We call from all lands their most enterprising and industrious workers, and we send to all lands the best devices for creating the most essential comforts and the greatest luxuries. The United States is looked upon as the home of all ingenious and effective "laborsaving" devices; this is the natural home of the finest wood-working machinery, and all foreign nations imitate our designs; the American steam engine has revolutionized the steam engine manufacture of the world; the introduction of navigation by steam here, led to the construction of steam vessels on all waters, and one of our steamersthe "Savannah "-was the pioneer in trans-oceanic navigation; our mowers and reapers gather the harvests of every field from Oregon to Maine, and from Great Britain to the most distant countries of Europe, and are even seen among the semi-barbarians of farthest Asia; the American rotary printing press sends out its stories of daily life and its records of the history and of the knowledge of all peoples in every quarter of the civilized world. And thus in myriads of ways the modern civilization, which is reaching its highest development in this new world, is reaching out to touch and to revivify every other nation. It is of this civilization-a civilization which seeks directly useful and practically valuable results-that you, and such as you, are the vitally essential supporters and promoters.

It is by such men that this only real civilization-which had its origin among the ruins of the old worlds of Greece and Rome, and which, checked by the destruction of the wealth and the science schools, the arts and the industries of the Saracens—has been revived within a few centuries, and given its wonderful growth-a growth which is still going on with ever accelerating speed. It is by such men that the value, the absolutely essential necessity, of intelligent labor has been forced upon the world, that the dignity of labor has been made known, and its acknowledgment compelled from those who, moulding general sentiment, had hitherto associated intellectual labor with manual indolence, and had despised the hard-working mechanic and every mental effort which led to other than non-utilitarian ends; that the Rip Van Winkle of the Middle Ages was awakened from that slumber of a thousand years, and taught to work the printing press, to labor at the forge, and the loom, and to educate his children in such a manner as, by profitable exercise, to develop together mind and body, and was given the power of making life worth living, while becoming daily better fitted to live the truest life.

Such men have taught the world that the true and only way to secure the greatest good of the greatest number, to obtain the blessings of stable and wise government, to secure a fair and equitable distribution of all those forms of wealth which are most essential to a life of happiness and content, to obtain for all an equal opportunity of gaining with certainty and holding safely, the best fruits of intelligently directed industry and to bring every nation most promptly,

and with most stability, to a state of maximum prosperity, is to educate a people in all the useful arts and in all true philosophy, training mind and hand together, and fitting soul and body to cooperate in doing the work of a citizen in the community. We have begun to learn to despise mere speculation, whether in finance or philosophy, and to adopt the modern system of philosophy, which bases knowledge on ascertained facts and upon logical deduction from such facts; we are learning to abandon those old habits of thought which come from over-respect for ancient methods and philosophies, to turn from the study of the teachings of less civilized times and peoples, and, leaving the Greek and the Roman to his own half-knowledge and profitless speculations, to devote ourselves to the acquirement of real knowledge, by directly profitable methods. Abstract philosophy, and the deductive method have, at last, been thrown down from the pedestal from which they so long received the homage of the greatest of mankind, and the inductive method of Aristotle, of Galileo, and of many truer men among their disciples than Bacon, has become fruitful of all that tends to make "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" words having true meaning.

And this is the situation but one hundred and four years after the foundation of our government and the birth of the nation.

The class of men from whose ranks the membership of this Society is principally drawn direct the labors of nearly three millions of prosperous working people in a third of a million mills and other manufactories, are responsible for the preservation and profitable utilization of twenty-five hundred millions of dollars' worth of capital, direct the payment of more than one thousand millions of dollars in annual wages, the consumption of three thousand millions of dollars. worth of raw materials and the output of five thousand millions of dollars' worth of manufactured products. Fifty thousand steam engines, and more than an equal number of water-wheels, at their command, turn the machinery of these hundreds of thousands of workshops that everywhere dot our land, giving quietly and docilely the strength of three millions of horses, night or day, or all night and all day, whenever the demand comes for their wonderful power. This Society, when it shall have become properly representative of such a class, may well claim position and consideration.

It has been by the work of men whom we are proud to claim as brothers in our own and kindred professions, but whom the world has not always honored as they are honored to-day, that true progress has always been most efficiently promoted. It has been these men who have been made gods and demi-gods in pre-historic times. Vulcan and Thor, the Assyrian Master of Works, the builders of the Pyramids, Archimedes, Hero of Alexandria, Cæsar's engineers and the author of "Theatrum Machinarum," and Leonardo da Vinci, artist and engineer, and a hundred later and equally great men, are

entitled to our homage as masters and teachers in a profession for which we may claim an age of certainly not less than five thousand years.

Wyatt and Arkwright, who taught us to spin by machinery more than a hundred years ago, and Hargreaves and Crompton, who followed those inventors; Jacquard, who perfected the pattern-loom, which to-day weaves with equal facility the portrait of him who was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," and the most beautiful and ingenious combinations of form and color of which decorative art is so wonderfully prolific; and Cartwright, who first harnessed the steam engine to the loom; Hammond and Heathcote, who made the stocking-loom; Watt and Fulton, and Stevens, Fourdrinier, Howe, and McCormick, Whitworth and Siemens, and Bessemer, Hoe and Bullock, Smith and Ericsson, and such great names glitter all along the list upon which we are glad to be permitted to inscribe our own obscure names, while the name, here and there, is seen of a great mathematical genius like Rankine, and of a great philosopher like Spencer, shining with a radiance that never comes but from a towering intellect, enlightened by wisdom and sparkling with that purest brilliancy which is acquired only by study, and thoughtful labor in the loftiest atmosphere of human thought.

