In the charter of the Institution of Civil Engineers the engineer is defined as " directing the great source of power in nature for the use and convenience of man." With all respect to this august body, and its often quoted definition, I would humbly suggest that it is bad. It is really the definition of a scientific man. It is incomplete as applied to an engineer, because it does not take into account the sordid element of price. An American definition is much better - "an engineer is a man who can do for one dollar what any fool can do for two. " This is not poetical and is useless for oratorical purposes; but it is right. It is no use being able to design most complicated alternating-current machinery, or being able to explain it with the help of a wilderness of clock faces and several issues of the technical journals, unless the machine when made, is cheaper than its rivals. Every design, every engineering manufacturer, and every piece of engineering is only a question of price. It is unpleasant, perhaps, but is a hard fact, and we have got to face it.

If one of us does $750 worth of work a year and earns $800, he is efficient; if he only does $450 worth he is an inefficient machine and will come to grief. He is like a ninety-kilowatt alternator which takes 100 kilowatts to excite, though the analogy is not close. If he does $75,000 worth of work and gets $50,000 he is an efficient machine of much larger size, and his efficiency is much more satisfactory to himself. I may mention, in passing, that an efficient man must do more work than he is paid for. This is not always realized. A man who only did what he was paid for would be of no use to the world at large. His efficiency is zero; his consumption being equal to his output. The man who does $75,000 worth of work and gets $50,-000 consumes two-thirds of the work himself; so his efficiency is only thirty-three percent; which is very high, even for an engineer.

We see, then, that the business man is the master; the engineer is his good slave; and the raw scientist is not good enough even to be the slave of the engineer; he has no market value at all, except as a teacher of more raw science. The raw scientist will remain at the bottom of the tree until he gets rid of the professional cant which pretends that raw science is pure, or nobler and superior to science as a whole; and the engineer wil remain in the middle position as long as he takes the middle view and considers engineering as something superior to money considerations, and as long as he looks down on business and commercial methods.

Views like these put forward in addresses do not al-ter the world at large, and they do not expect to do so. They are put strongly to warn you, who are young, and therefore inclined to be enthusiastic, against one of the greatest difficulties in getting on; that is to say, a poetic idea that there is something degrading or deteriorating in taking a money view of everything. You may say, " we take higher views of life than that; there is something better for us in our careers than money grubbing." So there is; I heartily agree with you; and when you have grubbed some money and are at liberty to attend to higher things, I would e to be allowed to join you.

It is cant to profess contempt for money. The poet professes to work for ame, and so does the musician, the artist, the philosopher, the scholar or the man of letters. They generally like money; but apart from that they are merely satisfying their proper vanity or love of approbation, by getting ahead of their fellows. But that is all you want to get on for. Money is nothing in itself, it is only a means, and making it is merely a way of getting ahead of your fellows. People who cannot make money do not like it being used as a criterion, so they run it down. Every one thinks the world ought to be judged by what he can do best himself. If you want to be poets you have my sympathy, but I can not deal with you in this address. I can only ask you to eschew cant.

You may, on the other hand, ask " how are we to get business and commercial knowledge?" You may say, " you are much older than we; you were practising engineering several years before any of us were bom. How did you get all your practical knowledge and become an engineer? " I can only answer, " I am only a very little bit of an engineer. " I know I will never be much of an engineer. This is mainly because this practical difficulty in getting on has always been in my way. I am entirely out of sympathy with the whole of this part of my address to you. I so much dislike saying it all that I know it must be true.

I can not tell you how to be engineers, because I do not know. All I can do is to make you realize some of your wants; and if you know what you want you are more likely to get it. One of the greatest difficulties in getting on is to find a good opening. Then, as to the different branches of the business - business is really a higher title than profession - in which are you to find openings? From the number of applications I receive from young fellows, it seems to be a common idea that consulting engineering is a good thing to begin upon. This is a curious notion. A consulting engineer is supposed to be a highly skilled engineer, with so much experience that he is an authority. I should have thought at least twenty or thirty years' experience, apart from school and college training, was necessary for a consulting engineer to be worth his salt. But there are various grades of consulting engineer; and 1 am entirely at a loss to know what the qualifications of the consulting electrical engineer really are. Then still less do I know what the consulting electrical engineer will be by the time you have had twenty or thirty years' experience.

In manufacturing work there is the designing of dynamos, motors, transformers, and so on. This was considered high grade work when I was a young man; and even very able men built some very queer machines in those days; we were all pretty ignorant. There are many openings to be had in central station work, and stations are growing bigger and more important every day. Central station work in a position of responsibility is very anxious. I do not think it is very well paid, either.

A large number of young men go in for installation work - which sounds as if they started bishops on their episcopal careers - but really means that they do what is, in fact, electrical plumbing under an unnecessarily imposing name. There are a great many of them and they seem to spend most of their time going into and out of partnership with one another, like ions, and sending notices round to that effect. At other times they go bankrupt and send no notices. The upper grades in teaching science are well paid, more especially as a position goes with an appointment, and there is time and facility for original research, which is a luxury and brings reputation. Moreover, a steady income with no expenses is a very blessed thing. But the lower grades are very poorly paid in proportion to their ability.

All this may sound rather discouraging, but I am dealing with the difficulties of getting on, and I am sure it will not discourage anyone who is worth his salt. At first it is very discouraging to make very little, and the good man has little chance of showing his superiority to the common run. But he should always remember that income, as a young man, is very little criterion of real value. There are many careers in which a young man can make something almost at once; but in all cases the income increases very slowly. In such a business as engineering a man of first-rate ability may be quite unable to make enough to marry on until he is thirty, or enough to be comforta-able on until he is forty. An eminent engineer whose name you all know, said that he did all the hard work of his life for $7.50 a week, and when he was well on in life money came rolling in of its own accord. I have reason to believe that one of our foremost engineers, now dead, never made $2,500 a year until he was over forty.

Though you may not like it, a hard struggle is very good for a young man who has anything in him. It gets him into ways of overcoming difficulties, so that when he gets above the small obstacles he goes on overcoming large ones from the mere force of habit. Nearly all great men rise from almost nothing with infinite trouble in their youth. There is nothing worse for a young man than to have about $1,000 a year of his own. He lives comfortably and does not worry; and when he is thirty he wants to marry and finds he can not, and is too late to begin life seriously then. If any of you have this sort of private income he had better go into partnership in installation work for a year or two and then begin business seriously.

I have only mentioned a few of the difficulties of getting on. I am sorry to say there are many more, which you will find out in good time. - Electrical Review.