The Character, Training, and Obligations of the Mining Engineering Profession.

In a discussion of some problems of metal mining from the point of view of the direction of mining operations it may not be amiss to discuss the character of the mining engineering profession in its bearings on training and practice, and its relations to the public.

The most dominant characteristic of the mining engineering profession is the vast preponderance of the commercial over the technical in the daily work of the engineer. For years a gradual evolution has been in progress altering the larger demands on this branch of the engineering profession from advisory to executive work. The mining engineer is no longer the technician who concocts reports and blue prints. It is demanded of him that he devise the finance, construct and manage the works which he advises. The demands of such executive work are largely commercial; although the commercial experience and executive ability thus become one pier in the foundation of training, the bridge no less requires two piers, and the second is based on technical knowledge. Far from being deprecated, these commercial phases cannot be too strongly emphasized. On the other hand, I am far from contending that our vocation is a business rather than a profession.

For many years after the dawn of modern engineering, the members of our profession were men who rose through the ranks of workmen, and as a result, we are to this day in the public mind a sort of superior artisan, for to many the engine-driver is equally an engineer with the designer of the engine, yet their real relation is but as the hand to the brain. At a later period the recruits entered by apprenticeship to those men who had established their intellectual superiority to their fellow-workers. These men were nearly always employed in an advisory way—subjective to the executive head.

During the last few decades, the advance of science and the complication of industry have demanded a wholly broader basis of scientific and general training for its leaders. Executive heads are demanded who have technical training. This has resulted in the establishment of special technical colleges, and compelled a place for engineering in the great universities. The high intelligence demanded by the vocation itself, and the revolution in training caused by the strengthening of its foundations in general education, has finally, beyond all question, raised the work of application of science to industry to the dignity of a profession on a par with the law, medicine, and science. It demands of its members equally high mental attainments,—and a more rigorous training and experience. Despite all this, industry is conducted for commercial purposes, and leaves no room for the haughty intellectual superiority assumed by some professions over business callings.

There is now demanded of the mining specialist a wide knowledge of certain branches of civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering, geology, economics, the humanities, and what not; and in addition to all this, engineering sense, executive ability, business experience, and financial insight. Engineering sense is that fine blend of honesty, ingenuity, and intuition which is a mental endowment apart from knowledge and experience. Its possession is the test of the real engineer. It distinguishes engineering as a profession from engineering as a trade. It is this sense that elevates the possessor to the profession which is, of all others, the most difficult and the most comprehensive. Financial insight can only come by experience in the commercial world. Likewise must come the experience in technical work which gives balance to theoretical training. Executive ability is that capacity to coÖrdinate and command the best results from other men,—it is a natural endowment. which can be cultivated only in actual use.

The practice of mine engineering being so large a mixture of business, it follows that the whole of the training of this profession cannot be had in schools and universities. The commercial and executive side of the work cannot be taught; it must be absorbed by actual participation in the industry. Nor is it impossible to rise to great eminence in the profession without university training, as witness some of our greatest engineers. The university can do much; it can give a broad basis of knowledge and mental training, and can inculcate moral feeling, which entitles men to lead their fellows. It can teach the technical fundamentals of the multifold sciences which the engineer should know and must apply. But after the university must come a schooling in men and things equally thorough and more arduous.

In this predominating demand for commercial qualifications over the technical ones, the mining profession has differentiated to a great degree from its brother engineering branches. That this is true will be most apparent if we examine the course through which engineering projects march, and the demands of each stage on their road to completion.

The life of all engineering projects in a general way may be divided into five phases:[*]—

[Footnote *: These phases do not necessarily proceed step by step. For an expanding works especially, all of them may be in process at the same time, but if each item be considered to itself, this is the usual progress, or should be when properly engineered.]

These various stages of the resolution of an engineering project require in each more or less of every quality of intellect, training, and character. At the different stages, certain of these qualities are in predominant demand: in the first stage, financial insight; in the second, "engineering sense"; in the third, training and experience; in the fourth and fifth, executive ability.

A certain amount of compass over the project during the whole five stages is required by all branches of the engineering profession,—harbor, canal, railway, waterworks, bridge, mechanical, electrical, etc.; but in none of them so completely and in such constant combination is this demanded as in mining.

