. Either side of their brain has been developed at the expense
of the other side. Not so with the engineer. The successful engineer is
both thinker and doer--must be in his profession. It seems to me that
engineering has many beautiful attractions as a profession.