Address in Praise of Founders

"Professor of the Engineering School In Address In Praise of the Founders Says Engineers Should Mediate World's Troubles" The Daily Gleaner (13 May 1920): 6, 9.

The annual expression of our appreciation of the spirit of the Founders of this University has become an established custom. But this year of all years I feel that it is more clearly apparent to us that whatever stability of community, province or government we possess, is due primarily to education and religion. Besieged on all sides by radicalism and unrest, during the last year we have based our hopes of a reorganized world on the endurance of education and religion. It is fitting, therefore, that for a few moments today we have received from this and similar universities through the devotion of the Founders to the cause of education.

Quite naturally I must use the development of Engineering as an illustration. From the days of Babylon and before, men have practiced engineering. The consulting engineer for the Tower of Babel must have felt quite the same emotions as the present day consulting engineer who witnesses the failure of his bridge with in the inevitable loss of life. The engineering of those days, however, was based on experience alone, and the available data was far from complete.

Today we have available an infinitely greater number of practical investigations coupled with an endless discussion of theory. The prospective engineer who enters our present universities is therefor introduced to an exceptionally fertile field for the development of any inherent skill he may possess. During his brief four year course he has at his disposal data contributed by the efforts of countless scientists who years ago struggled along with very little definite information. Do we not, therefore, owe much to the Founders who made possible the collection of this material?

Let us now consider in connection with the study of the modern engineer the definition of the term Civil Engineer. The old custom was to divide all engineers into two classes, civil and military. It follows, therefore, that up to the beginning of the nineteenth century we could quite properly have defined a civil engineer as any engineer not a military engineer. During the nineteenth century there sprang from the general profession civil engineering, three special classes, mechanical, electrical and chemical. All of these three classes are as well known today as the older profession. In addition, much to the disgust of all graduate engineers, we are now deluged with all kinds of trade engineers such as the heating engineer, the plumbing engineer, the kitchen engineer, etc. It seems that anyone who does useful work feels entitled to attach the term engineer to their name. But for the men who have spent four hard years in schools of applied science there are but four classes of engineer--civil, mechanical, electrical and chemical.

The Civil Engineer Today

I shall attempt in a few words to establish the position of the civil engineer of today. I wonder how many of us while we were peacefully seated in a parlor car, comfortably watching mile after mile of wilderness flit by, have stopped to realize the progress of transportation. How many have tried to visualize the toil and expense of constructing that railroad or just what it is actually worth to be travelling in luxury at the rate of 50 miles an hour, instead of rattling over the rocks in a stone chariot behind some prehistoric animal at the rate of one league in seven days. Before the labor unions became so strong that they could paralyze transportation in twenty-four hours, we were not particularly aware of the predicament we would be in fi we lost our railroads.

There are but few of us now, however, who are not aware of the danger of railroad tie-ups. We should not measure distance in inches, feet or miles, but in that unit of time that it takes to travel those various intervals. Vancouver is no farther away today than Montreal was 100 years ago. Here we expect to have olives, bananas, oranges, grapes, etc., at all seasons, simply because we can rely on our present system of transportation. Once again, what is it worth to have these railroads at our disposal? Let us attack it in a popular style, such as a good salesman might use. How many of us would rather walk 100 miles than pay three dollars to ride? the chances are that the walking trip would cost us more than that in shoe leather. How many would carry a hundred pound sack of meal from here to Boston for two dollars? Very few. Directly this measures the service of the engineers who spent months and years in making the surveys and supervising the construction of these lines, and indirectly it measures the service of the Founders of all schools of applied science. Without them we would still be riding in the stone chariot.

Let us turn to another field. Perhaps during your trips to some of our large seacoast cities you may have noticed in the harbor near some apparent construction operation, large bubble of air rising to the surface of the water. Very probably you attributed it to some natural gas rising from the bottom. If I am not mistaken it was far more interesting than that. Let us turn the wheels of time back four years and suppose we are standing on Brooklyn bridge, looking down the harbor. Hundreds of sea craft of all descriptions are crossing and re-crossing the East River. In the foreground are those identical bubbles that I spoke of before. Suddenly something happens! A great geyser of water rises ten feet in the air and disgorges the inert forms of three men. They are pulled from the water by a passing tug. One is dead, two will live. Where did they come from? Possibly 5,000 people saw the accident, about five could answer the question. They were working in a pneumatic caisson, 75 feet below the surface of the water and they were blown up through ten feet of mud and 65 feet of water by excessive air pressure in the caisson. In explanation, the air pressure should just balance the water pressure; if it falls below the water will rush into the caisson and if it rises above it will blow out a bubble under the cutting edge of the caisson, carrying the men with it. But what it is all for? Today where those men were working there are two reinforced concrete double track rapid transit tubes, and down under that mud and water you and several million of your fellowmen will ride comfortably in an all-steel train during the next century. How many will think of the poor "sand hogs" who made possible that tube? Thus we have another example of the progress of engineering.

