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      There is another thing that is the fault of the system, and that is the conflict of ideas as to what the designer should do and what belongs to the draftsman. A designer is apt to be a poor as well us an expensive detailer, because he hates to get into the puttering end of it. It is easy for him to sketch the larger and more important parts and then turn them over to the draftsman with instructions to fill in the details, but the filling in may be the most important thing of all. A good idea may be all that makes a machine possible, but it is attention to details that determines whether it can be made at a profit or not. There is need of some man intermediate between the designer and draftsman, who can decide manufacturing details. He would provide for oil holes and grooves, keys and set-screws, materials to be used, and the hundred and one little things that make it possible to utilize the idea of the man higher up. This position is one to which a draftsman or a machinist might aspire, but which neither could reach unless he was willing to learn to do the other man’s work. My ideal would be a machinist who had learned to draw were it not for the limitations which his lack of early practice has put upon him. If the public schools could only be persuaded to give real courses in mechanical draw- [255] ing so that boys could use pencil and pen freely by the time they were sixteen years old, then they could serve an apprenticeship in a machine shop and in a short time make nearly ideal draftsmen, in line for promotion to any height to which their ability might lead them. Men of this type might not command high pay, but they would surely get steady work and a chance for promotion that would be worth more than immediate returns.
 

ex “Reform in Drawings; How to make drawings that give the shop all necessary information,” [“Abstract of a paper read by E. H. Fish before the convention of the National Machine Tool Builders’ Association”] Machinery (November 1914) : 253-255 (254)
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