Report of the Secretary 405 



during the year from 3,024 to 4,022. The total income of the Association for 

 the year amounted to $144,089.21, which is something more than $30,000 

 greater than the income for the previous year. 



NEED OF A BUILDING 



And now, in concluding this report, I want to lay strongly on the minds of 

 the members and supporters of this Association the very great need of a suit- 

 able home and headquarters for our National work, for if ever a Society needed 

 a comfortable building of its own it is this one. At the present time we are 

 cramped into six offices of a regular ofhce building on Broadway. As every 

 effort is made to carry forward the Association's work as inexpensively as is 

 consistent with getting good results, the Board has not felt justified in paying 

 the high rents necessary to secure sufficient space to be suitably housed. 



Furthermore, there is little chance for expansion and no opportunity for 

 developing and maintaining attractive exhibition rooms, which we should by 

 all means possess. 



The development of our organization has now reached such a phase that our 

 activities should be focused in a national headquarters — a great clearing-house 

 for the exchange of ideas. Our present facihties provide only for our office- 

 work. We should have a commodious building in which those interested in the 

 protection of the wild life could meet face to face at all times and discuss the 

 great problems on conservation which daily confront us. 



There is an imperative need for a building where the workers in our field may 

 gather for counsel and inspiration, a social center, if you please, from which our 

 efforts may radiate to all parts of the world. We have not at present even an 

 adequate room for the reception of members, friends, and visitors. 



Such a building as some of us have longed for and dreamed of for years should 

 contain abundant office space and storage rooms — should have rooms for per- 

 manent exhibits of bird-houses, feeding-devices, and bird- attracting apparatus. 

 Samples of all types should be on permanent exhibition. Here we should 

 have exhibitions of shrubs and trees that produce fruit and berries that 

 people may plant in sanctuaries or about their homes to provide food for 

 birds. We should have a display of pictures, transparencies, and other illustra- 

 tions that might be studied by people desiring further information on the sub- 

 ject of our wild life. 



The modest library on conservation and natural history which we have been 

 building the past few years should vastly be expanded. There is no such thing 

 as a conservation library in America, and this Association is the logical force 

 that should acquire and maintain such a library for the rapidly increasing army 

 of bird-students. It would be of great help today, and the material that could 

 now be gathered and preserved would be of vast interest to those who follow 

 us in the generations to come. 



