(7). Considering these additions and allowing for those without degrees in engineering who were added to the engineering profession during the war through training or experience in military or civilian service, the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that there would probably be more than 400,000 engineers available for work in 1950, more than the number needed under assumed conditions of full employment. The Bureau in unpublished studies has predicted excess of supply over demand in engineering after 1950, if the number graduated in engineering continues at current high levels.

In March of 1946, the number of professional engineers had already reached an estimated 317,467, almost 63,000 or 25 percent more than the 254,522 reported as employed or seeking work in 1940 (18). Unless enrollments in engineering schools should decline from 1946-1947 levels, there might be serious overcrowding of the engineering profession in spite of the continued trend in the increase of demand for engineers.

Under conditions of this sort, women are likely to find it more difficult than ever to obtain admittance to engineering schools, on the one hand, or to obtain engineering employment, on the other. However, in 1947, the demand for women engineering graduates was reported to be "still good" by 4 of the 11 engineering schools reporting placement prospects to the Northwestern National Life Insurance Co. (28). The remaining 7 noticed a slackening in demand, but most of them added that there was still no difficulty in placing those available. One western university described the situation to the Women's Bureau as follows: "We can place the few women who graduate normally but anticipate difficulty if the number is increased too much.” In June 1946, 86 women were graduated from 130 of the 155 accredited engineering schools. Their distribution by field of engineering and their relation to the total is shown in table 6. Even at this time, when the effect of the war on the number of men graduates was marked, the women numbered only a little more than 1 percent of the graduates. Only in chemical engineering did they rise above 2 percent (20).

In spite of the extraordinary pressure from returning servicemen and young men graduating from high school for entrance to accredited engineering colleges, in the fall of 1946, women numbered 1,269, as compared with a total of nearly 200,000 undergraduate students in 130 of the 155 accredited engineering schools reporting to the Society for Engineering Education (20). A list of accredited undergraduate engineering curricula and the criteria for accrediting are published by the Engineers' Council for Professional Development (17). Of these women students, 285 were just beginning their courses as freshmen. Their distribution according to the branch of engineering they

were studying, compared to students, is shown in table 7.

that of all undergraduate engineering In all, women comprised only 0.6 percent of the undergraduate students in engineering.

All but 31 of the 130 schools reporting had 1 or more women enrolled, although an additional 24 had no women enrolled in the freshman class. However, the fact that more than half of all the schools reporting did admit women to the beginning class in 1946 and that in 8 schools the number of women freshmen was 10 or more is encouraging, in view of the extraordinary competition for admission (20) (38). The picture in the fall of 1947 will be even more significant, since many engineering colleges in the spring of 1947 were no longer accepting applications for entrance to the freshman class of 1948; others reported twice as many applicants as they could accept. Some, however, still had places available. It appears, however, that women have gained enough recognition in engineering to open the doors of training

Figure 5.-A senior student in electrical engineering whose wartime engineering aid work made her decide to obtain an engineering degree.

and employment in this field to the relatively few well-qualified young women who seek entrance to it. Some notion of the work women have done and are doing in the major branches of engineering is presented in the following pages.

Table 6. Distribution of Women and of All Students Receiving First Degrees in Engineering From 130 of the 155 Accredited Enginering Schools, by Major Field, 1945-46

Table 7. Distribution of Women and of All Undergraduate Students in Engineering in 130 of the 155 Accredited Engineering Schools, by Major Field of Study, November 5, 1946

