Ethics 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Engineering Profession 
 
 BY 
 
 
 VICTOR C. ALDERSON, 
 
 
 Dean 
 
 
 OF 
 
 
 Armour Institute of Technology 
 
 [ Reprinted from the Railroad Digest, January, igoi. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARY 
 AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 BOOKSTACKS 
 
 Ethics of the Engineering Profession. 
 
 The work of the professional man, he lie doctor, lawyer, clergyman 
 or engineer, always bears some direct relation to well-defined fundamental 
 principles. These principles may result from the experience of humanity, 
 they may come from a priori reasoning, or they may rest upon combina- 
 tions of these two. But no profession can be regarded as stable until 
 it has such a body of wcll-establishel principles as will guide a member 
 of the profession in determining the actual value of his work, will teach 
 him that his calling is honorable to himself and valuable to the community, 
 and will determine what line of action may elevate the profession and 
 instill into him the lesson that he must do nothing to bring reproach upon 
 his chosen profession. In a word, they give him ideals to struggle for, and 
 to struggle for an ideal is the only method of gaining true and lasting 
 satisfaction. Pure professional success, as distinguished from mere money 
 getting, depends upon acting in harmony with these principles. 
 
 A trade may be distinguished from a profession in that it does not 
 recognize the importance of these basal principles. Kot that the man at 
 the bench, the machine, or the loom, does not need guiding principles in 
 his work, but that they assume a distinctly subordinate place. The pro- 
 fessional man must be a broader man, must have a wider grasp of relations, 
 must have the ability to solve new complications, must be the leader and 
 the thinker as well as the doer. The machinist may run his machine, but 
 the mechanical engineer understands machinery. The electrician may close 
 the circuit, but the electrical engineer understands polyphase machinery. 
 The engine man may open the throttle, but the railway engineer under- 
 stands railroading. The engineer, whatever his specialty may be, must 
 base his practice upon the well-established laws of nature. If he belongs 
 to the group of the successful . rather than the unsuccessful engineers he 
 must have plain, practical sense, a scientific education, tact, business 
 abilit<r and a strong personality. 
 
 The principles which underlie the legal profession, no matter what 
 the lawyer may regard as professional ethics in a particular case, are 
 statutes and the common law — that is, crystallized human experience. 
 These laws form the principles upon which he aims to decide between 
 right and wrong, between justice and injustice, and his work, except in 
 certain criminal cases where the facts of guilt alone are to be proved, 
 consists largely in properly fitting each new case under some one of 
 the numerous general cases. _ The two parties to a suit merely urge the 
 application of different principles, and the ultimate reason for legal 
 wrangles is that the fundamental principles, according to which judgment 
 is formed, are of purely human origin : consequently, they arc in a -state of 
 change, of evolution. For this reason the determination of right aiW 
 
time, in justifying his belief in the corpuscular theory of light, said that 
 his “chief objection to the undulatory theory was that he could not think 
 the Creator guilty of so clumsy a contrivance as the filling of space with 
 ether in order to produce light.” Less than thirty years ago I heard an 
 instructor in one of the universities of this State advise his class that 
 the writings of Darwin and Spencer were dangerous reading for young 
 men. So thoroughly in sympathy have been the narrow intellects of all 
 centuries in their inhospitable treatment of the truth! With all its won- 
 ders and triumphs, the crowning glory of the nineteenth century is that, 
 in its closing years, men ceased to fear the truth. ^You have enjoyed a 
 great privilege in receiving your education in the last decade of this cen- 
 tury, and at this Institute, where truth has always been a welcome guest, 
 although he now and then turns into the street some aged, familiar loung- 
 er about the porch of the temple of learning. It is only recently that the 
 established belief regarding the composition of air was rudely ejected. 
 
 Now, what of the future? It gives to the young ipen who are about to 
 start on their careers, notably to those of your profession, golden promises 
 of success. At the opening of the last century Nature was man’s master. 
 Modern civilization has been a series of conquests over Nature. Year by 
 year, as the new century unfolds, greater and greater triumphs will be 
 achieved, and you will participate in the work of making the results of 
 these victories available for the welfare and advancement of mankind. 
 Greece and Rome, with all their superiority in literature and art, in phi- 
 losophy and jurisprudence, gave to the world no great inventions. The 
 Middle Ages covered Europe with cathedrals of unsurpassed beauty and 
 grandeur, but made no new discoveries to lighten the toil or increase the 
 comfort of the race. According to Wallace, only seven practical discov- 
 eries and inventions of the first magnitude were made from the dawn of 
 history to the beginning of the nineteenth century: Alphabetical writ- 
 ing, Arabic numerals, printing, the barometer and thermometer, the mar- 
 iner’s compass, the telescope, and the steam engine. To the nineteenth 
 century alone he assigns thirteen such discoveries and inventions: Rail- 
 ways, steamships, electric telegraphs, the telephone, Lucifer matches, 
 gas illumination, electric lighting, photography, the phonograph, the 
 Roentgen rays, spectrum analysis, anaesthetics, and antiseptic surgery. 
 
