34 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIi. No. 810 



ueering information and technical skill are 

 in demand in many fields not heretofore 

 requiring- them. What manner of man is 

 this present-day engineer, whose existence 

 and work are so vital to the higher inter- 

 ests of society? What are the intellectual 

 qualities that fit him for his high office, 

 what the aptitudes that qualify him for 

 leadership, what the supreme test of his 

 fitness to bear on his shoulders some of the 

 burdens of organized civil life and to lead 

 the way toward still higher achievements? 

 Finally, what style of intellectual training 

 is best suited to fit him for the prodigious 

 problems awaiting solution at his hands? 



It is not necessary, even in this presence, 

 to refrain from saying that the type of 

 man, whom we are about to survey in his 

 highest ethical and intellectual character, 

 is not an artisan, a motorman, nor even an 

 engine-driver, as useful and honorable as 

 these callings are. Nor is it manual train- 

 ing or manual dexterity or mechanical skill 

 that constitutes his claim to recognition as 

 an invaluable contributor to progress in 

 the twentieth century. He is rather the 

 masterful man who unites oceans and re- 

 vises the paths of commerce; who levels 

 hills and removes mountains if they chance 

 to be in his way; who changes the course 

 of rivers or sends them through tunnels to 

 generate electric light and power and to 

 convert deserts into fruitful fields. 



If modern industry demands combina- 

 tion and the massing of capital, combina- 

 tion requires the services of large-minded 

 engineers as managers. When Cecil 

 Rhodes appealed to the Rothschilds for 

 capital to form the De Beers Diamond 

 Mining Company for the purpose of 

 uniting all the diverse and independent 

 claims of the Kimberley diamond field, he 

 was assured that money would be fur- 

 nished on condition that they be permitted 

 to place in charge their mining engineer 



as manager — Mr. Gardner Williams, who 

 hailed from the great state of the Golden 

 Gate. Mr. Williams substituted for the 

 open working of the diamond mines his. 

 method of mining by vertical shafts, and 

 horizontal tunnels into the core of the 

 precious "blue ground" filling the volcanic 

 pipes, which have yielded uncvit diamonds 

 to the aggregate value of more than $500,- 

 000,000. 



When the great gold-bearing reef at 

 Johannesburg, the richest gold mining 

 district in the world, needed a eontrol- 

 ing genius to direct the Kaffir mines, it 

 was John Hays Hammond, another Amer- 

 ican mining engineer, who dictated the 

 engineering and mining policies of the 

 Witwatersrand. Hammond adapted the 

 method of mining the ore and winning the 

 precious metal to the conditions existing in 

 that great outcropping reef, forty miles in 

 length, with the result that a low-grade 

 conglomerate has yielded millions of gold 

 with a fair profit to the shareholders. In 

 large enterprises of this character success- 

 or failure turns on the trained intellect, 

 the executive abilit.y, and the comprehen- 

 sive grasp of the controlling brain at the 

 head. 



There is no rainfall in Egypt. The 

 burning, wind-driven sands forever face a 

 cloudless sky. On half the city of Cairo- 

 no green thing grows and flourishes. 

 Mosques and the splendid tombs of the 

 Jlemlook sultans are surrounded by drift- 

 ing sand. But for the yellow flood of 

 Father Nile the whole of its fertile valley 

 would be as parched as the sands about the 

 great pj-ramids of Bl-Geezeh. I have seen 

 the river in flood, when its turbid water 

 stretched for miles bej'ond its banks to the- 

 rising ground at the feet of the Sphinx, 

 enriching, irrigating and insuring a boun- 

 tiful harvest to the stolid husbandman, who- 

 still practises the methods consecrated hy 



