Excerpt from The Building Estimator

The illustrations. Are mostly taken from local sources, but I have had a wide enough experience to draw a fair average of time required on all kinds of work. In addition to an apprenticeship on the other side of the Atlantic, and another apprenticeship as a contractor in the West, I spent three years in the city of New York, and half as long in each of the western capitals - Chicago and St. Louis. This much to satisfy those who read the preface that the book was not compiled by a the orist. No matter where work is done, if it is done right there is not such a great amount of difference in the time required.

For the last three years I have been in the Chief Engineer's office of the Union Pacific Railroad making plans and estimates for shops, etc. The old saying runs, If you want to find out how little you know of a subject, write about it. No one can be more sensible than I of how far this comes short of being an ideal book, and yet it is much better than it would have been bad the railroad experience not been added to the total, as that showed larger quantities handled on another class of work than falls to the average contractor.

Doctor Johnson, the dictionary man, used to pride himself on his prefaces, for in them he explained how a book should be written, and why it was impossible so to write it. The Engineering News in a recent complaint over the dearth of technical books written by practical men forgot to mention, among other reasons for the deficiency, that the perspective looks so much better than the building as to induce a feeling of discouragement. And yet, it is better that it is so; for all men and railroads, all arts and sciences, and most books, like trees, must grow or rot. If, therefore, while there is much here that is not elsewhere, you meet the common fault of such works - a lack of some thing that ought to be shown in capital letters - it is to be regarded not so much as a blemish, as a sign that progress is still possible, and as a flattering invitation to try your skill as an author and make two words grow where only one grew before.

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