88 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 786 



sources and, indeed, we in this land have 

 been favored in an exceptional degree. 

 "We have already done much toward the 

 development of these resources. Our in- 

 dustrial progress in the last one hundred 

 years has been unexampled. But with 

 this great development has gone great 

 waste and extravagance. Our natural re- 

 sources are being dissipated at a rate 

 which will cause the disappearance of 

 many of them within a comparatively few 

 years if the waste is not checked. To elab- 

 orate this subject would require a long 

 time, but you may not be aware of the fact, 

 to cite but one instance, that natural gas is 

 to-day being wasted in this country to 

 such an alarming extent that the waste 

 would be sufficient to light every city in 

 the United States having a population of 

 over 100,000. The engineer is the man 

 who applies the resources of nature. He 

 must be the man who also conserves those 

 resources. It is probably safe to say that 

 upon him, more than upon any other man, 

 depend the continuance and increase of 

 our prosperity. 



The law, medicine and theology have al- 

 ways been considered as the learned pro- 

 fessions. They are the vocations for which 

 men have been honored on accoimt of their 

 hrains. After what has been said is it not 

 clear that the engineering profession can 

 claim this distinction to fully as great a de- 

 gree? Assuredly, such would seem to be 

 the ease. But while the three so-called 

 learned professions have been recognized 

 as such for centuries, the profession of 

 engineering, as already said, is the product 

 of the last century and a half. For this 

 and other reasons, it has not been recog- 

 nized in the popular mind to the extent 

 which its intrinsic importance and the ex- 

 cellence of its work justifies. This is, of 

 course, perfectly natural. In the early 

 days of engineering, centuries ago, the engi- 



neer was usually a man engaged also in some 

 other vocation, frequently that of archi- 

 tecture, but sometimes that of the states- 

 man, administrator, mathematician, lawyer, 

 soldier or even priest. Archimedes was a 

 mathematician, but he also built canals in 

 Egypt and in his last days devoted his 

 scientific knowledge to the defence of his 

 native city of Syracuse against Marcellus. 

 The Emperor Trajan built a remarkable 

 bridge across the Danube; and Julius 

 Cffisar built one across the Rhine; Leon- 

 ardo da Vinci was not only poet, painter 

 and sculptor, but also a civil and military 

 engineer; and during the middle ages the 

 building of bridges in Europe was under- 

 taken by a monastic order known as the 

 Brothers of the Bridge. 



I maintain that the preceding discussion 

 fully establishes the fact that engineering 

 is a profession, that the engineer in the 

 highest sense is a professional man, and 

 further that he should be a scientist at 

 heart. It is equally clear, however, con- 

 sidering the relation of the profession to 

 business that many engineers may be 

 purely business men, practising engineer- 

 ing not in the truly professional sense. 

 This, however, is also true of the law, as 

 many examples might be quoted to illus- 

 trate. 



When this association was organized in 

 1848, the great development of engineer- 

 ing which has been sketched in preceding 

 pages was just beginning, but had not 

 progressed far. There were few engineer- 

 ing schools or engineering societies. In 

 this connection the growth of engineering 

 schools and of engineering societies is in- 

 teresting. The oldest engineering society 

 in this country is the Boston Society of 

 Civil Engineers. It was organized July 

 13, 1848, and incorporated April 24, 1851. 

 It held sessions until 1856, after which 

 there was a gap until 1874, so that it is 



