PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 745 
insufficient ; the men who direct the labours of these artisans 
will need to be educated to a higher standard. The work must 
commence at the bottom of the tree, and go steadily upward ; 
there will always be plenty of room at the top. The chair of 
architecture at our universities, and the professorship of 
engineering, must denote the nationally recognised importance of 
the education of these professions. It must become imperative, 
from the irresistible force of custom, for the would-be architect or 
engineer to pass a course of study, and come forth to the world 
certificated as competent. This result cannot be achieved in a 
day or a year, or a decade, but a generation may see much 
accomplished. It must be achieved by the higher education of 
the masses. Our public State schools should be the mediums 
through which every boy and girl would be made acquainted with 
the laws which govern health, and those which provide sufficient 
ventilation, of others which guard against the dangers of inefficient 
drainage and general sanitary provisions. They should be made 
to understand that a non-observance of these laws which will be 
treated as a misdemeanour and offence against society, which 
cannot with impunity be disregarded. These are the only steps 
by which the people of this great nation, the future federated 
Australia, will be enabled to write a page in the world’s history 
which will tell how science advanced, and how that advance 
improved the building and engineering work of the twentieth 
century. Much more may presently be done towards this in the 
establishment of national institutes, of which this Association is 
the type and, we hope, the parent of all. There should be one 
institute of architects, with its provincial chapters, numerous 
builders’ exchanges, with one national association holding an 
annual convention ; an engineering institute which should be 
Australasian, with vigorous offshoots in every city in the country 
—and for an example we need only look to Newcastle in New 
South Wales to-day—and a determined purpose in all these to make 
the national] spirit of their work the predominant idea in their 
discussions, and their central and, perhaps, annual gatherings, the 
notches by which the next hundred years may record the fact 
in stone and iron that Australasia was abreast and even ahead of 
the rest of the world in its vigour, intelligence, and scientific 
knowledge. 
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