 Opinons will differ as to the correctness of these lists. To the first, 
 I should add gunpowder, the screw, and what Gladstone called the great- 
 est of man’s inventions, because there was nothing in nature to suggest 
 it — the wheel; and, in the second, I should include vaccination, the cot- 
 ton gin, the typewriter, the sewing machine, and the self-binding reaper. 
 But whatever we may think of the accuracy of the comparison made by 
 Wallace, we recognize that the great majority of the inventions that now 
 enter into the world’s work were made during the last century. One hun- 
 dred years ago the farmer was still the slave of the fiail and the sickle, 
 and his produce was laboriously dragged to market by horses at the rate 
 of two miles an hour, or poled down the river on flat boats. New York 
 City, in 1801, had no greater conveniences for the health and comfort of 
 her citizens than London had in the days of Chaucer. Three-fourths of 
 the population of the United States lived within fifty miles of the At- 
 lantic, and of the five and one-half millions of people less than half a 
 
 3 
 
million lived west of the Alleghenies. There were not more than two 
 stationary steam engines in the country. A French engineer laid out the 
 city of Washington, and an English physician of the West Indies drew the 
 plans for the National Capitol. The steamboat of John Fitch and the 
 locomotive of Oliver Evans were looked upon as the fanciful contrivances 
 of impracticable fanatics, although the railway and the steamboat have 
 made possible the conquest of the continent. 
 
 In our future competition for the world’s trade great national works 
 will be undertaken, and many of them will be completed in your time. 
 We must have a waterway with a depth of twenty*one feet connecting 
 Lake Erie with the Hudson, and a fourteen-foot channel from the Chicago 
 River to the Gulf of Mexico. These waterways, in connection with the 
 Nicaragua Canal soon to be built, will give cheap transportation for the 
 raw materials and manufactured goods from the interior of our country 
 to the markets of Europe and Asia. Millions of acres of arid lands in the 
 West will soon be made fertile by irrigation plans carried out by national 
 or state appropriations or by private enterprise. In all these great un- 
 dertakings the men of your profession will be the leaders. Another im- 
 portant work of the twentieth century in which you will take part will 
 be the improvement of the appliances already in use. The possibilities 
 of steam, steel and electricity have not been exhausted. One of the most 
 valuable lessons that men learned in the last century was that every hu- 
 man contrivance, however perfect it may seem, can be improved. In a re- 
 cently published article Andrew Carnegie wrote: “It is scarcely within 
 the bounds of belief that any cheaper process of making steel remains to 
 be discovered.’’ He had in mind the Siemens open-hearth furnace which 
 was invented only a few years before he wrote, and which is even now 
 supplanting the Bessemer process of 1864. Why should not some member 
 of the class of 1901, of the Armour Institute, discover a method of mak- 
 ing better and cheaper steel than can be made by the open-hearth process? 
 Some one will surely make the discovery; the uses of steel will be mul- 
 tiplied, our present annual product of 11,000,000 tons will be greatly in- 
 creased, and there will be an enlarged demand for skilled engineers at the 
 mines and factories. 
 
 In 1825 Barlow, the English scientist, declared that an electro-mag- 
 netic telegraph was impossible, but in 1832 Henry had a line working 
 successfully, in his laboratory. Ten years later Morse had sent his im- 
 mortal message from Washington to Baltimore and demonstrated the 
 commercial value of his invention. Now the contract has been let for 
 la 3 dng a .sub-marine cable six thousand miles in length connecting Can- 
 ada and Australia. 
 