Before the war the largest group of women engineers were in civil engineering. Numbering 191, they comprised, however, only 0.2 percent of the 80,362 civil engineers employed in 1940. (See table 1, p. 5-13.) At first thought this branch, so closely associated with the construction industry, might be considered unsuitable for women. However, as "office-engineers" employed in this field on designing or specification work women have been successful, especially in municipal

and highway planning and in sanitary engineering, where they appear to have had greater opportunity for employment. Among the outstanding women in civil engineering are three who are among the dozen women listed in the 1941 edition of Who's Who in Engineering (11). One in 1947 was manager of the business news department and in charge of market surveys and construction reporting for the Engineering News Record, where she had worked for 20 years. During World War I, she spent her summer vacations from college drafting and computing for a mining company, a railroad, and the United States Bureau of Public Roads. After receiving her bachelor of science in civil engineering degree from the University of Colorado in 1920, she taught engineering mathematics at her Alma Mater and later worked as a draftsman for the State Highway Department. This work was followed by 4 years of employment as an office engineer for a consulting engineering and contracting firm. In this job, she prepared specifications, contracts, financial statements, and cost records; calculated and plotted influence lines for continuous girders; checked bar lists; and made graphs, obtaining experience which led to her employment in technical publication (11).

Another of the three was teaching mathematics in a Washington, D. C., high school at the outbreak of World War I. Following courses in surveying and experience as a wartime teacher of mathematics and surveying, she obtained her civil engineering degree from Cornell in 1920. Starting as a draftsman with a railroad, she was soon appointed engineer of service, a unique job in which she applied her engineering training and her feminine understanding of the traveler's need for comfort and relaxation to the improvement of design. Among her many achievements is the invention of the Dennis ventilator for use in railroad passenger cars. Her experience was to some extent paralleled in another utility, a telephone company, where a woman civil engineer, after some experience during the last war in surveying and estimating, specialized in cost studies. In 1946, she was assistant to the plant extension engineer (22).

The third woman civil engineer listed in Who's Who in Engineering received her degree in civil engineering from Cornell in 1924 and became specification engineer with the Philadelphia City Transit Department. Following her marriage, she continued to work as an office engineer on construction projects, being registered as an engineer in Pennsylvania (11).

As noted earlier, few women engineers are registered. But, among the 15 or so women identified as registered professional engineers in 1943, there were at least 8 civil engineers. Registered in such widely separated States as Indiana, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York,

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Michigan, and West Virginia, 4 were employed by State governments, including 1 junior engineer with the bridge department of a State Road Commission and a sanitary engineer in charge of a State laboratory. One was a structural engineer with a steel company; another was assistant office engineer for a major construction project (65). Another civil engineer, in business with her father, a road builder, illustrates why many practicing engineers, even in civil engineering, find registration unnecessary for employment.

In her book "Women Can Be Engineers," Alice Goff, herself a registered structural engineer employed by a steel company to design and estimate reinforced concrete buildings, describes the work of women in various branches of engineering (22). In her news letters to women engineers and architects she has described some of the pioneer women in the field. Among those receiving their degrees in civil engineering at State universities in the nineties, was one who designed the structural framework of the old Waldorf Astoria; another who served as an assistant professor for 10 years and then worked with a firm of structural engineers for many years; and several others who through experience or further training went into architecture or architectural engineering.

Only two women have ever graduated in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; one has prepared engineering reports on hydrological surveys for the Government and one checked drawings and served as editorial assistant for the Civil Engineering Journal.

Women in civil engineering, as indicated by these examples, although few in number, were employed before the war by Government, public utilities, educational institutions, and private contractors, as well as by publishers of technical journals.

A 1938 study of the members of the American Society of Civil Engineers showed that 55 percent of all its members were employed principally by State, Federal, or local governments. Twelve percent were self-employed; 8 percent were employed by contractors; 7 percent by public utilities including railroads; and 4 percent by colleges (5).

During the war, after the first wave of construction for the Army and for war production plants was over, the civil engineers were the only engineering group which had a personnel surplus. With all nonessential construction postponed, 7,000 of the 87,600 civil engineers estimated by the War Manpower Commission as employed at the beginning of 1943 were declared to be among those not needed in that. field during the next 6 months (58). It was suggested that displaced civil engineers transfer to teaching basic engineering subjects, to local public engineering departments, to naval architecture, aeronautical engineering or radar work, after brief training. Some women