Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/34

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Cornell, and Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, were among the officers and speakers. The various branches of economics were discussed largely by Americans such as Clark in economic theory, Ripley in transportation, Seligman in public finance, and Hoffman in insurance, although Eugene von Philippovich came from Vienna.

In one of the political sections an address of exceptional interest was made by the Right Hon. James Bryce, M.P., eminent as a statesman, preeminent as a scholar in the field of political and legal history, gratefully honored by every educated American. The Hon. David Jayne Hill, our minister to Switzerland, spoke for diplomacy. Under jurisprudence, Professor La Fontaine, member of the Belgian Senate, spoke for international, and Signor Brunialti for constitutional, law. Professors Max Weber, Werner Sombart and T. Jastrow, and Dr. Emil Münsterberg, president of City Charities at Berlin, came from Germany alone for sections devoted to the social communities and groups. From abroad came Rein, of Jena, the eminent pedagogical philosopher, for educational theory; Michael E. Sadler, of Manchester, whose splendid work for public education in England has won the admiration of educators everywhere, for the section devoted to the school; M. Chabot, of Paris, for the university; and Guido Biagi, royal librarian at Florence, for the library. The section on the college listened to an address by that staunch and scholarly educator, President M. Carey Thomas, of Bryn Mawr College.

Among the speakers before the six sections concerned with practical religion were some who have exerted a wide popular influence, such as Rev. Hugh Black, of Edinburgh, Rabbi Hirsch, of Chicago, and Dr. Josiah Strong, of New York.

But the regular meetings were not enough. The Eighth International Geographic Congress, under the presidency of Commander Robert E. Peary, came to St. Louis to meet with the Congress of Arts and Science, and aroused considerable interest. Members of the congress having common technical interests were invited to special meetings of various sorts. Thus a Conference on Solar Research was held and an organization effected looking toward international cooperation among those interested in the investigation of solar problems. It is significant that almost all of the leading academies and other appropriate societies of the world which had been invited to cooperate, were ready with representatives from the membership of the congress.

Nor were the scientific meetings all. Men may be interesting though their theories be wrong. When they are known to have ideas and to have won distinction, they are especially interesting, even to those not technically familiar with their work. And while some scholars may seem.neither to have inherited nor acquired the art of social enjoyment, the species is almost extinct, except in fiction and on the stage. There was entertainment enough, in varying degrees of informality, including the spontaneous formation of numerous