are offered to engineering seniors. The regular students in business courses will get much more from them. It is much easier to teach engineers. They will accept statements readily, while business students will always have to be shown the reason for the proposition. A new problem is much more readily attacked by the business student than by the engineer. The training of the former has been of a character to enable him to do this. The engineer, in order to be a successful executive, will have to acquire this habit. The ability to reason is much more marked in students of business than in engineering students. The latter, therefore, should take as many business subjects as possible. Engineers always begin in a factory in a minor capacity, and they will naturally study the work in which they are engaged. Not many study business subjects-new material at this time. The University of Akron is meeting this condition by requiring engineers to take at least 12 hours of business studies, with the privilege of taking more under special conditions.

J. H. O'HARA, of the department of economics, Carnegie Institute of Technology, emphasized the value of the study of industrial organization to sophomores taking production.

Dean McCAUSTLAND, University of Missouri, advised that as much latitude as possible for business courses be given in engineering and that the same be done for engineering in business courses. He did not think shopwork was necessary for industrial organization.

Professor CALLAN, Harvard University, discussed the course in "Synopsis of Engineering Problems" at Harvard, emphasizing the value of instruction in the technique of drawings, architectural work, etc. Other aspects of engineering, he said, should lead to an appreciation of engineering as a science and an art. All that can be done will be to give to the business student with but little engineering a broad sympathetic understanding of the profession as a whole.

R. A. STEVENSON, professor of accounting, College of Engineering and Commerce, University of Cincinnati. In the fall of 1920 the University of Cincinnati organized a course leading to the degree of commercial engineer. It was organized in response to a demand for men in management positions who have been trained in the fundamentals of engineering and in addition have a knowledge of business administration. Many of the graduates of the engineering courses had been returning to take evening courses in commerce. It is a five-year cooperative course. During the first two years the fundamental sciences underlying all engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics through calculus, mechanics, and metallurgy

are studied. The outside cooperative work in industry during these years is carried on in the production department of manufacturing establishments. The student then takes a cooperative commerce course in the university. The subject matter is similar to that given in the other commerce courses. Less laboratory work is required. The business firms of the city are enthusiastic about this program as a training for business. The banks which are using the students of the third, fourth, and fifth years find that the rigid scientific training of the first two years, coupled with the production experience in industry, is a valuable foundation for banking practice. The same training should be valuable as a preparation for management positions in general.

Dean BISSELL, of Michigan Agricultural College, suggested industrial history as a desirable requirement for a course designed to give students of commerce a suitable groundwork in engineering subjects and emphasized especially the need of arithmetic.

Mr. DOOLEY, director of personnel and training of the Standard Oil Co. of New York, said that the course of study was not the important thing. A trained mind is the important thing in industry. A man must be able to sense a situation and go to the heart of a problem. Enthusiasm and interest on the part of the student are essentials, and not a specialized knowledge of facts. All courses, including commerce, engineering, and the arts, should be put into one. All fundamentals should be taught so that all students would put their whole hearts into the work they take.

LOUIS MITCHELL, dean L. C. Smith College of Applied Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y. Students in engineering may be receiving considerable business training in their technical studies. The study of water supply and sewerage, for example, will include the making of estimates, which involves the questions of labor rates and material costs. It also includes the question of bond issues, sinking funds, depreciation, assessments, taxation, rates, and maintenance. Students of more than average ability should, however, be encouraged to carry nontechnical subjects, business administration subjects, as optional studies.

J. C. PINNEY, dean College of Applied Science and Engineering, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wis. This conference confirms the increasing experience of educators that representatives of industry who employ the product of schools and colleges want men who are willing to work, who can think along logical lines, and can express their thoughts intelligently.

T. WARREN ALLEN, Chief, Division of Control, Bureau of Public Roads, United States Department of Agriculture. Educational institutions should devise means for keeping in contact with

certain if not all students for a sufficient length of time after they have been graduated to gain some idea as to the coordination of their experience in industry with their college education. Tests made during the time spent in college to determine the range, speed, and precision of mental activity aside from the ordinary examinations might well be continued into the employment period. Postgraduate development may then be studied in comparison with undergraduate work, the deficiencies in undergraduate work indicated, and steps taken to correct them. The same course will not develop all students in the same way, and if thorough tests are made in order to obtain indications of the progress of mental development, such information should be of inestimable value both to the student and to the instructor in determining future procedure.

The value of tests of this character to a thinking student may be likened to the value of cost data to a contractor or a manufacturer. Cost data provide the means of ascertaining whether a particular operation is remunerative or not and how, if possible, a loss may be curtailed or the operation be made more remunerative. If the suggested undergraduate procedure is followed by a record of the character and extent of postgraduate study, in connection with the requirements of the work undertaken, and the mental development under the influences of these as determined by periodic tests, educational authorities should in time secure for guidance in educational work dependable data which would be difficult to secure in any other way.

