THE CONDITIONS AFFECTING CHEMISTRY 

 IN NEW YORK 1 



IN assuming the chair, I am confident that the coming 

 year will be one of great progress in our section's history, 

 not through any merit of its officers, but through the ever- 

 increasing spirit of cooperation among the members, and the 

 rapid strides which research and industry are making in this 

 country. You will hear reports, this evening, of two im- 

 portant general meetings of interest to our membership, 

 that of our own society at Detroit and that of the Interna- 

 tional Congress of Applied Chemistry at London. In both, 

 members of this section bore a worthy share, and it is a grati- 

 fying tribute to American progress in science and industry, 

 that the International Congress chose America for its next 

 meeting-place. It is not only the foreigner who lands at 

 Ellis Island that deems America synonymous with New 

 York, and the members of this section must be prepared to 

 do their full duty, during the next three years, in order that 

 our foreign brethren may carry back from their visit a crys- 

 talline rather than a colloidal vision of chemistry in America. 



And so, gentlemen, I have preferred to devote the minutes 

 which custom permits your chairman to employ in airing his 

 personal views, to a survey of the conditions affecting chem- 

 istry in New York, rather than to the presentation of some 

 debatable scientific ideas, as I had originally intended. The 

 choice of the more subjective topic is rendered more appro- 

 priate by the fact that this meeting is to be followed by a 



1 Address of the chairman of the New York Section of the American Chemical 

 Society, delivered October 8, 1909. Reprinted from Science, N. S., 30, No. 776, 

 pp. 664-8, November 12, 1909. 