THE FUTURE.

It is by the past we are to judge the future, and the rapid advances of the past century, in all branches of mechanical science and the mechanic arts, are simply indicative of greater advances and more rapid acceleration in the future.

We have seen greater advances made in all the great industries during the past century than during a dozen centuries preceding it. The progress, which to-day apparently culminates in the light and effective reaping machine, cutting in one hour more grain than our sturdy grandfathers could reap in a day, making the clustering stalks into bundles with tireless and deft metallic fingers, which bind them and tie them as could no human hands, in short, almost a miracle of human ingenuity; in the sewing machine, which has done so much to relieve the sad, toilsome monotony of the life of those poor creatures whose hard fate inspired Hood's "Song of the Shirt," and which accompanies American mowers and reapers to every foreign land, there to do one of the truest of all kinds of missionary work; in the spinning and weaving machinery which has been taught to produce the fabrics that comfortably clothe the poorest, as well as the richest and most artistic patterns that wealth demands or art desires; in the printing press, that has made civilization and educated intelligence possible, and which is the great safeguard which preserves our nation from retrogression, from internal

decay, and from external aggression more effectively than could the armies of an Alexander, of a Cæsar, or of a Napoleon, which supplies us with newspapers printed by the mile, and with books freighted with all human knowledge so cheaply that the poorest in the land may, at the sacrifice of the least of his few indulgences, read the thoughts of the wisest men of all ages, and learn of the latest and greatest discoveries and inventions of this age of wonders by the light of the street lamp, or of the dim candle that faintly burns in attic or cellar; in the steam engine that drives all these other triumphs of invention, and which impels the great trans-oceanic steam ers, carrying thousands of tons of valuable freight and hundreds of precious lives, twenty miles an hour, accomplishing the three thousand miles of heaving ocean which separates us from the mother country, in a single week; which transports us from one great metropolis to another at the rate of a mile a minute-that progress which thus has seemingly culminated in a perfection of invention and a fruitfulness of production that appear to us impossible to greatly surpass, has really, so far, exhibited, we may be confident, but the earliest stages of an onward movement that is like the motion of a meteorite, attracted toward the center of the nearest star with a velocity which increases as it flies, and which continues to increase without lessening and without fluctuating to the very end.

We are now called upon to do our part in the work so well begun by our predecessors, and so splendidly carried on by our older colleagues during the past generation. We have for our work the cheapening and improvement of all textile fabrics, the perfecting of metallurgical processes, the introduction of the electric light, the increase of facilities for rapid and cheap transportation, the invention of new and more efficient forms of steam and gas engines, of means for relieving woman from drudgery, and for shortening the hours of labor for hard-working men, the increase in the productive power of all mechanical devices, aiding in the great task of recording and disseminating useful knowledge; and ours is the duty to discover facts and to deduce laws bearing upon every application of mechanical science and art in field, workshop, school, or household.

Every member of the engineering profession has his share of this work, not only in his private capacity, but as a member of a great body of men of kindred pursuits, each of whom may be rightfully called upon to give to his neighbor of his own light, and to assist in promoting the general welfare.

METHODS OF WORK.

And the question arises, "How are we to work, and what is wanted of us; what is the best method of advancing this department of knowledge; what method is most truly philosophical and most productive of results?"

There is, as I have already else

The question is soon answered. where taken occasion to show, but one philosophic method of advancement of science.*

We are to decide upon methods of working and upon plans in detail, and we are to initiate these schemes with promptness and intelligence.

We must seek to acquire a knowledge of the facts, to understand natural laws, and to ascertain their positions and their mutual relations in nature's code. We are to endeavor to hasten the appoach of that great day when we shall have acquired a complete and symmetrical system of mechanical and scientific philosophy.

Our methods must be simple; they must be comprehensive, and they must be productive of maximum results in giving our industrial system such form and such distribution of material, that its work shall be done with highest efficiency and economy.

The first step in any such work is the careful collection of facts and the patient study of all phenomena involved, and the registry of such facts and phenomena in the most accurate possible manner, and so systematically and completely that they shall be readily and conveniently available, and in such shape that their values and their mutual relations shall be most easily detected and quantitatively measured.

In this work we need the aid of careful and precisely-directed observation, and if we can secure the assistance of men whose powers are exceptional, and whose skill has been perfected by training and experience, and who are prepared by habits of study to direct such effort and to supply the demand for the application of knowledge already acquired, we shall find our work immensely facilitated.

We have, therefore, the task before us of determining what are the directions in which investigation is most needed, and to decide what path research shall take. We are to find, among associates and colleagues, men well fitted to undertake such work, and encourage them to take up the labor of investigation; we must find for these selfsacrificing students of science, pure and applied, means sufficient to enable them to work efficiently and productively; we must learn to narrow the gulf which has separated men of business from men engaged in study, in experiment and in diffusing useful knowledge; we have to exhibit the fact that a community of interests exists between these two classes, and that it is as impossible for industry to prosper thoroughly without the aid of the investigator, the philosopher, and the inventor, whether of a machine or a process, as it is for the researches progressing on all sides in applied science to go on without aid from those whose business it is to acquire tangible

*Vice-President's address before Section A of the American Association for Advancement of Science: "On the Character of Physical Science and on the Philosophic Method of the Advancement of Science," at St. Louis, 1878; Trans. Am. Asso., Vol. XXVII.