hed the scene of his labors, enters
upon a rugged outdoor life in camp where he remains until the job is
completed. The Panama Canal was a civil-engineering job--probably the
largest of its kind ever undertaken--and its success, after failure on
the part of another government, is a high tribute to the genius of our
own civil engineers.

Mechanical engineering is a profession whose medium of endeavor lies in
the metals. Mechanical engineers shape things out of iron or steel or
brass or other metal compositions, and put these things into engines or
machines for service. All machinery, whether it be printing-presses or
automobiles or steam-engines, is the work of mechanical engineers,
though in the matter of automobiles this has become a profession by
itself, one of the minor branches known as automotive engineering. The
mechanical engineer as a rule works within doors, just as the civil
engineer works out of doors, and his work, consequently, is more
confining. In the pursuit of his profession he spends much of his time
supervising the design of mechanical units, and is the one man
responsible for correct construction and security against fracture of
the machine itself when in operation. Actually the mechanical engineer
has more opportunities in his daily routine for the exercise of his
creative faculties than has any one of the other kinds of engineers, for
the simple reason that no two machines even for the same
purpose--speaking of types, always--are exactly similar in construction.
Two lathes of like size and scope, if manufactured by two separate
organizations, will be different in their minor features, and each in
some particular will be the work of a mechanical engineer whose ideas
are at variance with those of the mechanical engineer who designed the
other type. Engineers, like doctors, often disagree, which accounts for
the many different types of machinery serving the same purpose which are
found on the market.

Electrical engineering is, as its name implies, a profession embracing
all construction whose basis is the electrical current. Any unit
whatsoever, so long as it utilizes or eats up or carries forward a
current of electricity, is the work of electrical engineers. The
profession is a comparatively recent one perforce, owing to the fact
that but very little of a practical nature was known about electricity
until a very few years ago. The wonderful progress in this field made
within the past twenty years