Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/452

446 stand for the providing of material and mental food for the masses, the betterment of their conditions of living, for healthy homes, for the pure air, the pure earth, the pure water of the sanitarian, for the intellectual growth which is made possible by freeing man from soul-and mind-killing drudgery. Public service is what engineerng stands for, and perhaps the cultural effect of such work will be admitted. The work is as altruistic as that of the physician, as that of the minister. For the spirit of acquisition, for corporate greed the profession of engineering is not responsible. There has been no fear expressed of our becoming a nation of physicians or even of lawyers. The danger to the commonwealth from a superabundance of lawyers may be greater than that from a superabundance of engineers. There need be no danger from either if the lawyers and engineers are men of the right stamp.

Moral integrity does not necessarily go with cultural training so called. Men with the broadest of cultural training may be found in the pay of corporations striving for illegal franchises. Political bosses with no cultural training may be found abetting them. Engineers may probably be called upon to carry out the work. The danger to the community lies not in the character of the work, but in the character of the man; and a nation is in no danger even if it be largely a nation of engineers, as long as these men are men of character. Such men our engineering schools are trying to train and send out into the world. Some of them as yet may be lacking in general training, but no one feels this shortcoming more keenly than these very men. If others were as conscious of their own shortcomings, of their woful lack of knowledge of the engineering of to-day, it would be well indeed. That these engineers, sent out by our schools, are making their presence felt in the world can not be gainsaid; that they have contributed to the mental and moral uplifting of this nation, no one who thinks deeply will deny.