H. J. HUGHES, dean school of engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Most engineering graduates enter the industries. If they are to serve industry well, their college work must be supplemented by considerable training and experience provided by the industries. The real job of the engineering college is to help students to build a sound foundation of scientific knowledge, to cultivate open-mindedness, and to aid them in developing habits of accuracy, of observation, clear thinking, and those qualities of heart and mind which make them good citizens as well as good engineers and business men. There is constant pressure from within and without the college for new, special, and practical instruction to meet the growing and changing needs of industry. In a conscientious effort to meet these demands the colleges have been attempting much that could better be done by the industries. The results have too often been unsatisfactory to all concerned.

Many industrial executives understand the possibilities and limitations of the engineering colleges; many industrial organizations are cooperating with the colleges in the training of young men for industrial positions. Some companies maintain training courses for

technical graduates; others provide summer training courses for undergraduates; some participate in industrial cooperation on the Cincinnati plan, and a large number employ students during summer vacation. The opportunities for systematic industrial training for graduates, however, are limited to a few fields of industry; in the aggregate there are many such opportunities, but they are relatively few in comparison with the number of graduates entering industry every year. Summer work, which might be made an important part of the students' preparation for industry, is of little real educational value, because it is for the most part neither well planned from an educational standpoint nor properly supervised. Joint local committees of industrial executives and engineering teachers must, by study of this problem, come to a thorough understanding as to what part each group can best perform in training young men for the industries. Such an understanding will inevitably result in economy, efficiency, and better-trained engineers.

GROUPS NOS. 3 AND 4, Secretary Wallace presiding.

The following excerpt was read from a letter sent by Eugene Meyer, jr., Managing Director of the War Finance Corporation, who was unavoidably prevented from presiding at Group 4:

The training of overseas engineers is entitled to a more prominent place in our educational system. An overseas engineer must, of course, be thoroughly qualified from a technical standpoint. But there are other requisites, particularly, knowledge of language, history, racial and other characteristics, and social points of view of the people with whom he will come in contact. The difference between engineering at home and abroad is, for the most part, the difference in the human element. The engineering technique may be the same the world over, but the problems are different because of the human element involved.

Obviously, a knowledge of languages is vital and fundamental. The superficial knowledge of language that is ordinarily obtained in our schools and colleges is entirely inadequate. Every overseas engineer has to deal with the labor of the country in which he is working. Complete knowledge of the history, characteristics, and thought of these people can only be obtained on the spot and by experience. Training courses can, however, furnish a satisfactory background. An engineer going to South Africa needs a different type of training from one who has to work among the Latin Americans or in the Orient. The ability to adapt one's self to environment, useful even at home, becomes vitally important abroad. Success frequently depends upon it.

G. L. SWIGGETT, chairman of the committee on commercial engineering, reviewed briefly the situation in world development areas, particularly in Latin America and the Far East. He stressed the importance of the engineer in America's program of participation in the economic development of the more backward areas. The engineer has not played the part on the whole in the past that he will play in the future, provided that engineering training in the colleges

is modified to include more of those subjects which give breadth of imagination, keenness of vision, and something of the adventure and courage of commerce. There is need for engineers trained in the practical use of commercial languages and to the visualization of economic resources, commercial products, and engineering designs in the currents and structures of industry and commerce. The engineering executive, with the trained understanding of business details and methods, will be the best qualified man to direct and supervise America's overseas investments and solve the business problems which will necessarily arise from those investments. The knowledge that the world has an ample supply of engineers trained in this manner and to this end will unquestionably overcome our retarded investments in foreign fields, saving our nationals much trouble and cost.

W. W. NICHOLS, Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Co. (Inc.), New York City. A great executive has truly observed that a man's success, professional and otherwise, depends more on his capacity to learn than on any other faculty, probably on the ground that other necessary faculties would be proportioned to such capacity. His convictions were founded also on an extensive experience in placing graduate engineers. Capacity to learn depends on that exercise which the training we call education gives. Rarely do considerations of curricula or educational methods indicate that such is the aim of our educational institutions. Most teachers overlook the fundamental need for such exercise because they forget the essential character of their aim. Only in comparatively recent years have professional schools made progress in substituting training by demonstration, in the broad sense, for the old method of education by affirmation. More and more is there a realization that an accumulation of technical information is not of itself so important. It is rather the mental development that results from meditation on the merits of such information. Accumulation of facts is not to be deprecated, but accumulation of facts should never be the principal aim of any educational process.

The inability of graduate engineers to express themselves properly may be due to lack of cultural training to which our professional schools are now giving more attention. France is reported recently to have restored the study of classics in the college curriculum because a 20 years' experience had proved a positive loss in culture resulting from the abandonment of these studies. Training in the classics may not be necessary as preliminary to professional engineering success. An enlarged capacity for knowledge, however, with a vision that tends to the progress which the engineer requires, may depend on much more than the limited training of a particular curriculum.