ADDRESS FOR THE MICHIGAN ENGINEERING 

 SOCIETY 



FRANK HODGMAN 



President 



What is the Michigan Engineering Society, and what has 

 it to do with the Michigan Agricultural College, or the College 

 with it, that I, as its representative, should be called on to speak 

 for it at this great celebration ? 



It is an incorporated society composed of men who have 

 graduated from colleges and universities and then spent the 

 rest of their lives studying in that greatest of all finishing schools, 

 the school of experience. It is a purely educational society, 

 and for the twenty-seven years of its existence has been a power- 

 ful educational force, not only in our own state, but all over 

 the country, and reaching out into foreign countries. Through 

 its influence laws have been made and unmade. Through its 

 literature courts have been guided in making their decisions in 

 cases which came within its special lines. It began as a society 

 of surveyors. For a time its principal discussions were of 

 topics connected with land surveying. Now they have broad- 

 ened out until they include topics in every field of civil engi- 

 neering. Its papers and discussions are published in an annual 

 volume now called the Michigan Engineer. Last year 2,800 

 copies were published and went to engineers from the Atlantic 

 to the Pacific coasts, and from Canada to South America. By 

 its system of exchanges, each member of the society gets annually 

 from twelve to sixteen similar publications from other engineer- 

 ing societies. These publications are filled with papers and 

 discussions, up to date, and of the best type, by men who are 

 known masters of the subjects of which they treat. As I have 



47 



