Page:Engineering as a vocation (IA cu31924004245605).pdf/55

 never more highly paid than is the work of a common laborer, frequently not so highly paid as the work of a union laborer.

It is this class of assistants that supports the correspondence schools, the evening classes, the private practical schools. A pitifully small number do amount to something after a while and from the very nature of engineering work a large percentage of engineers to the end of time will be men who have not received an education in resident technical schools. Some men prove by statistics based on records of men applying for membership in the national engineering societies, that very few men engaged in engineering work to-day are selftutored. Their deductions are false, for, in the first place, the successful self-tutored men have to be urged to apply for membership in such societies, having a feeling that a prejudice exists against engineers who are non-graduates. In the second place a man has only to canvass the offices of engineers and make inquiries to discover that a large percentage of the engineers and their assistants to be found to-day are non-graduates. Many are high school graduates and many have had only one or two years in resident schools, while a great many have simply grown up in the business, starting in as office boys. The writer made a canvass of one hundred engineering offices and sixty architects' offices and the drafting offices