ation, sometimes
patent infringements, sometimes municipal warfare between corporations,
but always of a highly specialized nature. He is an authority, and when
I have said that I have said all. His retainer fees are large; his work
is exact; he is a man looked up to by those in the profession following
a general practice. He has his office, and retains a staff of engineers,
usually young engineers just out of college, who, like himself at one
time, are on their way upward in the game. He is rarely a young man;
generally is a man of wide reading; is a man respected in his community
not for what he knows as an engineer, but for the standard of living
which he is able to set by virtue of his income. Besides the sources of
revenue which are his, and as I have set forth above, he is sought by
technical editors to contribute to magazines powerful in his field, and
this is a pleasurable source of income to any man in any walk of life.
The consulting engineer is a man to be admired and emulated by all
engineering students.

As to the time in life when an engineer feels qualified to enter upon
consulting work, that is something which must come to him from within.
Usually the engineer knows that he has become a factor in his chosen
branch or specialty when he finds himself becoming more and more sought
in an advisory capacity among his fellows. He can judge that he has
become an authority in his work by the simple process of comparing
himself and his work with others and the work of these others in the
field. If he finds that he is designing a better plant or automatic
machine, or more economically operated mine or more serviceable lighting
station than his neighbor, and, together with this knowledge, perceives
also that capitalists are beating a deeper path to his door than to the
doors of his competitors--to warp an Emersonian phrase--then the
handwriting on the wall should be clear to him--to quote the Bible.
Having sufficient capital to carry him through a year or two of personal
venturing in the consulting field, he will open an office and insert his
professional card in the journals in his field--and fly to it. If he be
a man of righteous parts, he will succeed as a consulting engineer--and
can go no higher in the profession.

The game is certainly worth the candle.

VIII

THE ENGINEER IN CIVIC AFFAIRS

Much has been written of late of the engineer as a citizen--of his civic
responsibilities, of his relation