A few years ago, at one of the meetings of our Society of Civil
Engineers we spent a day or so in discussing the proper mode of
educating young men so as to fit them for that profession. It is a
question that is reopened for us as soon as we arrive at the age when
we begin to consider what career to lay out for our sons. When we were
young, the only question with parents in the better walks of life was,
whether their sons should be lawyers, physicians, or ministers. Anything
less than a professional career was looked upon as a loss of caste, a
lowering in the social scale. These things have changed, now that we
engineers are beginning to hold up our heads, as we have every reason to
do; for the prosperity and well-being of the great nations of the world
are attributable, perhaps, more to our efforts than to those of any
other class. When, in the past, the man of letters, the poet, the
orator, succeeded, by some fit expression, by some winged word, to
engage the attention of the world concerning some subject he had at
heart, the highest praise his fellow man could bestow was to cry out
to him, "Well said, well said!" But now, when, by our achievements,
commerce and industry are increased to gigantic proportions, when the
remotest peoples are brought in ever closer communication with us, when
the progress of the human race has become a mighty torrent, rushing
onward with ever accelerating speed, we glory in the yet higher praise,
"Well done, well done!" Under these circumstances, the question how a
young man is best fitted for our profession has become one of increasing
importance, and three methods have been proposed for its solution.
Formerly the only point in debate was whether the candidate should go
first to the schools and then to the workshop, or first to the shop and
then to the schools. It was difficult to arrive at any decision; for of
the many who had risen to eminence as engineers, some had adopted
one order and some the other. There remained a third course, that of
combining the school and the shop and of pursuing simultaneously the
study of theory and the exercise of practical manipulation. Unforeseen
difficulties arose, however, in the attempt to carry out this, the most
promising method. The maintenance of the shop proved a heavy expense,
which it was found could not be lessened by the manufacture of salable
articles, because the work of students could not compete with that of
expert mechanics. It would require more time than could be allotted,
moreover, to convert students into skilled workmen. Various
modifications of this combination of theory and practice, including more
or less of the Russian system of instruction in shop-work, have been
tried in different schools of engineering, but never under so favorable
conditions as the present. With characteristic caution and good
judgment, President Morton has studied the operation of the scheme
of instruction adopted in the Stevens Institute, and, noting its
deficiencies, has now supplied them with munificent liberality, giving
to it a completeness that leaves seemingly nothing that could be
improved upon, even in a prayer or a dream. Still, no one will be more
ready to admit than he who has done all this, that it is not enough to
fit up a machine shop, be it never so complete, and light it with an
electric lamp. The decision as to its efficiency must come from the
students that are so fortunate as to be admitted to it. If such young
men, earnest, enthusiastic, with every incentive to exertion and every
advantage for improvement, here, where they can feel the throbbing of
the great heart of enterprise, within sight of bridges upon which their
services will be needed, within hearing of the whistles of a score of
railroads, and the bells of countless manufactories which will want
them; if such as these, trained under such instructors and amid such
surroundings, prove to be not fitted for the positions waiting for them
to fill, it will have been definitely demonstrated that the perfect
scheme is yet unknown.