ithout transgressing the law. The so-called building codes
in effect in large cities are intended to hold engineers to restrictions
for the greatest good of the greatest number, and the code of ethics in
practice among each of the engineering professions likewise was devised
toward this end. There seems to be need for it.

Perhaps by pointing out where engineers sometimes transgress, the
writer more effectively can indicate the need of a code and the
principles of which the engineering code of ethics consists. Even to-day
there are engineers digressing from the path indicated by the
professional body, though in such a way as to benefit still by the
protection of the law, and to be not openly susceptible to admonition
from the engineering societies' committees. Engineers of this stamp at
best are but tricksters. Actually, they should be debarred from
practice, just as the legal fraternity takes effective action against
members of the bar who go outside the pale, though nothing is ever done
to engineers. Engineering organizations in this regard are weak. The
man's name should at least be posted, or, better still, published in the
society's bulletin, so that the fraternity at large could know, and,
knowing, could warn men with capital to invest--the trickster's especial
prey--for its own welfare.

There was an engineer brought to the attention of the writer whose
activities were devoted to securing for his clients men of no mechanical
knowledge who yet wanted something done by machinery. A manufacturer of
paper dolls, say, having entered upon this phase of manufacturing only
because he had money to invest and not because he was interested in
mechanics, would see the need in his plant for additional mechanical
devices to cut down manufacturing costs. The engineer to whom I have
reference would find this type of manufacturer his particular "meat,"
because of the man's ignorance of mechanics, and, after clinching him
with a contract drawn up by the engineer's lawyer, would undertake to
devise for this manufacturer a perpetual-motion machine, if that
happened to be what the manufacturer wanted. The engineer conducted a
machine-shop in connection with his "consulting" office, where, at a
dollar an hour for the use of his machine-tools, he would "develop" his
ideas, as passed upon by the manufacturer who knew no more of
construction or the reading of mechanical drawings than he did of the
chicanery of the engineer, and in this