any man may be very proud to be selected as the President of the American Street Railway Association, which can boast of as much ability, talent and manliness among its members as any other organization in the country.

By virtue of the authority which I hold as President of the Association, I declare all the newly-elected officers duly installed. [Applause.]

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT LANG.

PRESIDENT LANG-Gentlemen, I dislike very much to open my administration with an apology for my late arrival at the hall; but you all know what a pleasant evening we spent, and it did not end with the ending of the day, but only with the beginning of the next day.

I wish to assure you of my profound pleasure in being called to this office. I deem it a great honor, from the fact that I was in no sense a candidate for the office. My place in the Association has simply been that of a quiet and earnest listener, endeavoring to learn all I can for the benefit of the property I represent. We have had opened up to us in the papers presented at this meeting a number of interesting questions that will command our earnest attention, and some of the improvements suggested we will want to introduce in our systems in the course of the coming year. Other questions will arise which will require our attention at our next meeting. I do not think it is proper at this time to enter upon the discussion of any questions of a practical nature. If I am as successful as my predecessor, and as successful as his predecessors have been, in keeping up the interest in this organization, I shall be very thankful. does not lie entirely with the officers of the Association to make a success of the Association; it depends upon its members, and as we send out communications during the year, asking for suggestions for topics to be considered at the next meeting, and the assignment of persons to prepare the papers, I hope you will give the matter your prompt. attention.

It

I am sure that Mr. Penington, our Secretary, will do all

the first of September, and I began prodding them up, and continued it until they were received. I consider that we had very good luck this year.

MR. BEAN-Then the Executive Committee did not pass on that paper which you did not receive.

THE SECRETARY-They did not. I never saw it until the meeting was in session the first day.

THE PRESIDENT-I believe it will be safer to limit this to the Executive Committee, than to the Association. They can take all the time they need to read and study the papers. If they find any objectionable features, they can have the objectionable matter eliminated or changed by the author. As Mr. Chapman has said, if you deny the Press the privilege of publishing these papers, unless you have strictly executive meetings-and they are objectionable-they will be taken word for word and published; but if the representatives of the Press understand that they are going to have these papers, they will take them as we give them and publish them as we want them published. I think that the Executive Committee is a safer body in this matter than the Association. They have in charge the entire affairs of the Association. They have usually done their work well and faithfully, and I think it is better to trust this matter to a small body of men, and make it their duty, than to leave it for the entire Association.

MR. BEAN-The National Electric Light Association prints all these papers in advance.

MR. RIGG-If the Association is not to instruct the Secretary, then the Executive Committee has all the power it requires, and no further resolution is necessary.

MR. LANG—I understood your motion, Mr. Rigg, to be that it is the sense of the Convention that the Secretary be instructed not to give out the papers for publication until they have been passed upon. He has been following the plan of his predecessor, and he desires a little support in the new position he will take before refusing to give them to the Press in advance of the meeting.

MR. RIGG's motion was put and carried.

DISCUSSION AS TO INSTALLATION OF OFFICERS PREVIOUS

TO BANQUET.

MR. KERPER, Dayton-I suggest that hereafter the installation of officers take place at the close of the session just before the banquet, as has been done in former years, at Washington and other places. I think the new officers should have been installed last evening; and it would be the proper thing for the incoming and outgoing officers to be recognized in their respective positions at the banquet. I make that as a motion.

Motion seconded by Mr. Bean.

THE PRESIDENT-I am nearly out and do not expect to get in any more, and so can speak without personal interest in the matter. I do not know, but there may be some people who like a little notoriety and like to officiate at banquets, and for those who are entitled to that and like it you can accommodate them, but if you install the new President and Officers, what are they going to do? This would change the former order of business. The new President has been installed on the last day, which has generally been Friday.

MR. KERPER-My idea is to simply install the officers on Thursday.

MR. ELY, Niagara Falls-I rise to speak on the question with diffidence. I am a little new, and do not want to begin to take too much part in the discussion, but it occurs to me, from my knowledge of parliamentary law and procedure, that you are going to create the condition by the passage of the resolution that Captain McCulloch speaks of. The installation of an officer in any large body is similar to and co-equal with the inauguration of a new President of the United States. It is the installation of a new executive officer that gives him the power of his office, and would you not create an anomalous condition of affairs, not only as suggested by Capt. McCulloch, but would you not be practically depriving your body of its power for good in a great measure by cutting in two the session, and conducting one portion of the meeting with one set of officers and another portion with another set of officers; and would not that be the same

Association. As far as the paper read is concerned, I would thoroughly disagree with the idea that we can make any successful fight on this municipal ownership question, based on allegations against the people with whom we deal.

MR. RIGG-As I understand, when the papers were read, they were received and the Secretary instructed to have them printed.

THE SECRETARY-It has always been the custom--Mr. Richardson, the former Secretary, did it, and I have followed the practice—to give the street railway press advance copies of the papers, they agreeing not to print them until they were passed on by the Association. The papers read at this meeting are almost ready to be issued by the journals. They have them in type and ready to print as soon as the meeting adjourns. I have never had any instructions to the contrary, and have done this for the past two years. I think nobody should see these papers until the Association passes upon them. The street railway journals all want them, as they are afraid that some other fellow will get ahead of them in publishing them. The supposition is that the Convention. will pass favorably on the papers. I would like some instruction on this question, and will bring it up at the next meeting of the Executive Committee. I do not want to say to the newspapers that they cannot have these papers, unless I have something to back me up in it. I shall try to get instructions from the incoming Executive Committee as to what shall be done with these papers. My idea is not to let anybody see them until the Association votes on them, and then they are published properly.

MR. RIGG-I move you, Mr. President, that the Secretary be directed to issue no papers to anyone until they are passed upon by the Association, and give no information regarding the papers.

THE PRESIDENT-Does Mr. Rigg mean the Association in its regular annual meeting or the Executive Committee? MR. RIGG-The Association.

MR. CHAPMAN, Chicago-That does not accomplish what we wish. If these papers are read in the Association, and it

is understood by the Press that they are not to be published without the approval of the Association, then they will be taken verbatim, and they will go into the Press anyhow just as they are read. The papers should go before the Executive Committee and be passed upon before they are read at the meeting. If I remember rightly, the Pittsburg or Cleveland meeting passed a resolution instructing the Secretary to have all the papers printed in advance of the meeting. They were furnished for one or two years in succession, the complete papers in printed form, several days before the meeting; it being understood that they should not be published, but were for the information of members, so that proper discussion could be entered into at the time the papers were read. That is a common method with all the engineering societies and is a good plan. Nobody is competent to discuss a paper simply on hearing it read. He must read it and digest it before it comes up at the meeting. It seems to me if we debar the Press from getting these papers until they are passed on by the Association, we must have a Star Chamber or the reporters will take them.

MR.WATSON, Buffalo-The Cleveland Convention adopted that rule. The papers were printed and sent to the members to read so that they could discuss them intelligently.

THE SECRETARY-Article XIV. of the By-Laws reads as follows: "All papers read at the meetings of the Association must relate to matters connected with the objects of the Association, and must be approved by the Executive Committee before being read, unless notice of the same shall have been previously given to the Secretary, as hereinbefore provided." Now, in regard to printing these papers beforehand, it is almost impossible to do it, as they are not always ready. One paper read at this meeting was received in this hall after we were in session. The others could have been printed, as they were received in time. I have written an unlimited number of letters to nearly every gentleman who wrote a paper, hurrying them up. I commenced three months ago. A resolution was passed at the meeting of the Executive Committee that they were to be in my hands by