968 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVII. No. 442 



terious phenomena now puzzling all phi- 

 losophers, 'natural' or other, will find in- 

 terpretation and application to good works 

 for the benefit of mankind. 



In all this the young men now coming 

 into their opportunities, and their success- 

 ors of the next generations, will have their 

 part and find their opportunity. The 

 progress of the world is still an accelera- 

 tion, and the gain and the opportunity 

 acquire magnitude as a rapidly increasing 

 function of the elapsing time. The work 

 of the educator assumes constantly higher 

 value and greater importance and com- 

 mands more respect and larger distinction. 

 The place of the engineer in the world, 

 lofty as it has been in earlier days, when 

 Archimedes and Leonardo and Watt and 

 Pulton and Morse pointed the way to ad- 

 vancement through the union of the sci- 

 ences and the arts, and high as it is to-day, 

 when its apprentices are coming forward 

 with the learning of the centuries at their 

 command and the skill of the modern 

 mechanic and inventor and the productive 

 power of all modern machinery at their 

 will; it must grow with the advances of 

 the new industrial world until it shall be- 

 come one which old-world, old-time, kings 

 may well, and in vain, aspire to hold. 

 The engineer must be the general of the 

 industrial army and in his hands be held 

 the fortunes of nations. Those who to-day 

 witness the foundation or the dedication 

 of a noble structure, appropriated to the 

 work of contributing to the education and 

 the professional training and apprentice- 

 ship of the young engineer, are witnesses 

 of an event contributing to the highest 

 welfare of the race. Those so fortunate as 

 to be of the generation entering upon this 

 work with the commencement of the new 

 century have the splendid privilege of 

 taking just as large a part in the growing 

 opportunity of the engineer and his army 



as their wisdom, talent, ambition and en- 

 ergy may permit them to assume. The 

 man, to-day, who has the wit to recognize 

 opportunity and the skill and ability to 

 take advantage of it may fairly expect to 

 go as far and to rise as high as he may 

 choose — always provided he maintains him- 

 self in a condition of mental and moral 

 and physical efficiency. For he must make 

 himself a part of the great machine and 

 keep time with its march, and maintain 

 what I am accustomed to call 'maximum 

 commercial efficiency.' 



Perhaps, in this day and generation, 

 nothing can more effectively contribute to 

 the weal of the nation than the institution 

 of efficient means of promotion of the work 

 of the engineer and of his profession. As 

 chief of the industrial army of producers 

 of permanent wealth, his wisdom, his 

 knowledge, his culture and his professional 

 efficiency, as derived by the application of 

 talent and wisdom to the improvement of 

 the apparatus and the methods of produc- 

 tion, constitute the primary elements of 

 material progress and, through material 

 gain, of the advancement of the nation and 

 of the race. 



The progress of the state in all direc- 

 tions is largely influenced by the states- 

 manship of the people of the state, through 

 the legislation of the representatives of the 

 people in investing available capital in the 

 cultivation of the applied sciences and the 

 encouragement of the universality, the con- 

 tinuity and the efficiency of the industrial 

 system. A people which is thus made in 

 maximum degree industrious, skilful, fruit- 

 ful, through the exercise of every talent 

 in the most diversified employments, and 

 capable of thus making the industries in 

 highest degree effective in supplying all 

 the needs of the most enlightened com- 

 munity, attains most promptly and com- 

 pletely the highest position in the scale of 

 civilization. 



