The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1916-09-14

believed, and told everywhere about
Jim Glllls' bread tree of Jaekass hill.
Such imperfect observation and
such errors In deduction have led to
some very serious mistakes both in
mining and metallurgy, Accurate OBJ
servation and sound thinking have led
to brilliant successes The trouble
with most of us is that We neither see
nor think. Millions of men before
Newton observed apples to drop. but
SO far as we know. nobody before him
gave thought TO what caused them to
drop. | have no doubt that hundreds
of mill men 30 years ago, or more, OBJ
served greasy froths of mineral float
ing on their mill water. and thought
nothing about It, except to pronounce
1t nuisance. | happened to be con-
nected with the introduction of the
cyanide process in the United States
20 odd years ago. We tested in our
laboratory all kinds of minerals and
knew accurately respecting the solu-
bllity of silver minerals. In a REIN
cry that we operated we produced Sill
Yer bars from black precipitate COM
ing from some place in Nevada where
some one was cyanidng old mill tall
ings. Yet none of us thought of the
general applicability of the cyanide
process to silver ores. That import
ant industrial development came years
later, although it was screaming for
lour attention. But our ears were
plugged and our minds were saturated
with ideas of gold.
Now it is for correct observation
and sound thinking that your college
training has been preparing YOU.
think there Is a certain mistaken ten
dency among engineers of middle age
to depreciate the Importance of tech
nical training. You are probably con-
yersant with QUESTIONABLE recently
addressed by Prof Mann of the Car
negie Foundation to 1900 engineers,
asking what to their minds are the
basic qualities for engineers. The coll
lated replies showed that Al points out
Of 100 should be assigned to character
II " to judgment, 14h to efficiency, IA
to understanding of men, and only IL
to technical ability. Dean Marston, OF
Iowa State college, applied these fig
ures to six acquaintance with whose
personal characteristics he was famil-
lar, and found that the banker, the
grocer and the merchant rated higher
as engineers than did three success
full practitioners of engineering
There is manfestly here a miscon-
ception. The engineers of mature
years have seen technically trained
men remaining in the background,
while non technically trained men, by
virtue of their character judgment,
efficiency and understanding of men,
lstep in and take large number of the
important administrative positions.
Take railroading, for example. 1t is
rather a rarity to find railway presi-
dent who has risen through the en-
gineering corps. And in mining and
metallurgy we find large proportion
| of our chiefs taken from some other
4 line or some other industry. That 1900
= out of 1900 engineers-S7 per cent
I consider some one of the elements that
s go to make up character the funda-
e mental necessity for engineering sue
e cess does not mean that the average or
t these 1900 engineers would rate the
e elements Of character as making up ~
II per cent of the necessary qualifications
i of an engineer Not one of those en-
5, sineers would think of taking a grad
uate of business college as techni-
= cal assistant. Such one would not
= even be able to understand the Ian
d guage. No, the meaning is rather
h think, that on top of technical train
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