The determination of the commercial value of projects is a greater section of the mining engineer's occupation than of the other engineering branches. Mines are operated only to earn immediate profits. No question of public utility enters, so that all mining projects have by this necessity to be from the first weighed from a profit point of view alone. The determination of this question is one which demands such an amount of technical knowledge and experience that those who are not experts cannot enter the field,—therefore the service of the engineer is always demanded in their satisfactory solution. Moreover, unlike most other engineering projects, mines have a faculty of changing owners several times during their career, so that every one has to survive a periodic revaluation. From the other branches of engineering, the electrical engineer is the most often called upon to weigh the probabilities of financial success of the enterprise, but usually his presence in this capacity is called upon only at the initial stage, for electrical enterprises seldom change hands. The mechanical and chemical branches are usually called upon for purely technical service on the demand of the operator, who decides the financial problems for himself, or upon works forming but units in undertakings where the opinion on the financial advisability is compassed by some other branch of the engineering profession. The other engineering branches, even less often, are called in for financial advice, and in those branches involving works of public utility the profit-and-loss phase scarcely enters at all.

Given that the project has been determined upon, and that the enterprise has entered upon the second stage, that of determination of method of attack, the immediate commercial result limits the mining engineer's every plan and design to a greater degree than it does the other engineering specialists. The question of capital and profit dogs his every footstep, for all mines are ephemeral; the life of any given mine is short. Metal mines have indeed the shortest lives of any. While some exceptional ones may produce through one generation, under the stress of modern methods a much larger proportion extend only over a decade or two. But of more pertinent force is the fact that as the certain life of a metal mine can be positively known in most cases but a short period beyond the actual time required to exhaust the ore in sight, not even a decade of life to the enterprise is available for the estimates of the mining engineer. Mining works are of no value when the mine is exhausted; the capital invested must be recovered in very short periods, and therefore all mining works must be of the most temporary character that will answer. The mining engineer cannot erect a works that will last as long as possible; it is to last as long as the mine only, and, in laying it out, forefront in his mind must be the question, Can its cost be redeemed in the period of use of which I am certain it will find employment? If not, will some cheaper device, which gives less efficiency, do? The harbor engineer, the railway engineer, the mechanical engineer, build as solidly as they can, for the demand for the work will exist till after their materials are worn out, however soundly they construct.

Our engineer cousins can, in a greater degree by study and investigation, marshal in advance the factors with which they have to deal. The mining engineer's works, on the other hand, depend at all times on many elements which, from the nature of things, must remain unknown. No mine is laid bare to study and resolve in advance. We have to deal with conditions buried in the earth. Especially in metal mines we cannot know, when our works are initiated, what the size, mineralization, or surroundings of the ore-bodies will be. We must plunge into them and learn,—and repent. Not only is the useful life of our mining works indeterminate, but the very character of them is uncertain in advance. All our works must be in a way doubly tentative, for they are subject to constant alterations as they proceed.

Not only does this apply to our initial plans, but to our daily amendment of them as we proceed into the unknown. Mining engineering is, therefore, never ended with the initial determination of a method. It is called upon daily to replan and reconceive, coincidentally with the daily progress of the constructions and operation. Weary with disappointment in his wisest conception, many a mining engineer looks jealously upon his happier engineering cousin, who, when he designs a bridge, can know its size, its strains, and its cost, and can wash his hands of it finally when the contractor steps in to its construction. And, above all, it is no concern of his whether it will pay. Did he start to build a bridge over a water, the width or depth or bottom of which he could not know in advance, and require to get its cost back in ten years, with a profit, his would be a task of similar harassments.

As said before, it is becoming more general every year to employ the mining engineer as the executive head in the operation of mining engineering projects, that is, in the fourth and fifth stages of the enterprise. He is becoming the foreman, manager, and president of the company, or as it may be contended by some, the executive head is coming to have technical qualifications. Either way, in no branch of enterprise founded on engineering is the operative head of necessity so much a technical director. Not only is this caused by the necessity of executive knowledge before valuations can be properly done, but the incorporation of the executive work with the technical has been brought about by several other forces. We have a type of works which, by reason of the new conditions and constant revisions which arise from pushing into the unknown coincidentally with operating, demands an intimate continuous daily employment of engineering sense and design through the whole history of the enterprise. These works are of themselves of a character which requires a constant vigilant eye on financial outcome. The advances in metallurgy, and the decreased cost of production by larger capacities, require yearly larger, more complicated, and more costly plants. Thus, larger and larger capitals are required, and enterprise is passing from the hands of the individual to the financially stronger corporation. This altered position as to the works and finance has made keener demands, both technically and in an administrative way, for the highly trained man. In the early stages of American mining, with the moderate demand on capital and the simpler forms of engineering involved, mining was largely a matter of individual enterprise and ownership. These owners were men to whom experience had brought some of the needful technical qualifications. They usually held the reins of business management in their own hands and employed the engineer subjectively, when they employed him at all. They were also, as a rule, distinguished by their contempt for university-trained engineers.

The gradually increasing employment of the engineer as combined executive and technical head, was largely of American development. Many English and European mines still maintain the two separate bureaus, the technical and the financial. Such organization is open to much objection from the point of view of the owner's interests, and still more from that of the engineer. In such an organization the latter is always subordinate to the financial control,—hence the least paid and least respected. When two bureaus exist, the technical lacks that balance of commercial purpose which it should have. The ambition of the theoretical engineer, divorced from commercial result, is complete technical nicety of works and low production costs without the regard for capital outlay which the commercial experience and temporary character of mining constructions demand. On the other hand, the purely financial bureau usually begrudges the capital outlay which sound engineering may warrant. The result is an administration that is not comparable to the single head with both qualifications and an even balance in both spheres. In America, we still have a relic of this form of administration in the consulting mining engineer, but barring his functions as a valuer of mines, he is disappearing in connection with the industry, in favor of the manager, or the president of the company, who has administrative control. The mining engineer's field of employment is therefore not only wider by this general inclusion of administrative work, but one of more responsibility. While he must conduct all five phases of engineering projects coincidentally, the other branches of the profession are more or less confined to one phase or another. They can draw sharper limitations of their engagements or specialization and confine themselves to more purely technical work. The civil engineer may construct railway or harbor works; the mechanical engineer may design and build engines; the naval architect may build ships; but given that he designed to do the work in the most effectual manner, it is no concern of his whether they subsequently earn dividends. He does not have to operate them, to find the income, to feed the mill, or sell the product. The profit and loss does not hound his footsteps after his construction is complete.

Although it is desirable to emphasize the commercial side of the practice of the mining engineer's profession, there are other sides of no less moment. There is the right of every red-blooded man to be assured that his work will be a daily satisfaction to himself; that it is a work which is contributing to the welfare and advance of his country; and that it will build for him a position of dignity and consequence among his fellows.

There are the moral and public obligations upon the profession. There are to-day the demands upon the engineers which are the demands upon their positions as leaders of a great industry. In an industry that lends itself so much to speculation and chicanery, there is the duty of every engineer to diminish the opportunity of the vulture so far as is possible. Where he can enter these lists has been suggested in the previous pages. Further than to the "investor" in mines, he has a duty to his brothers in the profession. In no profession does competition enter so obscurely, nor in no other are men of a profession thrown into such terms of intimacy in professional work. From these causes there has arisen a freedom of disclosure of technical results and a comradery of members greater than that in any other profession. No profession is so subject to the capriciousness of fortune, and he whose position is assured to-day is not assured to-morrow unless it be coupled with a consideration of those members not so fortunate. Especially is there an obligation to the younger members that they may have opportunity of training and a right start in the work.

The very essence of the profession is that it calls upon its members to direct men. They are the officers in the great industrial army. From the nature of things, metal mines do not, like our cities and settlements, lie in those regions covered deep in rich soils. Our mines must be found in the mountains and deserts where rocks are exposed to search. Thus they lie away from the centers of comfort and culture,—they are the outposts of civilization. The engineer is an officer on outpost duty, and in these places he is the camp leader. By his position as a leader in the community he has a chieftainship that carries a responsibility besides mere mine management. His is the responsibility of example in fair dealing and good government in the community.

In but few of its greatest works does the personality of its real creator reach the ears of the world; the real engineer does not advertise himself. But the engineering profession generally rises yearly in dignity and importance as the rest of the world learns more of where the real brains of industrial progress are. The time will come when people will ask, not who paid for a thing, but who built it.

To the engineer falls the work of creating from the dry bones of scientific fact the living body of industry. It is he whose intellect and direction bring to the world the comforts and necessities of daily need. Unlike the doctor, his is not the constant struggle to save the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his prime function. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. Engineering is the profession of creation and of construction, of stimulation of human effort and accomplishment.