However, not all of our engineers have gone upward by the overalls route. Nor is it at all necessary to do this in order to attain to success. The high-school graduate, entering a college of engineering, has an equal chance. Some maintain that he has a better chance. Certain it is that he is better qualified to cope with the heavier theoretical problems which come up every day in the average engineer's work. There is a place for him, side by side with the practical man, and his knowledge will be everywhere respected and sought. But a combination of the theoretical and the practical, as has frequently been declared, makes for the complete engineer. Some get the practical side first and the theoretical side later; some get the theoretical side first and the practical side later. It matters little—save only that he who gets the practical side first is earning his way while getting it, while the man who goes to college is in the majority of cases being supported from outside sources while getting what he wants. But in the end it balances. Merely, the "full" engineer must have both. Having both, he has, literally, the world within his grasp. For engineering is—to repeat—the adapting of discoveries in science and art to the uses of mankind. And both art and science reflect and are drawn from Mother Nature.
There is still a great scarcity of engineers. All branches feel the need—civil, mechanical, mining, chemical, automotive, electrical—the call goes out. It is a call just now, owing to the vast reconstruction period confronting the world, lifted in strident voice. Engineers everywhere are needed, which in part accounts for the liberal salaries offered for experienced men. The demand greatly exceeds the supply, and gives promise of exceeding it for a number of years to come. All manufacturing-plants, all mining enterprises, of which of both there are thousands upon thousands, utilize each from one to many hundreds of engineers. Some plants make use of three or four different kinds—mechanical, civil, electrical, industrial—some only one. But not a plant of any size but that has need for at least one engineer, and engineers are scarce. Therefore opportunities are ample.
To the young man seeking a profession, provided he be of a certain type—possessed of certain inherent qualities, the nature of which I shall set forth in the following chapter—engineering offers satisfactory money returns and—more satisfactory still—a satisfactory life. The work is creative from beginning to end; it has to do frequently with movement—always a source of delight to mankind; a source having its beginnings in earliest infancy, and it is essentially a work of service. To build a bridge, to design an automatic machine, to locate and bring to the surface earth's wealth in minerals—surely this is service of a most gratifying kind.
And it pays. The arts rarely pay; science always pays. And engineering being a science, a science in the pursuit of which also man is offered opportunities for the exercise of his creative instincts, like art, is therefore doubly gratifying as a life's work. I know—and it will bear repeating—no other profession that holds so much of bigness and of fullness of life generally. Engineers themselves reflect it. Usually robust, always active, generally optimistic, engineers as a group swing through life—and have swung through life from the beginnings of the profession—without thought of publicity, for instance, or need or desire for it. Their work alone engrossed their minds. It was enough—it is enough—and more. And that which is sufficient unto a man is Nirvana unto him—if he but knew it. Engineers seem to know it.
III
THE ENGINEERING TYPE
It is becoming more and more an accepted fact that engineers, or physicians, or lawyers—like our poets—are born and not made. I believe this to be true. Educators generally are thinking seriously along these lines, with the result that vocational advisers are springing up, especially in industrial circles, to establish eventually yet another profession. Instinct leads young men to enter upon certain callings, unless turned off by misguided parents or guardians, and as a general thing the hunch works out successfully. Philosophers from time immemorial, including Plato and Emerson, have written of this still, small voice within, and have urged that it be heeded. The thing is instinct—cumulative yearnings within man of thousands of his ancestors—and to disobey it is to fling defiance at Nature herself. Personally, I believe that when this law becomes more generally understood there will be fewer failures decorating park benches in our cities and cracker-boxes in our country stores.