d ownership. These owners were
men to whom experience had brought some of the needful technical
qualifications. They usually held the reins of business management
in their own hands and employed the engineer subjectively, when
they employed him at all. They were also, as a rule, distinguished
by their contempt for university-trained engineers.

The gradually increasing employment of the engineer as combined
executive and technical head, was largely of American development.
Many English and European mines still maintain the two separate
bureaus, the technical and the financial. Such organization is open
to much objection from the point of view of the owner's interests,
and still more from that of the engineer. In such an organization the
latter is always subordinate to the financial control,--hence the
least paid and least respected. When two bureaus exist, the technical
lacks that balance of commercial purpose which it should have. The
ambition of the theoretical engineer, divorced from commercial
result, is complete technical nicety of works and low production
costs without the regard for capital outlay which the commercial
experience and temporary character of mining constructions demand.
On the other hand, the purely financial bureau usually begrudges
the capital outlay which sound engineering may warrant. The result
is an administration that is not comparable to the single head with
both qualifications and an even balance in both spheres. In America,
we still have a relic of this form of administration in the consulting
mining engineer, but barring his functions as a valuer of mines, he
is disappearing in connection with the industry, in favor of the
manager, or the president of the company, who has administrative
control. The mining engineer's field of employment is therefore not
only wider by this general inclusion of administrative work, but
one of more responsibility. While he must conduct all five phases
of engineering projects coincidentally, the other branches of the
profession are more or less confined to one phase or another. They
can draw sharper limitations of their engagements or specialization
and confine themselves to more purely technical work. The civil
engineer may construct railway or harbor works; the mechanical
engineer may design and build engines; the naval architect may
build ships; but given that he designed to do the work in the most
effectual manner, it is no concern of his whether they su