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public schools." It is not fair to expect the engineering schools of the United States to take that illy-digested product, the average grammar or high school graduate, with his smattering of many things, including plain sewing, and expect to get as perfect a product in the way of an edueated man as the German schools turn out. Much of the criticism, however, of our engineering schools is a survival of the days when few engineers were school bred and a college education was not common. No employer cared to have in his employ a man better educated than himself, for they were autocratic, were the successful men of the days of our fathers and grandfathers. The old practical (so-called) engineer was preferred whenever an engineer was employed. A strong stream of engineering graduates has been poured out over the world within the past thirty years and numbers of them have deserted technical (professional technical) engineering to go into eontracting and manufacturing. Their success has been so marked that the heads of the largest manufacturing establishments and the heads of the most progressive contracting companies are men who received engineering educations. If their traiuiug had not been as practical as it is possible to make school training, they would not have succeeded. Some men ask that the school courses be made more practical and yet are unable to explain just what they mean. Some are merely echoing an old com-