Our engineer cousins can, in a greater degree by study and investigation, marshal in advance the factors with which they have to deal. The mining engineer's works, on the other hand, depend at all times on many elements which, from the nature of things, must remain unknown. No mine is laid bare to study and resolve in advance. We have to deal with conditions buried in the earth. Especially in metal mines we cannot know, when our works are initiated, what the size, mineralization, or surroundings of the ore-bodies will be. We must plunge into them and learn,—and repent. Not only is the useful life of our mining works indeterminate, but the very character of them is uncertain in advance. All our works must be in a way doubly tentative, for they are subject to constant alterations as they proceed.
Not only does this apply to our initial plans, but to our daily amendment of them as we proceed into the unknown. Mining engineering is, therefore, never ended with the initial determination of a method. It is called upon daily to replan and reconceive, coincidentally with the daily progress of the constructions and operation. Weary with disappointment in his wisest conception, many a mining engineer looks jealously upon his happier engineering cousin, who, when he designs a bridge, can know its size, its strains, and its cost, and can wash his hands of it finally when the contractor steps in to its construction. And, above all, it is no concern of his whether it will pay. Did he start to build a bridge over a water, the width or depth or bottom of which he could not know in advance, and require to get its cost back in ten years, with a profit, his would be a task of similar harassments.
As said before, it is becoming more general every year to employ the mining engineer as the executive head in the operation of mining engineering projects, that is, in the fourth and fifth stages of the enterprise. He is becoming the foreman, manager, and president of the company, or as it may be contended by some, the executive head is coming to have technical qualifications. Either way, in no branch of enterprise founded on engineering is the operative head of necessity so much a technical director. Not only is this caused by the necessity of executive knowledge before valuations can be properly done, but the incorporation of the executive work with the technical has been brought about by several other forces. We have a type of works which, by reason of the new conditions and constant revisions which arise from pushing into the unknown coincidentally with operating, demands an intimate continuous daily employment of engineering sense and design through the whole history of the enterprise. These works are of themselves of a character which requires a constant vigilant eye on financial outcome. The advances in metallurgy, and the decreased cost of production by larger capacities, require yearly larger, more complicated, and more costly plants. Thus, larger and larger capitals are required, and enterprise is passing from the hands of the individual to the financially stronger corporation. This altered position as to the works and finance has made keener demands, both technically and in an administrative way, for the highly trained man. In the early stages of American mining, with the moderate demand on capital and the simpler forms of engineering involved, mining was largely a matter of individual enterprise and ownership. These owners were men to whom experience had brought some of the needful technical qualifications. They usually held the reins of business management in their own hands and employed the engineer subjectively, when they employed him at all. They were also, as a rule, distinguished by their contempt for university-trained engineers.
The gradually increasing employment of the engineer as combined executive and technical head, was largely of American development. Many English and European mines still maintain the two separate bureaus, the technical and the financial. Such organization is open to much objection from the point of view of the owner's interests, and still more from that of the engineer. In such an organization the latter is always subordinate to the financial control,—hence the least paid and least respected. When two bureaus exist, the technical lacks that balance of commercial purpose which it should have. The ambition of the theoretical engineer, divorced from commercial result, is complete technical nicety of works and low production costs without the regard for capital outlay which the commercial experience and temporary character of mining constructions demand. On the other hand, the purely financial bureau usually begrudges the capital outlay which sound engineering may warrant. The result is an administration that is not comparable to the single head with both qualifications and an even balance in both spheres. In America, we still have a relic of this form of administration in the consulting mining engineer, but barring his functions as a valuer of mines, he is disappearing in connection with the industry, in favor of the manager, or the president of the company, who has administrative control. The mining engineer's field of employment is therefore not only wider by this general inclusion of administrative work, but one of more responsibility. While he must conduct all five phases of engineering projects coincidentally, the other branches of the profession are more or less confined to one phase or another. They can draw sharper limitations of their engagements or specialization and confine themselves to more purely technical work. The civil engineer may construct railway or harbor works; the mechanical engineer may design and build engines; the naval architect may build ships; but given that he designed to do the work in the most effectual manner, it is no concern of his whether they subsequently earn dividends. He does not have to operate them, to find the income, to feed the mill, or sell the product. The profit and loss does not hound his footsteps after his construction is complete.
Although it is desirable to emphasize the commercial side of the practice of the mining engineer's profession, there are other sides of no less moment. There is the right of every red-blooded man to be assured that his work will be a daily satisfaction to himself; that it is a work which is contributing to the welfare and advance of his country; and that it will build for him a position of dignity and consequence among his fellows.
There are the moral and public obligations upon the profession. There are to-day the demands upon the engineers which are the demands upon their positions as leaders of a great industry. In an industry that lends itself so much to speculation and chicanery, there is the duty of every engineer to diminish the opportunity of the vulture so far as is possible. Where he can enter these lists has been suggested in the previous pages. Further than to the "investor" in mines, he has a duty to his brothers in the profession. In no profession does competition enter so obscurely, nor in no other are men of a profession thrown into such terms of intimacy in professional work. From these causes there has arisen a freedom of disclosure of technical results and a comradery of members greater than that in any other profession. No profession is so subject to the capriciousness of fortune, and he whose position is assured to-day is not assured to-morrow unless it be coupled with a consideration of those members not so fortunate. Especially is there an obligation to the younger members that they may have opportunity of training and a right start in the work.
The very essence of the profession is that it calls upon its members to direct men. They are the officers in the great industrial army. From the nature of things, metal mines do not, like our cities and settlements, lie in those regions covered deep in rich soils. Our mines must be found in the mountains and deserts where rocks are exposed to search. Thus they lie away from the centers of comfort and culture,—they are the outposts of civilization. The engineer is an officer on outpost duty, and in these places he is the camp leader. By his position as a leader in the community he has a chieftainship that carries a responsibility besides mere mine management. His is the responsibility of example in fair dealing and good government in the community.
In but few of its greatest works does the personality of its real creator reach the ears of the world; the real engineer does not advertise himself. But the engineering profession generally rises yearly in dignity and importance as the rest of the world learns more of where the real brains of industrial progress are. The time will come when people will ask, not who paid for a thing, but who built it.
To the engineer falls the work of creating from the dry bones of scientific fact the living body of industry. It is he whose intellect and direction bring to the world the comforts and necessities of daily need. Unlike the doctor, his is not the constant struggle to save the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his prime function. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. Engineering is the profession of creation and of construction, of stimulation of human effort and accomplishment.