=Age of the Engineer.= The great world war has been characterized in many ways, but perhaps the best characterization of all is that it is an engineers’ war. Eliminate the work of the engineers, civil and mechanical, from this war and it could not have been fought. For that matter the last seventy-five years of the world’s history has belonged to the engineers. Ninety per cent. of all our comforts, conveniences, and practical achievements is due to their work, and what wonders have been wrought in this time! The engineer has accomplished more in the field of transportation than in any other realm. Transportation, represented by the railroads, the steamships, the automobiles, and the better roads that have been built to accommodate them, makes up the chief differences between our age and all those ages preceding. =The Railway Systems.= There is being operated in the United States at the present time 230,000 miles of railroads. The mileage which they cover if stretched about the earth would belt the globe nine times. The total mileage for the whole world is about 700,000; all of Europe has 215,140 miles. The United States and Canada together have almost half the total mileage of the world and as much as all of Europe and Asia combined. In 1915 the railroads of the United States carried 976,303,602 passengers and moved 1,802,018,177 tons of freight. The railway companies employed 1,654,075 men and women. The average hourly pay for these workers, figured on the basis of the eight-hour day, is twenty-six cents. Railroading is a most difficult and dangerous occupation, and yet there is something in the work itself that appeals to the worker. “Once a railroad man, always a railroad man,” as one brakeman put it. There was a railroad wreck on the Southern Pacific line just south of Livermore, California, some years ago. The engine fell over into a creek and the engineer was caught underneath, and pressed down into the soft sand. It was eighteen hours before he was rescued; his chest was crushed and he was horribly burned but by some miracle he lived. The railway company gave him a pension in recognition of his faithful services of about twelve years, and he was able to live on the income without working. This invalided engineer was idle for almost ten months; he then went back to the company and asked to be put on an engine again. He was not considered strong enough to run a passenger engine, but was supremely happy when put in charge of a switch engine in the train-yards of Sacramento. He said, “It was the happiest day of my life when I pulled the throttle, and again felt the engine begin to move out under my touch and control.”