 In 1852 Roebling built his beautiful. suspension bridge over the Niag- 
 ara River, with an 810-foot span. Twenty years later he and his son aston- 
 ished the world by their construction of the Brooklyn bridge, with a 
 1,600-foot span. Plans have recently been completed for a bridge across 
 the North River, with a 2,700-foot span. American engineers have built 
 bridges in Australia, Burmah, and South America. The construction of 
 the bridge at Hawkesbury, Australia, gave a splendid example of the re- 
 sourcefulness of the modern engineer. Soft, deep mud made it impossible 
 to build the span on piles adjacent to the piers. So it was put together 
 
 4 
 
on a staging erected on a pontoon. When the span was finished the pon- 
 toon was towed to the piers at high tide, and hy the ebbing of the tide the 
 span was gradually lowered into postion. When the modern engineer 
 finds the ordinary appliances inadequate for his purpose he employs the 
 moon to work for him, lift his span and put it on its piers. 
 
 Future improvements in railway construction will demand the high- 
 est skill of the trained engineer. Already there are 190,000 miles of rail- 
 way in the United States, crossing 63,000 bridges, and constructed and 
 equipped at a cost of $10,000,000,000 during the last two generations. If 
 we could have a panoramic view of the trains that have left Baltimore 
 during the last seventy years it would give us a good idea of the changes 
 that have taken place in railway construction between the days of the 
 coach with mast and sail and the Titanic “consolidation” locomotive. 
 
 The results that have been accomplished in cheapening the cost of 
 transportation in the last thirty years indicate what great changes we 
 may look for in the next generation, as the outcome of work in which 
 some of you will be engaged. The old wooden cars, weighing sixteen tons 
 and carrying a paying load of fifteen tons, have been superseded by the 
 modern .pressed-steel cars, of no greater weight, but carrying a load of 
 fifty tons each. The old thirty-ton locomotive, struggling with thirty cars 
 and a paying load of 450 tons, has retired in favor of the Mogul and Con- 
 solidation, which can haul fifty steel cars with a paying load bf 2,500 
 tons. In 1867 the total freight carried in the United States was 75,000,- 
 000 tons, for which the charges were $400,000,000, or $5.33 per ton. In 
 1899, 976,000,000 tons were carried for $922,000,000, or 95 cents per ton. 
 This great and rapid reduction in freight tolls has been the most potent 
 factor in enabling us to send abroad this year nearly $1,500,000,000 in 
 the products of our farms and factories. Future improvements that will 
 reduce the cost of construction, maintenance, and operation will bring 
 about a still further cheapening of the cost of transportation. A fortune 
 awaits the man who will invent an angle-bar that will make the joint as 
 durable as the rail. Fame and fortune both wait on the genius who will 
 discover a cheap method of permanently preventing the oxidation of iron. 
 
 In my opinion the most interesting, , and perhaps the most important, 
 work that will engage the talents of the twentieth century engineer, 
 architect, and scientist, will be the making over of the nineteenth century 
 city. During the last fifty years the cities of the world have increased in 
 population with a rapidity never before paralleled. In most instances this 
 growth has been so sudden and tremendous that we have been able only 
 partially to adapt modern appliances to the rapidly changing conditions, 
 and often after a very clumsy fashion. And yet, a hundred years ago, there 
 was nothing to suggest the possibility of the development within a cen- 
 tury of our great interior cities. If a member of the class of 1801, of Har- 
 vard College, had given as his commencement address an accurate 
 prophesy of the majestic city that, before the century’s close, would rise, 
 “like an exhalation” from the marshes at the mouth of the shallow creek 
 at the headwaters of Lake Michigan, he would have been regarded as the 
 greatest imaginative writer of his times. But if I should attempt to de- 
 scribe tonight what I believe will be the Chicago of the next century I 
 should have to use language that would seem equally extravagant. 
 
 5 
 
Many of the improvements that are to take place in our city you will 
 witness when you return to celebrate your fiftieth anniversary, and some 
 of you will take part in planning and carrying them out. Some of the 
 changes that will come we can now predict, but many more will be the 
 outgrowth of further inventions and discoveries. In the well-built and 
 well-governed city of the twenty-first century the water supply will be 
 purified at its source, or in reservoirs. The sewage will be used to fer- 
 tilize a municipal farm upon which all who wish can find honorable em- 
 ployment. All wires and pipes will be laid in tunnels under the streets, 
 and through these tunnels most of the passenger and freight traffic will 
 be carried. There will be no rails on the surface of the streets, and all 
 the traffic in the streets will be moved by electricity. Cheap and rapid 
 transportation will carry the city workers to their homes in houses with 
 yards on the outskirts of the city. There will be no over-crowded tene- 
 ment houses, no congested areas, no plague spots, in the new city.' But, 
 in their places, there will oe public baths, lavatories, and playgrounds, 
 and municipal lodging-nouses, wash-houses, and kitchens. Light, heat, 
 and power will be generated in the form of electricity at adjacent mines 
 and brought to the city by underground cables. The twenty-first century 
 city will be a clean, light, healthy city, intelligently adapted to the com- 
 fort and security of all its inhabitants. Those of us who are living at the 
 opening of the twentieth century will be glad enough to see the transfor- 
 mation begin. 
 
