“To promote further the production of an adequate supply of the world’s needs for use and higher standards of life, we urge that there be established co-operation between the scientist of industry and the representatives of the organized workers.”
This conviction has also been expressed in the following terms:
“The trades-union movement of America understands fully the necessity for adequate production of the necessities of life. American labour understands, perhaps more fully than do American statesmen, the needs of the world in this hour, and it is exerting every effort to see that those needs are met with intelligence and with promptness. The question of increased productivity is not a question of putting upon the toilers a more severe strain; it is a question of vast fundamental changes in the management of industry; a question of the elimination of outworn policies; a question of the introduction of the very best in machinery and methods of management.”
The fundamental significance of these attitudes of the engineers and the organized workers of the country will perhaps be better understood when it is realized how indispensable the engineers have become in the conduct of industrial affairs to-day. While virtually the product of the last fifty years, they have already fallen heir to one of the most strategic positions in society. To them are entrusted the real “trade secrets” of industry. Only they understand how far the intricate material processes of manufacture are interdependent, and how they can be kept in harmony. The engineers have the skill and the understanding which is absolutely necessary for industrial management. Without their guidance the present highly complicated system of production would quickly tumble into chaos.
The ownership of industry has frequently been suggested as the key to the true emancipation of the great mass of workers of a nation. Leastwise many theoretical arguments on the process of workers’ liberation have been premised on the necessity of eventually liquidating the institution of private property. How futile such a programme is without recognizing the indispensable part which technical and managerial skill plays in any system of production has been emphasized again and again by individuals, notably in Russia and Italy, where the experiment of securing production without the assistance of adequate technical control has been tried. In fact, the whole question of property control is secondary when once the true value of engineering management is understood. In so far as the American workers see this, and make it possible for American engineers to co-operate with them in their struggle for liberation, will they make the task of the worker more easy and avoid the frequent recurrence of wasteful and often tragic conflict. The burden, however, is equally upon the shoulders of the engineer to meet labour half way in this enterprise.
It is very much to be doubted if most American engineers really have a clear understanding of the position in which they find themselves, beyond a general conception of their apparent impartiality. The progressive economic concepts and activities which have been outlined, while advanced by representatives of national associations of engineers, are not necessarily the reflection of the great mass of American engineers to-day, over 200,000 strong. Nevertheless, it is fortunate that an otherwise conservative and socially timid body of individuals, such as the engineers frequently have been in the past, should now find itself represented by a few spokesmen at least who are able to promulgate clear statements on fundamental issues. The rank and file of engineers have a long road to travel before they will be in a position to command adequate consideration for their basic ideals and purposes as expressed in their new definition of engineering, and as proposed by some of their leaders.
It is, indeed, seriously to be doubted if many engineers of America have really had the training to grasp the relation of their position to the economic developments of to-day. Conventional engineering education has been entirely too narrow in its purpose. It has succeeded in turning out good technical practitioners, not far-seeing economic statesmen. In recent years many engineering schools have placed emphasis on what has aptly been termed “The business features of engineering practice.” This, while conceivably a good thing from the standpoint of the limits within which engineering enterprise must ordinarily function to-day, is bound to over-emphasize the status quo, and so confine the vision of the engineer.
Engineers in this country have frequently taken a sort of pharisaic attitude on the desirability—offhand—of delegating the entire running of things human to technical experts. While such experts may usually have been quite successful in operating engineering enterprises, it hardly follows that this necessarily qualifies them for the wholesale conduct of the affairs of society.
Yet the demand on the part of certain engineers for a more fundamental participation in the conduct of the larger economic and political affairs of society should be construed as a healthy sign. It is an outgrowth of an intellectual unrest among the profession, precipitated by the thwarting of a genuine desire to build and serve. This unrest, in the absence of a constructive outlet combined with the past failure of engineering education to provide a real intellectual background, has resulted from time to time in some amusing phenomena. Thus not a few engineers have developed a sort of symbolism or mysticism, expressed in the terminology of their profession, with a view to building a new heaven and a new earth whose directing head they propose to be. From this they derive a peculiar satisfaction and perhaps temporary inspiration, and incidentally they often seem to confound laymen who do not understand the meaning of their terms. Instead of deriving comfort from symbolic speculations and futurist engineering diagrams, one would rather expect engineers to be realists, especially in the larger affairs of their profession. The seriousness with which the speculations concerning “space-binding” and “time-binding” have been taken is an example of how engineers with their present one-sided intellectual development may seize upon metaphysical cobwebs for spiritual solace in their predicament.
Another aspect of the intellectual limitations of many American engineers is revealed by some of the controversies which engage the technical societies and the technical periodicals. A notable and recurring instance is the debate concerning the relative merits of steam and electrical operation of railways. The real question which underlies replacing a going system with one which is better but more costly in capital outlay is primarily economic in nature. Consequently such a change is contingent upon a revised distribution of the national surplus rather than on the comparative merits of detail parts. This fact seldom seems to get home to the engineers. They have been arguing for the last fifteen years the relative advantages of this or that detail, failing all the while to understand that the best, in the large, from an engineering standpoint, can be secured only when unrestricted, free enterprise has given way to some form of enterprise regulated principally in the interest of public service.