Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 | Page 3

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 take
our part not as the led, but as leaders, convincing the people, if possible,
that all the ills of our social system cannot be cured by remedies which
neglect the forces of creation, and that the best doctors for our troubles
are not necessarily those whose sympathies are most audibly expressed.
In the recent discoveries of science our ideas as to the forces of Nature
must be greatly enlarged and our theories amplified. Recent discovery
of radium and radio-active substances shows at least that much of our
old knowledge needs re-writing along the lines of our greater
knowledge of to-day.
With this increase of knowledge it would seem as though those who
devote their lives to the exploitation of natural forces should take a
position in the future even more prominent than in the past, and it will
undoubtedly become our function to help the world to that ideal state
described by our greatest living poet of action, when he speaks of the
time to come, as follows:
"And no one shall work for money, And no one shall work for fame;
But each for the joy of working, And each in his separate star; Shall
draw the thing as he sees it, For the God of the things as they are."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Transactions of the American
Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910, by John A. Bensel
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