Decembee 13, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



907 



falls. The meetings at Chicago of the Coun- 

 cil of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science and of the Amer- 

 ican Society of Naturalists and affiliated 

 societies consequently mark the establish- 

 ment of convocation week. This fact alone 

 should make the approaching meeting one 

 of unusual importance, and we desire once 

 more to urge upon all naturalists who can 

 possibly do so, and especially those in the 

 east, the duty as well as the privilege of 

 attending the Chicago meeting. 



EXTRACTS FB03I PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT S 

 MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS. 



A SECRETARY OF COMMERCE AND 

 INDUSTRIES. 



There should be created a cabinet officer, 

 to be known as secretary of commerce and 

 industries, as provided in the bill introduced 

 at the last session of the Congress. It should 

 be his province to deal with commerce in 

 its broadest sense, including among many 

 other things whatever concerns labor and 

 all matters affecting the great business cor- 

 porations and our merchant marine. The 

 course proposed is one phase of what should 

 be a comprehensive and far-reaching scheme 

 of constructive statesmanship for the pur- 

 pose of broadening our markets, securing 

 our business interests on a safe basis, and 

 making firm our new position in the in- 

 ternational industrial world ; while scru- 

 pulously safeguarding the rights of wage- 

 worker and capitalist, of investor and 

 private citizen, so as to secure equity as 

 between man and man in this republic. 



THE PACIFIC CABLE. 



I call your attention most earnestly to 

 the crying need of the cable to Hawaii and 

 the Philippines, to be continued from the 

 Philippines to points in Asia. We should 



not defer a day longer than necessary the con- 

 struction of such a cable. It is demanded 

 not merely for commercial but for polit- 

 ical and military considerations. Either 

 the Congress should immediately provide 

 for the construction of a GrOvernment cable, 

 or else an arrangement should be made by 

 which like advantages to those accruing 

 from a Government cable may be secured 

 to the Government by contract with a pri- 

 vate cable company. 



THE ISTHMIAN CANAL TREATY. 



No single great material work which re- 

 mains to be undertaken on this continent 

 is of such consequence to the American peo- 

 ple as the building of a canal across the 

 Isthmus connecting North and South Amer- 

 ica. Its importance to the nation is by no 

 means limited merely to its material effects 

 upon our business prosperity ; and yet with 

 a view to these effects alone it would be to 

 the last degree important for us immedi- 

 ately^ to begin it. While its beneficial ef- 

 fects would perhaps be most marked upon 

 the Pacific coast and the Gulf and south 

 Atlantic States, it would also greatly bene- 

 fit other sections. It is emphatically a 

 work which it is for the interest of the en- 

 tire country to begin and complete as soon 

 as possible ; it is one of those great works 

 which only a great nation can undertake 

 with prospects of success, and which, when 

 done, are not only permanent assets in the 

 nation's material interests, but standing 

 monuments to its constructsive ability. 



THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 



The advancement of the highest interests 

 of national science and learning and the 

 custody of objects of art and of the valua- 

 ble results of scientific expeditions con- 

 ducted by the United States have been com- 

 mitted to the Smithsonian Institution. In 

 furtherance of its declared purpose — for 

 the ' increase and difFasion of knowledge 



