New York, that a committee was recently appointed to look into this matter and report to the Society. This report will be before you for action at this meeting.

As to the manner in which engineers individually perform their work, no criticism would properly lie, and in fact it is fortunate that our work speaks for itself, for, as a body, we say nothing. We are no longer, however, found working for the greater part of the time on the outskirts of civilization, and it becomes necessary, therefore, for us to change with changing conditions, and to use our Society not only for the benefit of the profession as a whole, but for the benefit of the members individually. Whether one of our first steps in this direction should be along legislative lines is for you to determine. For myself, having been confronted with legislation recently attempted in New York, I am convinced that we shall have legislation affecting our members, and this legislation should properly be moulded by some responsible body like our own Society. If we do not take the matter up ourselves it is likely to be taken up by other associations, and from past experience, it would seem as though it might be carried on along lines that would tend to ridicule our desire for professional standing.

The Society is to be congratulated on its present satisfactory status. The reports show a very satisfactory financial condition, and you may note a continuing increase in membership that is extremely gratifying. This, after having nearly doubled in the last seven years, still shows no sign of diminishing in its rate of increase. It may be said, also, that we have in the Society an excellent publishing house, where the members have an opportunity to secure technical papers published in the highest style of the art. We have in general in the officers, a number of men, who, within the prescribed limits, labor for the benefit of the members, but we also have constitutional limitations to the activity of our governing body, so that the voice of the Society is never heard, or, at least, might be compared to that still, small voice we call "conscience," which is not audible outside of the body that possesses it.

Now, in these days, when the statement that two and two make four is accepted from its latest originator as a newly discovered truth, a little extension of our mathematics, to take into our estimate people as well as things, is what we principally need, and it would be a good thing, regarded either from the point of view of what the world needs or the more selfish view of our own particular gains. At the present time it would seem as though our world had thrown away the old gods without taking hold of any new ones. Private ownership as it formerly existed is no longer recognized; individual action in almost any large field is to-day hampered and curtailed in a manner undreamed of twenty years ago. In fact, our whole scheme of government seems to be passing from the representative form on which it was founded, to some new form as yet undetermined. Whether all this is, in our opinion, for good or for evil, is of no particular concern. The matter that concerns us is, that we have left our old moorings, and that, to secure new ones, new limits are to be set to the activities of men along lines which concern us, and that, therefore, it is necessary that those who by education and training are best fitted to consider facts and not desires, should guide society as much as possible along its new lines. I consider that we as a profession are particularly trained to do this by our consideration of facts as they exist, and I think it will be recognized by all that we are not in our work or activities bound by any precedent, even if we do learn all that we can from the past; and that we are by nature and training of a cool and calculating disposition, which is surely a thing that is needed in this time of many suggested experiments.

To be effective, however, we must be cohesive, and thus be able to