THE ENGINEER IN CIVIC AFFAIRS

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THE ENGINEER IN CIVIC AFFAIRS

Much has been written of late of the engineer as a citizen—of his civic responsibilities, of his relation to legislation, to administration, to public opinion, and the like. It is timely writing. The engineer is about due for active participation in civic affairs other than a yearly visit to the polls to register his vote. He has not done much more than this since his inception. His work alone has sufficed, for him, at least, though the time is past when he can bury himself in his professional work and, in the vernacular, get away with it. Men of the stamp of Herbert Hoover have demonstrated the very great need for men of scientific training in public affairs. Such places heretofore have been filled with business men and lawyers. These men served and served well. But since administration of public affairs to-day is largely a matter of formulation and execution of engineering projects, it is assuredly the duty of engineers to take an active part in these public affairs.

Exact knowledge, which in a manner of speaking is synonymous with the engineer, is needed in high places in our nation. Men of technical education and training have demonstrated their fitness as servants of the people in the few instances where such men have taken over the reins of administration in certain specified branches of our government. Trained to think in terms of figures and the relation of these figures to life, engineers readily perceive the true and the untrue in matters of legislation and administration, though as a body they have never exerted themselves to an expression of their opinions on matters coming properly under the head of public opinion. Engineers have felt that they have not had the time. Or, having the time, that the public at large, chiefly owing to the engineer's self-imposed isolation, would not understand a voice from this direction, and so engineers have kept silent. The day has arrived, however, when this silence on the part of engineers must be broken.

The World War has been an awakening in this as in other directions. Lawyers and politicians have successfully dominated our56 government from its beginning, with a single beautiful exception in George Washington at one end and another admirable exception in Woodrow Wilson at the other. Washington was a civil engineer, and Wilson, while trained as a lawyer, was an educator. In between these two men there may have fallen a scattering of others who were not lawyers or politicians; the writer is not sure. Of one thing he is sure, however, and that is that engineers in the future will dominate politics to the betterment of the nation as a whole. For engineers are idealists—otherwise they would never have entered upon an engineering career—and idealism has come, as it were, into its own again. The man of vision of a wholesome aspect, the man who can so completely forget himself in his work of service as to engage in tasks whose merits nobody save himself and those pursuing like tasks can or will understand—which is pre-eminently the engineer—is the one man best fitted to administrate in public affairs. More important still than this statement is the fact that the world at large is beginning to realize the truth of it. Engineers as a body stand poised upon the rim of big things. Nor will they as a body stoop to the petty in politics, once they are fairly well launched57 in active participation of civic affairs. Neither their training nor their outlook, based upon their training, will permit it. For engineers, more than any other group of professional men, are given to "see true." And seeing true, being, as it is, the essence of a full life, is what is needed in our public administrators.

Engineers in the past who have become more or less prominent in the public eye—and there are some who have—have demonstrated their ability to see things as they are. Westinghouse was the first man in this country to foresee the coming of the half-holiday Saturday as an innovation that promised general adoption. He granted it to all his employees at a time when lesser industrial captains believed him to be at least "queer." Ford set the pace for a minimum rate of five dollars a day in his plant, and lesser captains still frown upon him for having perpetrated this "evil." Edison, among other things, has told of the importance of loose clothing—loose shoes and collars and hats—to a man who would enjoy good health. The list is not long, but the insight of those who form this short list cannot but be recognized. What these men have said and done concerning matters freely apart from the subject of58 engineering reveals them as members of a fraternity well qualified to lead public opinion rather than to follow it, as has been the province of engineers in the past. Each when he has spoken or entered upon action having the public welfare in mind has pronounced or demonstrated a truth which fairly crackled with sanity.

Engineers belong in civic affairs. The world of humanity needs men of their stamp in high places. Humanity needs men in control of state and national affairs who would hold the interests of humanity sacred. Engineers are such men. Not that engineers more than any other professional men are sprouting wings—not that. But engineers do see things in their true light—cannot see them in any other light than the one imposed by the law of mathematics, which is that two and two make four, never five or three—and this involuntarily would admit of decisions and grant graces from the point of view of absolute truth, which is, of course, the point of view of humanity—the greatest good for the greatest number. With such men occupying high places in the nation's affairs, the world of men and mankind would leap forward ethically and spiritually at a pace in keeping with the pace at which civilization59 has progressed under the impetus of engineering thought since the days of Watt. Nobody can deny that progress. Nobody could well deny the fact that ethical progress under engineering guidance would be equally great.

I hold a brief for engineers, of course. Engineering has been my major work for twenty years and more. It has been my privilege to associate intimately with two men—yea, three—possessed of great engineering ability. The third man failed of great repute, owing chiefly to his advanced—rather too much advanced—visionings. He wanted to talk across the ocean by telephone at a time when the cable interests successfully prevented him from commercializing his apparatus. And he died a disappointed inventor. But he had the stuff in him, the thing that makes for human greatness, just as had the other and more successful two men with whom I as a designer was privileged to work. All were men of kindly spirit, of broad outlook, of unselfish devotion to worldly interests. Each was a humanitarian. Each saw things as they are, and each saw things as they should be, and each thought much on problems of human welfare and betterment. Of such men in civic affairs the nation,60 and indeed the entire world of nations, has had but a sad too few in the past. It is to be hoped, and it is the belief of the writer, that engineers will become more plentiful in civic life in the future.

I have always believed that the man who reached an advanced age without a sizable bank-account is a fact which would well serve as a definition as to what constitutes an idealist. There are many such men—meaning, of course, men having a level set of brains, and not mental incompetents. Such men are inclined to things other than the accumulation of bank-accounts. They strive toward goals which to them are more worth while—self-improvement, for instance, spiritual growth being a better term. Of such men were the world's acknowledged saviors. A man who can wilfully thrust oars against the current of a stream flowing currency-wise, in such a way as to force himself into a back eddy or pool more or less stagnant, is a man pronouncedly great among men. The world is loath to recognize such a man for what he is; yet such men have lived and still live and will continue to live, always more for others than for themselves—seeing life in the true, in other and more gracious words.

Engineers, in the abstract, are such men. The accumulation of money is secondary with them. Their work holds first place in importance. Possessed of that professional pride which will not permit a man to set aside his work and enter a more lucrative and materially satisfactory field of endeavor—if he starve in his obstinacy—engineers are men of the temperament, aside from the training, to minister to public needs and desires. Self-effacement is the engineer's chief characteristic. He views largely and without bias. He can see things from the other fellow's angle because he is not an engineer if he has not the gift of imagination. The successful engineer has this most precious of endowments, and, having it, cannot but be possessed also of kindliness and sympathy, which are imagination's own brothers. Kindliness and sympathy are needed in the high places of our government for the people by the people. And because men in time gravitate to their rightful sphere of usefulness through the workings of an all-wise Providence, engineers already have turned and are turning toward the administration of public affairs.

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This book is part of the public domain. Charles M. Horton (2008). Opportunities in Engineering. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/24681/pg24681-images.html

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