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 every hour spent with these volumes he will become more valuable to
the organization employing him. Likewise, if he find himself working for
an electrical manufacturing concern, and himself a graduate in
electrical engineering, if the product be only a single line, and so
small a thing as spark-plugs, it will profit him greatly to read
whatever has been printed on the subject of spark-plugs. So with the
mining graduate in the matter of the different processes of recovering
minerals; so with the civil graduate, especially in the concrete field
of construction, which has made rapid strides in the past few years--the
graduate should absorb as much as he can of the available works printed
on the subject. Indeed, this is the profession of it, in that the
practitioner must ever be alive and alert to what is being done and has
been done from the beginning in his chosen line of endeavor.

Next must come fealty. The graduate on his first job must believe--and
if he does not believe ought to change connections--that the product of
his company is the best in the market. This need not necessarily be
true; but he must feel that it is true. For only in this way can he put
the best that is in him into his work. Industry--and the engineer is the
backbone of industry--is a hotbed of competition. Any organization needs
all the enthusiasm it can get. Greatest enthusiasm of all must come from
within its own circles. Lacking this enthusiasm within its own family,
the organization as a whole suffers. The graduate must first of all
supply enthusiasm to the source of his employment, because at first he
can supply but very little else. He must be true to his trust in ways
other than the mere doing of what he is told or producing what he is
expected to produce. This attitude cannot but help him qualify for
promotion, and rapidly. It is a very important factor in any engineer's
ad