THE   FUNCTION  OP  THE   ENGINEERING   SOCIETY  657

b  The  individual  member  should  seek  to  build  up  the  Society
in    professional  and   numerical    strength.    The  quality
must  be  kept  up  for  the  sake  of  the  elements  advanced
early  in  the  argument,  but  influence  goes  with  numbers  of
the  right  sort,  and  opportunity  for  wider  service  follows
with  the  increased  income  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  in-
creased scope  of  interests  on  the  other.    The  Society  has
barely  begun  to  draw  from  the  great  reservoirs  of  profes-
sional activity  throughout  the  busy  industrial  centers
of  the  United  States;  the  world  is  ours  also.
c  The  individual  member  should  build  up  the  activities  of  the
Society  as  respects  its  papers  and  discussions.    This  calls
both  for  personal  effort  in  contributing  himself  from  his
own  experience  and  work,  and  for  the  interesting  of  his
neighbor  also  to  do  the  same  thing.     K  the  dream  of
making  our  published  Proceedings  and  Transactions  a  pro-
fessional necessity  to  every  engineer  is  ever  to  be  fully
realized,  it  must  be  when  from  all  over  the  flow  of  knowl-
edge, data,  skill  and  experience  into  the  Society's  chan-
nels is  deep,  full  and  never  failing.     What  it  will  mean  to
the  Society  if  these  ideals  are  made  realities,  it  is  beyond
the  clearest  and  most  hopeful    vision  to   pierce    and
prophesy.
52    Consideration  must  now  pass  to  the  final  topic  under  review,
which  is  the  possible  function  of  the  Society  to  the  profession  who  are
not  enrolled  in  its  membership.    K  the  foregoing  argument  has  been
conclusive,  it  is  plain  that  such  service  or  functions  should  be  dis-
charged without  a  prejudice  to  the  interests  of  the  membership  itself.
