The geological department of a college can help in deciding on foundation conditions for army-work constructions, on the location of camp sites with reference to topography, drainage, and water supply, and on the location of trenches with reference to dryness, underdrainage, and rock deposits. Such a department can participate in the study of earth vibrations in connection with heavy artillery discharges for the accurate determination of the distances of enemy batteries. It can also help the government in giving more exact training to young men in the interpretation of geological and topographical maps.
It is obvious that the technical college and the technical institute may render the greatest government service through its faculty and student body. Armour Institute of Chicago has a large number of its graduates and older students in concerns which are producing munition supplies and war-ships. Many have entered the signal service, and a large class in marine engineering has been specifically organized to prepare men for service with the government.
Wentworth Institute in Boston, under the direction of Principal Arthur L. Williston, has been giving instruction in various branches of military engineering to the First Regiment of Engineers of the Fifth District, U. S. A. This regiment was originally an infantry regiment, but the men voluntarily elected to train themselves to become an engineering regiment. The commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers and all the enlisted men gave three nights a week to the work for several months. In addition some sixty of the men in the regiment voluntarily resigned from business positions in order to devote eight to ten hours a day, six days in the week, to the work. This institute instilled what Mr. Williston calls "mechanical gumption" into the enlisted men through short unit courses in mapping and surveying, topographical sketching, and map reading; gasoline-engine operation, repairing, and maintenance; portable steam-power plant construction and operation; electrical-power plant operation; field telephony; electric-line construction and maintenance; timber construction, including pontoons, timber trusses, timber suspension-bridge construction, machine-gun shelters, dugouts, and dugout tunneling and framing; strength of materials; concrete construction, including culverts, bridge abutments, gun-carriage and engine foundations; acetylene welding and demolition work; thermite welding and emergency repair; machinery erection and alignment; forging, hardening, and tempering; hydraulics and drainage, especially trench drainage; and rigging. The time was too short to give any elaborate theoretical training. The instruction was given through brief and intensive courses in a very practical way. In many instances it showed men who had practical experience and ability how to adapt their particular kind of skill to the special needs of the given service. Many of these men already had skill, but they needed to have it adapted to military ends.
Technical colleges and institutes believe that education is the very last thing in which they ought to economize. Illustrations of class work in national-emergency courses for the army and navy given by Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York.
A poster which accomplished its purpose. War time, even more than normal times, requires an educational appeal to the work impulses of youth.
Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, has been conducting 8 evening classes in machine-shop practice, 6 classes in machine-drafting design, 1 evening class in elementary ship drafting, and day courses for a large body of enlisted men from the navy electrical school and from the signal reserve corps. Those who come from the signal reserve corps are being trained for active service in telegraphy, the institute furnishing the technical instruction in elementary and applied electricity, and army officers furnishing the military and field-service instruction. A mess for the men of this corps is conducted at the school of household science connected with the institute, and here details of men are trained for this work through a course in army cooking. The men from the electrical school are quartered at the navy yard, and spend five and one-half hours a day at the institute taking courses in machine-shop operation, steam-engine practice, elementary electricity, armature- and field-coil repair work on electrical machines, elementary chemistry, and batteries. It is interesting to note that Pratt Institute made a special effort to hold intact its student body of the regular courses, on the theory that the thoroughly trained mechanic or technician in service is many times more valuable to the nation than a private in the ranks. As a result of this effort, very few of the students of the day school dropped from the regular courses.
The William Hood Dunwoody Institute of Minneapolis began immediately on the severance of relations with Germany to serve as a recruiting station for the United States Engineers' Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Signal Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Quartermaster's Enlisted Reserve Corps, the United States Civil Service Commission, and the United States Navy.