Each of these volumes contains a well co-ordinated mass of scientific material on one of the great problems confronting the American people. By means of these publications the members of the Academy have been able to secure trustworthy information on questions affecting the vital interests of the country and have thus been in a better position to perform their duties as citizens.

The influence of these publications has not been confined to our members. The public press has made liberal use of the material gathered under the auspices of the Academy and has assisted in broadening the influence of our publication work. We, of the East, do not fully appreciate the position which the Academy has assumed in the Far West. A considerable number of clubs and reading centers depend upon the publications of the Academy for the material with which to conduct their inquiries and discussions. This phase of our educational work has been growing so rapidly that the time is now ripe for the creation of a special bureau of research and information, which will not only furnish guidance for special investigations, but will also bring members into closer touch with one another. One of the greatest services which the Academy can perform will be to co-ordinate the effort that is being put forth by our members in the study of industrial and political questions. With every section of the country fully represented in our membership, the Academy is in a position clearly to mirror the intelligent opinion of the American people as well as to present the results of the most advanced research.

In spite of this increasing influence, the Academy has hardly begun to utilize its possibilities of usefulness. In a great democracy such as ours a national organization which will maintain the highest ideals of truth and sincerity possesses unlimited possibilities for good. To realize these possibilities, however, each member must feel a keen sense of the responsibilities involved and a willingness to co-operate with his fellow members in developing the work and extending the influence of the Academy. The plea that I wish to make this year is for the further development of this spirit of cooperation. With it the Academy's educational influence will advance from year to year until every section of the country will profit by the research and investigation conducted under your auspices.

The Presiding Officer, Dr. Charles Custis Harrison, then intro

duced the speaker of the evening, Honorable George Bruce Cortelyou, Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor, Washington, D. C.

Dr. Harrison spoke as follows:

"The growth of the United States of America is much more striking to all of us than is the development of the machinery of Government. In fact, the slow processes under which new Departments have been created to meet new needs are curious in the extreme."

After stating the rise and history of the several Departments of the Government, Provost Harrison concluded as follows:

"For many years duties have been assigned to these several Administrative or Executive Departments which have been wholly incongruous and unrelated to their proper functions; and for many years, too, as we all know, the development of the manufacturing interests of the country, and the mining interests of the country, has been so great as to force upon the attention of Congress the establishment of a Department in recognition of our national development upon these lines; and so, in 1902, the Department of Commerce -or, as it is now called, the Department of Commerce and Laborwas established. No one who has not read the Act can at all understand the multiform and multitudinous duties which devolve upon the Chief of this Department. When Oliver Wendell Holmes was a Professor at Harvard, he had so many subjects to teach that he called his Chair at Harvard a 'Settee!' And I think that Mr. Cortelyou may call his Chair in the Cabinet a Settee!

"Of course, all of us feel a peculiar interest in Mr. Cortelyou, entirely apart from the duties of his new and high office-an interest which has grown out of his affection for and intimacy with our late and much beloved President, William McKinley; for Mr. Cortelyou bore very much the same relation to Mr. McKinley as Mr. Nicolay and Mr. Hay bore to Mr. Lincoln, and it is an episode not to be overlooked that these two men, holding very much the same relations to two of our great Presidents, should find themselves together in the present Cabinet.

"We do not intend, to-night, to trouble Mr. Cortelyou with telling us of all the duties of his office. He can leave the Settee and take the 'Chair of Commerce,' and we shall be glad to hear from him

upon the subject upon which he has consented to speak to us-that is to say, of 'Some Agencies by which the Domestic and Foreign Trade of the United States may be Increased.'

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have very great pleasure in presenting to you the Honorable George B. Cortelyou, a member of the Cabinet, and Secretary of Commerce and Labor."

Secretary Cortelyou then delivered the annual address on "Some Agencies for the Extension of our Domestic and Foreign Trade." This address is printed on pages 1-12 of this volume.

