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and validity of the methods by which these results are reached. 

 They may even embarass, discourage, and delay a correctly 

 managed undertaking, by an impatient demand for a practical 

 outcome before any such outcome is fairly attainable. They 

 may overvalue and overpraise the empiric at the expense of 

 the scientist, and may greatly overstimate a relatively easy and 

 simple piece of work, which yields an immediate and important 

 economic product, as compared with a difficult and complicated 

 one whose progress is necessarily slow. A sufficient body of 

 intelligent, conscientious, and disinterested critics of the scien- 

 tific work of the state, such as I hope this Academy may always 

 be able and ready to supply, would help greatly to correct the 

 distorted perspective in which an economic science is com- 

 monly seen by the economic citizen. Furthermore, the mem- 

 bership of this Academy is the natural and immediate constit- 

 uency and support of such purely scientific work as the state, 

 or any other public agency, may choose to foster or initiate. 

 With its general outlook over the whole field of human welfare 

 and scientific activity, it ought to be in a position to suggest 

 or to set on foot new work in lines neglected hitherto. This 

 view of the legitimate and possible relations of the Academy 

 to public scientific work seems to have been foreshadowed, 

 whether consciously or unconsciously I do not know, by the 

 description and resume of that work contributed by our last 

 year's symposium, and contained in our Transactions for 1909. 

 I commend this review to your attention as worthy of care- 

 ful study. I would like to see, and am indeed ready to advise, 

 the appointment of annual committees of this Academy on 

 scientific progress within the state, to present reports which, 

 published in our Transactions, will form a continuous and, 

 in course of time, an invaluable record of the history of scien- 

 tific enterprise in Illinois. 



These are delicate and important functions which I am pro- 

 posing to you, and all this implies, as you will see at once, 

 that the State Academy is really to succeed and to continue to 

 succeed ; that it is to attract and to hold in its membership the 

 best, the most experienced, and the most public-spirited scien- 