 I have barely touched upon a few features of the work of improving 
 present appliances which will engage the attention of your profession in 
 the immediate future. But surely these illustrations are sufficient to 
 show the great opportunities that are in store for you, and to arouse 
 that strong feeling of enthusiasm without which great achievements are 
 impossible. Sir Humphrey Davy, scientist, poet, and philanthropist, who 
 began life, as he once wrote, with “a look toward future greatness,” has 
 disclosed to us the secret of its attainment. “Almost all great deeds,” he 
 said, “arise from a plenitude of hope or desire. No man ever had genius 
 who did not aim to execute more than he was able.” With the inspiration 
 that you have received during your years of study you will aim to accom- 
 plish something more than the carrying out of the plans of others or the 
 mere improvement of their discoveries. You must he inventors as well 
 as engineers. The engineer and the architect must often carry out the 
 wishes of their clients against their own judgment. Therefore, give all 
 the time and energy that you can command to original work and the dis- 
 covery of new uses to which the forces of nature can be applied. Elec- 
 tricity alone furnishes an inxehaustible field for the genius of the in- 
 ventor. What an infinity of uses awaits the invention of a light, cheap, 
 and powerful storage battery! With such a battery the problem of aerial 
 navigation will be solved and the airship will become a practical utility 
 for many purposes, including life-saving from shipwrecks. 
 
 It has been estimated that an invention which shall secure the com- 
 plete combustion of all the carbon in coal will cause a saving of 100,000,- 
 000 tons in the world’s present annual consumption of coal. Who will 
 earn the blessings of his fellow-men by inventing a cheap and healthy 
 method ventilating and cooling in hot weather and tropical climates the 
 
 6 
 
int' dwellings, hospitals, and factories? The inventor is the bene- 
 
 fa - race. Davy’s safety lamp has saved thousands of lives. 
 
 aities for usefulness are greater than his. With our en- 
 ^edge of the laws of nature, the useful inventions of the next 
 ought to exceed in number and importance all those of the last 
 ceix A repetition of the thrilling experiences of Davy, Morse, Roent- 
 
 gen, an X the other renowned inventors, who seemed to touch the limits 
 of human ingenuity, may seem to timid minds impossible; 
 
 “Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ 
 
 Gleams that untravel’d world whose margin fades 
 Forever and forever when I move.” 
 
 Twenty years ago Brichsen, one of the ablest surgeons of London, 
 publicly announced his belief that “surgery had reached its limits.” But 
 since this sentence was uttered surgery has achieved some of its most 
 wonderful and beneficent triumphs. One thing, however, the inventor 
 must bear in mind: Few great inventions in the future will be the result 
 of accident or aimless investigation. They will, on the contrary, be the 
 outgrowth of patient, laborious, intelligently directed research. The de- 
 vices that will secure the perfect combustion of coal, prevent the oxida- 
 tion of iron, give practical utility to the storage battery, wireless teleg- 
 raphy, and sub-marine telephony must be wrought out by the painstaking 
 process of eliminating obstacles and adding improvements, one by one. 
 Other inventions of far-reaching importance will be made by brilliant in- 
 vestigators, who will start with a clear conception of what they wish to 
 accomplish and work out the result with infinite attention to details. 
 
