The Economic status of the Engineer

This is not a committee report, though perhaps it could be made to serve as such, because its genesis was a request of the engineer that a paper be written around the author's remark, ``The economic status of the engineer is largely a matter determined by each individual engineer according to his particular personal qualifications and the relations these bear to the work he does and to the personalities of those persons with whom and by whom he is employed.'' The study on which the paper is based shows conclusions which may be briefed as follows: Engineers, through suffering considerable loss of income and employment during the recent years of business depression, on the whole have fared much better than most classification groups, be they government, capital, profession, or labor. Preceding the depression, there was no lack of employment for engineers and their compensation for the most part was equitable in comparison with the pay for other types of service. The verdict of users of engineering service regarding the reasons why engineers who have not made satisfactory progress professionally or in their economic status is almost unanimous that such failures are due to deficiencies in personality, general culture, tact, industry, etc., rather than for lack of technical training. Graduation from college is prerequisite to success in engineering, but does not per se guarantee an engineer.