doing creditable work, or of later attaining any desirable position in
the profession.

The course of instruction, at the Stevens Institute of Technology,
includes instruction in the trades to the extent above indicated. The
original plan, as given below, included such a course of trade education
for the engineer; but it was not at once introduced. The funds
available from an endowment fund crippled by the levying of an enormous
"succession tax" by the United States government and by the cost of
needed apparatus and of unanticipated expenses, in buildings and in
organization, were insufficient to permit the complete organization
of this department. A few tools were gathered together; but skilled
mechanics could not be employed to take up the work of instruction in
the several courses. Little could therefore be done for several years in
this direction. In 1875 the writer organized a "mechanical laboratory,"
with the purpose of attaining several very important objects: the
prosecution of scientific research in the various departments of
engineering work; the creation of an organization that should give
students an opportunity to learn the methods of research most usefully
employed in such investigations; the assistance of members of the
profession, and business organizations in the attempt to solve such
questions, involving scientific research, as are continually arising in
the course of business; the employment of students who had done
good work in their college course, when they so desire, in work of
investigation with a view to giving them such knowledge of this peculiar
line of work as should make them capable of directing such operations
elsewhere; and finally, but not least important of all, to secure, by
earning money in commercial work of this kind, the funds needed to carry
on those departments of the course in engineering that had been, up
to that time, less thoroughly organized than seemed desirable. This