Excerpt from Modern Engineering Practice, Vol. 1 of 10: Steam, Electricity, Mechanics; Mathematics

The American engineering student is flushed with triumph and is thrilled with the new opportunities before him. Within tenyears he has seen America succeed to premiership on lines of his own culture and effort. But there is more ahead in every direction. He hardly knows whether to go back into the technical school and ask his instructors for more years of training before he goes out at all, or to leap forward and continue the line of advance which his fellows have inaugurated. On the one hand, he is convinced that raw material and the primal and insistent forces of nature have been but crudely handled hitherto; on the other, he is fascinated by the fact that, even with his present possessions in knowledge and skill, the conquest is easy and sure. This is all true, if he looks upon the matter only as a competition evidently led by the technically trained American. But there is something more in it all, as we say, than the fact that as France and Germany won over England, so America has outrun the victors themselves in entering all markets and furnishing the highest sort of product.

That something is this: Just at the time when America sees that she has not yet opened her most valuable resources at home, she is confronted with a sudden and well-nigh overwhelming gift of opportunity in her new realm abroad. That new realm is not, as we know in these days, to be subdued by armies with cannon and sword; it is to be brought safely and loyally in league with our American position by the conquest of ideas and ideals. Among the leaders of such an advance, the engineering student in this our practical age is likely to be foremost. Surely no educational scheme can neglect to furnish him with knowledge and with skill, whether the American remain at home or go abroad to do his work; and surely least of all can the young American afford to forego the knowledge and skill which will give him mastery here or else where.

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