will dominate politics to the betterment of the nation as
a whole. For engineers are idealists--otherwise they would never have
entered upon an engineering career--and idealism has come, as it were,
into its own again. The man of vision of a wholesome aspect, the man who
can so completely forget himself in his work of service as to engage in
tasks whose merits nobody save himself and those pursuing like tasks can
or will understand--which is pre-eminently the engineer--is the one man
best fitted to administrate in public affairs. More important still than
this statement is the fact that the world at large is beginning to
realize the truth of it. Engineers as a body stand poised upon the rim
of big things. Nor will they as a body stoop to the petty in politics,
once they are fairly well launched in active participation of civic
affairs. Neither their training nor their outlook, based upon their
training, will permit it. For engineers, more than any other group of
professional men, are given to "see true." And seeing true, being, as it
is, the essence of a full life, is what is needed in our public
administrators.

Engineers in the past who have become more or less prominent in the
public eye--and there are some who have--have demonstrated their ability
to see things as they are. Westinghouse was the first man in this
country to foresee the coming of the half-holiday Saturday as an
innovation that promised general adoption. He granted it to all his
employees at a time when lesser industrial captains believed him to be
at least "queer." Ford set the pace for a minimum rate of five dollars a
day in his plant, and lesser captains still frown upon him for having
perpetrated this "evil." Edison, among other things, has told of the
importance of loose clothing--loose shoes and collars and hats--to a man
who would enjoy good health. The list is not long, but the insight of
those who form this short list cannot but be recognized. What these men
have said and done concerning matters freely apart from the subject of
engineering reveals them as members of a fraternity well qualified to
lead public opinion rather than to follow it, as has been the province
of engineers in the past. Each when he has spoken or entered upon action
having the public welfare in mind has pronounced or demonstrated a truth
which fairly crackled with sanity.

Engineers belong in civic affairs. The world of humanity needs men of
their stamp in high places. H