Social workers in our colleges have in many instances found engineering students “too busy,” and as a rule not so open to the altruistic appeal as those in other departments of the universities. Yet, it is a fact that 70 per cent of the 3,000 men engaged in industrial service are engineers. The reason is obvious: A football captain (an engineer) said the other day:
“This industrial work is the livest thing that’s struck college since I’ve been here. It’s a real job and it’s practical. Everyone of us who goes into it is bound to acquire an experience in dealing with men, which the curriculum can’t give, and we need it!”
Indeed a prominent general manager, himself a college graduate, recently said to the writer:
“The college graduates in my employ are frequently a confounded nuisance. They come to us with a splendid knowledge of books, but when as foremen or superintendents, they get out into the shop, and deal with working men, they make a mess of it. A good part of my time is spent in straightening out difficulties and restoring harmony. They haven’t any real sympathy with men and don’t know how to handle them.”
Here then is a great need in the training of an engineer, which the industrial service movement is designed to meet. Engineering students are quick to see the point. As they teach English to foreigners or lead a club of working men they come to understand these men, not as a “class,” but as individuals. They get a friendly insight into their working and living conditions and a first-hand knowledge of how to deal with them intelligently and sympathetically. Thus one student writes:
“My class of Italians is the finest bunch of men I’ve ever come into contact with—bright, keen, appreciative to an embarrassing extent. They have done me more good than I can ever do them.”
Another says:
“My club of working men was the big thing needed to complete my college education. It taught me things I could have learned in no other way, and as an engineer, I am already deriving great benefit.”
It is also true that many a college man has been kept straight and acquired higher ideals because of the responsibility of some group of men or boys who were looking up to him. One such man, an engineer of promise, says:
“Before I undertook any of this work, my one ideal in life was to make all the money I could, regardless of anyone under me. Since I gave some of my time in volunteer service my ideals have all changed. Now I don’t care where I go or what my salary, so long as it is some place where I can help my fellow men.”