At the close of Mr. Cortelyou's address the President of the Academy said:

"Before the adjournment of this meeting I wish to express to the Secretary of Commerce and Labor the sincere appreciation of the Academy for his admirable address. Called to one of the highest positions in the administration of our National Government, he has shown a breadth of view combined with an executive capacity which has aroused the admiration and inspired the confidence of the business community throughout the United States. It will be the privilege of the historian a hundred years hence fully to describe the difficulties that had to be overcome in the establishment of this great new Department and to gauge at their true value the courage and tact that were required to assure to this Department its full measure of usefulness. We stand so close to the formative period of this Department that we cannot appreciate in all its bearings the great edifice which is being reared by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. But the results already accomplished are sufficient to enable us, in welcoming the speaker of the evening, to pay tribute to the zeal, energy, faithfulness, devotion and the ability with which the new work has been undertaken."

SESSION OF SATURDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 9TH.

The Presiding Officer, Honorable Samuel McCune Lindsay, Commissioner of Education, Porto Rico, announced as the general topic of the afternoon session, "The Immigration Problem," and introduced the first speaker, Honorable Frank Pierce Sargent, Commissioner-General of Immigration, Washington, D. C. The address of Commissioner Sargent, on "Problems of Immigration,"

The second address on "The Problem of Assimilation," was delivered by Franklin H. Giddings, LL. D., Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, New York City. A summary of Professor Giddings' remarks follows:

In popular discussions of the effects of immigration upon the characteristics of the American people the word assimilation is used for two distinct but related phenomena: one, a gradual conversion of the mind and conduct of the immigrant to American standards, an approximation to an American type; the other an admixture through intermarriage of the immigrant blood with that of the native-born population. The commingling of bloods is the process of amalgamation. The modification of mind and conduct through initiation and education is the process of assimilation. In the present paper I shall examine the known facts relating to both assimilation and amalgamation as they are taking place in the United States to-day.

There never has been a time since immigration to the United States began on a large scale in 1820 when it has not been opposed by an influential class or party of the native born, which has tried to secure the enactment of restrictive legislation. This effort assumed formidable proportions in the Know-nothing movement of 1854. It barred out Chinese laborers in 1892, and now it is attempting to restrict the incoming of the peoples of Southern and Eastern Europe, admittedly more unlike the older American stock than were the Irish and German immigrants of former years. How far a restrictive policy is expedient can be determined only by a study of assimilation and of amalgamation, as these processes are statistically known, in the light of the past experience of the human race, which from the earliest times has been undergoing continual modification through the meeting of minds and the commingling of bloods.

These statistical facts and the lessons of history are plain to those who will read them without prejudice. Twenty-one millions of foreign-born persons have come to the United States since 1820, and yet to-day on the mainland of the United States only 1,403,212 persons are unable to speak the English language. Within the same area there are only 3,200,746 whites unable to read or write and of these 1,913,611 are native born. Few sober-minded

students would venture to affirm that American standards of living, or American legal and political institutions have as yet undergone any considerable change for better or for worse in consequence of the presence here of the immigration that arrived before the year 1890. Assimilation has been astonishingly complete, and the pessimistic predictions of the Know-nothings have not been verified.

Amalgamation proceeds slowly, and statistics of the intermarriages of native and foreign born, or of different nationalities of the foreign born, do not adequately represent it. We have no way of knowing how rapidly it proceeds among the children and grandchildren of immigrants when all distinctions of European nationality have been lost. The only question we can raise is: When admixture of the stocks now resident here has been accomplished what will the resulting population be like? This question can be answered with a high degree of certainty. In the entire United States 53 per cent. of the foreign born are of English and Teutonic stocks and 21 per cent. are of Celtic stocks. Practically 75 per cent. of our foreign born are of English, Teutonic and Celtic stocks. This is the fact that is made significant by history. The English people, and its offspring, the American people of English descent, are a product of the blending of Teutonic with Celtic bloods during the first ten centuries of the Christian era. Unless the inflow of Latin and Slavic peoples into the United States from this time forth should be out of all proportion to any phenomenon of immigration yet seen in the world's history, the American people must remain what it has thus far been, essentially English in blood, mental qualities, character and institutions.

Admitting that many of our immigrants now are physically and mentally inferior, our practical problem is to exclude undesirable persons without barring any nationality as such. This conclusion. applies only to immigration of the white race. Dilution of the American blood by other color races, as for example, the Chinese, is highly undesirable, and should not be contemplated.

The third address, on "Immigration in its Relation to Pauperism," by Miss Kate Holladay Claghorn, of the Tenement House Department, New York City, will be found on pages 185-205.

"The Diffusion of Immigration" was discussed by Eliot Norton,