Brown and White Vol. 6 no. 40

              mr freeman who spoke next for the affirmative said : " trusts are gigantic combinations control ing the market and making an artificial scale of prices they buy up smaller concerns and drive out those they cannot secure by a short lived but ' ruinous competi tion the time has now been reached when every industry is being absorbed by trusts and we are becoming a nation of the very rich and the very poor the legislative corruption by these combinations has never been more apparent than at the present time and the people are not fighting the trusts so vigorously out of senti continued on second page notices the engineers club of philadel phia the regular meeting of the engineers club of philadelphia will be held at 1122 girard street on march 18th at 8 o'clock p st a paper on " the fruits of san itary science " will be presented by prof j b johnson dean of the engineering school university of wisconsin the mechanical engineering society a joint meetiog of the mechan ical and civil engineering societies will be held on friday evening at 7 o'clock at which most important business will be transacted it is therefore desired that every mem the regular meeting of the economic society will be hel-d on tuesday evening at 7.15 o'clock professor stewart will speak on " the basis of the triple alliance ber of both societies be present converse 99 will present a paper on " automatic typesetting the economic society a smoker on friday evening march 24tl a smoker will be held in the gym nasium at 7.30 o'clock the events will be wrestling and boxing and everyone is eligible to enter merriman for his kind gift upon a canvass of the members present it was found that six would be able to prepare papers this year the competition therefore promise to be very interesting the advis ability of accepting a new cut for the epitome was then discussed and a motion to have a new one was voted down j wesley grace,99 was selected to read the paper at the next meet ing which will be held next week upon motion the meeting tbeat adjourned president eliot of harvard ra his annual report said that the university was in need of four new buildings one to be a dormitory and one each for use in the depart ments of engineering of architec ture and of languages mathematical club president steckel called the meeting to order and introduced the speaker g c allen 99 presented the paper his subject being " bmpiri cal formulas he began by stating that an empirical formula is one assumed to represent certain observations this formula is not known to represent the law which governs them the best method for computing the constants in such a formula is by the method of least squares the first step in establishing an empirical formula is to plot the observations taking one observed quantity as the abscissas and the other as the ordinates as a specific example of this method tne lecturer took the velocity of the mississippi river as abscissas and the depths below the surface as ordinates by joining the points thus plotted a curve was obtained which resembled a para bola in form it was assumed to be a parabola and therefore a relation between these two vari able quantities — the velocity of current and the depth of the ob servations — was found the con stants in the equation were de rived by the method of least squares and then a comparison be tween the observed values and the values computed by means of the derived formula the latter agree ing very exactly with the former this method may be used to deter mine the relation between a variety of physical phenomena which are apparantly connected by no natural or definite law as a second illustration of the derivation of emperical formulas the magnetic declinations for several years were taken and plot ted as above and then the curve which best represented this was assumed from this the empirical formula giving the relation be tween the times of observation and the declinations was deduced and its accuracy proved after the reading of the paper it was freely discussed by the mem bers as a third and final example the results of certain experiments on the flow of water down an inclined trough lined with cement were taken ; and from these a formula connecting the hydraulic radius which is the area of the section of flowing water divided by the perimeter and the velocity of the flow in meters per second was derived professor lambert then an nounced that professor merriman had shown his very personal in terest in the welfare of the club by offering three mathematical works to that member delivering the best paper before the club after some discussion it was de cided to have the competition for this prize this year and a vote of thanks was tendered professor the brown and white lehigh university south bethlehem pa fkiday march 17 1899 vol vi calendar friday march 17 — at 7 p m t joint meeting of the civil and mechanical engineering so cieties in the physical labora tory sunday march 19 — at 6.15 p m meeting of the christian as sociation in christmas ilall at 7.30 r m special re ligious services in the chapel tuesday march 21 at 7.15 i\m n meeting of the economic so ciety in saucon hall wednesday march 22 — at 7 p m t meeting of the forum m sancon hall friday march 24 — smoker in the gymnasium baseball the condition of the candidates for the baseball team is as good as can be expected considering the little outdoor work had al though but four practices have been he'd and only two of these on the diamond there is a notice able improvement in the form of most of the men up to the present a majority of the work has been batting practice and if present indications may be taken as a criterion that weak point of last season s team will be some what strengthened it is the object of captain grace to have the men individually advanced as far as possible so that after the arrival of the coach more time may be devoted to team play and the finer points of the game the coach mr ilecker will arrive on monday the 20th when he will take charge of the team mr liecker is a man of much experience in baseball and understands the game thor oughly he has a reputation for his ability to develop young play ers and his work with the team will be watched with interest mr hecker has been definitely engaged for six weeks but the athletic committee has added the proviso that if 50 per cent of the second term's athletic dues are paid before may ist he may be retained until june ist it is too early to speculate on the make-up of the team as yet the new players are showing up well and the old men are rapidly approaching last season's form it is rather unfortunate that easter vacation should come so early this year as little time remains before the southern trip but if the weather is favorable it is still prob able that that the team may be rounded into form approaching that of former years lehigh club of chicago the regular monthly meeting of the lehigh club of chicago was held last friday evening in the roomsof the technical club after partaking of a very inviting supper the president j b hittell 87 called the meeting to order the principal business of the evening was the discussion of the condition of the university's finances and it was the unanimous opinion of the club that every effort should be put forth to assist lehigh various methods of accomplishing this were discussed but definite action was postponed until the next meeting when it is hoped that the club will be in possession of fullt r informa tion as to the actual needs of the university and the plans which are on foot for relieving their needs the football kicking squad at harvard will resume practice next week a general call for candi dates for spring practice will be issued a few weeks later forum meeting the regular meeting of the forum was held wednesday even ing in saucon hall the roll call and reading of minutes of previous meeting were followed by the an nouncement of thornton as the extemporaneous speaker and wil kinson crit'c new business in cluded the election of buch 01 and the proposal of yellis 00 and cjnderhill 01 to membership starkey critic of the previous meeting again called attention to non-observance of parliamentary rules on the part of members thornton in the extemporane ous speech on " the effect of the change in the spanish ministry on the peace treaty said in part : spain at the present time has twenty million dollars at stake and this alone should preclude any hesitancy on her part in signing the treaty the new cabinet seems favorable toward the treaty and a few weeks may witness its signa ture when we will be free to deal with the philippines as we see lit the debate resolved that trusts are a menace to the united states was well presented by both sides mr coutant opened for the affirmative he said : " history clearly shows that the downfall of nations has been caused by the accumulation of wealth and centralization of power the aim of the trust is selfish the indus tries of the whole country are cen tralized in a few men who often use their power for evil the country is now confronted by a great danger — that of corporation control of states mr fletcher spoke for the nega tive in part : " trusts are the natural outgrowth of the industrial conditions of the nineteenth cen tury they are formed in general according to law and easily handle business too large for individuals to conduct successfully by the union of smaller concerns better results are obtained trusts are their own corrective for when one trust forces prices up another trust competes and always succeeds in restoring prices to their former scale no 4(1