years. Feeling that the work was being sadly mismanaged, certain prominent Canadian engineers "butted in," investigated, and reported upon the incomplete project. They showed that the $12,000,000 enterprise, which the city had about half finished, will fall so far short of returning a profit on its cost, and that it has so many serious defects, that it will be far better for the community to lose all it has thus far expended than to incur the additional outlay necessary to complete the work. A thorough investigation to determine before-hand whether the scheme would be profitable would certainly have indicated the futility of constructing on the lines adopted.

This fundamental economic problem of whether the proposed construction will prove to be a paying enterprise is often one of extreme complication, involving, perhaps, a determination of the character of the proposed improvement, a choice of sites or routes, a selection of uses, a consideration of aesthetics, an opinion on type or style of construction, a question of ultimate durability, a study of greatest possible convenience, a prevision of serious opposition, a prognostication of future conditions, an anticipation of prospective structural modifications, and a safe estimate of cost. The best way to illustrate such complication is by presenting a few examples of actual cases, either pending or already solved.*

CASE I

There is in contemplation a project for building a long, high, and exceedingly expensive bridge across San Francisco Harbor so as to connect the city of San Francisco with the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and its other suburbs. This project has been a dream for at least a decade; but it is not an idle dream, because some day in some manner or other it is certain to be realized. Some ten years ago the author prepared a report for a banker on the feasibility of the project, the necessity for the structure, the possible revenue from its use, and its approximate cost; and since then several other engineers have made independent studies of the problem.

* These examples are copied verbatim from Lecture No. 1 of the author's series of lectures on "Engineering Economics" delivered early in 1917 to the Engineering Alumni Association of the University of Kansas. Three only of the five illustrative cases, viz., those pertaining to bridges, have been reproduced. In respect to Case 2, it is of interest to note that the suggested economic study has since been made by a Board of Advisory Engineers consisting of Col. Bion J. Arnold as terminal expert, Mr. J. Vipond Davies as tunnel expert, and the author as bridge expert. Their joint report was finished and presented early in 1919; but its contents have not yet been made public. All of the items mentioned were given full consideration; and the difficult question of how to tunnel through soft material at an unprecedented depth was solved in a masterly manner by Mr. Davies. It is hoped by the writers of the report, which consists of some 600 type-written pages and a large volume of folded blueprints, that it will be published ere long by the city of New Orleans; because it would provide the engineering profession with a good example of how to prepare a complicated economic study of a complex subject upon an unusually large scale, and how to solve several new and difficult engineering problems.