reared by the civil man, just as it is seen in every bit of construction work of the mining and the electrical engineers. At first glance this may not appear to be true, but a close analysis of different jobs will bring out the truth of this statement.

Thus mechanical engineering offers largest and quickest returns. It does this for another reason. Because of this very overlapping upon the other three branches, for every position open in the electrical field, or the mining or the civil field, there are a dozen vacancies in the mechanical field. It cannot but be otherwise. Not one of the other branches but what has need at times for—as I have stated—a mechanical engineer. The casings and base-plates and supports of motors, for instance, while the motor itself—its windings and the like—is the work of the electrical engineer, are due to the designing genius of some mechanical man. Likewise, in the mining field, where shaking screens, to name only one of the many mechanical units necessary in mining operations, are an essential factor—units operated with pulleys and belts and cams and levers—all the province of the mechanical engineer—the mechanical man finds his uses. So in civil work, especially in dam construction where gates are necessary; and in chemical engineering—to drop into a minor branch—where tanks and vats and ovens and stirring paddles and the like are used. No matter in which branch a man may go, always he will find evidence of the presence some time of the mechanical engineer. The mechanical engineer dominates all the other branches, as has been said before. He is given second place in the order of the branches merely because the civil engineer happened to be the first and oldest kind of engineer to be given recognition as a profession. This man made himself a professional man, just as did the early practitioners of medicine—concocters of herbs in the beginning.

The proper selection will depend upon the young man's predilections and tastes. If he selects wisely, following out his predilections and tastes with a degree of accuracy, he cannot go wrong. He cannot go far wrong even if he doesn't follow out his hunches, for the reason that he can always swing over into any one of the other branches whenever he sees fit to do so. The thing is done every day, and will continue to be done throughout all time. Merely, it would be well for the young man, of course, to select in the beginning that branch which most appeals to him, and to stick to it like glue. Success is certain to be his. For in no other walk of life are the rewards so sure and so ample and so immediately responsive as in the engineering professions. These—like the matter of his selection from among the four major branches—are solely a matter up to the individual.

VI

QUALIFYING FOR PROMOTION

Immediately upon graduating—indeed, often several months before graduating—the engineering student finds his first job awaiting him. Frequently he finds a number of first jobs awaiting him and must make a selection. For it is the custom with large manufacturing concerns to send out scouts in the early spring of each year to address the engineering student bodies, with the idea in mind of securing the services of as many graduates as the scouts can win over for their respective organizations through direct appeal. What is usually offered the coming graduate is a brief apprenticeship in the shop, at a living wage, with promise of as early and rapid promotion in the organization as the work of the apprentice himself will permit, or improves.

These offers are generally splendid opportunities. The graduate may learn much of a practical commercial nature which perforce has been denied him in his student days, and also, having entered upon this apprenticeship, he not only gets acquainted with production on a large scale, but he is brought into touch with what constitutes most recent acceptable practice as well. This, provided he be a mechanical or an electrical engineer. Graduates in civil and mining engineering, while offered positions from executives in these particular branches also, have no such large opportunities offered them. The work itself does not permit it. Yet in any of the branches there is never a scarcity of jobs open to graduates upon their leaving college.

To qualify for promotion in any work, but more especially in the professions, one must know one's business. That is a trite statement, but it will bear repeating. The young graduate at first will not know his business. His mind will be a chaos of theories based upon myriads of formulæ which cannot but confuse him in the early days, when he is most earnestly trying to apply one or more of them to the more or less petty tasks which will be assigned to him. All he can do under the circumstances—all anybody could do under the circumstances—is to wait patiently, the while doing the best he can. Problems have a way of working themselves out—the correct formula will present itself; its true application will become manifest—and thus the young engineer has learned something of a practical nature which need not forsake him throughout the remainder of his engineering career.

Engineers are especially tolerant of one another's mistakes and errors. They are much more so than medical men, for instance. In the field of medicine one must show by many practical cases wherein a certain treatment has proved effective before the fraternity at large will even give the practitioner a hearing. This is not so among engineers. Engineers turn to one another in difficulties with earnest desire to help if they can help; and when one of their number is in trouble in his efforts to solve a difficult problem the whole body will turn to him with friendly encouragement and advice, if the latter is wanted. The young graduate who is struggling with a problem come up in his daily work, if he will but make the fact known to the engineers on the job in association with him, will find himself surrounded by engineers every one of whom will be seriously concerned for him and anxious to render assistance.

So the young graduate need entertain no fears on the ground of possible errors when starting out. Merely he must go slow; take his own good time on a job; ask all the questions possible of his engineer neighbors. Frankness in engineering, as in any other walk of life, pays. The bluffer is not wanted. No man knows it all, and certainly no engineer knows all there is to know about his profession. Time was when this might have been true; but it isn't true to-day. The work of engineering research and development has become so complex that engineers are forced to specialize. The engineering graduate, entering upon his first job, will discover early that he, too, must specialize. This will not be difficult, owing to the fact that his engineering education has been general and designed to embrace in a liberal way all practice. Drawing, as he will, from this liberal source that which he finds necessary in the solving of his initial problems, he will find himself within a short time becoming, willy-nilly, a specialist.

In the earlier years there should be considerable study done after hours on the part of the graduate engineer. Because his education has been general in the field, and he now holds a position with a company manufacturing steam-turbines, say, he must "wise up," as the saying goes, on the subject of steam-turbines. It will do him no harm to trace back to its source all progress made in the field of turbine engineering and construction. He will find no scarcity of books on the subject, and with