 Some men have a genius for scientific investigation, as others have 
 an aptitude for languages, music, or mathematics.- But most of these 
 geniuses lack time and opportunity for research. Oliver Lodge, in a re- 
 cently published article on the “Scope and Tendencies of Physics,” says: 
 “It was the uniquely endowed laboratory of the Royal Institution, London, 
 which enabled Faraday to realize his genius. Men able to experiment 
 are not lacking; laboratories — research laboratories — and the leisure to 
 employ them, are the urgent need of all countries at the present time.” 
 I would like to suggest to some man of wealth and public spirit, who 
 wishes to emulate the wise philanthropy of the founder of Armour Insti- 
 tute, and mark the opening of the twentieth century by an act of generos- 
 ity in harmony with the enlightened spirit of the age, that he establish 
 and endow in connection with this school a chemical and physical labo- 
 ratory designed exclusively for original research. Let the endow- 
 ment be generous, and let the income be devoted, not to the 
 salaries '' of teachers or scholarships for students, but to provide 
 ample incomes and all possible facilities for specially-trained 
 scientists, who shall give their time and energy to inventions 
 and discoveries of practical utility. It is impossible to estimate the bene- 
 ficial results that would fiow from such investigations. The man who 
 will give his name to such a munificent endowment will be remembered 
 for his broad-minded liberality centuries after his ninety-nine-year leases 
 have run out and all his other investments have ceased to bear interest. 
 
 I have now spoken briefiy of the encouraging openings which the new 
 century discloses to the enterprise of the engineer and the ingenuity of 
 
 7 
 
the inventor. But the work of both is strictly practical, utilitarian, com- 
 mercial. Whatever the engineer can construct, or the inventor devise, 
 has a money value, or it is valueless. Now, anything that can be valued 
 in money has not the highest value. The value of truth can not be ex- 
 pressed in money, or in any other terms; for truth is the sum of all values. 
 The bankers of Florence would give nothing for Galileo’s discovery; Lon- 
 don brokers would not accept from Newton the law of gravitation as 
 collateral; and Lord Rayleigh could get no bid from Wall Street on 
 argon. The noblest activity of the human intellect is the pursuit of truth 
 for its own sake. You, therefore, who have learned the value of truth, 
 must be not only engineers and inventors, but scientists; for the scientist 
 is the simple seeker after pure truth. In this search you will be free 
 from the sordid demands of clients and employers, free from the oppres- 
 sive atmosphere of commercialism, free from the superstitions and tradi- 
 tions of the past, free at last to approach, without fearing the truth, the 
 profoundest mysteries of the universe. The wise and great of all past 
 ages will guide you to the end of their journey, and where they leave you 
 alone with Nature you will begin your journey and explorations in the 
 illimitable realm of undiscovered truth. Who can describe the exultation 
 of the traveler in this vast, mysterious realm? Who, that has not felt a 
 similar joy, can understand the thrill of ecstacy that overcomes the 
 “watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken?” 
 
 Of one thing I am convinced — that the earnest seeker after truth, as 
 his knowledge of the material world increases, will approach the unre- 
 vealed secrets of the universe in a spirit of devout reverence. We may 
 admit the demonstrations of Copernicus and Galileo, of Kepler and New- 
 ton, of Buffon and Darwin, and find temporary mental repose in the neb- 
 ular hypothesis, but what do we know of the origin of matter? In the 
 presence of the tremendous truths of the conservation or energy and the 
 indestructibility of matter we can only exclaim, as Hutton did a century 
 ago: “In the economy of the world I can find no traces of a beginning 
 and no prospect of an end.” We may penetrate the remotest confines of 
 the domain of knowledge, and ascend to the loftiest heights of specula- 
 tion; we may tell rhe composition and temperature of the stars, and 
 measure the orbits of unseen planets; but who has discovered the incep- 
 tion of organic life? “There is a path which no fowl knoweth and which 
 the vulture’s eye hath not seen.” We may hold, as it were, the universe 
 in the palm of our hand, as Goethe held the skull of his friend, Schiller, 
 but in the universal sphere we can find no solution of the awful mystery 
 of human life, any more than the philosopher could discover within the 
 narrow walls of bone the secret of the power of the dead poet. The mon- 
 ument to Newton in Westminster Abbey tells us that the greatest of sci- 
 entists “asserted in his philosophy the majesty of God and exhibited in his 
 conduct the simplicity of the Gospel.” The man of science of the twen- 
 tieth century, even with his increased knowledge of the material world 
 and his enlarged control over the forces of nature, should approach the 
 inner mysteries of the universe with the same spirit of humility and rev- 
 erence toward the truth which added lustre to the fame of the great phi- 
 losopher of the seventeenth century. 
 
