Evening star., 1948-04-24
Letters to The Star
Professional Engineers Responsibility

Professional Engineers Responsibility
To the Editor of The Star:
The District must have law that will give
the public protection against incompetent.
INSCRIPTIONS or inexperienced persons design
ing or constructing such horror traps as the
Empire Building which collapsed last December
Any law that does less than require that the
actual design of such projects be done by IL
censed professional engineers and that the con-
struction be actually supervised by such compe-
tent persons Is a travesty upon the public and
not worth the paper upon which it is printed.
The Engineering Joint Council, which repre-
sents all of the major engineering societies and
associations of the District, is now sponsoring
before Congress a bill that does far less than
this
This bill is designated as HR 1884 and 2031.
It allows persons with absolutely no previous
engineering training or technical experience
to perform the actual design and construction
supervision of such projects. AL that is re-
quired by this bill is that licensed professional
engineer assume the responsibility ty-morally
and financially-for each recurrence of struc-
tural collapse which may be caused by the
technical errors of an incompetent person
whom he may hire to perform the work.
Will such an attempted assumption of re-
sponsbility protect the public against repetitive
catastophes will it replace even one stone upon
another; will it restore the lives of dear ones
to the bereft mothers and fathers, sisters and
brothers left behind?
No part of this bill requires licensed pro-
fessional engineer, to personally check the
figures and computations of the incompetents
that it allows to practice engineering. BY its
own terms it defines the practice of engineer
ing as the actual making of these computations
and then exempts the very ones who make the
o;lt f1~ I,1.,
errors, omissions and incompetence by pro-
viding for the assumption of these responsible
ties by another.
A PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER.
Praises MIR. Truman on Initiation
To the Editor OF The STAR
President Truman again has shown wise and
courageous leadership, which shines especially
by comparison with the actions of the Repub-
lican majority in Congress, when he set forth
again in his speech before the American News
paper Publishers the need for legislation to give
power to the Government to control prices and
credit and to allocate scarce raw materials in
order to prevent imitation
More imitation is particularly likely because
the Republican ma jority in Congress has re-
duced taxes by measure which gives to the
wealthy, especially if they are married. far
greater proportionate increase in income after
taxes than to people with small incomes; and
this additional spending power has not yet had
time to exert its full effect in driving up prices.
The refusal of the Republican majority to do
anything effective to curb imitation shows that
freedom for prices is more important than free
dom for human beings in their opinion.
President Truman has shown as much cour-
age in sticking to his demand for power effec-
lively to control prices in the face of this Re-
publican inertia as he has in refusing to with
draw his recommendation for greater protection
of the civil rights of minorities despite the re-
volt in the Southern wing of his own party.
ALFRED BAKER LEWIS.