2019 RETA Breeze Sept-Oct

the working class. Through enlightenment from Mr. Day’s

that dictates to them from which they cannot depart. In other words, it is as closely associated to the person as their features themselves. While we consider character as the initial qualification of our ideal, at the same time I believe that the force of character is so deeply impressive that it is unnecessary to dwell upon this point any further. Education as a qualifying characteristic of an ideal engineer should be considered in its broadest sense. Under education we would include experience, training, and in reality, the acquisition of all knowledge, whether it be by the hard knocks of actual practical experience or whether it be by the acquisition of knowledge from technical schools, correspondence schools or colleges. We can read, study, or be told a great many things in a great many different ways, but when it comes to the acquisition of actual operating knowledge, I firmly believe that it can be acquired only by practical experience. Practical experience is a valuable teacher in that more senses are brought into use and the impressions so gained could not be acquired in any other manner. Again, I believe that the engineer should be initiated as a boiler fireman and should pass through the various stages, omitting none, until they come to the point that we may consider them as our ideal. The practical knowledge should be gained by experience with various makes of The blending of school education with practical experience is one of the fine points in the construction of our ideal, and in the use of the term “blending” I would use it in its fullest sense. First, I think an operating engineer should have a good high school education (editor’s note: today this may be better read as technical degree). After this, I machines, including therein the renovation of old equipment.

think that their instruction should be received at the time they are acquiring their practical training. In other words, their instruction should be blended with their practical experience, or while boiler firing they should make a study of boilers, and so on up, until when they arrive at the stage of an engineer they would have had a practical as well as a technical education gained through the medium of a trade school. I do not wish to be understood as depreciating the value of a traditional college education. On the other hand, if our ideal has the qualities necessary to make them such, they will have shown a closeness of application and a persistency that is necessary to make a course valuable, and I firmly believe that in our case this will give him all the collegiate education necessary. The education of our ideal would not be complete unless they had been a student of human nature, in that it is only by their knowledge of this important feature that he is able to control their subordinates in the construction of an organization in which there will be harmony and from which they will derive the maximum results from the inherent mental and physical characteristics of their subordinates. In other words. he should be an organizer. technique of their subject, they may be able to make repairs, keep their plant constantly running. and yet they would be sadly lacking in what I consider one of the fine qualifications of an ideal operating engineer from a manager’s standpoint if they did not have the knowledge of the value of a dollar. I believe the lack of this knowledge has been the limiting feature in the success of many a good operating engineer. The ideal operating engineer should have a thorough knowledge of the cost An operating engineer may be thoroughly conversant with the

teachings as well as David Brown, William Story, and others; the elite business class was imparting their values upon their skilled employees. The thought that they could be equals was still not common, but the thought that certain traits should be universal were beginning to take root. So, with that in mind, here is Mr. Day’s presentation, slightly modernized with clarifications where appropriate. Is it not true that ideal company presidents, department managers or engineers have characteristics which are so general in their application that those qualifications that are fulfilled by an ideal engineer could not be equally as well be applied to an ideal department manager or an ideal company president? For instance, who could imagine an ideal engineer who did not have strength of character? It is true we successfully maintain and operate a plant to the entire satisfaction of the manager but at the same time. would that manager consider the person for hire, in the light of an ideal, if they had neither character, education, or ambition? It is under the classification of character, education, and ambition that I qualify an ideal operating engineer from a department manager’s standpoint. Character, in that it applies to their involuntary personal characteristics; education, that factor qualifying them as an engineer; ambition, that characteristic which causes them to establish an ideal for himself and furnishes the motive power that impels them towards success. Character is a latent quality, a quality born and bred in a person. It is a force “ could probably find numerous operating engineers who could

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