State legislation which should interest Michigan engineers at this time should concern the support of principles, measures and administrative machinery which will ultimately become unified in a state department of public works. As we begin to take an active part in support of these public duties we will be asked why the engineer should assume any responsibility for the framing, enactment and administration of the laws of the state. Most engineers are citizens. Many engineers fully appreciate the demand for what might be called engineering sentiment in connection with many branches of state and national government. In the absence of scientific thought, what has society substituted? Let us go back a little in our history. The pioneer explorers of the state who pulled the Gunter chain and carried the unreliable compass in greater or less proximity to our section and township lines (as science would establish them) should have exhibited some elementary signs of engineering ability. They were hurriedly drafted into service because of the high fever among land speculators. Frequently, members of Congress were stockholders in companies which exploited the public domain. In order that surveys might be performed to serve these speculators, rather than the public. or the general government, the work was let by contract and a most vicious system developed. These surveys ignored science in the measurement of distance, the determination of direction and in the character of monuments that were set. The majority of these contract surveyors broke away from their employers as they found attractive localities for settlement when they became the exponents of surveying for the new communities that soon came into being. Many of these men engaged in farming, milling or store-keeping on the side. This kind of surveying has left a blight that depresses the field of practice and sears the minds of many who might otherwise support better things. A state department of public works should support a branch which would stimulate practice of this kind. Every existing monument would be respected and the location of missing monuments would be ascertained. Monuments would then be tied together, thus giving each freeholder definite information relative to the location and area he owns. Monuments would be of metal and each would show on its face the corner it is presumed to represent. Local offices would come into being where reliable data relative to boundary surveys

would always be available. Such a department would stimulate interest in the enactment of the Torrens law for registering land titles. It would then become the administrator of that law. Deeds to real estate thereafter would have to be based on surveys made by men competent in measurement, in the determination of direction. and in all of the details of field operations. If a state department of public works housed only this branch of service, the creation of the department would be fully warranted.

A subdepartment which had to do with boundary surveys would soon stimulate a rational conception of riparian boundaries and public interests in streams and lakes would soon be defined and protected. No private rights or interests would be invaded, yet all interests would be stabilized. There is no beginning or end to the sophistry applied to riparian boundaries as now defined. The doctrines which support our existing administration under court control are unsound, inadequate and foreign to a country where public interests are presumed to have some recognition and where private rights are supposed to be defined and protected. In discussing some current reasoning of his time, at least ninety years ago, Macaulay makes the following comments: "How it chanced that a man who reasoned on his premises so ably, should assume his premises so foolishly is one of the great mysteries of human nature. The same inconsistency may be observed in the schoolmen of the middle ages. Those writers show so much acuteness and force of mind in arguing on their wretched data, that a modern reader is perpetually at a loss to comprehend how such minds came by such data. Not a flaw in the superstructure of the theory which they are rearing escapes their vigilance. Yet they are blind to the obvious unsoundness of the foundation. It is the same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal arguments are intellectual prodigies, abounding with the happiest analogies and the most refined distinctions. The principles of their arbitrary science being once admitted, the statute-book and the reports being once assumed as the foundation of reasoning, these men must be allowed to be perfect masters of logic. But if a question arises as to the postulates on which their whole system rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims of that system which they have passed their lives in studying, these very men often talk the language of savages or of children. Those who have listened

to a man of this class in his own court, and who have witnessed the skill with which he analyzes and digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a crowd of precedents which at first sight seem contradictory, scarcely know him again when, a few hours later, they hear him speak on the other side of Westminster Hall in his capacity of legislator. They can scarcely believe that the paltry quirks which are faintly heard through a storm of coughing, and which do not impose upon the plainest country gentleman, can proceed from the same sharp and vigorous intellect which had excited their admiration under the same roof on the same day." Because the engineer's voice has not been heard in the councils of the government, our courts are obliged to accept responsibilities for which judges are not prepared, either by training or practice.

