Destructive criticism has recently been decried in an editorial in an
engineering journal. Some kinds of destructive criticism are of the
highest benefit; when it succeeds in destroying error, it is
reconstructive. No reform was ever accomplished without it, and no
reformer ever existed who was not a destructive critic. If showing up
errors and faults is destructive criticism, we cannot have too much of
it; in fact, we cannot advance without it. If engineering practice is to
be purged of its inconsistencies and absurdities, it will never be done
by dwelling on its excellencies.

Reinforced concrete engineering has fairly leaped into prominence and
apparently into full growth, but it still wears some of its
swaddling-bands. Some of the garments which it borrowed from sister
forms of construction in its short infancy still cling to it, and, while
these were, perhaps, the best makeshifts under the circumstances, they
fit badly and should be discarded. It is some of these misfits and
absurdities which the writer would like to bring prominently before the
Engineering Profession.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

The first point to which attention is called, is illustrated in Fig. 1.
It concerns sharp bends in reinforcing rods in concrete. Fig. 1 shows a
reinforced concrete design, one held out, in nearly all books on the
subject, as a model. The reinforcing rod is bent up at a sharp angle,
and then may or may not be bent again and run parallel with the top of
the beam. At the bend is a condition which resembles that of a hog-chain
or truss-rod around a queen-post. The reinforcing rod is the hog-chain
or the truss-rod. Where is the queen-post? Suppose this rod has a