Civilization in the United States: An inquiry by thirty Americans

by Unknown

The early engineers who carried on this work were seldom formally trained. They were little more than higher types of artisans. It was only after thirty-odd years of discussion and agitation that the first scientific schools were established in this country—two in number. And it was only after the enactment of the Morrill Act by Congress (1862) that formal engineering training as we know it to-day was put on a firm national basis. By 1870, 866 engineers had been graduated from American technical schools and colleges. The real advent of the typical American engineer, however, has only occurred since 1870. At present he is being supplied to the industries of the country at the rate of 5,000 a year.

The coming of the formally trained technologist or scientist of industry lagged somewhat behind the development of the industrial revolution. This was particularly true in America. Originally all attention was centered on the training of so-called civil engineers, i.e., canal, bridge, road, dam and building designers and constructors. The rapid rise of the mechanical arts after the Civil War focused attention on the training of engineers expert in manufacturing. To-day the mechanical and electrical engineers are more numerous than any other group and have far outstripped the civil engineers.

The original function of the engineer, especially in the first days of his systematic training, was to deal scientifically with purely mechanical problems. Thus the oft quoted definition of the British Institution of Civil Engineers that “Engineering is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man” reveals quite clearly the legitimate field within which the engineer was supposed to operate. He was to harness the untamed energies of nature. That this conception was then sufficient, and that the careers of most engineers were shaped accordingly, is hardly to be disputed. Nor, judging from the achievement of American engineers in the last fifty years, can it be contended that their function was conceived in too narrow a light. Undoubtedly, the problems of mechanical production, power-creation and transmission, bridge and building construction, and railway and marine transportation, during this period were largely material ones, and the opportunities for their solution were especially good. To these the engineers directed their attention. Thanks to their training, technique, and accumulated experience, they became more and more successful in solving them. At the same time, their relative freedom of thought and action with reference to technological problems brought them into more or less coherent groups which, as time went on, began to conceive a larger function for the engineer—service to society as a whole rather than the solving of mere concrete, specific difficulties.

For while the material problems of production are undoubtedly as important as ever, the present-day industrial system has begun to reveal new problems which the engineer in America has, to a limited extent, come to realize must be faced. These new problems are not material in the old sense of the word; they concern themselves with the control and administration of the units of our producing system. Their nature is psychological and economic.

Certain groups in the American engineering profession have become quite conscious that these deeper problems are not being solved; at the same time they consider it a necessary duty to help in their solution, inasmuch as the engineer, they feel, is peculiarly fitted to see his way clearly through them. Thus is being split off from the main body of old-line engineers, a new wing not so much concerned with wringing power from nature as with adjusting power to legitimate social needs. As against the old engineer, concerned primarily with design and construction, there is to be recognized the new engineer, concerned mainly with industrial management.

Unfortunately, however, a strict evaluation of the engineer’s status with reference to the influence he may have on the solution of these social and economic problems causes serious doubts to arise regarding his ultimate possibilities in this field. Despite his great value and recognized indispensability as a technologist, expert in problems of materials and processes of manufacture, he can at best but serve in an advisory capacity on questions affecting the division of the national surplus or the control of industry. Nevertheless, it is of fundamental significance that the American engineering profession has of late considerably widened the scope of the British Institution of Civil Engineers’ definition of engineering, namely, to the effect that “Engineering is the science of controlling the forces and utilizing the materials of nature for the benefit of man and the art of organizing and of directing human activities in connection therewith.” The implications of this much broader definition, if widely accepted, will bring the American engineers sooner or later squarely before a fundamental issue.

The ideal of service is profoundly inherent in the profession of engineering. But so, also, is the ideal of creative work. The achievements of engineering enterprise are easily visualized and understood, and from them the engineer is wont to derive a great deal of satisfaction. Recently, however, the exactions of the modern complex economic system, in which the engineer finds himself relatively unimportant compared with, say, the financier, have contrived to rob him of this satisfaction. And as his creative instincts have been thwarted, he has turned upon business enterprise itself a sharp and inquiring eye. From isolated criticisms of wastes and inefficiencies in industry, for instance, he has not found it a long or difficult step to the investigation of industry on a national basis for the purpose of exposing technical and managerial shortcomings.

It appears, however, that the majority of American engineers to-day believe that their position as a class is such that they can effectively maintain an impartial position when differences which arise between large economic groups of society such as those of the merchant, the manufacturer, the labourer, the farmer, although these differences frequently lead to economic waste and loss. At all events, it is on this basis that attempts are being made to formulate a general policy for engineers as a class to pursue. It is very doubtful, however, whether a group such as the engineers, constituting the “indispensable general staff of industry,” can long take an impartial attitude towards two such conflicting forces as capital and labour so long as they (the engineers) adhere to the ideal of maximum service and efficiency. The pickets of the fence may eventually prove unduly sharp.

A minority group which believes otherwise has already organized into an international federation of technicians affiliated with the standard organized labour movement of America. This group holds that the engineer is a wage-earner like all other industrial workers, and that his economic welfare in many instances is no better than that of ordinary wage-earners. In addition, this group maintains that in the last analysis it is flatly impossible for engineers to take an impartial attitude in the struggle between capital and labour. Hence they advocate the engineer affiliating with the organized labour movement like other wage earners and, in times of crisis, throwing his influence with the workers of industry.

The organized labour movement of America has indicated in clear terms its estimate of the American engineer’s true value and opportunity. The American Federation of Labour in 1919 issued the following statement: