of their regular course of instruction. Medical students receive what is called bedside instruction in hospitals attached to the schools they attend.

The problem of the professional engineering school must be solved in somewhat the same way. Laboratories may help but they will not be sufficient. For laboratory equipment soon gets out of date and with the resources at the command of most schools may not be scrapped and replaced by something new. The engineering schools will have to devise some contact with the outside world which will make their instruction real and prevent it from becoming merely academic. But that contact must be such that neither the instructor nor the student gives up more of his time to purely routine operations and processes than is necessary to acquaint him with the conditions of the world he is to enter.

Finally, even in a school which emphasizes professional training something must be done for the student which will help him in his life outside of his profession. For he is a man and a citizen as well as an engineer. As a man he must live a life which has many other than professional contacts. He will be in a world which has other than professional interests. To get the greatest profit from that world and to lead a life which is most worth while he must some time during the period of his education lay the basis for the cultivation of tastes which will enable him to enjoy non-professional things. As a citizen he must participate in the solution of problems which democracies must solve. It is true that the cobbler must stick to his last but when cobblers are called as they are in popular governments to take a share in the determination of policies they must in some way be assisted to reach right conclusions. What is true of cobblers is even more true of engineers. For engineering may be regarded as a learned profession and engineers are educated men, who may properly be called upon to share the leadership which is so necessary to wise political action. I heard the other day of a student in the Students' Army Training Corps in one of our leading universities who was asked in an examination the

name of the people who inhabitated Hungary. His answer was the "McGuires." While that answer revealed the fact that the man had a basis of historical and political knowledge, yet that knowledge was so limited and imperfect that it might lead to the conclusion that he had mistaken Hibernia for Hungary.

I would not be understood as asking that the engineering student should be expected to acquire an extensive historical knowledge during his undergraduate course. With the demands made upon him by his strictly professional subjects such an expectation would be doomed to disappointment. But after all there is no reason why engineers should not be reasonably cultivated men. And for the average man the foundation for such cultivation as he is successful in acquiring must be laid in his college course.

One of the difficulties which will be encountered by those who try to lay this foundation is the reluctance which the average engineering student has to devote himself to these non-professional courses. He regards them both as useless and uninteresting. Perhaps a large measure of blame for his attitude must be laid on his instructors. Perhaps if a greater attempt were made to make these courses attractive even at the peril of having them regarded by the student as "cinch" courses greater success would attend our endeavors to coax the engineering student to consider of value the nonprofessional work which in his own interest he should be required to undertake.

The two problems which would appear to be as yet unsolved in the schools which emphasize professional training are thus the contact with the outside world of engineering and the cultivation of the man and citizen as well as the engineer.

The third purpose which engineering schools in general or some engineering school in particular may emphasize is engineering research. This purpose is probably the most difficult of realization. Research in pure science may without great difficulty be carried on within academic walls. It, of course, involves the expenditure of large sums of money needed for

the equipment of laboratories and for the staff to which the investigation of problems is intrusted, but experience has shown that carrying on such research is not beyond the powers of educational institutions. When, however, we come to the applications of science conditions along many lines are quite different. The laboratory methods which suffice for pure scientific research are often ill adapted for the work which must be done. For the purpose of much engineering research is not so much the ascertainment of scientific truth as it is the determination of the commercial practicability of particular methods of quantity production. This purpose can hardly be realized in many cases in any laboratory which a university may be expected to provide. Engineering research must in many cases, to be successfully prosecuted, be carried on in the factory and in the mill.

There are, however, unquestionably many problems the solution of which can be begun in an engineering laboratory. There are probably some the solution of which may be completed there. So far as this is true it is very desirable that an engineering school should, if possible, devote some of its attention to their solution. For the student who thus learns to solve problems not only acquires knowledge about his profession but at the same time cultivates a mental attitude the possession of which will probably be of greater value to him than the mere acquisition of knowledge. Work of this character is even more valuable to the instructor than to the student. Successful accomplishment in this direction at the same time stimulates his imagination and makes him a more inspiring teacher. No one who has devoted many years to teaching can fail to notice the deadening influence upon his work of a persistent and continuous attention to what is known unaccompanied by some striving on his part to apply what he knows to the discovery of something that is unknown.

It may well be, therefore, that the most successful engineering schools will be ones which endeavor on the one hand to use the subjects which they are called upon to teach as subjects from which some measure of general education can be ob

tained and on the other to give a reasonably adequate professional training with which will be combined some attention to research. But it can hardly be expected that any school can hope successfully to do much more than to lay the foundations upon which the student must subsequently build. No engineering school, any more than a college, can expect its students to acquire all that is comprised in a general education. No engineering school, even if it devoted itself exclusively to professional training, could hope to turn out its graduates finished engineers. Nor could it if it gave all its time to engineering research hope to solve all the problems which arise in industry.

So it seems to me that the problem at the basis of engineering education is essentially the one lying at the foundation of all education, which can be carried on in an institution more or less academic in character. This is the combination of fundamentals, a reasonable breadth of view and the cultivation of the capacity to solve the new questions which are continuously presenting themselves in every line of work. Such are some of the first thoughts on engineering education which one not a member of the guild ventures to present for your consideration today.

RESPONSE TO ADDRESS OF WELCOME.

BY JOHN F. HAYFORD,

President of the Society.

Mr. President, we thank you for your words of welcome. I take it that the greatest thing a host can do is to make his guests feel at once that they are at home. By your action in immediately putting yourself on our level and starting with a discussion of the problems of engineering education you make us feel at home, and you make us feel that you are one of us and are glad to have us here.

In trying to decide where we should meet we fixed upon Baltimore and Johns Hopkins practically because we found a meeting point here, which we thought combined the elements of the North and of the South. We felt that here in Baltimore we would find some of the characteristics of the South, of its warm welcome in a social way, and we hoped-and this day starts with the fulfillment of the hope-that we would get some of the cool climate of the North.

Also early in our discussions of where we should meet it appeared that it was desirable to meet near Washington, because it was expected that the center of interest in many respects would still be Washington at this time. We did not want to be in Washington, with the distractions that are there, and Baltimore fulfilled the prescription.

This Society from the beginning has been one that was always looking for new ideas. It is quite appropriate then that we should come to Johns Hopkins, the birth place of one of the great new ideas of American university education. I am referring of course to the fact that Johns Hopkins is the birthplace of the research idea as applied to American universities. Johns Hopkins did its work so well in starting the research idea in the universities in the United States that the