their spirit, though much alike in their rigorous methods of collecting facts by patient observation in most of the countries now inhabited by civilized man. The second great organization - if we consider the above as a single society with several branches — is much more recent in its formation, and quite peculiar in its methods.

The "Musée Social," founded in 1894 by the Comte de Chambrun, deserves attention from our countrymen, since it devotes itself to the study of questions in which we as a nation are much concerned. Its founder is also worthy of some notice even in a country where rich men give millions of dollars at once to endow universities, and hint that they may give more millions if they are allowed to make and unmake college presidents according to their millionaire whim. The Count de Chambrun is of an old French family, and long since married a great fortune, in the person of the heiress of a famous glass-making industry of Baccarat, near Luneville, which was founded in 1765 by the bishop of Metz, but which fell into the hands of Pierre Antoine Godard-Demarest in 1820, and now employs two thousand four hundred workmen. It has for many years yielded a large income, and seems to be the main source of the family wealth, the Countess de Chambrun being the grand-daughter of the Godard-Demarest who became proprietor of the works three-quarters of a century ago. The count himself is almost coeval with the property, having been born in 1821. Since his marriage he has passed through high political grades under the Second Empire and the French Republic, but retired from politics in 1879, and for eighteen years has devoted himself to music and social economy. His latest work has been to endow and organize the "Social Museum," just mentioned,― a name which hardly conveys to our ears the full meaning of his institution, to which he has conveyed property amounting to nearly $500,000. Its declared object is "to put gratuitously at the disposal of the public the documents, models, plans, statutes, etc., of social institutions and organizations whose aim and result is to ameliorate the material and moral condition of the laboring class." It renounces membership fees (having a sufficient endowment for the present), forbids political and religious discussions, which are an important feature of the Le Play societies,— and has proceeded to furnish, during the three short years of its existence, the following eight kinds of social activity:

1. A permanent museum of social economy, consisting of models and other material objects.

2. A library and writing-room in Paris, open to all without charge.

3. The imparting to all interested inquirers of all available information that may be asked for in regard to social undertakings.

4. Expert consultations, either in regard to the formation of societies, etc., which may be in contemplation, or concerning the actual state of existing establishments and the modification that may be desirable therein.

5. The establishment of lectures and lecture courses, and oral explanations for the purpose of elucidating the documents in the library, and of popularizing the methods of Social Economy.

6. Deputations for study and in vestigationin France and other

countries.

7. Publications communicating the researches of the society of the "Social Museum," and the documents there collected.

8. The award of prizes and medals to recompense distinguished service, and the arrangement of competitions upon special subjects.

For the direction of this varied activity, eight sections or departments have been created,-not corresponding exactly to the above-named modes of service, but in fact covering them; each section being managed by a committee chosen and proceeding pursuant to a system laid down by the founder, in accordance with French customs, but in no wise restricted as to opinions or utterances, except for the prohibition cited, of those fruitful sources of controversy, religious and political debate. It would astonish a Frenchman, if he were allowed to discuss a topic at all, to be told that he must conform his utterances to your taste or mine, as to opinions. He might recognize our right to intimate an impropriety in the manner, but not in the matter. Discussions in France are often prohibited; but, if allowed, they must be free.

I have dwelt at some length on this interesting society,- a new Academy, in fact, for the propagation of exact knowledge on special topics, because its future career will reward observation, whether it succeeds or fails; and also because it furnishes useful hints for the management of our own Association, which needs, in some respects, to be changed and improved. I may venture to say this, first, because it is obvious, and many of you would say it if I did not; and, again, because I have had my full share in the policy heretofore pursued by us, either as suggesting it or consenting to it. We have had a certain degree of success, have done a part, at least, of our duty to our members and the public; but we

"This ought

And one

have come far short of what might have been done. we to have done, and not to leave the other undone." reason for my withdrawal now as Secretary is that the Association may be the more free to adopt those changes of method which might by some be interpreted as a reflection on the course pursued by the older members and officers, of whom your Secretary may fairly be taken as a representative.

It must be plain to any close observer that the American Social Science Association (though never forfeiting its claim to a respectable place among those influences that have made for good in our national life since the Civil War) has not kept pace with the advancing needs of the country, and bears now a smaller part in its attempted mission than during its earlier period. For this many reasons might be given, some of them quite beyond human control. The rapid growth and changing conditions of our people would have made it impossible for any organization not fully in local touch with the different regions of our vast imperial democracy to adapt itself to the immense work which our scheme of department committees has seemed to imply. Neither in Education, in Public Health, in Trade and Finance, in Jurisprudence, nor in Social Economy could a body like ours, with members in less than half of our forty-five States, assume to know what subjects pressed for discussion everywhere, nor how to meet the public demand for suggestion and information. We needed a federation of societies for this, not a single centralized band, however gifted or diligent in research.

