way roll up the costs against the
unfortunate. In the end the engineer might and might not produce a
satisfactory working machine. There was nothing in the contract about
this--save only as it protected the engineer. What was indeed produced
was a list of costs for the development often of several designs of a
given idea that to say the least were heartrending.

Then there is the engineer who for a consideration will bear false
testimony against his neighbor, or his neighbor's ox. This happens most
frequently in municipal traction or lighting wars, set before tribunals
under the caption of "The People _vs._ the S. S. Street Railway
Company," or in a battle of alleged infringement of patent rights. There
are engineering experts, just as there are legal experts, who deem it
within their code of ethics to address themselves and their energies
toward the refutation of such claims, however wrong or right these
claims may be. Engineering is an exact science. It is based on
principles hardly refutable. Yet there are engineers who will and can
confound these principles before a court of law in such manner as to win
for their clients a decision of non-suit where the facts point glaringly
to infringement--in the matter of mechanics--or to win for their clients
a favorable decision in the matter of costs of maintenance and operation
of a railway, in a case of this kind. As has been said, figures don't
lie, but figurers sometimes do.

Other instances of breach of engineering ethics, however otherwise
secure from the clutches of the law, occur to the writer, but the two
just cited ought to serve. At best, the topic is unpleasant and by no
means indicates the character of the profession as a whole. Where there
is one engineer who will perjure himself in the fashion as set forth
above there are many thousands of engineers who could not be bought for
this purpose at any amount of money. The profession of engineering is
notably clean; its code of ethics rigidly adhered to; the rights of
others, both in and out of the profession, regarded with something akin
to sacredness. Engineers, as a body, for instance, possess a peculiarly
rigid idea concerning themselves in relation to branches of the
profession outside their own and yet intimately close to their own.
Called in as an expert in the matter of heating and lighting a building,
say, the heating and lighting engineer will rigidly confine himself to
this phase of the engineering venture