The Accumulated Knowledge of a Thousand Generations: U.S. Mining Engineers as Public Intellectuals, 1885–1920

Abstract

American mining engineers operated around the world at the turn of the twentieth century when the United States poised itself as a global power. The article examines three prominent engineers-Hennen Jennings, John Hays Hammond, and Herbert Hoover, later the thirty-first president of the United States-and how they leveraged their expertise and wealth into international renown. Through the writings, speeches, and associations of these three engineers, they became public intellectuals whose discourse addressed the history of their profession; efficiency and conservation practices; professional standards and ethics; and racialist hierarchy. As Americans, they amplified a teleological discourse of Western industrial civilization as dominant and proper: they positioned mining as a fundamental aspect of Western civilization. Epitomizing American elites' ideals in the prewar period, they envisioned racialized technological and social progress through efficiency, management, and empire. This article contributes to U.S. history, transnational history, and the intellectual history of engineering and technology.