Drayer, C. E.

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 The Knowledge Bank at The Ohio State University Ohio State Engineer   Title:  Discussion on Compensation of Engineers and Architects Creators:  Drayer, C. E. Issue Date:  Nov-1919  Publisher:  Ohio State University, College of Engineering Citation:  Ohio State Engineer, vol. 3, no. 1 (November, 1919), 27. URI:  http://hdl.handle.net/1811/33980  Appears in Collections: Ohio State Engineer: Volume 3, no. 1 (November, 1919)           The Ohio State Engineer 27Discussion on Compensation of Engineers and ArchitectsBy MR. DRAYER (Representing A. A. E.)Mr. Drayer: It seems that one of the relations thatmight with propriety be established between EngineeringCouncil and the American Association of Engineers isthat the American Association might take this statisticalwork of the Engineering Council has done so well, asillustrated by Mr. Baker's excellent paper and use itin operation.Mr. Baker has said that Engineering Council took apart in the railroad wage hearing before the Board ofWages and Working Conditions at Washington. So itdid, a very splendid part. I am going to tell you justwhat that part was and be entirely frank in the matter.The hearing was sprung on us before we were ready forit. I was in New York in the McAlpine Hotel when wordwas forwarded by wire from Chicago that the hearingwas called, and believe me, there was some scrambling.We proceeded to buy the Western Union by sections, itseemed, the way we sent wires and got our chapters andour railroad committee to working. We worked Sundayand nights. The committee worked on the train goingto Washington. We worked until about one o'clock onSunday night and were ready at two o'clock on Mondayafternoon, and at the hearing, set ahead of time, wethought we could be ready for it. The rest of the recordis written and may be read by anyone as the courtstenographer took the testimony. Council said, '"Werepresent forty thousand engineers." They asked ushow many we represented. We said, "Forty thousandrailroad engineers, because of the national conferencewe had on March 17 in Chicago. We organized a railroaddepartment and followed that case through the Board ofWages and Working Conditions, until it was derrickedfor a very good reason from the Board and passed onto the Eegional Directors. We were on the job at Wash-ington and found out about the change a few days after.We took it up with the various Regional Directors and Iam very happy to say at the present time we have hadincreases granted in the Northwestern Region, the Cen-tral Western Region and the Allegheny Region. Mr.Bush, Director of the Southwestern Region told us atthe beginning that things were all right in his Region."Now kindly do not butt in" was the tenor of his letters.Lately he has promised to put into effect schedule not lessfavorable than the one adopted in the Northwestern Re-gion. The way we found out what conditions were inthe Southwestern Region was to .send a questionnaire toall the engineers in that region. We spent a lot of timetabulating those questionnaires and presenting them.That is a measure of the history of the railroad case.What I said a moment ago was that the AmericanAssociation of Engineers has got the machinery to dothese things and that is demonstrated by the fact that itis not going to do but it has done.In some of these things we and Council have workedat cross purposes. Let us forget our differences. Letus find out the way for us to work together and let ushave 100,000 strong so that we may have a truly nationalvoice for the engineering profession.We have an employment department in the country.We are placing thirty of forty men in positions eachweek. Of the five hundred to six hundred that are listedin our employment bureau, about ten percent are out ofwork. The other ninety percent want better positionsand obtaining better positions is one of the things weaim to do for them. We have more jobs from $125 to$200 a month than we can fill. We haven't enough ofthe higher positions. We must develop our service de-partment so that we can get the three, four, five, six,seven—yes, up to ten and fifteen thousand dollar jobsto come into our employment department. I might sayI got just a little shock when a party came to us theother day and asked me to find a fifteen thousand dollarman.Another question is this question of licensing. Weare going to discuss licensing, or the registration of en-gineers, which seems to be the better term. GardnerWilliams just came in a while ago and he will tell aboutit and tell from their experience up in Michigan. NowA. A. E. until recently has taken the position of expressedwillingness to help the engineers of any state once theyhave decided that they want the license law, to put thebest law possible on the statute books. Now we meanto change our position. We are going to become militanton licensing and we are going to see before a very greatwhile a license law upon the statute books of every statein the Union.The Engineering Council License Committee has justrecently prepared its report. I think it will be ready toannounce pretty soon. When we have that report we willhave the license laws of the several states. We will haveall of the experience that we are going to have for fiveor six years perhaps. We will be gaining experience inthe meantime, and we can certainly decide upon what isthe best license bill. But I will not anticipate. What-ever I may have to say on licensing further I will waituntil after Mr. Williams discusses the matter.What I want to say is this: A. A. E. has the machin-ery to put license laws in the various states. EngineeringCouncil has not. Let us get together and help each other.With reference to federal employes, Mr. Baker hastold what Council has been doing in connection with theKeating Commission. Our district office in Washingtonhas been helping the Commission too. and as Mr. L. K.Sherman, president of the United States Housing Com-mission, told me in Chicago the other day, one of themembers of the Keating Commission has expressed ap-proval of what we were doing. The Keating Committeewill probably have its authority extended to cover all theengineers in government employ. There is nothing toprevent it.Our Board of Directors last Saturday authorized aFederal Department of A. A. E. with headquarters inWashington. We will be in position to provide the ma-chinery. We will have the machinery just as we had forthe railroad men. And we will be able to do for thefederal employees, I hope, as much as we have done forthe railroad men, provided, of course, the federal em-ployees come in behind us and help us do it, as the rail-road men have so generously done.There is one thing that I want to take very sharpissue with Mr. Baker upon and that is the questionwhether you should raise the men at the top or raise themen at the bottom. He spoke about the salaries of thechief engineers being cut. The chief engineer of a west-ern road told me that the maximum salary of the chiefengineers was twelve thousand dollars a year under therailroad administration; not five or six thousand, buttwelve thousand dollars a year. I know one chief engi-neer was getting eighteen thousand dollars or twentythousand dollars a year. I think he could spare his eightthousand dollars a little better than some who weregetting seventy-five dollars a month or a hundred dollarsa month could afford to have their dollar cut in half.When we prepared recently our schedule of salaries forstate highway engineers, that question was to the fore.Some of the men said, "Let us raise the fellows at thetop. The bottom will come up and take care of itself."Don't you believe it. Take care of the men at the bottom.Those are the fellows that need being cared for and theywill crowd the fellows up at the top. I am perfectlywilling to see the chief engineers raised. But gentlemena great deal of trouble in the engineering "profession isdue to the chief engineers. Some of them haven't backbone enough to stand up for their men when it comes tothe question of paying them a proper salary.It is a time for frankly speaking. It is not a timefor speaking with carffully selected words and going awaywith a misunderstanding.

Discussion on Compensation of Engineers and Architects

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Discussion on Compensation of Engineers and Architects

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