The International General Electric Company carries products of American industry to every land, and brings back developments which foreign scientistshave worked out. Thus, by a league of minds, peoples know one another better, and humanity moves forward with a swifter stride. You may travel through a The sun never sets on this GENERAL ELECTRIC 44-2 D OF THE ASSOCIATED ENGINEERING SOCIETIES Vol. IV OF ST. LOUIS A Monthly Periodical Devoted to the Interests of the Engineering Profession in St. Louis ST. LOUIS, MO., MARCH, 1925 WHY ENGINEERS RECEIVE ADVICE People who accept advice peacefully are very apt to receive it plentifully, so the predicament of the engineers in modern industry is a very natural result of a psychological situation. Much good advice has been dinned into their ears in the past few years, and their faults have been delineated with the same clarity and precision with which their duties. have been specified. All this has been received by the engineers with seeming relish and a grateful attitude highly appreciated at the fonts of wisdom whence the advice emanates. It is easy and gratifying to give advice and admonition to other people, and deep under the surface there are real good reasons for engineers to be proud they have been singled out for such marked attention and such gratuitous bestowal of wisdom. All the advice is good, and if life were long and time unending, so that the seed thus liberally scattered in the engineering mind could be brought to fruition, undoubtedly great profit would ensue. A few samples of the many good things often repeated to engineers by their leaders, by publicists and by statesmen may not be out of place. One muchused and true thought is phrased like this: "Gentlemen, by your works and science you have made modern civilization mechanistic and complex, and therefore you must guide it correctly by par No. 3 ticipating actively in governmental, civic, social and business affairs." Another adjuration shows the "reaction" of business: "These big properties, gentlemen, represent investments of millions of dollars and afford work to hundreds. You should appreciate more acutely the place of finance in engineering work and should study more closely the problems of management." Next comes the cultivated scholar, who delicately remarks: "Gentlemen, you are too sordid, sodden and materialistic and lack the breadth and culture that can be obtained by a careful perusal of the world's best literature. You need the refinement and soul-stirring emotion and imaginative power to be derived from an intimate acquaintance with Shakespeare, Dante, Main Street', 'Babbitt', the New Republic and the Dial." Other every-day admonitions are these: "You should participate more actively in golf, polo and mah jong"; "you should learn to write good English"; "you should become public speakers"-but most gracefully of all do engineers receive good advice on their duties as citizens and employes and their obligations to engender good public relations for the industries with which they are connected. Yet all things have an end as well as a beginning, and many of the long-suffering engineers seem to be growing a little bored and even more than a little Entered as second-class matter, February 11, 1916, at the post-office at St. Louis, Mo., under the Act of August 24. 1912. Acceptance for mailing at the special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917. authorized August 23. 1918. impatient with the abundance of the exhortation that comes their way. As one remarked recently at the conclusion of a fine meeting: "I like sermons in church, but why pick on us engineers at all these conventions and in so many public speeches? I am not ashamed of what I and other engineers have done, yet a lot of people seem to think I and others are headed for perdition and in addition. know nothing and do nothing." Such a feeling is human, but shows a lack of understanding of the real meaning of the situation. The advice and reproof are a compliment to engineers and embody appreciation of the work they have done. Such attention indicates that they have done their jobs so well that there is a public clamor for them to take over all the other jobs. In finance, literature, sport, government, education, public relations and business there seem to be many jobs the incumbents find difficult, so the natural thing is for them to survey the field and find the type of man who exhibits competency. The next step is to urge these competent men to help and to do other jobs in the quiet, effective, easy and efficient way they have found so successful. The hard-working engineers are indeed to be congratulated on receiving the attention of so many good citizens. It augurs well for their future and they should suffer with patience. The advisers mean well. QUICKSAND AND ECONOMICS By CHARLES R. GOW, President of the Charles R. Gow Co., Boston, Mass. There have always been differences of opinion-even at the time of the flood there must have been conflict between the diluvian and ante-diluvian schools of thought and I find much honest divergence of opinion in the matter of the handling of quicksand. The lay mind, and in some cases the technical mind, is prone to look upon qiucksand as a material. In my opinion it is a condition of an otherwise inert material resulting from some sort of disturbance. We may illustrate by considering the effect of the upward flow of water through sand contained in a funnel. It will be seen that the sand