PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 557 
special work, in investigation or in practice, and the developments to which it is 
leading. But while, no doubt, every worker is the chief authority on something 
or other, the plot he cultivates may be so restricted in area, and its products may 
bulk so little in the general harvest, as to form no suitable topic to engage the 
attention of his fellow-workers on such an occasion as this. 
When an engineer leaves practice in the great, and takes to the devising and 
production of what are usually referred to specifically as ‘ scientific instruments ’ 
(though all machines and mechanical appliances may properly be classed as such), 
his colleagues in the profession may be disposed to look upon the change as a 
degeneration of species. Naturally I am not disposed to accept such a verdict. 
Remembering the careers of those who did most in the founding of the various 
branches of present-day practice, I am quite prepared to accept as applicable 
another phase borrowed from the language of the biologist, and to let it be called 
a ‘reversion to a more primitive type.’ But instead of dealing with the narrow 
branch of applied science with which my own practice is chiefly connected, 
I prefer to utilise the short time at,my disposal to make some observations upon 
a larger and more general theme. The thesis which I propose to uphold may not 
fall very obviously within the scope of the original aims of the British Associa- 
tion, but it has, at least, an intimate bearing on the work of those who are 
concerned with the applications of mechanical science. 
Tredgold’s oft-quoted definition of engineering as ‘the art of directing the 
great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man’ may well 
be taken, and often has been taken, as a text upon which to hang a discourse on 
the importance of the profession to which many of us belong, the leading part it 
has played in the process of civilisation, and the dependence of the world to-day 
on its activities. But the words suggest failures as well as achievements, and 
responsibilities no less than privileges. The definition suggests that the engineer 
not only fails in his vocation if he does not accomplish something for the use and 
convenience of man, but, further, that he acts contrary to the spirit of his pro- 
fession if he directs the sources of power in Nature to the unuse’ or incon- 
venience of man; and surely we must understand by ‘man’ not the engineer’s 
immediate client but mankind in general. The works of the engineer are to 
be used by some people; they have to be endured by all. 
- Taking the highest view of our calling—and surely we do not hold that ours 
is in any sense a sordid or selfish vocation—the engineer fails in the fulfilment 
of his duty in so far as his works are detrimental to the health or destructive 
to the property of the community, or in so far as they are unnecessarily offensive 
to any of the senses of those who are compelled to live with them. There has 
been too great’a neglect of such considerations. The medical practitioner is held 
to be negligent of his duty if he acts solely in the immediate interests of his 
patient, and does not take due precaution to guard against the spread of disease 
or the offence of the community by the exhibition of unsightly forms. We 
should take as high a view of our responsibilities. 
In his Presidential Address to the Association last year, Sir Wm. Ramsay 
said that the question for the engineer has come to be not ‘can it be done?’ 
but ‘will it pay to do it?’ The answer to this question, in respect to any 
particular proposal, depends on the width of view we take in answering two pre- 
liminary questions : whose interests are we to consider? and, what do we mean 
by paying? Of course, there are limits that must be set in answering each of 
these; my present contention is that these limits are usually much too narrowly 
drawn. ‘A road surveyor may save a few pence or shillings to his county council 
by leaving a piece of newly metalled road unrolled—because the clock strikes the 
hour for retiring—and may thereby cause expense, amounting to pounds, it may 
be to hundreds of pounds, through damage to motor-cars or the laming of horses 
(not to speak of loss of life or limb), to the users of the road, who are, after all, 
the clientéle he is there to serve. Does it pay? The authorities of a city will 
spend large sums on the adornment of the streets with stately and ornate 
buildings, and on the purchase of works of art—and rightly so, though com- 
paratively few of the citizens can appreciate or even give themselves the chance 
1 We have no word to denote very clearly the negative of use, as the term is 
here applied ; wnwse may serve for the present. 
