I. REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWENTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

BOSTON, DECEMBER 27-31, 1912.

THE MEETING OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION AT BOSTON.1

From the point of view of the general public, the chief characteristic of the association's twenty-eighth annual meeting lay in the presence of Col. Roosevelt and in the power and charm of the address which he delivered as president. The attractive force of his political and literary fame accounts in great measure for the large attendance, which ran to about 450 members, surpassing the number of those brought together on any previous occasion except the quarter-centennial at New York in 1909. Much attractive power lay also in the conjunction of allied societies. The American Economic Association, the American Political Science Association, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, the New England History Teachers' Association, the American Sociological Society, the American Statistical Association, and the American Association for Labor Legislation all held their meetings in Boston and Cambridge in these same days, December 27 to 31. The intervention of a Sunday among these days gave welcome relief from a program which was, as is usual, distinctly too congested.

The Massachusetts Historical Society invited the members of the association to luncheon on one of the days of the sessions, and Harvard University exercised similar hospitality upon another. There was also a reception for the members by President and Mrs. Lowell at Cambridge, tea at Simmons College on one of the afternoons, and "smokers" at the City Club and at the University Club. For all these hospitable entertainments the gratitude of the members was publicly and privately expressed. The sessions ended with a subscription luncheon at the Copley Plaza, at which Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart presided, and at which brief addresses were made by Prof. Albion W. Small, president of the American Sociological Society; President Samuel C. Mitchell, of the University of South Carolina; Prof. Talcott Williams, of the School of Journalism of Columbia University; and President Eliot.

A characteristic note of the meeting was the prevalence of conferences for the discussion of practical problems, rather than general sessions for the reading of formal papers. The latter, aside from the evening devoted to Col. Roosevelt's presidential address, were

1 This account is, in the main, that printed in the American Historical Review for April, 1913. 2 Printed in full ioid.

confined to the last two sessions-those of Monday evening, December 30, and of Tuesday forenoon-with the addition of a joint session held with the American Political Science Association on the afternoon of Monday, before the meeting for business. The Mississippi Valley Historical Association also had an open session. Practical conferences on the other hand numbered not fewer than nine, devoted respectively to the work of archivists, to ancient history, to historical bibliography, to military history, to the interests of teachers, to those of State and local historical societies, to medieval history, to American history, and to modern history. In nearly all these conferences the committee on program and the respective chairmen had almost entire success in bringing about real and lively discussion. Their process consisted in permitting, at each conference, the reading of only one or two formal papers, the texts of which had usually been circulated among those appointed to discuss them, which they were then expected to do with the freedom of oral if not of extemporaneous discourse.

In the sessions devoted to the reading of formal papers, the longestablished rule of the society limiting such papers to 20 minutes was frequently disregarded. The results of such excess of speech on the part of those who read-or of leniency on the part of those who preside are always in some degree injurious to the success of a session and to the interests of those who come last upon the program.

The fourth annual conference of archivists,1 presided over by Prof. Herman V. Ames, was held on Saturday morning, December 28, in the building of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In opening the conference the chairman recalled the organization of the Public Archives Commission at Boston in 1900 and briefly reviewed its work, pointing out what had thus far been accomplished in the way of publishing information respecting public archives and of arousing general interest in and securing legislation for their preservation. The first contribution to the program was an informal report by Mr. Gaillard Hunt on the archives of the Federal Government outside the District of Columbia. The most important of these are the archives of the various legations and embassies, which fortunately have never suffered from fire. Thirty-nine field offices in the Indian Service have records prior to 1873. Of the offices under the Treasury Department the customhouses, mints, and assay offices have the most important records. Of the Federal courts the only one that has preserved its records from the beginning is that at Hartford. Mr. Hunt's report showed how little attention has been paid to this class of Federal archives and made it clear that prompt measures are necessary to insure the preservation of valuable material.

1 Its proceedings are printed in full in the present volume.

1

The conference was devoted mainly to the consideration of a plan for a manual of archive practice or economy, similar in method to the manual of library economy prepared by the American Library Association. Mr. Victor H. Paltsits presented a tentative outline for the manual and indicated the general nature of its contents, dwelling more at length on such matters as official and public use of the archives, sites and plans of archive buildings and their heating, ventilation, and lighting, classification and cataloguing of archives, and the restoration or repair of manuscripts. The general discussion was opened by Mr. Waldo G. Leland, who emphasized the utility of profiting from European experience, pointed out the distinction between public archives and historical manuscripts, and reiterated the necessity of observing the principle of the respect des fonds in the classification of records. Dr. Dunbar Rowland pointed out the desirability of adopting uniform methods of classification throughout the archives of the various States, urged the adoption of the most liberal regulations respecting the use of archives, and dwelt upon the qualifications of the archivist. The problems of local records were dealt with by Mr. Solon J. Buck and Mr. Herbert O. Brigham, who urged the standardization and abbreviation of forms, eliminating much useless legal verbiage. Mr. James J. Tracy told of his experiences as chief of the Massachusetts Division of Archives and asked for the cooperation of historical and hereditary societies in securing suitable legislation. The advantage of publicity in arousing general interest in archives was dwelt upon by Dr. Henry S. Burrage and Mr. Thomas C. Quinn.

The conference on ancient history was held in one of the buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on the same morning. In the absence of Mr. Fairbanks, of the Boston Museum, Prof. William S. Ferguson, of Harvard, presided and introduced Prof. George F. Moore, of the same university, who opened the conference with a presentation of oriental history as a field for investigation. He pointed out that recent explorations had revolutionized the knowledge held a century ago and had raised innumerable fresh problems-problems af race, of language, of chronology, and of intercourse. The fact that Syria was the connecting link between the three centers of ancient civilization would suggest that there the most important discoveries of the future would be made. This speaker was followed by Prof. Henry A. Sill, of Cornell University, who, with a wealth of illustration, showed what had been done and what remained to do in the Græco-Roman field. Among other things he suggested, as work ready to be entered upon, a new edition of Diodorus, and of the fragments of the Greek historians, and a history of ancient historiography. The great mass of material which has been brought to light, much of which is yet unpublished, gives