grains will ultimately reach a state of partial suspension which will make the body of material in the funnel decidedly unstable. Subsidence of the water flow will restore the original condition of the sand. Quicksand in nature is very rare in spite of its common use in fiction writing. It may occur where ground water An abstract of an informal address delivered before the Associated Engineering Societies of St. Louis, January 7, 1925, at a meeting held under the auspices of the St. Louis Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Mr. Gow's talk was illustrated by lantern slides. is fed from higher levels. A specific case in my knowledge is that of the sand at a tide water river mouth. During a rising tide the water flows through a restricted opening into a basin behind a dike, where it is held as the tide recedes. The temporary head created results in a partial suspension of the river sand and creates a real quicksand for the time being. Another case is that of a New England mill, the ground floor of which was destroyed by an uprush of quicksand. Investigation disclosed the fact that the building had been unwittingly constructed over a bed of sand which was kept saturated from an outside source. A sewer under the building which had skirted the pocket collapsed, releasing the sand with disastrous results. A remedy was found in driving pipes into the sand and so relieving the water pressure. The mill was rebuilt and has since obtained its water supply from these relief pipes. Consider a sand stratum into which water finds its way from a higher source, located under a solid, impervious layer of earth. The sand becomes water soaked. When an excavation is made through the upper earth stratum relief is afforded and the pressure head on the water in the sand does the rest. As sand is removed from the excavation, other sand flows in to take its place, frequently resulting in subsidence of the surrounding earth. Obvious correctives are to remove the water from the sand or to prevent the flow of water and sand into the excavation. In some cases it has been found practicable to drive well points into the sand and to pump the inflowing water from the points. Another expedient is to drive a twelve-inch pipe into the sand with a two and one-half inch well point inside it, the space between the well point and the inside of the pipe being filled with coarse gravel. The twelve inch pipe is then pulled, leaving the coarse material around the well point. This plan is not always successful. The second method of control is to line the excavation with sheet piling or other water tight casing driven through the sand stratum. Telescoping steel cylinders are sometimes used for this purpose. The piling or cylinders used are drawn after placing the foundation concrete, if practicable. A method developed by the Gow organization involves the employment of reinforced concrete cylinders which are left in the excavation. The pneumatic caisson process for the control of quicksand is used as a last resort in particularly aggravated cases. The Gow Company has used precast concrete air and working chambers for this purpose. In my opinion we are apt to underrate the capacity of fine sand to carry loads. In many cases it affords an excellent foundation. It is within my experience that wet sand, on which men could not stand, supports a load of three tons per square foot. A certain bridge pier shifted its position through displacement of the supporting piles, settling on the river bed of fine sand. Though the bridge has been in use under heavy traffic for several years, no further subsidence has occurred. The Public Duty of Engineers I have been asked to say something about the duty of engineers in advising the public on economic questions. People as a rule have become very distrustful of one another. The public has acquired a habit of not thinking-it only feels. It does not care to listen to logic. It acts impulsively; no matter how well an institution may have served for a long time, if anything goes wrong the people destroy it at once. The American people are notably susceptible to the half truths which cause eternal confusion in the understanding of economic problems. To illustrate: The statement is often made that "the true test of civilization is not dependent on accumulated material wealth". This is a half truth and it takes no great amount of logical reasoning to expose its fallacy. A large purveyor of cheap transportation has an income, we'll say, of $100,000,000 per annum. It would require the wildest stretch of imagination to suppose that this gentleman spends more than $500,000 a year for his personal requirements. The balance of his income goes into industry and is used in many ways to the advantage of mankind. Human progress is promoted by the accumulation of material wealth. It is the duty of the engineer, with his lack of bias, his habit of logical reasoning, to advise the public on economic problems. He should understand and enunciate the real truth about economic principles. A short time ago Mr. Gow, speaking before the American Engineering Council, presented "An Engineer's Declara tion of Economic Principles". Space will not permit of a complete reprint at this time, but a few excerpts will serve to amplify the remarks printed above. It is not thoroughly understood that the wealthy man does not, generally speaking, live upon his wealth, but upon the income which the use of his wealth makes possible, and that when his wealth |