tales of strange discoveries, and he would say, 'I am very glad that you told me about this, for if I had seen it myself I would not have believed it.' These stories which we hear of the great advantages of athletics seem to me something like this. My own experience is that the effect of athletics is very demoralizing to our engineering students. Our best athletes will come to my lectures in mechanics and sit and sleep through a whole year. A few years ago a gentleman who had charge of the foot-ball team in an Eastern institution came to me after the season was over, and after the season for mechanics had largely lapsed, too, and enquired if he could not be passed in the subject. said, 'I have been doing a good deal for the institution; we have raised $52,500 from gate receipts,' and he took out of his pocket a beautiful gold watch and said, 'Just see what the alumni have given me for this work.'

He

"Now, when a young man can neglect all his studies for two or three months and yet have the praise of the alumni and get a $250 gold watch and then come to the professor and ask to be passed, there must be something very wrong. I told this young man that we had no such option in mechanics, and he has not passed yet. There are many cases of that kind. These men, who are often the poorest students, are usually the heroes, for a time, until the average collegian gets the wool pulled away from his eyes.

"I speak with some degree of feeling on this matter, because men who have boys to educate have given hostages to the schools and colleges. We can never get over this difficulty without taking the bull by the horns.

We must put a stop to the gate receipts.

Think of half a dozen young men having charge of the receipts and expenditure of $50,000 to $100,000 a year! It is an outrage. We are the people, members of faculties, who are mainly responsible for this state of things. We must not only have such rules and regulations as Professor C. M. Woodward has given us; it is easy enough to have rules; but we must live up to them. There are, unfortunately, many in our faculties who wink at these things-college professors, eminent men, who condone all kinds of crookedness in athletic affairs. It is our duty to muster courage enough to stamp out professionalism, but we shall never be able to stamp it out until we are bold enough to say what we think. PROFESSOR SPANGLER.-Professor Spangler spoke as follows:

"I have listened with a good deal of pleasure to the paper. It reminded me of Dr. White's paper on the same question. The speaker said that athletics is a good thing, but the university sports are not athletics, they are professionalism, and nothing else. I agree with this. I do not mean that the men are professionals in the sense that their rules say they are professionals, but when you keep men for months and months on a special system of training, and then charge so much to see them perform, it is professionalism, pure and simple. It is a thing which we ought to get into shape, especially for our engineering students. We don't take proper care of the boys physically, and it is almost impossible to do anything for them in this direction It is practically impossible even to have their e

we mu

direction. It is practically impossible to do more than to have their eyes examined. If we are going to train men, we must take care of them physically, and you can

Paste over bottom 3 lines p. 186. Pro. Soc. Eng. Education, Vol. X.

Each

One

not do it with the present system of athletics. institution must work out the problem for itself. of the evils of the present system and one of the reasons why our intercollegiate sports are in their present condition is because the alumni of each institution believe their concern must win, whether or no, and they are ready to wink at almost anything that may be done in order that the best possible teams shall play. It is not the student body. They don't want crooked things done, and I do not believe the faculties want crooked things done. But I do know it is a fact that 'we must win, whether or no,' and that there are $60,000 or $70,000 or $80,000 to be contributed every year by somebody, and the alumni make up the amount if there is not enough, and they will take a little more than belongs to them of the control of athletics. I believe it is a fad, and will die out in its present shape."

PROFESSOR C. M. WOODWARD.-Professor Woodward wished to say that he was deeply grieved at the experiences related on his right and on his left, and that so far as his institution was concerned, no student low in his work in mechanics, or in anything else, was allowed to play on the teams.

OVER-DEVELOPMENT IN ENGINEERING

LABORATORY COURSES.

BY F. P. SPALDING,

Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Missouri.

The great importance of laboratory work in all lines of scientific study and its absolute necessity to any properly organized course in engineering have been the subject of frequent discussion before this Society, and are so generally conceded as to need no comment at this time.

A large development has taken place during the past few years in laboratories for engineering work. In nearly all engineering schools of good standing laboratories have been installed for the purpose of illustrating and emphasizing the class-room work in certain subjects, as well as to give practice in conducting tests and facility in handling instruments and the reduction and interpretation of results. In a number of institutions also large experimental equipments have been added, intended for the instruction of advanced students and for research.

All of these things have their legitimate uses and are both desirable and necessary in order to secure the best results in engineering education. As is apt to be the case, however, when development is very rapid, there seems to have been an over-development in this direction. Too great stress may be laid upon this work, it may be employed outside its legitimate uses and may be extended to a point where it usurps

the time which should be devoted to more fundamentally important matters.

This over-development is not confined to engineering work, but is even more marked in some courses in general science, and is particularly noticeable in the science courses in some of the secondary schools. Great stress has of late very properly been laid upon the importance of developing laboratories of science in the high schools, and efforts to make use of these laboratories and give prominence to this feature of the work have frequently led to elementary courses being given almost exclusively in the laboratory, losing to the student that grasp of his general subject which should be derived from systematic class-room work. It is, however, with engineering laboratories only that we are concerned in this paper, and it is the purpose to enumerate a few points in which the development of laboratory work may not be conducive to the best results in engineering education.

In the first place, it may be remarked that, in undergraduate courses, efficient laboratory work must be based upon, and carefully coördinated with, classroom work in the subject treated. For the most part such work must be intended for illustration, to enable the student by actual contact with materials and machines to see for himself the operation of mechanical laws. This tends to fix principles in the students' minds and gives force and meaning to class-room teaching. But in some instances laboratory courses seem to be getting away from this purpose. We find elaborate and systematic courses in mechanical laboratory having no special relation to the other work of the stu