There should be a subdepartment where water resources might be administered. This office would have charge of drainage, waterpower development, water supplies for towns and cities, the improvement of channels where sewage and waste products might be cared for, the protection of lakes and streams in behalf of that great element of the public interested in sport, recreation, camping and good health. The state should give some guarantees to those who cut ice and store it for summer use. The lumberman should be able to float his logs to market. Western states recognize this necessity, yet logs are driven under public supervision and the private parties interested are held responsible for all damage that may be done to improvements along the banks of streams or to structures in their channels. Private and public uses of water will never be protected and stabilized until they are administered by the state. Our present government of water resources is based largely on misfit doctrines that have been inherited from the feudal days of central Europe.

The engineer should be largely represented on commisisons which regulate public utilities. The Public Utility Commission might well be a branch of the state department of public works. Another subdepartment would be charged with the administration of laws relating to public safety.

The State Highway Department, of which all engineers have reason to be proud, would be one of the strong branches of this department.

The state department of public works would co-operate closely

with the State Board of Health. It would soon become a source of inspiration for city planning and for the protection and improvement of the scenic features of the state. It would be helpful to the Public Domain Commission. Our town, city and village plat law would soon be revised and placed under competent official direction. A state department of public works would find many opportunities for a close co-operation with a national department of the same type.

A state department of public works must be viewed wholly as a matter of good public business. While such a department would naturally be a great stimulus to engineeing, engineers should support the movement in the interest of good government. We would weaken our position by the discussion of details of organization or of personnel at this time. Should such a department be created at once, or should it have a slow development, we should always support the best engineering talent for the administrative places that may be provided. These men should command the esteem and confidence of the public and they should be more than technicians. Not only should they know something about the law which pertains to their duties, but they should understand the laws that govern fields of activity that are close to them. They should know where the principles of these laws have been derived.

A profession becomes great in the estimation of the public when the individual members thereof manifest a deep-seated public interest and when, as professional men, they perform a great and uniform service to society. While we know that the engineer has probably done more for the human race than have the men of any other single profession, engineering is in its infancy and there are branches of our work to which we can not point with pride. We will not enjoy complete public confidence and respect until we clean up some of our professional backyards and alleys. Since I am in close touch with one of these depressing fields of practice, I wish to tell you what we must do before we are to have the united support of some very important elements of Michigan society. I have referred to boundary surveying. You know how influential the farmers of Michigan are at the present time and you realize that this influence is not to decrease. While our brethren of the field of highway engineering have done much to demonstrate to the farmer that the engineer has some of the

attributes of leadership, yet more must be done before this great element will be willing to entrust further responsibilities to men of our profession. When boundary surveying is properly performed a measure of ability is required that we have failed to appreciate in past years. We refer to the surveyor as though he were some kind of a cheap subordinate. If you will read the early history of Virginia, you will find one George Washington placed in a poor light by the fashionable element because he was a surveyor. We must stimulate this field and stand shoulder to shoulder in support of the best laws, the best kind of administration and the best kind of practice. When we stand as a unit for better things the people we presume to serve will gradually accept our estimate of the work we perform. Incompetency runs throughout our history of boundary surveying. It is natural that the freeholder is convinced that this kind of work should be classed with common labor. It has not been exposed to applied science to any great extent. Before the farmer sees much of importance in boundary surveying the practitioners must perform some educational work. Monuments must be found and replaced with substitutes which will endure. Each farmer must know the area he owns. He should not continue to pay taxes on lands that belong to a neighbor because of errors in the original government surveys. When a farmer dedicates land to the public for highways or for other purposes he should be given some credit therefor. He should certainly be relieved from taxation on lands that he can no longer use profitably. The average farmer would prefer to dedicate,—that is, actually transfer,-lands covered by water to the public rather than to be required to pay taxes on unproductive areas. In this way

the public may in part regain title to public property. The farmer is apt to direct us to study easements and to discover for him why he should be imposed upon simply because some old common law term stands as a barrier to justice and progress. We should be able to talk abount riparian boundaries without involving the discussion with obsolete sophistry from the middle and dark ages. We will probably have to go back and accept some of these longforgotten responsibilities before the farmer will be ready to say that the engineer should have a higher place in the political life of the state.

There are other elements of society that may be heard from