84 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



neering schools. We need more thoroughly trained teachers of engi- 

 neering, men who combine theoretical training with a wide and con- 

 stantly increasing experience, men who can handle the factors of the- 

 ory, practice and economics." 



" Technical education," says another correspondent, " should look 

 beyond the individual to the aggregate, and should aim to shape its 

 activities so as to develop at the maximum number of points sympa- 

 thetic and helpful relations with the industrial and engineering inter- 

 ests of the state. This means careful and steady effort towards the 

 coordination of the activities of the technical school with the general 

 condition of industry and engineering as regards its raw materials, its 

 constructive and productive operations, its needs and demands with 

 regard to personnel and its actual or potential trend of progress." 



The coming era in engineering is less a period of discovery and in- 

 vention than of application on a large scale of principles already known. 

 Greater enterprises, higher potentialities, freer use of forces of nature, 

 all these are in the line of engineering progress. 



" The realm of physical science," says a correspondent, " has become 

 to the practical man a highly improved agricultural land, whereas in 

 earlier days it was a virgin country possessing great possibilities and 

 exacting but little in the way of economic treatment." 



In all forms of engineering, practise is changing from day to day ; 

 the principles remain fixed. In electricity, for example, the field of 

 knowledge ' extends far beyond the direct limits or needs of electrical 

 engineers.' 



" The best criticism as to engineering education came formerly al- 

 most entirely from professors of science and engineering. To-day the 

 greatest and most wholesome source of such criticism comes from those 

 engaged in practical affairs. We have begun a regime wherein coor- 

 dinated theory and practise will enter into the engineering training of 

 young men to a far greater and more profitable extent than ever be- 

 fore." 



" The marvelous results in the industrial world of to-day," says a 

 correspondent, " are due largely to the spirit of ' usefulness, activity, 

 and cooperation ' that exists in each community of interests and which 

 actuates men employing the means which applied science has so bounti- 

 fully accorded. I know of no greater need of engineering education in 

 our country to-day than that its conduct in each institution should be 

 characterized by the same spirit of usefulness, activity and coopera- 

 tion." 



In mining, as in other departments of engineering, we find in the 

 schools the same growing appreciation of the value of training at once 

 broad, thorough and practical, and the same preference for the univer- 

 sity-trained engineer in preference to the untrained craftsman. 



The head of a great mining firm in London writes me that ' for 

 our business, what we desire are young men of good natural qualifica- 