 Now, with all this bright prospect before you of useful accomplish- 
 
 8 
 
ment in all the departni^nts of thought and activity in which you are in- 
 terested, what, you are asking yourselves, are the conditions essential to 
 success? Men differ in their ambitions and aspirations, and in their 
 opinions as to what constitutes success. Of one thing you may be sure — 
 that, twenty-five years from now, your idea of success will be different 
 from what it is today; and fifty years hence you will hold still another 
 opinion of the ultimate object of life. Individual success, it seems to me, 
 consists in a certain completeness or perfection of a design for which 
 Nature has furnished the framework. The oak and the violet are each a 
 success, but you can not make ship-timber out of the one or extract per- 
 fume from the other. A blind man would be a failure as an astronomer, 
 though he might become a brilliant musician. That man, therefore, is 
 fortunate who discovers early in life what Nature intended him for, and 
 sets about filling in the framework. With some the work is done quickly, 
 while others devote weary, and what seem profitless, years to the task, 
 iviorse was past fifty before he could convince Congress of the value of his 
 invention. At forty-seven, Audubon was painting all day and selling 
 his pictures after dusk in the streets of London. No success is worth 
 having that is not worth earning; and it has a peculiar sweetness if it 
 has been earned by hard struggle and patient waiting. It does not appear 
 that men of science are apt to make wealth the gauge of success. Sir 
 Humphrey Davy refused to make a fortune by taking out a patent monop- 
 olizing the sale of his safety lamp; Linnaeus, the devoted botanist, after 
 he had overcome his early poverty, wrote to a friend, half humorously, 
 half pathetically: “Once I had plants and no money; now, what is money 
 good for without plants?” Whether you are destined to attain fame and 
 immortality, or to acquire wealth and power; or, better still, to make 
 some wonderful discovery; or, best of all, to confer some great benefac- 
 tion on the race, the opportunities for earning success in all these forms 
 were never so great as they are today. The spirit, therefore, which 
 should dominate and direct the life of the young man who enters on his 
 career at the beginning of this century, is the spirit of expectancy. He 
 should begin life, not merely with hope, which is the universal animal in- 
 stinct of youth, but with confident expectation that he will witness in the 
 future triumphs as great as any that have been achieved in the past; that 
 he will take part in these triumphs, and that his conscientious labors will 
 be surely crowned with success. 
 
 You will each of you do well to take with you on your journey two 
 servants, who are not always companionable, but whom you must train 
 to serve you in harmony. Enthusiasm ^and Patience have always been 
 the faithful attendants of the men who have succeeded. 
 
 If you have not already adopted the habit, let me recommend to you 
 a practice that you will find of inestimable value. Select some one sub- 
 ject and make yourself master of all that can be known about it. It is im- 
 material what the subject is, only let it be as limited as possible, and, if it 
 is one in which you are interested, so much the better. The essential idea 
 is to know everything about one thing. I have heard a story of a German 
 scientist who in his youth determined to acquire a complete knowledge 
 of the universe. He soon found it necessary to confine his studies to the 
 solar system. Then he determined to limit his investigations to the earth 
 
 9 
 
and its occupants. When he began to realize the shortness of life com- 
 pared with the infinite bounds of knowledge, he rapidly restricted his re- 
 searches, first to organic life, then to animals, then to the group of artic- 
 ulates, then to lepidopterous insects, then to the family of moths, then to 
 one genus, then to a single species; and, finally, devoted the last fifty 
 years of a long life to the study of the antennae of the Atticus Gecropia. 
 “And what benefit,” exclaimed the narrator, “did this philosopher derive 
 from the accumulation of such a mass of accurate information?” ”Why, 
 no one was ever able to impose upon him the antennae of any other moth 
 for those of the Atticus Gecropia T It is not, however, the information 
 that you acquire by this complete mastery of one subject which will help 
 you, but the power of discrimination which the practice gives. It is the 
 best antidote for undue self-esteem; for, when you know one thing thor- 
 oughly you become thoroughly aware how little you know about all other 
 things. This habit of mind, which you can develop by the mastery of 
 one subject, will enable you to estimate correctly the value of your own 
 judgments on other subjects concerning which your opinion must be large- 
 ly a matter of inference or deduction. It will also furnish you a valuable 
 test by which to gauge the thoroughness and accuracy of the work of 
 others. 
 
