The magnitude of the Academy’s work has forced upon your Board of Directors the question of adequate quarters for the library and offices of the organization. At the present time the University of Pennsylvania places at our disposal quarters in one of the University buildings. The time is soon coming, however, when the work of the Academy will require a separate building with adequate library facilities. This is a question which I wish to bring to the attention of every member of the Academy, and especially invite their co-operation in devising means by which this end may be accomplished.
From whatever point of view, therefore, we examine the work of the Academy, there is evidence of steady and healthy growth in all directions. Our combined efforts must now be directed towards the further extension of the work, for in an organization such as ours lack of growth means retrogression and decay.
Professor Johnson, in introducing Judge Knapp, said:
When the Academy decided to devote the Annual Meeting to a discussion of “Social Legislation and Social Activity,” it was felt that the Annual Address should be devoted to the subject of transportation. Social activity is everywhere, and at all times, conditioned by the facilities for travel and shipment. They determine the measure and direction of social progress; and the first and possibly the greatest subject of social legislation is the regulation of transportation.
For the consideration of this great question, it was felt that the one man pre-eminently qualified was the Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and not alone because of his official position, although as the guiding mind of that most dignified and influential body he has had unrivaled facilities for acquiring a clear and comprehensive insight into the problems of transportation, it was because of his exceptional personal qualities, because of his calm poise of judgment, his judicial fairness that makes him command the respect and admiration alike of the railway official and the complainant shipper, and because of the clear and lofty diction he has employed in all his numerous essays and public addresses.
The work of the Academy has had the benefit of Judge Knapp’s frequent co-operation. On the occasion of the Thirty-fourth Scientific Session he addressed our Society upon the subject of Railway Pooling, and the able paper presented by him was published in Volume VIII of The Annals of the Academy. Judge Knapp again contributed to The Annals last January, when a paper by him on “Government Ownership of Railroads” was published. Both of these papers have been highly serviceable to all students of current transportation problems, and have done much to widen the beneficent educational influence of the Academy.
The trained jurist is not infrequently a cultured scholar, but it is seldom that a man possesses in addition to these attainments the genius to instruct and the altruistic spirit that prompts to a devotion of his talents to the furtherance of the public good. Judge Knapp’s powers are generously active for the betterment of the age in which he lives; and it is a source of satisfaction to the members of the Academy that the Society has been one of the agencies by means of which Judge Knapp has given to the public the results of his valuable experience and sound thinking.
Judge Knapp then delivered the Annual Address, printed on pages 1–15 of this volume.
Session of Saturday Afternoon, April 5.
Topic: “The Housing Problem.”