Brown and White Vol. 6 no. 36

              there will be a meeting of the civil engineering society in the physical laboratory on friday evening at 7.15 o'clock c gross 00 will read a paper and some very important bu^itess will be transacted special religious services c e re-examinations there will be special religious services held in packer memorial church at 7.30 p m on next sun day and the three following ones on monday april 3 at 8.30 a m will be held the re-examin ations in senior graphic statics and junior strength of materials on wednesday april 5 at 2 p m will be held the re examin ations in senior bridge design senior and junior geodesy junior construction and fresnman free hand drawing the supply bureau the supply bureau desires to call attention to those who wish to purchase blow pipe sets these sets are of a special make and we must have the orders at once as the sets will not be kept in stock manages of the 2038 students at cornell 1305 are from new york state as an example taking advantage by her physical situation of her immunity from invasion she de veloped her industries and took first place among the nations of the world owing to her 1 mited ex tent of territory and to its appro priation to manufacturing enter prises it became necessary in order to obtain an adequate food supply to acquire more territory and to devote such territory to the production of food stuffs to pro tect her food avenues an immense navy has been found necessary with us however the conditions are different we might be sur rounded by an enemy for a cen tury and yet could feed double our population hence it is evident that we are not under the same necessity for territorial aggrandize ment as is england to make good the comparison of england to rome it may be stated that while up to within a few years we borrow ed money for industrial enterprises from london the tide has turned and now new york sends money across the ocean on the whole what makes a nation prosperous is not a question of territory or even of civilization but of whether that nation has the technical ability to reduce the cost of industrial production england's position in the world today is due to the fact that she was the first to develop her resources that she was near the natural bases of raw materials and that she monop olized her technical skill the point which i desire to bring out is that what counts is not territory but command of natural resources and skill to use them we americans possess a peculiar capacity for invention we live in a country as large as the whole of europe and are a se f-supporting community with a variety of resources and climatic conditions such as no other coun try in the world knows hence if we can lower the cost of pro duction we can easily distance england and take first place among the nations of the world in considering the so called ' open door ' policy in the east it would be well for us to see who is behind the door russia eng land's foe in the east is an agri cultural country and looks to us for many of her manufactured products she is obliged to de pend upon other countries for her iron in other words russia must have assistance and england and the united states are the only countries which can assist her in this connection it must be remem bered that if russia increases her influence in china our trade will increase whereas if england gains the ascendency the reverse will result " president stewart then aveg some figures to show the enormous increase of our expenditures of late and the excess of such expen continued on second page the first regular meeting of the recently o'ganized economic so ciety was held last tuesday even ing in the rooms of the forum the first part of the evening was devoted to the transaction of the business incident to the organiza tion of the society the constitu tion prepared by the committee designated for its framing was sub mitted and read by mr parsons and after a few changes it was adopted by the society in discuss ing the matter of dues professor stewart remarked that it would be a most desirable thing if the society could have a library of books on economics especially in view of the fact that this subject is not fully represented in the university library with mr caprilles in the chair professor stewart's name was pro posed for president and he was thereupon unanimously elected the only remaining business was the choosing of a secretary and treasurer for this office messrs roebling a c dodson mora and bayard were nominated and the bal loting resulted in the matter's election the remaining exercises consisted of a talk by president stewart,who spoke on expansion partly as fol lows in beginning i desire to state that i am not in favor of expan • sion and tonight i want to call your attention to some of the economic objections which i see to it let us go back to a country which has played a great part in the civilization of the world to that great republic which starting on the banks of the tiber grew into control of the whole italian peninsula there came a day when it felt called upon to change its policy and with that change of policy ended republican rome the island of sicily the granary of italy had been tossed about be tween the greeks and the carth agenians for centuries but rome became involved and then began the struggle between her and carthage up to this t time the farmers of italy had been rome's soldiery but after the punic war her legions were romans only in name although many conquests were made the bulk of the soldiers were britons and gauls the downfall of rome may be said to date from these changes it may be remarked that the italian popu lation of the first two centuries before christ died away because of its inability to compete with the slave labor of northern africa and sicily so much for rome but is there in the modern world any parallel to her position england is a great nation whose manufac turing position today is uoques tioned although it may be ques tioned by us before many years in considering our expansion question we may look to england the brown and white lehigh university south bethlehem pa friday march 3 1899 economic society vol vi isto 3s calendar friday march 3 — at 7.15 p m meeting of the civil engineer ing society in the physical laborat ry saturday march 4 — at 10 a m picture of the gymnasium team at the gymnasium sunday march s at 6.15 p m meeting of the christ an asso ciation in christmas hall at 7.30 p m special devo tional services in the chapel tuesday march 7 at 4.30 p m mustard and cheese rehearsal wednesday march 8 — at 7 p k y meeting of the forum iv sau con hall at 7 p m meeting of the mathematical club in pro fessor thornburg's lecture room thursday march 9 at 4.30 p m mustard and cheese rehearsal friday march 10 at 4.30 p m choir rehearsal in the chapel ,, at 8 p m intercollegiate oratorical contest saturday march 11 at 9.30 a m college lecture by f h newell chief hydrographer of of the u s geological survey on " the hydrography of the united states " forum meeting the regular meeting of the forum literary society was held wednesday evening in saucon hall after roll call and reading of minutes of previous meeting mr bailey was appointed critic of the meetidg and mr moore ex temporaneous speaker under unfinished business the committee appointed to arrange for the intercollegiate oratorical contest reported arrangements completed and announced mr barager as lehigh's representative and march 10 as the date new business included the election of littell 99 and harleman 01 to membership and the proposal of the names of heinz 00 and gil bert 01 the literary program was opened by mr benedict critic of the previous meeting who pronounced it the most successful held year the extemporaneous speech on the attitude of the freshmen towards college institutions was well handled by mr moore he said in part : criticism of the freshmen is now the prevailing topic and justly so for up to the present time they have shown a great lack of interest in all college affairs they have taken abso lutely no interest in the forum none of them having attended a single meeting and their action in refusing to pay their share of the expenses of the founder's day hop could only have been taken by freshmen they should at least have shown sufficient knowledge to profit by the example of the upper classes and helped bear the expense if their present acts may be taken as a criterion college institutions will io the future'suff'er a decided decline in place of the regular debate the question for the annual lafay ette debate to be held here may 12 was considered after consid erable discussion it was decided to select a question bearing on dis criminating duties and their eelations to the american mer chant marine on wednesday march 8 will be held the first of the semi-final debates to choose men for the lafayette debate the second will be held in the week following and the finals probably two weeks later after an inter esting resume of national and inter national events by mr luten on motion the society adjourned our inter-collegiate orator as a result of the trials held in the chapel on tuesday afternoon g w barager 1900 was chosen to represent lehigh in the coming inter-collegiate oratorical contest with j g eoss 1900 as alternate notices engineers club of philadelphia the regular meeting of the en gineers club of philadelphia will be held at 1122 girard street on saturday march 4 at 8 o'clock p m an illustrated paper on en gineering of transmission of intel ligence " will be read by theo spencer civil engineering society