Care of Cities and Towns

Quite another task for the modern engineer is the care of cities and towns in the matter of water supply and sewage disposal. Some of us can remember when sewage was allowed to flow freely down the main streets. Those were the days when waves of typhoid each spring and autumn were as sure as the vernal and the autumnal equinox. From the year 800 A.D. to early in the thirteenth century the streets of Paris were described as absolutely filthy. On good authority it is stated that King Philip Augustus was so disturbed at the stench when he opened the window of his palace one day that he ordered all the streets to be paved with stone. The first act for the paving of the streets of London was passed in 1532 and apparently for a somewhat similar reason as was the case in Paris. Today the modern engineer has not only to think of the surface of the streets but also of countless conduits to be placed under the street surface. Our waste materials are removed swiftly from all our centers of population and in a great many cases carefully treated so that they lose all power for doing harm to other communities. Suppose as an example of the modern water supply problem we consider a city of 500,000 population situated on the salt water which implies that its water supply is from a distant source. What would happen to such a city if its water supply broke down for an indefinite period? Every single inhabitant would swarm back into the country or die in the city. Proper training of the engineer has prevented such calamities.

Probably the first human effort toward bridge building was the felling of a tree across a stream. The next step curiously enough was to the masonry arch which is the most indeterminate structure we have today. With the rapid development of rolled steel shapes in the 19th century, trussed bridges of steel became the most common type culminating in such remarkable structures as the Forth Bridge in Scotland and the famous Quebec bridge over the St. Lawrence.

Hydro-electric Developments

It is needless to mention other enterprises such as the great hydro-electric developments or countless other feats of engineering to demonstrate our dependence on the young men who are passing through the scientific courses of our universities. And now to turn to the problems of the present day, it seems evident that our graduates may be called upon to perform a task which, if it is accomplished, will bring back to our present social scheme the stability which it had before the World War. that is the adjustment of the present strained relations between labor, capital and the public. Usually it is customary to leave the public out of this quarrel between capital and labor but it is always the innocent bystander that is shot, and since we have been treated to a continuous vaudeville f strikes during the last eighteen months, it is perfectly evident that the public is that bystander.

Why is the engineer in a position to mediate between capital and labor? Because he belongs really to neither class, yet he assists bot and has the confidence of both. It is noteworthy, then, that we are now considering the necessity for giving our graduates a broader education. It is not too much to say that it is evident at the present time the two most valuable assets to an engineer are first, a practical knowledge of sociology and second, the ability to think constructively. The university must supply him with the last, but he will only learn how to handle men by active duty.

It is the duty of the university, therefore, to develop the mind so that it may think constructively. To equip the human machine with tools and part so that it may go out and do useful work. I recall in this instance one of the bitterest pills which a professor has to swallow. A friend of mine attacked me with the following denunciation: "Why don't you give up instructing; it is so inactive you don't build any bridges, or harness any mighty rivers, or move mountains, it must be so monotonous." To which I replied, as best I could, "No we don't do any of these things and your opinion is the opinion of the general public; but we are not non-productive, we manufacture the engineers who will move those mountains and will chain those rivers."

Training of Future Engineer

Now finally let us consider the probable changes in the training of the engineer of the future. I believe that the greatest change will be the introduction into all engineering courses of a fundamental training in the principles of business administration. In the next three years the engineers of Canada and the United States will be called upon to spend $1,500,000,000 in highways alone. Will not business ability be necessary to prevent waste? I also believe that the day of the specialist has gone. I think that in the future a broad general education is a better solution of our training problem rather than a specific specialization. In other words an engineer's ability to do things and work out solutions for himself is worth more than any number of concrete facts he may have memorized. To possess knowledge is good but to be able to do is better, and a combination of both is best. To accomplish this result is the task before us here.

And who are the designers and builders of this laboratory in which we work on the human mind. They are the Founders, and it is to them that we owe social equilibrium. Were they with us today, their interest would be here on the hill, their criticism would help us, we would have their encouragement; but they are gone and we must  therefore depend on you, my friends, to help us with your interest, your constructive criticism, and above all, your enthusiasm.