ermination of a method.
It is called upon daily to replan and reconceive, coincidentally with
the daily progress of the constructions and operation. Weary with
disappointment in his wisest conception, many a mining engineer
looks jealously upon his happier engineering cousin, who, when he
designs a bridge, can know its size, its strains, and its cost,
and can wash his hands of it finally when the contractor steps
in to its construction. And, above all, it is no concern of his
whether it will pay. Did he start to build a bridge over a water,
the width or depth or bottom of which he could not know in advance,
and require to get its cost back in ten years, with a profit, his
would be a task of similar harassments.

As said before, it is becoming more general every year to employ
the mining engineer as the executive head in the operation of mining
engineering projects, that is, in the fourth and fifth stages of
the enterprise. He is becoming the foreman, manager, and president
of the company, or as it may be contended by some, the executive
head is coming to have technical qualifications. Either way, in
no branch of enterprise founded on engineering is the operative
head of necessity so much a technical director. Not only is this
caused by the necessity of executive knowledge before valuations
can be properly done, but the incorporation of the executive work
with the technical has been brought about by several other forces.
We have a type of works which, by reason of the new conditions
and constant revisions which arise from pushing into the unknown
coincidentally with operating, demands an intimate continuous daily
employment of engineering sense and design through the whole history
of the enterprise. These works are of themselves of a character
which requires a constant vigilant eye on financial outcome. The
advances in metallurgy, and the decreased cost of production by
larger capacities, require yearly larger, more complicated, and
more costly plants. Thus, larger and larger capitals are required,
and enterprise is passing from the hands of the individual to the
financially stronger corporation. This altered position as to the
works and finance has made keener demands, both technically and in
an administrative way, for the highly trained man. In the early
stages of American mining, with the moderate demand on capital and
the simpler forms of engineering involved, mining was largely a
matter of individual enterprise an