ENGINEERING IN INDUSTRIAL WORKS. 



BY WILLIAM D. ENNIS. 



[William D. Ennis, engineer; born in New Jersey in the early seventies; apprenticed 

 to the Rogers Locomotive company; connected as engineer, salesman, and con- 

 struction superintendent, with various works, including the Passaic Rolling Mill 

 company, Walworth Construction and Supply company, Consolidated Gas company 

 of New Jersey; graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology ; formerly engaged in 

 private and associate practice in connection with the installation and economical 

 operation of steam power plants; for some time located in the state of Washington 

 in behalf of the Everett Pulp and Paper company, where he was engaged in modern- 

 izing the power equipment of that and of several allied industries ; at present engineer 

 to the American Linseed company. A frequent contributor to technical literature, 

 British, American, and Continental, on subjects connected with steam and electrical 

 engineering chemistry. The following article is from the Engineering Magazine, 

 and is published by special arrangement.] 



The supreme control of industrial enterprises, including 

 the general management of all phases from the purchase of 

 supplies to the sale and delivery of finished product, is classic- 

 ally in the hands of the expert accountant. The line of pro- 

 motion in the past has been usually from the bookkeepers' 

 desk toward the higher chairs. An innovation was practiced, 

 when instead of the clerk, the private secretary, or stenog- 

 rapher of higher degree, who of all others had opportunities 

 to become familiar with the motives and methods of his chief, 

 was marked as the legitimate successor of that chief. 



A still more marked innovation has lately been evident. 

 The managers of to-day are technicists. Engineers — mechan- 

 ical and civil — make it their ambition to become, not consult- 

 ing experts, but executives. Among military and naval 

 cadets, the most brilliant and successful students enter the 

 engineering corps of the service, and become in after years 

 the most thorough and successful officers. The same ten- 

 dency is pervading commercial life. To refer to a single one 

 of the older American engineering colleges as an example — 

 the Stevens institute of technology, in New Jersey, founded 

 in 1872 by an engineer: of the 600 graduates prior to 1896, 

 230 (or 38 per cent) were in 1900 occupying positions not 

 technical but executive. The functions of many others who 

 fill nominally professional offices are in reality purely those of 



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