 It is surprising what a gulf there is between a superficial and a com- 
 plete knowledge of any subject. Wh^ you have bridged this gulf once 
 you will forever afterwards be disp asfied with slovenly work and super- 
 ficial knowledge in yourself and .Luers. “Finish one picture, sir, and you 
 are a painter,” said West to Ms pupil Morse, who was almost in despair at 
 his teacher’s repeated corrections. Darwin devoted eight years to the study 
 of barnacles and the preparation of his treatise on cerripedes. Huxley pro- 
 nounced this work of Darwin “a piece of critical self-discipline, the effect 
 of which manifested itsef in everything he wrote afterward.” We can 
 all practice this same sort of self-discipline. If you have a taste for pic- 
 torial art, master the subject of line engraving; if your fondness is for 
 literature, make one poem your constant companion. If, on the other 
 hand, your inclinations lead you to physical and chemical research, know 
 everything about one substance. If natural history claims your affections, 
 make an intimate friend of one animal or flower. The acquaintance of a 
 lifetime will not exhaust their interest and attractiveness. Let us sup- 
 pose, for example, that you have selected as your special friend the com- 
 mon tawney-red butterfly of our summer fields, the Danaias Archippus. 
 What entomologist can tell you the comparative weights of the egg, the 
 larva, the chrysalis, and the fly? How long is the life of the insect? 
 What is its habitat, its daily and nocturnal habits? What senses has it? 
 Has it senses which the larva has not? If larvae from the same set of 
 eggs are fed on different plants will there be any corresponding differ- 
 ences in the butterflies? In what stage of existence does this frail crea- 
 ture resist the frosts of winter, as a butterfly, chrysalis, larva, or egg? 
 Can the size of the butterfly or the color of its wings be changed by 
 changes in the food of the larva or by any treatment of the chrysalis? 
 When you shall have answered all these questions you will find no one 
 who will give you a cent for the information, but the habit of accurate 
 observation which you will have acquired may be worth to you fame and 
 fortune. Rayleigh’s discovery of argon has been ascribed to his fastid- 
 iousness respecting the weight of nitrogen. 
 
 10 
 
The twentieth century engineer will be a busy man, as you will soon 
 realize. You will become engrossed in the practical work of your profes- 
 sion, and will find little time even for scientific investigations. Do not, 
 however, on this account neglect entirely the claims of literature and art. 
 As Goethe, the man of letters, found strength and refreshment in scien- 
 tific research, so the man of science may drink invigorating draughts 
 from the cool fountains of literature. Newton was wont to refresh him- 
 self with history and chronology. Morse found recreation in Homer, 
 Spencer, and Dante. Twenty minutes a day devoted to reading will take 
 you in a year through the greatest classic poems of Hebrew, Grecian, Ro- 
 man, and English literature; and, with the returning years, you will ex- 
 perience the keen delights of renewing old friendships, for each re-read- 
 ing will disclose to you new truths and beauties. If you begin the day 
 by communion with these great spirits you will take with you to its end 
 thoughts that will often help to lighten its drudgery and illuminate its 
 gloom. 
 
 So far I have spoken only of the opportunities for individual devel- 
 opment and success that awaits you in the new century. Let me say in 
 closing a few words respecting the duties and responsibilities that rest 
 upon you and all other young men of the country in your capacity as 
 citizens. Here your opportunities are the measure of your obligations. 
 Citizenship is something in which everyone can succeed. Every member 
 of the Republic, therefore, should be first of all a good citizen. The man, 
 however, who has received education, wealth, or other especial advantages, 
 owes a two-fold duty to the State — the duty of simple citizenship and the 
 duty of making a full return for the benefits which he has received. 
 Whatever else he may accomplish, the man who falls short of the fulfill- 
 ment of these obligations fails to make his life complete. One of the ear- 
 liest laws passed by the Pilgrims of Plymouth was a statute imposing a 
 fine upon those who refused to accept public office. There seems to be 
 little call for the enactment of such a statute at the present time, but we 
 do need some moral force that shall arouse men to a quickened sense of 
 the obligations of citizenship. 
 
 Science teaches that the history of organic life always has been, and 
 always will be, not only that the stronger live and the weaker perish, but 
 that the stronger survive through the death of the weaker. To man, 
 alone, has been granted the power to stay in a measure, for the benefit 
 of his fellow-men, the workings of this relentless law. The protection of 
 the weak by the strong differentiates man from the brute; and the extent 
 and character of the protection given to the weak by the strong, in any 
 community, mark the degree of civilization which it has attained. This 
 Republic was founded for the purpose of securing to its citizens the rights 
 of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Are the hopes of the found- 
 ers being fulfilled? A system of government under which, although all 
 men have the right to pursue happiness, only some attain it, has not 
 reached an ideal development. With many thousands in this country 
 the pursuit of happiness is still nothing but a pursuit. It is true, there 
 has been great progress during the last century in the treatment of the 
 weak, helpless, and unfortunate, especially in the care of the diseased, 
 the insane, and the feeble-minded, and in the reformation of the criminal 
 and vicious. But much still remains to be done for the amelioration of 
 those classes. 
 
