384 
TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING 
tions, thus offering to exchange important responsibilities with Western veteri¬ 
narians. 
Heretofore the few members which you held in the West have apparently 
laid you under no responsiblities to this vast section, and in counting your effec¬ 
tive forces or your liabilities or duties, we have never figured as an essential 
factor, nor have we as Western veterinarians ever felt that the character of your 
society, its objects or aims, its virtues or shortcomings, its joys or trials, were of 
any concern to us. 
Henceforth we are to mutually share its duties and benefits, its trials and 
triumphs, its responsibilities and pleasures. Western veterinarians are ready 
and anxious to take their proper place in your society as a part of a national or¬ 
ganization, and meet you in fair numbers to-day to consummate this union. 
You, perhaps, wished to see more present and certainly it would have pleased us, 
but after all, like new recruits to an army, before such accessions can prove a 
help and strength to this society, they must learn how and what to do, they 
must be organized and trained, their forces concentrated and all thoroughly 
amalgamated, so perhaps, the not very heavy attendance may bode no ill to you. 
We hope, however, that those offered may rapidly train into able and willing 
workers, ever ready to advance the Association towards its highest ideal, and 
through it to be of value to our whole profession. 
From these new members we trust you will succeed in selecting able and 
willing representatives in every Western State, who will in the future see that 
the interests of the society shall no longer suffer from neglect, and that we shall, 
hereafter, furnish our due proportion of members, labor and thought. 
When, however, you have secured ample membership in the West, have 
become intimately acquainted with a large part of our Western veterinarians, 
have procured among us sufficient competent representatives to look closely 
after the general work of the society, have all your members under thorough 
discipline and have held large and well attended meetings in every section of 
the whole country, you may yet fall short of the highest state of honor and use¬ 
fulness of such an Association. 
We have already mentioned the phenomenal development of the veterinary 
profession in the West within the past ten years, from a few scattered represen¬ 
tatives, mostly foreign born, to more than one thousand regularly qualified 
veterinarians. 
Above and beyond all other reasons we welcome you here in the hope that 
your presence among us and our amalgamation with you will inspire the mass 
of this young and rapidly growing part of our profession to higher thought, to 
deeper study, to rapid, firm, enduring progress. 
The outlook here for earnest, competent veterinarians, grows brighter and 
brighter every day. The general public is rapidly realizing his worth from an 
'economic and humanitarian standpoint in the management of ordinary every¬ 
day accidents and ailments, and the State and nation are rapidly discovering the 
value and need of our profession from a national economic and sanitary view in 
controlling and eradicating those contagious diseases of animals which so often 
ruin the owner and cripple the finances of the community, or through other dis¬ 
eases which in addition render the flesh of affected animals unfit for or danger- 
