G.—ENGINEERING 141 
experience leads me to believe that a university course, followed by works 
training, will be found generally most successful. Having completed the 
university portion of his training, it is not advisable for the student to 
decide upon the particular section of the industry in which he will engage, 
for, without a thorough working knowledge of the whole, neither he him- 
self, nor those who have so far been responsible for his training, can possess 
sufficient data about his capabilities, or the particular branch of engineer- 
ing for which he is most suited. Before this is decided it is essential that 
he should spend three years in some selected engineering works, passing 
from the pattern shop through the foundry to the forge, on to the machine 
and fitting and erecting shops, through the steam engine, oil engine, and 
electrical testing departments, and so on to the drawing and design 
offices. Interspersed among this portion of his training there will be 
various periods of erection work either at home or abroad. Some time 
in his third year of training he and his superiors can begin to form an 
opinion concerning the branch in which his particular abilities can be 
most fruitfully employed. He may be mathematically minded, in which 
case he would be most useful on the scientific and technical side, A man 
of strong practical bent would find ample scope for his talents in some 
such post as that of assistant to the works manager. Or his predilections 
and personal attributes may constitute him an ideal salesman; or he may 
have a desire to go abroad. In the training of the engineer this practical 
experience, obtained in all the main departments of a large works, must 
be regarded as a fundamental necessity, and he will obtain at the same 
time that contact with and understanding of his fellow-men which will 
give him a capacity for co-operation and leadership, indispensable for the 
professional engineer of to-day. 
There is next the student who comes into the works from a public or 
secondary school, after reaching School Certificate or Higher School 
Certificate standard. He may ultimately attain to the same posts as are 
available to the university-trained student, but the road is harder, and only 
to be traversed by those possessed of enthusiasm and determination. Not 
only must he pursue a three or four years’ course, passing through all the 
main departments, but he must also attend evening classes, so as to raise 
his education as nearly as possible to the standard of the university student. 
During his passage through the works he must become a student of one 
of the three institutions—Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineers— 
and, if his capabilities be wide enough, he should take an external uni- 
versity degree. Much hard and intensive work is entailed, and there are 
many who fall by the wayside, either from physical disability or flagging 
enthusiasm. But those who succeed, whose character impels them to 
overcome, by pains and tribulation, an initial handicap which can prove 
very hampering, are among the salt of the profession. 
A further problem of industrial training is involved in the production 
of craftsmen, chiefly recruited from boys leaving an elementary school at 
the age of fourteen or fifteen, who, after a preliminary probationary period 
in the works, are apprenticed, at the age of sixteen years, to some par- 
ticular branch of the trade. It is obvious that the general training of any 
such boy must continue in some way or other during the whole of his 
