The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1920-09-16


Washington June 81.
No profession can claim exemption
from citizenship. The constitutions
privileges of citizenship are also con
stitutional obligations, for demOcrac.
distributes broadcast duties as wei
as rights. The engineer can no
dodge his responsibility as a either
unless he is a constituencies Stacker
Moreover, even a reconnaissance sur.
vey of the subject is enough to show
that the engineer has the making OF
a good citizen.
The best American citizen is and
always has been he who lives not fOl
today so much as for tomorrow. The
pioneer and the volunteer soldier alike
choose hardship and danger that
there may be a larger measure OF
comfort and safety in the future. Re
gard for the future is not only a good
definition of civilization but it is a
practical kind of simple test to apply
to our everyday motives: Are you
and l seeking an easy today or a safe
tomorrow?
Now, as L understand the require
ments of effective citizenship, the en-
gineer measures up to the specifica-
tons: he is forward looking, he
seeks to safeguard the future, and he
is constructive by training and habit
First President an Engineer.
Need l say much to convince you
that while to look backward is a large
part of the lawyer statesman's code,
l.,I~
habit of the engineer? Where could
be found better evidence of the cision
of the engineer than this city of
Washington? Our first president was
successfully a civil engineer, a mill
tary engineer, and a nation builder;
and his vision of the America to- be
was so far-reaching that his conrti-
button to city planning has proved no
less adequate than beautiful, even
though since he selected this site for
the new nations capital the popula-
tion of the United States has increas-
ed more than twenty five fold. Wash
ingten the engineer planned for ma
tional prosperity and planned well.
The engineer of today also thinks
in terms of the future, and because
he ever keeps the factor of safety in
mind as he works l have chosen to
call him an insurance agent of the
first magnitude. National prosperity
will not satisfy us unless it is backed
up with guarantees of permanence, !
and so it is that l appeal to the en-
gineers to help write this nation wide /
endowment policy to run to the bene- /
fit of our children's children. My po-
litical conviction is that the future /
of our nation will be largely what you
engineers make it, and national pros
perity must be worked out in terms
of the nations industry. The public
questions of the day are largely mat
ters of production and distribution,
and however humanistic or idealistic
or altruistic you and l may wish to be,
the future of America can be safe
guarded only as the plans are drawn
up by citizens like you, who trust to
the eternal laws of matter and energy
rather than to the broken reed of po-
litical expediency. This industrial
nation needs citizens who will pa
tiently lay solid foundations of fact
and erect upon them structures of
just action in which there is a factor
Of safety large enough to safeguard
the nations future prosperity.
The third link that connects the en-
gineer and national prosperity is his
constructive habit. IL is not enough
to know the truth; we have to trans
late it into action and herein lies the
distinction l draw between science
and engineering: what science has :
discovered engineering must apply. ,
Take this thought over into politics, r
and the peculiar usefulness of the en-
gineer- citizen becomes almost self
evident. He has no use for the alb
stract except as the formula or the
equation may affect his working plan.
The engineering habit of mind is to
trust implicitly the constants deter 7
mined by science and tested by exper-
fence, but such faith is only the point i
of departure-works not faith is the
engineers creed, and it is his task in 4
life to construct. o
Now it is just this constructive ten c
dency that we need more of in Amer
lean politics. In political procedure s
we use practical engineering simply t.
as a source of figures of speech-the L
terms log rolling" and wire pull +,
ing" steam roller" and side track il
ing" are suggestive of the world of s.
work. but only suggestive. In keep 81
ing our political institutions in run
ming order the legislative habit is to A
putty up any cracks in the structure Ii
that indicate weakness, without max A
ing any inspection of the foundations. b
And l regret to record my observation
that in our legislatures, whether state
or federal we find too little confid-
ence in experts, possibly because the o
best of our scientists and engineers
are rarely if ever seen or heard by
those who control matters of state m
craft. The skillful faker has had Il
Ko c1af IN urfn