Message to the engineers of America

The ease and promptness with which the public as a whole becomes accustomed to and takes advantage of the work of the engineer, using the term in a broad sense, is almost startling. Surprise at, and fear of radical innovations in transportation and private service quickly give way to blase indifference followed instantly by all manner of criticism that these things are not better constructed and managed. Does the street car stop a few minutes on a switch? — summon the State Commission. Is the Overland Express fifteen minutes late on a three thousand mile run? — Congress is memorialized to make the great railroad companies attend to their business; everyone apparently for getting how steep the hills were before the days of street cars, how far away San Francisco was before the days of the locomotive, the telegraph and telephone, and how difficult it must have been to study by the light of a tallow candle.