November 25, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



719 



There are other matters in connection 

 with this question which appear to be of 

 more importance than the pure questions 

 of technical training, and which are deeply 

 rooted in English custom and feeling. 



In the first instance, engineers have from 

 time immemorial in this country (England) 

 been educated by an apprenticeship to other 

 engineers. The result has been more or less 

 hand-to-thumb methods. This, of course, 

 can be improved by direct technical train- 

 ing of the character given in America to 

 engineers. 



English industries, however, are con- 

 ducted under two bureaus of administra- 

 tion—commercial and technical. The atti- 

 tude of the commercial direction always 

 tends towards the greatest immediate re- 

 sult, which usually takes the form of the 

 least outlay of capital. The tendency of 

 the engineer is to get the minimum produc- 

 tion cost per unit, which involves large out- 

 lays of capital. Neither side is entirely 

 right, and in America this has been suc- 

 cessfully overcome by educating the com- 

 mercial bureau as engineers. In other 

 words, our engineers are administrators 

 instead of consulting men, so that any im- 

 " provement in English industries must come 

 by a reorganization of their method of 

 administration, as much as by superior 

 education of their men, and this is a matter 

 which can not be accomplished by technical 

 education, and, in any event, would be of 

 very slow growth. There are many hun- 

 dreds of American engineers in the employ 

 of English concerns, and almost universally 

 they are in executive positions. The whole 

 of the gold mining industry practically is 

 under the direction of American engineers, 

 and England owns mines yielding fully 

 seventy-five per cent, of the gold output of 

 the world, and the American form of ad- 

 ministration has been introduced into this 

 industry almost universally. 



Another matter which enters into the 



great English question is that social dig- 

 nity does not attach to the position of 

 engineer. In the English social mind, the 

 engineer is still an artisan or a tradesman, 

 and the distinction of the engineer as a 

 professional man of equal rank and per- 

 sonal attainments to any other profession 

 has but few advocates in this country. The 

 consequence is that the young men of better 

 families, looking about for a profession, 

 must choose either the law, the church, the 

 army, the navy, medicine or the civil ser- 

 vice if they hope to attain social dignity. 

 The result is that it would be very difficult 

 to draw the average brains of the country 

 into the technical branches, whereas I think 

 the feeling in America is quite to the con- 

 trary. 



Herbert C. Hoover. 

 London. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 



RECHERCHES SUR LES SUBSTANCES RADIOACTIVES. 



Of the half dozen books which have recently- 

 appeared on radioactivity, two are of command- 

 ing importance, for they contain the records 

 of the epoch-making work of the two investi- 

 gators to whom we are most largely indebted 

 for our present knowledge of the phenomena 

 in question, E. Rutherford and Mme. Curie. 

 Of these two wholly dissimilar treatments the 

 former is the more comprehensive and perhaps 

 the more suggestive ; for, from beginning to 

 end, it is a presentation of a well-developed 

 theory of the cause and nature of radioactivity. 

 Facts are everywhere grouped about, and 

 fitted into, and interpreted in the light of this 

 theory. On the other hand, Mme. Curie's 

 ' Eesearches sur les Substances Radioactives,' 

 now appearing in its second revised and cor- 

 rected edition, deals very sparingly and very 

 conservatively with theory. It is primarily 

 a record of the experimental researches which 

 have been made by herself and her husband 

 during the past five years. Nevertheless, the 

 work of other experimenters is given ample 

 attention, so that the book constitutes a very 

 complete and concise resume of the present 



