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