Symposium on “the status of the engineer”

THE ENGINEER does not work in isolation. Like his fellows in the other learned professions his work is done in cooperation with those within and without his own profession. His work may be done through conscious co-operation, as in a corporate organization or learned society, or it may be done through that co-operation which he, like all others, exhibits as a member of organized society, and which is often most intense and effective when he is attending strictly to his own business, with no thoughts of co-operation in his mind. From the dawn of engineering the work of the engineer has had to do with men as well as with things. The first rude implement shaped by the hand of man was designed to divide man´s labor with him. In creating the first industrial and agricultural tools used by mankind the primitive engineer worked out a problem in organization, for the problem of organization is the problem of the division of labor. Labor may be done wholly by men and divided up among them in various ways according to their abilities, or it may be divided so as to be done partly by animals or partly by machinery provided by the engineer.