i8 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



practical instruction — men who cannot merely calculate the size of 

 parts of a machine, but who can draw it after they have calculated it, 

 and make it after they have drawn it. These are the men whom our 

 country sorely needs to complete the organization of its great army of 

 industry. Indeed, I know of no more pressing material need in this 

 country. Our land has more mechanical ingenuity in it than any 

 other; but did you ever think of its wretched misdirection and waste 

 for want of industrial education ? If not, stroll through the national 

 Patent-Office. Look at a few facts. In one of our most important 

 cities are engines for supplying that city with water — erected at vast 

 expense. The whole amount was wasted. There is ingenuity in that 

 vast machine, there is skill in it ; but, for want of education regarding 

 certain principles involved, the whole thing is failure and waste. 



Take another case. A few years since, with a small party of our 

 fellow-citizens, I visited the West Indies in a national ship. She was 

 a noble vessel, and her engines had cost, it is said, nearly $800,000. 

 The engines showed ingenuity ; but they were so deficient in proper 

 elements of construction that our voyage was prolonged until we were 

 all given up as lost and had the honor of having our obituaries in the 

 leading newspapers ! The first voyage of those engines was the last. 

 They were sold for old iron ; and the sum lost on them alone was suffi- 

 cient to endow the finest institution for mechanical engineering in 

 the world ! I might multiply examples of this sort, but this is enough 

 to show what need exists for more careful training in this direction, 

 and I pass to a kindred department. 



Another great department bearing on a multitude of industrios, 

 directly and indirectly, is Civil Engineeeing. Take one among the 

 fields of its activity. We have in the United States about seventy 

 thousand miles of railway, and every year thousands of miles are added. 

 I do not at all exaggerate when I say that millions on millions of dol- 

 lars are lost every year by the employment of half-educated engineers. 

 Proofs of this meet you on every side. Lines in wrong positions, bad 

 grades and curves, tunnels cut and bridges built which might be 

 avoided. All of us know the story. 



But this is not all. Hardly a community which has not some story 

 to tell of great losses entailed by bad engineering in other directions. 

 I have known the traflftc of a great city street interrupted for a year, 

 because no engineer could be found able to make the calculations for 

 a " skew arch " bridge, a thing which any graduate of a well-equipped 

 department of engineering can do. I have known a city subjected to 

 enormous loss by the failure of its water-supply system, because the 

 engineer employed made no calculation for the friction of water in the 

 pipes. I know a whole district sickened by miasma, because a half- 

 taught engineer was intrusted with its drainage. We must prepare 

 men for better work ; and, for every dollar thus laid out, we shall cre- 

 ate or save thousands. 



