618 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 
convenient modes of expressing the physical facts and laws, and the inter- 
dependence of those physical facts and laws. When the student loses grip of the 
physical meaning of his equations, and regards them only as abstractions or 
groupings of symbols, woe betide him. His mathematics amount to a mere 
symbol-juggling. That is how paper engineers are made. The high and dry 
mathematical master who thinks it beneath him to show a student how to plot 
the equations y=A sin 2, or r=6 sin 6, or who never culls an example or sets 
a problem from thermodynamics or electricity, must be left severely on one side 
as a fossil, Better a living Whitworth scholar than a dry-as-dust Cambridge 
wrangler. He at least knows that elasticity is something more real than the 
group of symbols E= p+, which any mathematician may ‘ know,’ even though 
he be blissfully ignorant whether the force required to elongate a square-inch bar 
of steel by one one-millionth of its length is ten ounces or ten tons. 
One evidence of the wholesome change of opinion that is springing up con- 
cerning the training of engineers is the abandonment of the system of taking 
premium pupils into works with no other test or qualification than that of the 
money-bag. Already many leading firms of engineers have been finding that the 
practice of taking sons of wealthy parents for a premium does not answer well, 
and is neither to their own advantage nor in many cases to that of the ‘ pupil, 
whom it is nobody's particular business in the shops to train. Premium pupilage 
is absolutely unknown in the engineering firms of the United States or on the 
Continent of Europe. The firms who have abandoned it are finding themselves 
better served by taking the ablest young men from the technical schools and 
paying them small wages from the first, while they gain experience and prove 
themselves capable of good service. Messrs. Yarrow & Co. have led the way with 
a plan of their own, having three grades of apprenticeship, admission to which 
depends upon the educational abilities of the youths themselves. Messrs. Siemens 
have adopted a plan of requiring a high preliminary training. The Daimler 
Motor Company has likewise renounced all premiums, preferring to select young 
men of the highest intelligence and merit. Messrs. Clayton and Shuttleworth have 
quite recently reconstructed their system of pupil-apprenticeship on similar lines. 
The British Westinghouse Company and the British Thomson- Houston Company 
have each followed an excellent scheme for the admission of capable young men. 
Even the conservatism of the railway engineers shows signs of giving way; for 
already the Great Kastern Railway has modernised its regulations for the admission 
of apprentices. What the engineering staffs of the railway companies have lost 
by taking in pupils because of their fathers’ purses rather than for the sake of their 
own brains it is impossible to gauge. But the community loses too, and has a 
right to expect reform. 
To this question, affecting the whole future outlook of engineering generally, 
a most important contribution was made in 1906 by the publication by the 
Institution of Civil Engineers of the report of a committee (appointed in 
November 1903) to consider and report to the Council upon the subject of the 
best methods of education and training for all classes of engineers. This 
Committee, a most influential and representative body consisting of leading 
men appointed by the several professional societies, the Institutions of Civil, 
Mechanical, and Electrical Engineers, the Institution of Naval Architects, the 
Tron and Steel Institute, the Institution of Gas Engineers, the Institution of Mining 
Engineers, and two northern societies, was ably and sympathetically presided 
over by Sir William H. White. Its inquiries !asted over two years and included 
the following sections: (1) Preparatory Training in Secondary Schools ; 
(2) Training in Offices, Workshops, Factories, or on Works; (3) Training 
in Universities and Higher Technical Institutions; (4) Postgraduate Work. 
The findings of this Committee must be received as the most authoritative 
judgment of the most competent judges. So far as they relate to preparatory 
education they suggest a modernised secondary school curriculum in which there 
is no one specialised scientific study, but with emphasis on what may be called 