The Conference of Charities, the Public Health Association, and the National Prison Association - children of our loins in some sense have at least the framework of such a federation. They meet as the delegates from States and establishments, with a real representative quality which our gatherings have often lacked. Our society, on the contrary, might be charged, and possibly has been, with being a close corporation, proceeding in its selection of subjects and writers from personal and restricted views, and not opening to the great public that opportunity for discussion which is the best guarantee that truth will be elicited and recognized in our debates. The charge would not be true in any invidious sense; for among all the associations with which a long experience has connected me, first and last, I should be unable to name one that has sought truth more dispassionately or acted less partially in the investigation of truth. But all men have their limitations.

The whole is always more than any of its parts; and we have certainly suffered from the smallness of our active membership.

We have also been constantly hampered by the smallness of our annual income, which has made our meetings fewer and our publications scantier than the occasion demanded. We have never been able, pecuniarily, to carry out the suggestions of Horace Greeley, Henry Villard, Francis Lieber, Benjamin Peirce, and other distinguished members, in the copious distribution of the excellent material which our general meetings have always furnished. An endowment like M. de Chambrun's would have been everything to us.

Instead of such an endowment, it was proposed by the late Professor Peirce, when President of our Association, that we should connect ourselves with some university, like Harvard, Cornell, or that in Baltimore, hold our meetings in the university town at some time when the co-operation of the professors and advanced students could be secured, and allow the university to publish at its own expense our papers and discussions. Like much of our suggestion to our fellow-countrymen, this very sensible proposition was ten years in advance of the time. Several universities have since adopted measures inferior to what this would have been if vigorously taken up, even by a second-rate university. It might have had the inconvenience, however, of restricting us in the formation and expression of opinions, and in the marshalling of facts from which inferences are apt to flow, wherever the human reason is allowed to operate without the intervention of prejudice, bigotry, or pecuniary interest; since few American universities have found themselves able to encourage freedom of thought on questions where the local majority surrounding their halls and libraries was adverse to the utterance of truth. Some of us can remember when every old college in the country, and most of the new ones, were as unwilling to discuss the Ten Commandments in their application to negro slavery as our modern capitalists are to consider the same antiquated regulations as having anything to do with railroad dividends, coal mining, or the Standard Oil Company. This timidity of the learned class in America was not entirely overcome by the experiences of the Civil War and the emancipation of the negro.

I think it can be said of our Association that, while we have avoided most of those topics which at the time would have led to the angry and fruitless disputes of party politics or the bitter

antagonism of religious dissent, we have never abstained from declaring opinion at the proper time or from hearing all sides in those discussions which ultimately influence public opinion. Any other course would have been fatal to our reputation among men who think, even if they lack the courage to declare their thought in the face of angry multitudes or the powerful few, jealous of their wealth or privilege. Dr. Johnson remarked that, although courage (which he himself possessed to the verge of insolence) was not intrinsically a very great virtue, yet it was so necessary to the existence and manifestation of every other virtue that it could be spared less than most of them from human character. This was a sagacious observation, and one to which the human race have never failed to give its due weight; since mankind honor courage without virtue far more than all the heavenly graces without courage. But valor and fortitude, though they seldom fail to win applause, more rarely attract wealth; and it is an old saying that high thought must content itself with scanty and threadbare bodily raiment. Petrarch said,—

"Povera e nuda vai Philosophia,"

which in modern vernacular would read, "Social science pays small dividends." It would be convenient to find them larger; but we have contrived to get on with such as we had, remembering the Latin poet's qualification of his own possessions,—“ Parva sed apta mihi.”

In some remarks which I shall offer on Friday, as Chairman of the department of Social Economy, a brief review will be made of the progress in that field since we organized that special department in 1874, under the presidency of that founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor William Barton Rogers. A suitable memoir of that man of science, eminent both in mathematical, natural, and social science, had scarcely appeared, last winter, when his successor, the late President Walker, was removed by sudden death. He had distinguished himself in education, in war, in administration, and especially in economic and social science, not always advocating popular causes, nor esteeming it. the function of the learned so to do, at all times, but ever keeping in view his own integrity as a thinker and leader, and preferring truth, as he saw it, to the applause of a coterie or a multitude. He had now and then taken part in our meetings, and is sincerely lamented by our Association.

Two other men of distinction, associated with us almost from