 The greatest dangers that now threaten the safety of the Republic 
 lie in the rapid concentration of population in the large cities, the concen- 
 tration of immense wealth in the hands of a few individuals and corpora- 
 tions and its corrupt use and the concentration of governmental functions 
 in the executive branches of the Nation and States. As I have already in- 
 timated, the men of your profession will play a leading part in the physi- 
 cal regeneration of our cities; but their moral and political regeneration 
 can only be accomplished by the combined efforts of all the citizens. We 
 greatly need in the administration of our American cities the services of 
 trained specialists in engineering, finance, and hygiene. 
 
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In a rich Democracy, great inequalities in the distribution of wealth 
 are a sign of weakness in the form of government or disorder in the so- 
 cial system. A nation in which the total wealth is constantly increasing, 
 but where the poor are becoming poorer and increasing in numbers, is 
 drifting toward revolution. War and the preparations for war increase 
 the misery of a nation’s poor, not only through economic waste, but be- 
 cause the familiar contemplation of the horrors of distant conflicts dulls 
 the national perception of distress at home. Tennyson was one of the 
 wisest and most sympathetic students of the great social problems of his 
 age. As he saw Europe converted into a military camp, and witnessed 
 the abject condition of many of his countrymen, he uttered the universal 
 prayer of this generation: 
 
 * * * “Ah! when shall all men’s good 
 
 Be each man’s rule, and universal Peace 
 Lie like a shaft of light across the land 
 And like a lane of beams athwart the sea 
 Thro’ all the circle of the golden year?” 
 
 Peace is essential to the highest moral and economic development of 
 the nation. The world has heard much of the glories of war on the one 
 hand, its deeds of valor, endurance, and heroism — and on the other, of the 
 horrors of its conflicts, but the world has given too little heed to its fear- 
 ful economic waste. Some conception of the terrible import of the cost 
 of war may be had if we consider that, of the total expenditures of this 
 Nation since its foundation, amounting to sixteen billions of dollars, two- 
 thirds, or over ten billions, have been made on account of the Civil War 
 of 1861. This sum would have provided for the manumission of all the 
 slaves at an average of $1,000 each, and left over six thousand millions 
 of dollars to be used in the economic development of the country. 
 
 If we can avert war in the coming century, our country will realize 
 the hopes of the founders of the Republic. In our population there will 
 always be the strong and the weak, but there should be no submerged 
 tenth. There will always be a lowest stratum in the composition of all 
 human societies, but the aim of our civilization should be constantly to 
 diminish the size and raise the level of this lowest stratum. We have in 
 this country unbounded natural resources and accumulated capital; and, 
 with an enlightened national sentiment, intelligently expressed through 
 faithfully executed laws, there will be no starvation, no pauperism, no 
 grinding poverty in our society. 
 
 The success of any system of popular government depends upon the 
 tireless, determined insistence of the people that the laws and those who 
 make, execute, and interpret them shall at all times faithfully reflect and 
 carry out the wishes of the people. In so far as they fail to do this, the 
 government ceases to be a government by the people. The historian of 
 the United States, writing a century hence, will note that toward the 
 end of the nineteenth century the people began to manifest a spirit of in- 
 difference to the character of the laws and the manner of their execution; 
 that, owing to this indifference, the national legislature showed a dispo- 
 sition to deal with matters that the founders of the Republic thought it 
 would be wiser to leave to the local legislatures; and that the representa- 
 tives of the people in the various legislative bodies showed an inclination 
 perfunctorily to pass laws respecting the important matters of taxation 
 and appropriations, solely on the recommendations of the executive de- 
 partments. It rests with us of this generation .to determine how the his- 
 torian shall conclude his narrative. Upon you especially, the young cit- 
 izens of the Republic, will fall the responsibility of resolving that this 
 spirit of indifference shall not prevail. Your opportunities for success in 
 your chosen calling are great; your opportunities for rendering useful 
 service to the Republic are still greater. Let me repeat, in closing: Your 
 opportunities are the measure of your responsibilities. Be true, there- 
 fore, to the ideals of your profession and loyal to your duty as citizens; 
 and the honor which you will reflect upon your Institute, will be new 
 proof of its power for good, and of the enlightened wisdom of its founder. 
 
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