752 REPORT— 1897. 



my observations concerning the conditions of engineering education which ohtain 

 in the mother country. 



A few words now in relation to that physical and mental training gained 

 laboriously, and somewhat wastefullyas I think, at the joiner's bench, in the fitting 

 and turning shops, the foundry and the forge, during the old course of mechanical 

 engineering apprenticeship. I am convinced that the kind of knowledge which 

 comes of thoughtful chipping and filing and turning and forging, though only 

 applied to a few of the materials with which in after life the engineer has to deal, 

 are quite as important as tables of density and strength to his future sense of 

 Tightness in constructive design. The use of such work is not merely to teach one 

 the parts and combinations of any particular macliiue ; in a still higher degree it 

 is the insensible mastery of a much more subtle knowledge or mental power, the 

 apphcation of the senses of sight and touch and force, it may be of other senses 

 Also, to the determination of the nature of things. (1 am not going to apologise 

 for referring to the sense of force. The vexed question of its separate existence 

 appears to me to have been settled fourteen years ago by Lord Kelvin in his 

 address at Birmingham on * the six gateways of knowledge,' and I may well leave 

 it where he left it.) I should altogether fail to describe adequately what this 

 mastery means. It appears to me to be inscrutable. The value and nature of the 

 power can only be appreciated by those who have experienced it, and who have 

 felt its defect in those of their assistants or in others who do not possess it. 



But the great workshop training has still further advantages. The apprentice 

 is surrounded by skilled workers from whose example, if he is wise, he learns a 

 great deal ; and apart from this it is no small profit to have rubbed against the 

 British workman, to have discovered what manner of man he is, and to compre- 

 hend how little the world knows of his best parts. The whole time spent in large 

 engineering works cannot, however, be uniformly beneficial ; the apprentice must 

 take the work as it comes ; the most interesting or instructive portions cannot be 

 reserved for him, and he often feels that some of his time is being well-nigh 

 wasted. 



A few years ago I should not have thought it practicable usefully to substitute 

 for such a course anything that could be undertaken in a student's workshop, how- 

 ever organised ; but the impossibility, in many cases, of including such experience 

 without neglecting something equally important has led me to view with satisfac- 

 tion the introduction of workshop training into certain schools of applied science in 

 England. Such a change cannot of course carry with it all the advantages of 

 experience in the great workshop and of contact with its workers, but those 

 -advantages which it does retain may be secured in a shorter time where there is 

 uo commercial interest to be served. 



In Canada and the United States, as I have already said, the principle of the 

 student's workshop has been carried considerably further. Compared with the 

 •old country, I believe the number of young assistant engineers who in proportion to 

 the number of their chiefs can find employment in America is much greater, and that 

 it would be practically impossible for the British system of pupilage to be generally 

 employed. Here, therefore, the whole college training of an engineer is designed 

 to tit him for immediate employment in some specific branch of the profession, 

 and up to this point his training is, necessarily no doubt, more academic than in 

 England, where the application of the principles he has acquired at college is still 

 generally left for the office or works of the engineer. With this diflerence I am 

 not at present concerned, but I desire to reiterate what I have already said to the 

 efl'ect that where, as in England, the student of engineering has the opportunity of 

 continuing his training in the office or works, it is better that his limited college 

 course should cover all that is possible of the principles of those sciences which 

 may prove useful or necessary to him in after life, rather than that any of them 

 should be omitted for the sake of anticipating the practical application of certain 

 others. 



The compulsory inclusion of the principles of all such subjects as chemistry, 

 ■electricity, geology, and many others, in science courses intended for a future 

 •engineer is desirable not only because a fundamental knowledge of them leaves 



